BROUGHT NEAR BY THE BLOOD OF CHRIST: EPH 2:11-13

Good morning. For those of you who are here this morning or are listening on

live stream or on radio, welcome to the preaching ministry of Dillingham Moravian Church.

My name is Pastor Simon. May the Lord lead us to abide in Christ as we study

the Word of God together.

According to one article, Word Relief, the Southern Baptist Church,

and other Christian groups came up with a different solution for part of this

country's immigration problem.

These groups together co-signed a January 24th letter to the newly inaugurated

president, asking Trump to reconsider suspending the U.S.

Refugee resettlement program and to modify an executive action that allows the U.S.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to conduct detention activity at sensitive

locations such as churches and schools.

This is how the letter wrote. President Trump, you have said that you want people

to come into the country in the largest numbers ever, but to do so legally,

the January 24th letter said.

Lawfully admitted refugees who have fled persecution on account of their faith

could help you to achieve this goal, meeting the needs of the U.S.

Labor market in an economy we hope will thrive under your leadership,

while also offering protection and freedom to individuals persecuted and denied

religious liberty abroad.

The point of this letter was to pledge the aid of churches and schools that

belong to the signing organizations to house and aid those illegal immigrants

who are fleeing to this country away from persecution.

The reason that I'm sharing this article with you is that before Christ's death

on the cross, and His resurrection.

All non-Jewish people or Gentiles, including us, were as illegal immigrants

and aliens to God, and not allowed to have citizenship amongst God's people. Let us pray.

Lord Father, we are so, so grateful that we have the opportunity to hear from

You and Your Word, that your scripture is holy,

that it is set apart by you.

It is spoken to the people that

you have designed all those thousands of years ago to write your word.

Thank you for your word. Teach us today.

Use us and grow us so that we may be able to live,

in an abiding life with you together. In your precious Son's name,

Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

This morning, we're going to be studying Ephesians 2.11-13. Therefore,

remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision

by the so-called circumcision, which is performed in the flesh by human hands,

remember that you were at that time without Christ,

alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise,

having no hope and without God in the world.

But now in Christ Jesus, you who were formerly far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Here at DMC, we have been going through a teaching series on Paul's letter to the Ephesians.

Last week, we had learned that Paul taught the Ephesians that salvation or right

relationship with God cannot be earned or worked for.

Rather, it is given to his church as a free gift of God's grace through faith

in Christ alone, as the only Lord and Savior.

Secondly, God, through Paul, to the Ephesian church and to us,

taught that God's people are the workmanship of God, created for God's work

that God wants His people to carry out.

God also communicated through Paul that abiding believers are to live in such

a way that we are characterized by God's good deeds that God has prepared in advance for us to do.

It is within the context of living in the gracious gift of God's salvation in

Jesus Christ that we come to our passage today in Ephesians 2, verse 11.

Ephesians 2:11

The first truth I want to bring to your attention is that as former non-believers

in Christ, we were once far off from God.

In 2004, my wife Abigail and I were separated by countries.

Abigail and I had been living together in Edmonton, Alberta,

Canada, when we received a letter from the Canadian government that Abigail's

student visa was about to expire.

And she needed to be out of the country by the time her student visa was up.

Abigail and I had applied for a special married visa through the American consulate

in Canada, but that visa had not been approved of yet.

And our plan was for me to go to Oregon and to go to Bible school and seminary.

Yet because of immigration legalities, that had not been straightened out yet.

Abigail was confined to the U.S., and I...

Was not allowed to leave my own country and not allowed to live with my wife in America.

It would take seven months for us to be reunited.

I share this little bit of our family background because both Abigail and I

were strangers or aliens in our respective countries, and that caused us to

be physically separated.

This concept of being separated away from someone else and being a stranger

or an alien to another nation is similar to what Paul was trying to explain to the Ephesians.

In Ephesians 2, verse 11, where Paul wrote, Therefore remember that formerly

Ephesians 2:11

you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by the so-called

circumcision, which is performed in the flesh by human hands.

In this passage, Paul commanded the Ephesians to remember that they were once

Gentiles in the flesh who were called the uncircumcision by the circumcised Jews.

As part of the Abrahamic covenant, God demonstrated that His people Israel was

set apart unto Him by the outward sign of all Israelite males being circumcised.

In Genesis 17, verse 9-14, after God Almighty El Shaddai changed Abraham's name

Genesis 17:9–14

to Abraham and was instructing Abraham on the covenant of God,

God said further to Abraham, Now, as for you,

you shall keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations.

This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you.

Every male among you shall be circumcised, and you shall be circumcised in the

flesh of your foreskin, and there shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.

And every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout

your generations, a servant who is born in the house, or who is bought with

money from any foreigner, who is not of your descendants.

A servant who was born in your house or who was bought with your money shall

be circumcised, and thus shall my covenant be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.

But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin,

that person shall be cut off from his people.

He has broken my covenant. I'm pointing out this Genesis chapter 17 passage

Genesis 17 · chapter mention

to us to help us understand just how important Abraham and his descendants were.

Who later on become Israel and Hebrews, are to God.

And circumcision was the sign of God's covenant with his chosen people.

And I want you to see just how great a price it was to be physically born as

a Hebrew or an Israelite and not be circumcised.

It didn't matter whether you were an Israelite biologically.

If you weren't circumcised, you weren't an Israelite. and you sure were not

part of God's covenant people.

And thus that meant that all the nations around were also not part of God's chosen people.

God had deliberately and intentionally set Israel apart from everyone else on the planet.

We must understand that because that this was what made Israel holy,

that they were set apart from God to worship God and to serve him alone.

Now, like most of the commands that God gave Israel, they either ignored or disobeyed them.

But they also went further than what God had intended Israel to do.

And what I mean by this is that by Jesus' and Paul's time, Israel had isolated

themselves socially, physically,

religiously, and spiritually to the extent that they ignored the commands of

God to be a light to the nations and to be witnesses of the salvation and glory of God to all the earth.

Throughout the Old Testament, we see glimpses of God's plan to bring the Gentiles

to salvation, but never a direct revelation that the Gentiles who believed could

become part of the family of God with Israel.

In Jesus the Christ and his new covenant enacted by his own shed blood,

heralded by the apostles and Paul, God revealed that the Gentiles who believed

in Jesus Christ as their only Lord God were grafted into the nation of God in the church.

And that is why Paul, here in Ephesians chapter 2, had explained to the Ephesian

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

church that as a part of God's people, the church of Christ,

God has given them the wondrous gift of salvation through faith in Christ as

their only Lord and Savior.

Through Christ's sacrificial death on the cross and His glorious resurrection,

God has given all believers in Christ, Jew and non-Jew, the wondrous benefit

of being part of God's chosen people and joint heirs with Christ to the kingdom of God.

We need to understand that the Ephesian congregations were made up of not only

non-Jews, but also Jews as well.

And this is important because Paul remonstrated to the Gentile believers at

Ephesus that even though they had this great standing with God,

they were to remember who they once were,

that they were not to get uppity, were proud of their status in God,

especially over the Jews in their midst.

What then can we as modern-day Christians here in Alaska learn from verse 11?

For most of us Christ followers here in Alaska, we were born not as a Jew,

but rather we belong to the nations, or as Paul would term, the Gentile world.

What this means for us is that without Christ and His wonderful yet brutal sacrificial

slaughter on the cross and His resurrection, we would have no part of God or His people.

Now, most of our churches are not racially divided between Jew and non-Jew,

but it's very possible for us to look down on those who are not of Christ's people, the church,

who are God's holy and set-apart nation of priests.

It's extremely tempting when we see non-Christians who are making poor decisions

based upon living in the darkness of this Satan-controlled world,

to condemn them, to want to distance ourselves from them.

I hear often from Christians that they want to spend time only with Christians.

Now, God has commanded us in the Bible to have true fellowship with the body of Christ.

We also learn the knowledge of Christ's love within the community of Christ's

local church and derive Christ's strength and life from fellowship with Christ's church.

Yet, just as Jesus Christ was sent into our world to save us miserable sinners,

we also are incarnationally sent by God into the world to share the gospel of Jesus,

so that people can get to know Christ as their only Lord and Savior,

that they can be saved from the wrath of God.

God, through Paul, reminds us that without the wonderful salvation in Christ

and God's adoption of us as the elect of God, we, you and I,

are no better off than those who do not have Christ.

We, ourselves, were enslaved to our sin. We were enslaved to the darkened understanding

of Satan, the Satan-controlled system of this world.

We, you and I, must remember who we once were and be reminded of who we now are in Christ.

That those who do not know the glorious majesty of our God and Jesus Christ.

They are to be pitied and they are to be loved as Jesus loves us.

Our attitude towards unbelievers and our families and our communities are to

see them from the viewpoint of Christ as desperately needing Jesus.

So far, God, through Paul, was reminding the Ephesian congregation that the

Gentile believers were once far off from God because they were not a circumcised

member of God's covenantal nation of Israel.

Paul was urging the Gentile believers, and subsequently us as well,

that we are to remember who we once were without Christ.

Paul continued on in Ephesians 2, verses 11-13.

Ephesians 2:11–13

Remember that you were at the time without Christ, alienated from the citizenship

of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

Paul went on to communicate to the Ephesians who they once were without Christ,

by reminding them of the privileges from God that the Gentiles previously did

not have and that the Jews did have in God.

Paul went on to list the five disadvantages of what the Gentiles did not have before Christ.

The first disadvantage was that they were separated from or were without Christ,

meaning that they didn't have the Messiah, the anointed king of Israel.

The salvation that the Messiah was to bring had always been focused on God's people, Israel.

Up to that point. Secondly, in Ephesians 2, Paul explained that the non-Jews

were alienated from citizenship from Israel.

As a legal immigrant, it took me 11 years to gain my U.S.

Citizenship with all the rights of a citizen. And since I was a formal legal

alien living in a foreign country, this verse has special significance for me.

It's important for us to realize that citizenship in Israel was pretty much

impossible to get, meaning that you had to be born a Jew to be a Jewish citizen,

with a few rare exceptions.

There were Gentiles whom the Jews proselytized, they evangelized,

but they stayed mostly God-fearers and were not allowed to be citizens of Israel.

Citizenship in Israel in the time of Paul and Jesus was not just a political

nationalist issue, but was primarily a spiritual theological issue.

A Jew was one who was included in

the covenant of God as a descendant of Abraham, and no one else could be.

Remember that in order to be included in that covenant of God,

every male had to be circumcised.

And this leads us to the next dishonor that the Gentiles did have,

which was that non-Jews were strangers to the covenants of promise.

Were these covenants of promise? There were at least four covenants that Paul

was thinking of, and each set Israel apart from the rest of the world.

Let's look at Genesis 17 7-8, where God vowed to establish an everlasting covenant

with Abraham and his people and adopted Abraham's descendants as his people.

Verse 7 and 17, I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants

after you, throughout their generations,

for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you.

I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land of your sojournings,

all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession.

And here's the most important part. And I will be their God.

This passage is right before God giving the command to have all of Abraham's

male descendants, through Isaac and Jacob, circumcised in Genesis 17, verse 9-14.

Genesis 17:9–14

The second covenant of promise is found in Exodus 19, verse 3-6,

Exodus 19:3–6

where when Israel was camped in the wilderness of Sinai in front of the mountain.

Moses went up to God, in verse 3, and the Lord called to him from the mountain,

saying, And thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the sons of Israel,

You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on

eagles' wings, and brought you to myself.

Now then, if you will indeed obey my voice, and keep my covenant,

then you shall be, and here it is, my own possession among all the peoples.

For all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a

holy nation. The covenant God referred to in Exodus 19 was the Mosaic covenant that he made with,

which involved God setting down His law for Israel to live by.

In Leviticus 16-17, as part of God's covenant to make Israel His holy nation

and the kingdom of priests, God allowed Israel to be made holy,

forgiven, and cleansed from their sins through the blood sacrifice of animals.

God knew that for Israel to be truly forgiven of their sins,

all of their light blood had to be sacrificed.

Israel and humanity could not pay that costly price.

So out of His loving mercy, God established the sacrifice of the blood of animals

to atone for the sins of Israel so that they could be made right for God.

The last covenant that Israel held on to as a promise was the covenant God made

with David, that there would be a king from the line of David,

and that the anointed king, or Christ, would reign forever.

The Lord foretold in Jeremiah 33, 14-16, Behold, days are coming,

declares the Lord, when I fulfill the good word which I have spoken concerning

the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

In those days, and at that time, I will cause a righteous branch of David to

spring forth, and he shall execute justice and righteousness on the earth.

In those days, Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell in safety.

And this is the name by which she will be called, The Lord is our Righteousness.

The fourth advantage that Gentiles did not have, and Jews did have,

was that the Gentiles were without hope, meaning that without the Savior Messiah,

the nations had no hope for deliverance from sin, no hope in death.

Paul taught in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 13, But we do not want you to be unformed

1 Thessalonians 4:13

brothers about those who are asleep, meaning those who have died in Christ,

so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.

And lastly, the Gentiles.

Without God in the world. The nations had no real purpose. They had no real

hope. They did not have the life of God without Yahweh.

Up to this point, Paul had taught the Ephesian church to remember who they once

were as those who were outside of relationship with God, with God's nation,

without the true hope found only in Yahweh Lord.

And yet Paul declared that God did not leave us in that terrible place that

was outside of hope and the relationship with God.

No, God intervened into human history and with the person of His beloved Son,

Jesus Christ, one with God.

And now all those who were once far off, including us, have been brought near

to God by the blood of Christ. According to one article, the U.S.

National debt has now surpassed $36 trillion.

$36 trillion is roughly the value of the economies of China,

Germany, Japan, India, and the United Kingdom combined.

It amounts to $274,000 per person, or per household rather, and $107,000 per person in America.

If every household contributed $1,000 per month towards paying down the national

debt, it would take about 23 years to pay off.

The problem is, is that the national debt continues growing exponentially.

With this rate of growth, I'm not sure that the American people can ever pay off our national debt.

But maybe we can, and I hope that we can.

Now, my point with bringing our attention to the national debt is like,

is that like the American national

debt being a humongous mountain that we may not be able to pay off,

our blood debt that we owe God was a debt that could never, ever be paid off

by ourselves and prevented us from being brought near in relationship to Almighty God.

Ephesians 2.13.

Paul proclaimed. But now in Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off have

been brought near by the blood of Christ.

I want you to see the vast difference in verse 13 compared to verse 11 and 12.

Paul declared that those of the nations who are far off from God and from Israel

have now been brought near.

For those who were formerly outside the covenant nation of Israel is now in Christ.

For those without hope now have hope. For those without any covenant promise

from God have now been brought into relationship with God through the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ.

I want you to see that we could never have been brought near to God by ourselves.

We just couldn't do it. God had to bring us near.

How then did God bring us who are far away from Him near?

By the blood of Christ. Remember that God and Israel, in order to make Israel

a kingdom of priests that solely belonged to him.

Israel had to be forgiven of all their sins and be consecrated or completely

set apart for his purposes.

And for that to happen, the blood debt of all of our lifeblood had to be shed

to pay for even one of our sins,

one of their sins, and thus to make Israel his true chosen people whom God continually

dwells with, God had to give rid of the monstrous mountain of debt that they owed.

And yet Israel, nor the nations, could pay that debt, since all of humanity

would have to die to pay it.

And thus, in His grace-filled and merciful love, God the Father sent His only begotten Son,

Jesus Christ, to die in our place and effectively pay our debts of blood with

His own blood, so that we could be brought near to God again.

The main truth to apply to us as Christians today is that it is only with the

shed blood of Jesus Christ on the cross that we have been brought into relationship with Him.

You and I, if we have responded to the grace of Christ by trusting in Christ

as our only Lord and Savior, we are now viewed by God as if we have never sinned before God ever.

This is so important because it means that you and I could never have earned

our salvation or paid back the ever accruing debt of our salvation.

God. This means that you and I must live lives in constant gratitude for the

wondrous mercy that God has poured out upon us that we can never deserve.

What then has God been teaching us today?

Ephesians 2. The first truth that God through Paul is teaching us,

or has been teaching us is that as part of the Gentile or non-Jewish nations,

we were once far off from God because we were not a circumcised member of God's

covenantal nation of Israel.

We also learned that we are to remember who we once were as those who are outside

of the relationship with God, outside of relationship with God's nation,

and who were once without the true hope that is also found in Yahweh Lord Jesus Christ.

Thus, we as Christians are to give grace to those around us,

since we were once without grace.

And lastly, we must remember that it's only with the shed blood of Jesus Christ

on the cross that we are being brought near to God into relationship with Him.

And I want to encourage you today to trust Christ, to believe in what He has

done on the cross on your behalf, and in the trusting of His love.

Walk according to His ways, and

God will use you to be able to share the glorious gospel of God to others,

and you will give and bring glory to God, our Father in heaven.

Let us pray. Father God, we thank you for the merciful love that you have shown

us in your Son, Jesus Christ.

Thank you for bringing us near to you through Jesus.

Use us, Lord. May we be an example and the ambassadors of your Son,

Jesus Christ, into this world.

And Lord, may we cling to you. May we live as a kingdom of priests dedicated

to you and to your kingdom purposes.

We thank you, we praise you, and we bless you. In your precious Son's name,

Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.

I'll leave you with a blessing from 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 16 to 17.

2 Thessalonians 2:16–17

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, God our Father, who loved us and gave

us eternal comfort and good hope through grace.

Comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and work.

Have a wonderful Sunday. May the Lord bless you.