Apocalypse Now: Part 5 -The Wall

Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our

lead pastor Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message

would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you

to the life changing love of Jesus.

May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.

Before we jump. In I was thinking this way, our

confession really is a reflection of kind of what

Johnny talked about last week. Last week Johnny was like talk

like like the the zombie apocalypse, right?

Like like you were dead. You were made alive in Christ

because it is love for us. Each week when we come together,

our confession, Are you ready? Our confession is that we're

badly broken. Yes, you are.

Grace and peace to you. See, that's the thing.

We say brokenness. And what Johnny revealed last

night that Paul was talking to these Ephesian Christians about

was that brokenness goes all the way to the bottom, all the way

to the very end. It's not just brokenness.

Like I'm sad sometime. It's not brokenness like, you

know, I, I, I say a cuss word when the Astros are just

terrible, you know, like those are all valid signs of

brokenness. But those are very much on the

surface. And a brokenness runs all the

way to the end. Last week, though, we saw this

construction, right? We were dead in our trespasses

and you remember, but God being rich in mercy made us alive with

him. That's really the summary of the

whole Jewish people's story. The whole idea was they were far

away from God, but God called them to a person, Abraham, and

he found him and he said, Abraham, I'm going to make you a

people and I'm going to bless you and the whole world is going

to be blessed to you. And that began a relationship.

Relationship between God and people and relationships are

interesting things, right? Like there has to be

communication, there has to be understanding and clarity, and

there are these promises between God and his people that defined

that relationship, that broken and loved relationship, this

relationship where God said you. Jewish people, you don't get it

right? You have to learn.

I'm a holy God, he said. And you're not.

And so we have to learn and figure out how to make it work

together. And those relationships, those

defining kind of promises, are called covenants.

And so the word covenant, we can sometimes think about the word

covenant and it's like a list of all the things that you have to.

Do. But that's not really the heart

behind a covenant. The heart of A.

Covenant is to define a relationship.

How can 2 beings who aren't the same come together?

How can they work together? And so these covenants define

the relationship between God and his people, the Hebrews, the

Jewish people. It started with God made a

covenant with Abram and he said Abram, I'm going to bless you.

And he said I'm going to make. You a people, a nation, Abram,

the family that comes from you is going to be a.

Nation and he. That it was a covenant.

And later when his people, Abraham had son Isaac and Jacob

and his twelve sons, and they went into Egypt where they

became a nation, and then God led his people out of slavery by

his own hand, and he created another covenant with his

people. This covenant was called the

law. The Law was a covenant.

See, we thought the law. We think if we're not careful,

we just think that the law is a list of things that we need to

do because God is kind of like cranky a little bit and doesn't

want us to have fun. But the heart of the law was you

are a people who are not holy. You fight and you and you, you

fear and you and you, you hurt each other and you hurt

yourself, he said. And I, God says God is holy.

And so the purpose of the law is to show how an A broken people

and a perfectly holy God can live together and coexist in the

same space. It's not to limit us.

The purpose of the law. The covenant.

Of the law is to bring us into the presence of God and that

took shape in the temple with the sacrifices and the

priesthood. Finally God made a covenant with

David and he said I will make your household, your family,

your lineage will be a royal family.

There will forever be a descendant of David on the

throne. And they thought this was again,

because the Jewish people have been thinking in terms of, of,

of national kind of, they thought a literal throne in

literal Jerusalem, there would be a literal David on that

throne. That's why they were so

frustrated and angry with the Romans because the Romans,

Caesar was sitting where there was supposed to be a descendant

of David. So these covenants that God made

with his people, this desire to define his relationship with

them was intended. What did he tell David?

Abram? It will be a blessing to who?

The Jewish people. Or the whole world, he said.

I will bless you and you will then be a.

Blessing. But by the time we come to the

1st century, by the time we come to Jesus, these covenants had

become They've been used to exclude.

People from the presence of God. These covenants that were

created to cover and fill the whole earth.

With the knowledge of God and his people have been used to.

Exclude him and this is actually shown in the temple when we

first started in week 1 when Johnny started he showed us a

picture of the temple. And so I want to bring that back

again, labeled a little bit because when you look at the

structure, the very structured, incidentally enough,

interestingly enough, when we get when we do our Lent series

next year, in the weeks leading up to we're going to do the

whole series on the temple and what the temple shows us, what

the temple means for us, how it lead to sin.

But you can begin by looking the tall part in the center is

called the temple building. Inside the temple was where the

brazen altar was, where sacrifice was made for the

forgiveness of sins. It was where the showbread was.

It was where the lamps were. And the priests would the people

would come to the doors of the temple and they would bring

their sacrifice and the priests and only the priests were

allowed to take the sacrifice into the altar and make

atonement inside the temple building.

Was the Holy of Holies where? One day a year, one person the

high. Priest was allowed.

To enter in and make atonement for the people, the temple.

Proper was where the physical presence of God dwelt, and this

is so important. The reason we have a temple is

because God desires to be with his people.

We go all the way back to the Garden of Eden.

God traded Adam and Eve in the garden that says that God walked

with them. The temple shows us the God

wants to be with his people, right?

So right around that temple building, you can see behind

that first wall would have been called the the the court of the

Israelites. And not just any Israelites,

male Israelites, Jewish men were allowed beyond that.

They could get right up to the door of the temple building, but

then no further than that outside the court of the

Israelites. What is the court of women?

Not just any women. Jewish women.

They were allowed to get a little.

Bit closer to the temple, a little bit closer to the

presence of God, but not quite all the way in.

And then outside the Court of Women, it would have been, this

would have been called the Court of the Gentiles.

And so it's not that Gentiles. Weren't allowed in the temple.

It's just that they weren't. Allowed that close to the temple

and there was a structure you can see it called the

balustrade. And it was this sense, this

series of stones set outside and it was intended to be a literal

physical barrier to the gentile people that said do not come

inside. They've actually found one of

the stones that created this balustrade.

And on this balustrade there was an inscription on it.

You can see it written all right and here's how that translates

on the balustrade. No foreigner may enter within

the balustrade around the sanctuary and the enclosure.

Now listen, here's the good part.

Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his ensuing

death. Some of you are like we need a

wall like that. Well.

Hang on to that because we're going to see by the end.

What that looks like. But the idea is there are all of

these obstacles and barriers that kept the Jew, the the the

Gentile people away from the temple.

And notice it wasn't good gentiles and bad tiles.

This was a categorical exemption.

It doesn't matter whether you were a tall gentile or a

handsome gentile or a rich gentile or a gentile who looked

like a Jewish person. If you were gentile, you were

out. We call this, Yeah, a category

exclusion. Another way to express this is

systemic. There was a systemic approach

to. Keeping these people.

Out of the way of God. We're familiar with this.

We have a history of this in our in our country, right?

If you walked around before the 40s and the 50s, you might see

signs that look like this. It doesn't say if you were a

person of color and you were wealthy or rich or connected.

It just says if your skin is a certain color, you are not

allowed here. You have to stay out.

No questions, no comments, just exemption.

We call this systemic. It doesn't.

It doesn't even bring into fact whether this is a good person or

not. We still see some of this today

and it looks like this. Augusta National golf it not.

Just Augusta National. But notice what it says,

Members. Only another way you could say

it. It's like if you're not a member

here, don't even think about coming inside these walls.

Now listen now. So, so this is, this is a

revelation. This shines a light for us right

here. What it doesn't mean is that

every person who's a member of Augusta National hates every

person who's not a member. It doesn't mean that once they

walk outside of those gates that they have to fight each other.

They're not. But it clearly says there's a

difference between you and me. It doesn't mean that that you're

bad and I don't like you. It just means this place isn't

for you. And if it's a holy twitty Golf

Club, really, like, who cares that much about that?

But listen. If it's a temple where the

presence of the living God dwells, that matters.

The implicit sign is Gentiles don't have access.

And I want to pause and I want to stop because I think

culturally we've lost a little bit of that sense that at the

beginning we were outsiders. We've kind of Co.

Opted this story and today we're going to understand why we get

to Co opt that story. But it's important to really sit

with the idea that it hasn't always been that way.

See, the Jews and the Gentiles were both dead in their

transgressions. They both had sin that needed to

dealt be dealt with. But the distinction between Jew

and Gentile wasn't sin or not sin.

The distinction between Jew and Gentile was inclusion in the

story of God. The Jews were dead, that they

were God's people, Gentiles. That's most of us Gentiles, dead

in our trespasses, but not even available to have access to the

presence of God. That's why last week was such

good news. That's why last week was so

important. Jesus has made us alive with

Christ. He has unified us.

We saw that Jew and Gentile come together.

He's unified us in him. So we look at the picture of the

temple in the balustrade, in the in the separation and the walls,

and the question is, if we've been made alive in Christ, how

do we get from here to there? How do we get from separate

Gentiles out of there in light of the covenants, in light of

the promise to Abraham, in light of the promise to Moses, in

light of the promise to David? How do we get away from and

beyond and around the separation?

When our death is promised, That's what.

Paul picks up in Ephesians chapter 2 now Stephen rayburn

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

read out of. Message or new living or one of

those kind of easier to read I'm going to read out of the new

American standard and like Johnny said last week it's a

little bit clunkier it's a little bit harder to read which

really gives us an opportunity to drill down and focus in on

what he's saying right so we pick up in Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Let's read verse 11 right. Remember we're his workmanship

were created to do good news, therefore.

Because of that, because we're a new creation, we're because

we're created to do good works, right?

Remember that, that previously you and remember when we read

Ephesians, who is you? Is it you, right?

Is it, is it Joe and Fred and Susie, right.

You is who all y'all, all y'all. He's talking to the Gentiles

right now. And what is he, what he says at

that time? Remember that all y'all the

Gentiles in the flesh, he was talking about circumcision.

All of y'all who haven't been circumcised, all of you who are

excluded from the covenants, who don't practice that, every

single one of you by the so-called circumcision which is

performed in the flesh by human hands.

Remember that all y'all were at that time separate from Christ,

excluded from the people of Israel, strangers to the

covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the

world. So what Paul was saying is all

of y'all, we're on the outside and notice what he does right?

When he talks about all of y'all who were the circumcision and he

talks about those who were the, you were the uncircumcision and

you were by those who were the the circumcision, right?

What he's talking about is these things begin to become identity

markers for us, don't they? We begin to identify ourselves

as the ones who get to go behind the wall, the ones who get.

I know a couple people who actually went.

To. What's the place called?

Augusta National, right? For the Masters?

And they brought me booty swag, right?

Like I got a sweet hat and I go then.

So it's so it looks like I've been behind the wall, but have I

been behind the wall? No, I'm a little bitter about

it, but I'll get over it, right, Because these things become

defining characteristics and Paul unpacks that and what he

goes into, like Paul makes a big deal out of this about of their

distinction and he identifies 5 things that the Gentiles didn't

have that made them different, right?

Like what does he say? This is verse 12.

Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ.

Jesus is the covenant person. Jesus is the one, right?

Like when God made a promise to Abraham, said I'm going to bless

the whole world through you from the beginning.

Israel didn't do that. Israel stopped being a blessing

to the whole world. They didn't fulfill the plan and

the purpose of their covenants, but Jesus came and did.

But what he said to the Gentiles is Jesus wasn't for you.

That's not your guy. Jesus was a Jewish person by the

wayside. Note this shouldn't have to be

said in the 21st century. Your anti-Semitism, your belief

that the Jews are doing right, it doesn't fit here.

It doesn't work here. Our Savior is exhaustively and

thoroughly, all the way down to the bottom, a Jewish man.

So it doesn't, it doesn't work. Let's let's not do that.

Not us. We don't do that right, but

other people. It's OK to just look at it and

just go. Hey, when you see it right here,

just go well. That's not true.

That's not true, right? He says.

You were Gentiles were without Christ.

You didn't have access to the covenants because you didn't

have a person, he says. You were separate from Christ.

You were excluded from the people of Israel.

You are not part of a family. You didn't have a covenant group

that you were a part of. You were strangers to the

covenants of the promise of a, of a land, of redemption, of

return, of, he says. You didn't have any of that.

There were no covenants made with the Greek, with the Greeks.

God went to the Jewish people. And made himself known strangers

of the covenants, having no hope.

See, apart from Jesus, apart from the people of Israel, apart

from God's presence, there was no hope.

And this last one is without God in the world.

That Greek word is actually it's atheos.

Christians were called atheists because they didn't partake in

the religious system of who they thought.

You don't. Have a God.

So what Paul is talking about is at this point, prior the Greeks,

the Gentiles, us, we were systematically excluded from

everything that God has for his people.

We were outside. And again, this is really

important for us to pause and take in.

This is a real thing. This is a real thing.

And it's important for us to remember this existentially,

like when we leave this room, because there's a very real

temptation in our signs, not just in our signs.

To create boundaries and walls that keep people out.

And as we begin to keep people out, we begin to identify them

as people who are outside, people who don't belong here.

And we begin to identify people by where they belong in relation

to us. We begin to erect walls.

We can begin to put up boundaries and borders.

So again, the problem wasn't that the Jewish people hated the

Gentiles, it was just that they acknowledge God doesn't work in

you the same way that he works in us.

This isn't Paul telling the Gentiles, hey, you guys are the

black sheep of the family, right?

You're familiar with that, with that thing, right?

Like the black sheep means you do some terrible things.

He wasn't telling the Gentiles, hey, you guys have some bad

behaviors, but if you would just get it together, then you would

be inside. He's not saying like you're a

black sheep in the sheep in. He's saying you're like a llama

in the sheep in a different thing entirely.

Like you eat different food, you got different stuff.

Everything about you is different.

You don't belong here. When was the last time you

paused and stopped? And when you looked at this

story and you meditated on the reality that this wasn't for

you? At 1st you were an outsider.

You. Were a stranger to the promises.

That's not my words, that's Paul's word.

It's actually in the scripture, he said.

There once was a system to exclude you from the presence of

God. And Paul is hammering this.

Paul just goes at it, right? And he's a little bit to the

people where they're like, all right, Paul, we get it, right?

Like let up, like, like, like, move on.

His point here isn't to shame them.

His point isn't to shame you. But listen, I feel like if we

don't know how bad the bad news is, we can't really appreciate

the good news. And I just feel like a lot of

times when I look around and I see kind of the way sometimes

that we act and the kind of the sometimes the way that we

behave, I think we've forgotten that we were at once foreigners

and strangers to the promise and excluded from Israel and left

out in the cold and therefore brought in by grace.

And I think when we forget that. We get 9 miles down a bad road

and we get lost and we get. Stuck So what does he say right

so you were way outside verse 13 but now in.

Christ. You who were previously.

Far away have been brought near. This is similar to verse 4 right

verse 4 last night you were dead in your sins in verse 4.

But God being rich in mercy, he he made us alive with Christ the

same thing we were far away, but God has brought us near.

Now here's the thing that we don't automatically get, but

that if Paul's first hears and emphasis would have got because

he spent years with them teaching like that, those ideas,

those that language about brought near.

That's priestly terms. Those are terms about the

temple. Paul's talking about the temple.

One time you were on the backside of the balustrade, but

now Jesus, but God, same thing, rich in mercy has brought you

inside the wall. You get to be near now to where

He is. Listen, I can show you that

verse in Numbers. That's in the Old Testament

Numbers chapter 3, verse 10, talking about Aaron.

Numbers 3:10

He says you shall appoint Aaron. Aaron was the high priest.

God says you shall appoint a high priest and his sons that

they may keep their priesthood. But the layman who what say it

out loud, what who comes near shall what put to death a layman

who's not a priest, He doesn't get to come close to God.

But what Paul says is you outsiders now because of Christ,

you have been brought near. And listen, this was always

God's desire. This was always what God wanted.

Look, Isaiah chapter 57 verse 19 talking about creating the

Isaiah 57:19

praise of the lips as a prophecy.

Listen, this is God speaking through the prophet peace, Peace

to him who is what? Far away and.

To him who is near. Peace to those who are outside

the wall, across the balustrade, those peace to those who are on

the other side of the river. Peace to those who are far away.

He says, listen, we saw it in Jesus.

When Jesus in math in Mark Chapter 11 died and he was on

Mark 11 · chapter mention

the cross. What does it say happened?

It says the veil in the holy of Holies was torn.

The division, the separation between the outside and the

presence of God was removed forever.

And it wasn't just a matter of curtains and Home Hardware.

It was a matter of the presence of God filling the world just

like He always. I wanted it to.

Paul says that's what Jesus does.

So I want to show that picture of the temple again when we talk

about you have been brought near.

He's not saying that you have a new.

Idea. A new doctrine to tweeze with.

Oh yes, let's let's bring this before Zeus and see what Zeus

has to say. He's talking about a literal

physical reality. You are brought near outside of

the balustrade. The veil has been torn.

You have brought been brought in, not.

Just to the outer inner courts, not just to the court of the

Israelites, all the way to the Holy of Holies where the

presence of God has dwelt. You are actually brought in to

the presence of God. Are you hearing me?

We take this for granted. We have been given access.

To a place that was once off limits, we had been given access

to a healing that was once far away from us.

And what we're told over and over again is that it is Jesus

who does that. Jesus doesn't just make peace,

He is peace. And you remember the thing that

we've been saying from the beginning, One of these big

phrases is in him. In him he's menu Christ broke

down the barriers. Christ, God and his mercy made

us alive. Those who are in him are walking

up. But listen, just the same way

that we weren't made new, we weren't given life because of

our circumstances. This piece isn't circumstantial,

and some of you all need. To hear that today.

The peace that we're seeking, the peace in Jesus, it's not

circumstantial. The Gentiles weren't included in

the people of God because they did enough.

They weren't included in the people of God because they kept

the. Law.

They were included in the people of God because Jesus came for

them, and in the same way that they were made new in him, they

were made God's people in him. Peace was made through him.

He explains it this way verse 14 for he himself.

Talking about Jesus is our peace.

And I was like, like every word here is so important.

Please don't hurry past this, right?

He himself is our peace. How did he do that?

I should find it right? He himself is our peace He made.

Both groups into one. He made both groups into one and

he broke. Down the barrier of the dividing

wall. What does that make you think

of? The balustrade, right?

The walls on the temple that kept the Gentiles from the

Jewish women, the Jewish women from the Gentiles from the

Jewish men, and the Jewish men from the priests and the priests

on the presence of God. He said he's torn down the

walls. They don't exist there anymore.

By abolishing in his flesh the hostility, which is the law

composed of commandments expressed in ordinances.

That's a mouthful we're going to unpack.

So that in himself he might make the two one new person, in this

way establishing peace. Jesus literally broke down the

wall that kept us apart. Look, if you turn back like one

page the book of Galatians chapter 3 starting in verse 27,

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

Paul writes this to another group of Gentiles.

For you all who were baptized, remember what baptized means.

What does baptize mean? Say it, I hear it immersed.

Totally immersed, right? Like no part is of me is dry.

Under the water, right For those of you who have been.

Immersed in Christ Jesus, have clothed yourself with Christ.

Now listen, there is neither Jew nor Greek, Jew and Gentile.

That's everybody in the whole world.

And he says that distinction doesn't exist anymore.

There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor

female. You are all one in Christ, one.

It doesn't. This doesn't mean conservatives

and liberals getting at a table together and not blowing each

other up. It means those distinctions

cease to exist unless you keep bringing them up, unless you

keep insisting on them. They're not real.

They don't exist. Men and female, right?

Well, women can't women got to do it's like nonsense oh, slave

and free. What's the distinction that you

want to impose on the Kingdom? That's your.

Idea. That's not Father's idea.

And he talked about, right, like this distinction, this hostility

was rooted in the law and the ordinances, right and all that.

This is so important. Are you listening real quick?

What Paul's not saying? Is that the law was bad.

He's not saying that the law is bad.

What he's saying is the law sin. Remember, Johnny talked about

the powers, the spiritual forces, these powers that are at

work and the age to come, but also in the present age, right

there at work. Now these powers sin, use the

law to build distinctions, right?

What parts of the law? Circumcision.

It's real easy to tell, right? You are.

You're not easy to go. I'm either us or I'm them.

Talk about the dietary restrictions.

You either eat ham or you don't. And if you are circumcised and

don't eat ham, it becomes real easy to tell real quick, doesn't

it? Oh, you're one of them.

Oh, you're one of those. The Festivals.

Passover Tabernacle. All of these, these feasts that

were taught to show God's movement with within his people

and for his people. It became real easy for the

Gentiles and for the Jewish people.

The Jewish people started to believe, well, you don't do

these things, you're not circumcised, you're them, you're

outside. You don't belong in the temple.

You don't get access to where I go and listen.

So over time it becomes the most easy thing in the world to

believe closer to God equals further away.

From the Gentiles. The closer I get to God, the

further I get away from the Gentiles.

And so we start to evaluate our experience in terms of our

boundaries, in terms of our borders.

We see it. Spiritually all the time, right?

Like we just say I'm a spiritually mature Christian

because I have memorized 500 verses of scripture because I go

to church all the time, called boundary marker spirituality.

And what I want to say is, reading the scripture is great,

going to church is great. But I know lots of people who

read the scripture every day and they use it to justify hate.

You're not mature. You hate Jesus loves.

You hate using the. Scripture to reinforce your

worldview. Doesn't make you like Jesus.

It baptizes something that Jesus came to do away with, right?

He. Came to bring peace.

And again, what he didn't do is say, hey, here's a roughly Jew

and Gentile mob, he said. Those are my people.

It's not saying I hate Cowboy fans, but I'll have lunch with

one. And the reason I'll have lunch

with 1 is so that I can hope to convince them that the Cowboys

are terrible and Jerry Jones is ruining the NFL and all that.

And if I can just get in a table with them, then I would know I

would convince them. But I'm a little nervous because

if I go, if I go have lunch with the Dallas Cowboys fan, am I

justifying their Dallas Cowboys existence?

What if I go have lunch with them and somebody sees them and

they wonder whether I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan?

And what if I go to them and I have lunch with them as Dallas

Cowboys fans and I'm telling them and they get mad at me and

I just walk up and go, Lord save me from these.

Heathens bless you. Listen, Jesus didn't come so

that black people could drink at white drinking fountains.

Jesus came to create a world where there are no signs, ours

and theirs. He.

Said he made US1. And the reason we read the

Galatians passage is because it's not just about Jews and

Gentiles. It is the most fundamental

distinctions we can think of. Male and female.

What does that mean? We're all just some amorphous

BLOB of, you know, neutered gender?

Absolutely not. He created you like you are.

What it means is whatever you are, male, female, foreigner,

native. Whatever, whoever you are.

That doesn't make it easier for you to get to Jesus.

That doesn't make you more like him fundamentally, at your core.

The work of Jesus doesn't destroy our enemies.

It destroys hostility. The problem is we me, we have

made far too much peace with hostility.

The problem is we love to baptize hostility as religious

something or other. We're separating, dividing,

killing, hurting, responding, retaliating in the name of

Jesus. So what I want to say is listen,

and I mean this I'm what I want to communicate to you is love

right now. I love you.

I see I see the world that you're in.

I see the things that we see all over the place on the news and I

and I want to say is I understand that in every heart

there's some bias. We just live in a world where

there's bias and I understand, and if it's not carefully

tended, it can lead us to hate other people or other groups of

people. And what I want to say is I

don't need you to hide that from yourself.

I don't need you to to just what I need you to do is not not, you

know, try to pretend that that's not a case on it.

What I need us to do is not baptize it in the name of Jesus

and tell us that we hate other people because Jesus wants us

to. It's a very different thing.

I can say I have trouble with this person, right, Cowboys

fans? Come on.

Hey, you're hurting me. So All right, look at how.

See, look, the dividing line has been down, right?

It's OK to say, hey, man, I really struggle to like Cowboy

fans because they've settled for mediocrity and all that stuff.

What I can't do is, did that come out?

Was that real? What I can't say is that Jesus

feels the same way about Cowboys fans that I do.

And what I need to do is hold up in my heart that says I latch

onto distinctions that aren't real in the Kingdom.

And the closer that I try to get to him, the more and more those

distinctions should become uncomfortable to me until

eventually they become untenable.

Jesus doesn't destroy our enemies.

He destroys hostility. He destroys all the things that

make us hate or distrust or not like other people.

This is called the doctrine of reconciliation.

We see it all over the place. It's all throughout Scripture,

right? But he says explicitly here in

verse 16, he, he did this right? He, he did away with the

hostility that he might reconcile them both in one body.

Who's the body? Jesus in him.

What's the church? The what?

Of Christ, The body of Christ. He brought us all together, Jews

and Gentiles, male and female, black and white, slave and free,

Cowboys and Texans and 49ers. Maybe I don't know, right?

But he brought all of us together so that we might be

reconciled to Him, having put to death the hostility.

Listen, you cannot claim that the law of God has irreversibly

set you against somebody that God loves.

We've misinterpreted and mishandled the law.

The cross doesn't mean that Jewish people will suddenly

become Gentile people. It doesn't mean that Gentile

people will suddenly become Jewish people.

What it means is everything that just made us distinct and

separate. He killed that he.

Killed the reason for the Jewish people to want the Gentiles out.

So here's the bad news for us. In a deeply and thoroughly

divided and often hostile nation and culture, our separation from

others reflects A separation from God.

You've seen the shirt, right? And it's whatever God loves.

All the people that you hate hate that shirt because listen,

I'm broken. I'm sinful.

I'm trying to figure out how to live in the world, right?

I'm trying to figure out how to make it better for my kid.

And I see dumb people doing dumb things.

I'm like God, you're people like help us right, like we're like

we're doing all and and me and I think that's the distinction.

As soon as I forget that I was invited into this thing that it

wasn't my party when I started, it becomes real easy.

It's self righteousness becomes real easy to for me to believe

that I I belonged here. If we cling to the things that

cause us to resist reconciliation, if I cling to

the things that make me go, but God, have you seen them?

God, do you know, like we cling to those things and we, we're

resisting those things, we're resisting him.

When we fail to make peace with our enemies, we're resisting the

Prince of Peace, the king, to restore a Kingdom in which there

will no longer be slave or free or Jew or Greek or male or

female or all of those things. So what does that sound like in

our ears? What does that mean to us?

That kind of reconciliation? Verse 17 And he Jesus came and.

Preached peace to who? Y'all all y'all, he came and

preached peace to all y'all who were far away and peace to those

who were near A lot of times in our mindset right?

Like we can place ourself in the in the people who are near,

right, Because we've been included in this for a long

time. We now have the Scripture, we

have the New Testament, we have the teaching.

I've been in churches since I would before I was a person.

I've been in church, right? And so it's easy for me to think

like, no, I've been brought nearby Christ and it's the

people who are outside that are doing all the problems.

But the thing he says is now the people who are near needed peace

too. The Jewish people.

Didn't have it all right. They didn't get it all right

either. They were broken.

They were in the sense having the temple didn't make it OK for

them. They all needed peace.

They all needed recovery and restoration, just like we do in

verse 18. For through Him we both have

access in one spirit to the Father.

Peace, this piece that we're talking about, this covenantal

peace, not just with you and you and you and you, right, but this

relationship, this promised relationship between God and his

people. Peace is the embodied message of

Jesus announced to us, this message, this no longer slaver.

Free. Distinction.

The dividing wall brought down the end of the balustrade, the

crumbling of temple. What did Jesus say?

He says I'll destroy this temple and I'll build it up.

Next week we're going to talk about the temple again, and

about new. Right.

But Jesus. Said, listen, this temple, it's

going away. All of those things, the way

they used to get in those things are are are going away.

What Jesus said is the things that you think make you

different and better than someone else don't exist

anymore. There is only Jesus and those

who are in him and those who are outside.

And you know what we call the word lost people, right?

Do you know what a great way to refer to people who aren't

following Jesus, who don't know Jesus yet?

A great way to refer to. Them is the ones that Jesus

misses the most. Thank you.

The ones that Jesus. I look at those.

People and go. Lord, right, it's a tax

collector and a Pharisee. Lord, thank God you didn't make

me a cowboy fan. Hallelujah, I've been delivered.

Cowboy fans over there, go and have mercy on me because I've,

you know, I know it. I get it.

There's a lot. Of that going on I know.

The temple makes peace through sacrifice.

That was the point of the temple.

Bring your sacrifices to the altar and have them sacrifice

and then the forgiveness of your sin.

Jesus came and said I'm the sacrifice.

It's not the blood of goats and Rams, it's the blood of covenant

maker, the King who is all things and he makes access for

all of us. So before we move into next

week's vision of what new the new humanity looks like, I want

us to stop there, OK? And I want us to talk about I

want us to put handles on this. This is counter cultural.

This is hard. OK, So what are some things that

we can do this week? First, remember.

I mean, spend a lot of time this week thinking about the fact

that you were excluded. This wasn't for you.

The whole. 1st 2/3 of the book, The Old Testament were about

another people in which you weren't included.

And we can pause and stop and remember, but listen.

We don't think about our outsidedness to make us ashamed

or to make us fearful. We.

Meditate on it to remind us to be grateful.

Our remembrance should inspire in US gratitude.

And so we practice gratitude. The second thing that we can do

is receive. Receive the grace of

acceptedness. This Jesus didn't save you for a

religious performance. Jesus didn't include you in a

new cultural identity. He included you in a new kind of

humanity. We're all the distinctions and

we're all the hostility between you and me.

Go to die. It sounds like I have a little

work to do, right, Russell? A little cowboy football work.

He invited us into a new kind of humanity, a new way of life.

And finally reach, remember, and then receive and then reach.

What I mean is go across the wall.

I'm not just saying invite someone into your space.

I'm saying you go to their space.

Have a meal and just listen to them and just understand them.

This is not I'm going to go have.

I'm going to go grace those liberals with my redemptive

presence, and I'm going to give them the gift of.

Convincing them that they're wrong.

This is an invitation to put to death the attitudes in you that

cause you to see people in terms other than Jesus.

The idea is to put to death the hostility that makes us respond

in hate and separation and division from other people.

See, we're gathered here in this room on this day as a

congregation of Jesus Church, and our express purpose is to

demonstrate in real time and space the peace that Jesus has

made lasting and practical for us.

This is our demonstration. This is our testimony.

So when we build walls of hostility between people, when

we maintain those walls and we work on them, we are destroying

the reconciled humanity that Jesus died to give his life for.

When we insist that some are outside and some are inside,

we're destroying what Jesus came to do when we tolerate our own

prejudices. Or when we.

Refuse to be curious about whether we have any prejudices.

We are rebuilding walls that Jesus tore down, and we are

resisting the peace that Jesus has come to secure for us.

But here's the good news. Try as we might, the walls are

down and there are those who are entering.

Try as we might, the peace has been made and our invitation

isn't to believe in something. Our invitation is to embody

something, to live like this peace, truth.

So let me pray for you for just a minute because I want to

acknowledge that this is difficult.

I want to acknowledge that this is hard.

I want to acknowledge that this is countercultural, that there's

nothing in our world that tells us that this is the way.

By the way, that's why Jesus said it's a narrow path.

And listen, some of you are wrestling right now, and I want

you to know Jesus isn't mad that you're wrestling.

Jesus isn't mad when he reveals something.

You know why he reveals? Because he wants to love you in

that sure. He wants to lead us to a

promised land beyond all those things.

So Jesus, I just pray that you would give us peace.

I pray that you would give us peace Now in this moment, in

this place, badly broken as we are.

I pray that you would show us your love.

And Lord, help us to be wall Breakers.

And that's a different metaphor, right?

We meet wall builders and all this.

But Lord, help us to break down hostility.

Help us to actively go into the world for the purpose of

reconciliation. May we never believe that there

are people or groups of people that are categorically excluded

in the promise of God, in the covenant of Jesus, the new

covenant, his blood which makes peace.

Father God, forgive me. I tolerate too much of this in

my heart. I get angry, I get exercised,

get frustrated, I get sad and I want to scapegoat someone.

Jesus, I just pray that you would.

Every time that that happens, I pray that there would be like

bells in my head that go off. That's not the Kingdom that you

have invited me into. That's not ultimate reality.

So I pray, Father, that you would give me an apocalypse or

revelation of the new humanity that you have created.

And I pray that you would help me to walk and lighten in terms

of that. Jesus, we need your peace today.

We need your grace. We love you and we thank you,

and we ask all of these things in your name for your glory.

Amen. Thank you for joining us today.

River City Church is all about experiencing and expressing

God's love in our lives and community, and we hope that

you've been able to experience that today.

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May the Lord bless and keep you in all grace and peace.