Ephesians 2:11-18

What would you do if I said you can't be seated?

Would you like rebel? Would you get like all mad and

frustrated? You would just laugh?

No, you wouldn't. So I don't.

I don't know about you guys, but I fly around a good bit to do my

work. I work with churches to help

them love their most vulnerable neighbors.

And sometimes I find myself on Frontier flights.

Has anyone ever flown Frontier? OK, so there are a couple of

miracles I've witnessed in the world, and one of them is

falling asleep on the Frontier flight, man.

So the other day I'm flying here by way of Vegas, which,

whatever, Frontier, thank you. But I'm on my way to Vegas.

And guys, you got to understand, it was a golden moment.

Like, it was so good. Like, I'm all tucked in and all

cozy and all that. I'm like, laying like this in a

seat and like, kind of, you know, like kind of in a modified

fetal position. And I'm like this.

And I drift into this beautiful, ethereal world that only English

playwrights know about, right? And then all of a sudden,

someone violently hits me on the shoulder, sucking me from this

golden moment that I was experiencing, waking me up.

Now I'm groggy. Now I'm a little frustrated.

And he says, excuse me, I need to use the bathroom.

And I'm sure he said it in a nicer tone, but that's how I

heard it. And so he's like, can you get

up? And I'm like, can I?

And I get up? And these are all things I'm

thinking, by the way, I didn't actually say them.

But I get up and he goes to the bathroom and I'm in like the

last seat. So it wasn't a far walk.

But as soon as he gets into the bathroom and shuts the door, we

hit turbulence. It was so awesome.

And I felt this like sinister grin well up within me.

You know why? Because I'm petty, that's why.

Because I wanted him to suffer. The window seat man had become

my arch nemesis. And if we're honest, they're

people that we like and they're people that we don't like.

We have our own concepts of us and them.

Here's a few Republican versus Democrat, Coke versus Pepsi,

Team Edward versus Team Jacob, Lord of the Rings versus

Chronicles of Narnia, Married versus single, male versus

female, Oklahoma versus Texas, Oklahoma State versus Oklahoma,

normal versus weird window seat people versus aisle seat people.

We draw lines based on culture, race, socio economic factors,

and even like, our likes and dislikes, what we're comfortable

with and what we're not comfortable with.

And I'd like to propose that this isn't it.

We've lost the plot. We're missing the point.

This is not the way it should be.

So what does God have to say about this?

As we look at Ephesians 2 last week, you saw how Paul was

saying God has reconciled us to Himself.

Well, this week we see how God is reconciling us to each other.

So as we approach chapter 2, verse 11 through 18, I want you

to remember that God has reversed your situation and

reconciled you so that you can live in peace with Him and one

another. So I'm going to say it again for

those in the back. Remember that God has reversed

your situation and reconciled you so that you can live in

peace with Him and each other. So the first thing I want you to

see is that we need to remember who we were.

Have you ever heard this phrase? Sometimes you can forget where

you came from. When I first moved to New York,

God started giving me these real big opportunities.

And I'm in rooms with pastors who are leading the charge

nationally and internationally. And sometimes you're just faking

it till you make it. But I never forgot really, my

own style. I never tried to be something I

wasn't. And I remember speaking to this

room of like, half of them have written books by this point.

And I'm like, you know, I'm like leaning in and at the end of the

meeting, this young woman who was in the meeting says, you're

from Florida, aren't you? I'm like, how do you know?

And she's like, I just saw the Florida swagger.

You, you act a certain way because Floridians were crazy.

We got issues. There's something that makes you

weird growing up near the water. I don't know what it is, but it

impacts all of us. Like you guys walk away from

alligators, right? Not me.

Like there's a guy in my neighborhood.

He has an emotional support alligator.

We are different and so we recognize each other.

Though I was living in Manhattan and working with all sorts of

new people, I didn't forget where I came from.

And this is Paul's point. And verses 11 through 12 he

says, therefore, which calls us back to chapter 2, verse eight

through 10. Remember that at one time

previously, you Gentiles in the flesh.

Now I want you to pay attention to this phrase in the flesh

called the uncircumcision by the circumcision, which is made in

the flesh by human hands. And Paul right here is pointing

to the fact that this is the old way.

Remember that you were at that time.

And again, he's pointing us back to that previous moment.

You were separated from Christ, you were alienated from the

Commonwealth of Israel, and you were strangers to the covenants

of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

See, Paul is calling his Ephesian non Jewish audience and

us to remember where we came from.

They were uncircumcised. They didn't have the sign that

they were God's covenant people. They weren't like their Jewish

counterparts. Now this mark in the flesh

identified who was in and who was out, who was God's people

and who wasn't. And if you don't know what

circumcision is, you can talk to the Matrix.

They'll be glad to tell you. And if you don't want to talk to

the Matrix, I'll tell you when you're older.

But the point is that the importance of circumcision, it's

it's seen throughout the Old covenant, specifically in Exodus

Exodus 4:24

4, verse 24, which all the Jews in all of them would know.

This verse you have Moses who represented the law.

He had just had this incredible experience at the burning Bush.

And now he's going to Pharaoh. He's going to say, let my people

go. It's going to be this beautiful

moment. But then we have this in the

Scriptures at a lodging place on the way, the Lord met him and

sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah, Moses's wife,

took a Flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched

Moses's feet with it and said, surely you are a bridegroom of

blood to me. I mean, this had to be a weird

Tuesday. Like they get down differently,

but like Moses is about to go to the Gentile leader of the world

who, you know, I'm not trying to get too, too much into his

cornflakes, but he was uncircumcised and he's going to

him and he hasn't even circumcised his own son.

Moses had one job and he wasn't doing it.

And his wife had to step up and say, OK.

And the point of this passage, as awkward of a text as it can

be, is that to the Jewish people, circumcision was

important. It was deathly important.

So the Jews in a sense, are being obedient to the Old

covenant. And Paul says here that the

circumcision is made by human hands.

Rather than saying this is a divine, divinely ordained thing.

He's like, no, this is made by human hands.

This isn't what you think it is anymore.

And so Paul zeroes in to this gentile audience, and he has

them focus on three things. He says this, remember.

And don't worry, we'll talk about circumcision more in a

little bit. But he zeroes in and he says,

remember, you were separated. You were alienated, and you were

strangers. You're separated from the person

of Christ. There is no name under heaven by

which men will be saved. And you were separated from

that. You were alienated from the

people of God, the community where you can find the way to

God. You weren't a part of them, and

you are strangers to the promises of God, to the

covenantal promises that we see in the covenant with Abraham,

Isaac, Jacob and David. These promises which said that

the Jewish people would be a light to the Gentiles in

Abraham, all the nations of the world would be blessed.

But we as Gentiles were strangers to that.

We were ignorant. We didn't know.

We had no idea. You see, what Paul is doing is

he is showcasing the law before he gets to the gospel.

He is showing us just how hopeless we are because he says

because you were separated from this three, from these three

things, you were alone. You are without hope.

You are without help. You were destitute and in need.

You had no protection. In 2015, Robert Eggers wrote and

directed a movie called The Witch, and this movie is about a

family in Puritan New England in the 1630s who has a dispute in

their town. And because of this dispute,

they fell on the wrong side of of the ruling.

And so they were excommunicated. They were put outside of the

walls of the town, and the rest of the storyline goes and shows

that because they were separated from the promises, the people,

and in this sense from Christ, they were laid bare to the

attacks of the enemy, to the witchcraft that lay outside of

the gates of the town. You see, Paul wants the

Ephesians to know you had it bad, it wasn't good.

There was no vitamin C in where you were.

You were in a terrible place and you were in danger at every

turn. And I think when we remember who

we were, gratitude starts welling up, right?

I was once lost, but now I am found.

Was blind. But now I see sometimes we can

get comfortable where we are and we forget where we came from.

And Paul's saying, don't forget, don't forget, because when you

forget, that's when you start zigging, when you should zag,

stay focused. You see, when we remember where

we came from, we can realize that God has reversed our

situation. And verses 13 through 15, Paul

plays, I mean, basically he plays the Nuno reverse card, he

says, but now something new. There's a contrast.

This is like Ephesians 24 where it says but God but now in

Christ Jesus. Not in circumcision or any other

religious observance, but now in Christ Jesus.

You who were far off have been brought near by the blood of

Christ. Notice the verb tense here.

You have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

You did not bring yourself, you did not invite yourself to this

party. God came and got you and God

keeps you. You couldn't do anything to get

near to God because you were separated, but you have been

brought near by the blood of Christ through the finished work

of Christ on your behalf, through his life, death and

resurrection. For you, this decisive act

changed your whole situation. I don't know about you.

This is humbling for me because I'm way I'm I'm a recovering

perfectionist. My whole life I've thought that

if I just work hard enough, I'll be loved.

If I just do the right thing, I'll be enough.

But no matter how hard I work, I just keep messing up because on

my best day I'm a dumpster fire. You know that's right.

And I think that's where we all are.

We on our best days we can't get right.

But this humbles me because it tells me that I was never the

one who was meant to be perfect, that the perfect one stands for

me, the perfect one came for me, the perfect one died for me and

rose for me to make me right. And that takes a load off.

See, Christ changed my situation and our situation when I

couldn't, when we can't, when we were hopeless without God and

exposed to all the horrors of the world, Christ became our

bridegroom of blood. Verse 14 explains how we were

brought near. For He Himself is our peace.

I love this word is He is actively our peace.

And you know, I want us to notice you know, the first

couple of verses he Paul was saying you now he's he's

switched it up to our see Jew and Gentile had been brought

together and he says for he himself is our peace who has

made us both one and broken down in his flesh.

The dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of the

commandments expressed in the ordinances.

So he says two things here. Christ is our peace because he's

made US1. He's made US1 by breaking down

the wall in his flesh. So remember how circumcision was

a mark in our flesh? Now the wall is actually broken

down because of what happened in Christ's flesh for us.

What the law couldn't do, Christ did at the cross.

And what's interesting is when he is talking about this wall of

hostility, those who are worshipping in the temple were

actually separated by a wall. The Gentiles could only go so

far. And then we can see that the

wall is torn down because the law has been abolished.

Christ fulfilled the law as someone who was perfect, and He

suffered as a law breaker in our place by living and dying for

us. He dealt with the law and the

wall this week. I don't know about you guys, but

I was drinking some coffee and I was on my way to Comma.

Like, they know me by name now. And I'm on my way to Comma

Coffee with Isaiah. Buck.

Isaiah, raise your hand so he can be embarrassed.

Yeah, there he is. Embarrassing.

So Isaiah and I are in in the truck and we're driving.

And, you know, I got lost. And then I find my way back.

And then I turn on the Main Street.

And I'm not kidding, guys. As soon as we turn on the Main

Street, we see what looks like an explosion, a plume of smoke,

a loud bang, debris everywhere. We were like 2 to 3 seconds from

being in the middle of that, which would have been awkward

because I was driving your pastor's truck and I had a

student in the car. So it's like there's so many

ways that this could have gone wrong.

And of course, Buck and I, which is our style, we get out of the

truck and we want to, we want to talk to people, right?

So we get out, we're talking. And what was interesting, this

wall, because of the wind and some just former fire damage and

all that, the wall fell down and crashed and everyone came out.

People who would never hang out together.

We're all there together and I'm like shooting a video and this

guy walks under me because I'm insanely tall and he says hope

they had Allstate. And I mean, we're cackling,

we're laughing, but it's like we're all sharing this moment

because the wall was torn down. This is what Christ did for us

when he tore down this wall. Everyone came out, everyone was

brought together, people who had nothing in common before.

All of a sudden you're on the same team, You're together.

This is what He did for us. He has destroyed the wall of

division and He did this for a purpose.

You see, Christ reversed our situation and He did it to make

us right with Him. The third thing I want you to

see is that you can rest in your reconciled identity.

Christ not only reconciles you to Him, He reconciles you to

each other. So let's keep with this thought,

verse 15, that this kind of denotes purpose that he Christ

might create in himself in his body one new man in the place of

two kind of has that image of being grafted into the into the

vine. He said that he might create in

himself one new man in a place of two so making peace and he

might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross,

thereby killing the hostility. He does what the law couldn't

do. He brings people who didn't want

to be together, together. And so when we rest in our new

reconciled identity, this not only ensures our forgiveness,

but it frees us to forgive others.

It overflows into our daily lives.

We start caring for each other. We're no longer hell bent on

protecting ourselves at the expense of protecting others.

Now we can open our eyes and stop navel gazing and look out

and see our brother and sister and actually do something.

You know, when I work with the church, I always like to tell

them that. Because of the cross, there's no

longer than us and them. It's just us.

And when you see a church who gets this, you will see someone

who has money sitting to someone who has not.

You'll see a millionaire sitting next to a pauper.

You'll see someone in a mansion sitting next to someone who's

experiencing homelessness. Because I think that's what it's

supposed to look like. Because Christ died for all of

us, and He reconciles us so that we can live in peace with each

other. Verse 17 And he came, and this

kind of this is really the gospel, you know.

He came and preached peace. He proclaimed and announced to

everyone. He shouted it from the

mountaintops that where there was disunity, now there is

unity. Where there was 2, now there is

one. Where there was inreconcilable

differences, now you are reconciled.

He waved the white flag of our surrender for us, and he came

and preached peace to those who were far off the Gentiles, and

peace to those who are near. Now they are 1.

You see, this reminds me of the parable of the prodigal son,

right? Because we love to get hung up

on the one who was far away. But if we look at the scripture,

there were two prodigals in that parable.

There was the one who was near, who was close to the Father but

didn't get it. You see, they both needed

saving. They both needed the Father's

love, and they both needed to be reconciled.

And that's what Paul is saying. We both need peace and he's

saying in Christ we have it. And now that we are one, we go

to God together. That wall separating the

Gentiles is no longer there. The temple has been destroyed in

8070. So we can go to God together.

We have access to Him. Verse 18 says this, for through

him we have access in one spirit to the Father.

That's the result in Christ. We are connected to God the

Father through the Spirit. I'd be remiss if I didn't tell

you that there's a Trinitarian formula here.

And what Paul is doing, he's like, he's not doing it by

accident. He's saying, look at God's

unity. Now what if our unity reflected

that? This is our new unity.

You see, back in the day, the Levitical priest, what they

would do is they would sew buttons into their robes and

they would have a rope around them so that when they went to

the holy place to make offering for sin, just in case they were

seen as sinful and God struck them down, someone could pull

them out because they stopped hearing the bells.

In this text, we realized that Christ was struck down for us so

that we all have access. So no matter where you've been,

what you've experienced, what you've done, or what's been done

to you, who, where you're from, who you're from, who your people

are, who your people aren't, none of that matters because

what matters is what Christ has done for all of us.

We have access to God because of Christ.

He hears our prayers. You can rest in your reconciled

identity. So in closing, I want to tell

you why this is important to me. Let my people go.

As I said earlier, we want to empower the local church to love

those most vulnerable, to love those neighbors who have

something, may have have different experiences than we

have had. And we want to help churches

actually engage these people that they may not have much in

common with, at least at face value.

I mean, This is why we've been partnering with Heritage.

And it reminds me of one of the churches I partnered with in

Pennsylvania. This church was an Amish

country, so it's very fascinating.

A lot of good candies, though, and really nice handmade

furniture that was kind of cool. But one thing I noticed was at

this church, if you went in the church, right, it was this

beautiful sanctuary. And when I say beautiful, I mean

it was ornate. There's like gold, like

filigree. I don't even really know what

filigree is, but it sounds fancy.

And there was a lot of it. And then there was like, all

these, like, sculptures and, you know, kind of like these things

actually. That's really nice.

But they were like gold, and it was really fancy.

And then they had a gym. Well, everyone in the gold

church looked a certain way, but everyone in the gym was

experiencing homelessness, and they were unhoused.

And so we debriefed after the service.

And people, they were really curious because they recognize

that there was a dividing line and no one from either side

crossed it. And they asked me, how do we

bridge this gap? I think Paul's words for us

today are an answer. Whatever our dichotomies, we are

one people in Christ. So remember that Christ reversed

your situation and reconciled you so that you can live in

peace with Him and one another. You were hopeless.

Now you're hopeful. You were far away, but now

you're near. You were strangers, but now

you're family. You were kept away from God, but

now you have unfettered access. Like Paul says in another letter

to the Galatian church. There is neither Jew nor Greek,

slave nor free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ

Jesus. So knowing this truth, that we

used to be two, but now we're one, what does this mean for

heritage? What does this mean for you?

We love building walls as humans, don't we?

We love saying who's in and who's out.

But you know what? God delights in tearing those

walls down. Who is your neighbor on the

other side of the wall? Who has God put in your path?

Let's pray, God, I don't know what you have for us.

And sometimes you continue to apply the message even after we

leave. And so I pray, Holy Spirit, that

you would open our eyes and our hearts to who our neighbor is

and remind us that you died for all of us, regardless of whether

we like it or not. It's in your name we pray.

Amen. Thanks for listening.

To learn more about Heritage Church or if you'd like to

respond to this sermon, visit our website at

www.heritageshawnee.org.