A Family at Peace

Thank you for reading this sermon from Christ Fellowship. I hope and pray that this sermon will be a blessing of grace and truth to you. With that said, let me encourage you not to use this sermon as a replacement for your local church. Christ Jesus did not establish his Church simply for us to consume content. Instead, He calls us to be part of a real, covenant family.

The Chiefs lost last week, eliminating them from playoff contention. This loss ended a 10-year playoff streak. We’ve won three Super Bowls for the past five years. Some would say they’ve been the best team in this era of football. Most would say that they’ve been the most hated team in this era of football. The funny thing is, I remember watching the Super Bowl in 2019 when they were playing and everyone was rooting for the Chiefs because they were the underdog. And fast forward to last year, everyone’s rooting against the Chiefs because they were the favorite. And so what changed? Some people would say the refs. Some people would say Taylor Swift may be legitimate. I think most of it is they just kept winning and I made people mad. But I think what really brought the hate was how much bragging Chiefs fans did. And I think this is true for any major sports team that continues to win over and over again. It’s not even necessarily that they’re winning. I think there’s always a handful of fans of those teams that are just bragging about it and obnoxious about it and trolling people online. I think this brings a lot of hatred. I think bragging results in this hostility. This is true even between people. If you think about someone who always brags about how great they are, think about a group, who always flaunts how great they are, builds resentment against them. I point in all of this as to say that boasting, it brings hostility. It brings hatred. It brings division. We’ll be in Ephesians 2 this morning, like I said. But before we go into our text, I want to read two verses from earlier in Ephesians 2. It says verses 8 and 9. It says, And so if boasting brings hatred, then Christ’s removal of boasting should bring peace. That’s exactly what he does. That’s the peace that we’re looking at this morning. We’ll be in Ephesians 2 starting in verse 11. Therefore, remember that at one time, you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision, by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth 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 once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. And so Ephesians 2 is commonly split into two sections. The first section, some of what I just read from verses 1 through 10, people call it vertical reconciliation. So Paul’s talking about how Christ, he brings reconciliation between us and God, so this vertical imagery. And now in our text, our section of the text, Paul’s talking about horizontal reconciliation. So Christ brings peace between each other, between different groups of people. And so in Ephesians, there’s two people groups that Paul’s talking about, the Jews and the Gentiles that are in one church. You can see him address the Gentiles here. He calls them Gentiles in the flesh, the uncircumcision. This means that by their very nature, they were excluded from the people of God, from the covenant community. There were foreigners, they lacked the physical marker of belonging to God’s people. And because of this, they were mocked, they were despised by the Jews, they were looked down on because of their earthly standing, because they had no claim to the covenant promises that God had. And now they’re in church with the very same people who used to once mocked them, who used to despise them. And so you can imagine that is probably a pretty tense, awkward situation. And yet Paul starts off this section about peace by telling them to remember their former exclusion. He’s saying remember when you were mocked, when you were despised, when you weren’t part of this community. So it would be hard for them to remember this. It’s hard for us too. None of us probably enjoy thinking about times in our lives where we are excluded or we’re looked down upon. But Paul’s main point in this is he’s saying remember when you were without God, when you had no hope, because you were separated from God and therefore from his covenant community. Remember when you were living in your sin. So he’s saying it’s not that we should remember our sin, remember our isolation in order to feel guilty. We’re not supposed to look back at those times and just sit and well and despair. He’s telling them to remember this former state so that they can see how the Lord has delivered them. This is the instruction that he gives to us as well. Remember your sin, remember the time when you had no hope, when you were apart from God. Not in order to despair, but in order to rejoice. Like God has delivered you from that former state. This is the reversal that God brings to our life. Instead of looking back at our sin and thinking about our shame, thinking about our guilt, we look back at our sin and we see God’s redemptive power. We see how desperate we were in order to see how joyful we can now be in Christ. He has brought us into this family that we were once outside of. So some of us can relate to the Gentile Christians here. We can look back at our former lives and see just an obvious rejection of God walking in the ways of the world, nowhere near him or his people. But what if you don’t have this wild rebellious pass at the Gentiles? Some of us have grown up in church our whole life. You can’t really look back and remember a time where you were alienated from God’s people. It seemed like you’ve always been around them. This would have been more similar to the experience of the Jews in the church who grew up as the covenant people of God. Who assumed that they were always included into this. They were the circumcision, which is kind of a funny group name to go by. But they took pride in that they had this physical marker that they belonged to God. That they were separate from the world, that they were above the world. They were chosen. They were holy. They took a lot of pride in this. And yet Paul, we see him add a little qualifier to their label here. He says, you are the circumcision which is made in the flesh by hands. And that phrase, made in the flesh by hands, is Paul denouncing any special privilege they had in this covenant community. Throughout the Old Testament, this phrase is used to describe idols. Idols that are made in the flesh with human hands that bring the displeasure of the Lord because it centers on man’s work. In the New Testament, this phrase is used to describe the temple that’s made with human hands and that God no longer dwells in because it’s made with human hands. And so it seems like Paul is letting them off the hook for a second, but really he’s warning them. He’s saying, look, the Gentiles, yes, they are in the flesh. They were excluded. But you were in the flesh as well. You were identifying yourself by these customs, these practices, this pride. He’s saying, you haven’t earned your spot in the kingdom of God. Both Jew and Gentile are hopeless apart from Christ. And this is what we’re called to remember as well. This is the first step in having peace among each other, is recognizing that whether we have this wild sinful past of rebellion or whether we trusted in ourself for our righteousness, we are all hopeless apart from Christ. We are all people who need to be brought near to Him. And this is what Christ does for all of us. Notice Paul, he doesn’t say that the Gentiles were brought near by adopting the practice of circumcision, by taking on the customs of the Jews. He’s saying, you you been brought near by the blood of Christ. That is what draws you into the people of God. All of this is accomplished by Christ. The Greek here shows that they were actually passive in this process. Paul’s saying, you have been brought into the family of God. You did not bring yourself into the family of God. You have been reached out and rescued and brought in. The same goes for us. It’s not our own words. It’s not our earthly identity. It’s not our culture that brings us into the family of God. It’s God Himself by the blood of Christ. And so we have to start there when we’re talking about peace. We have to start with the peace that Christ brings to us. And we need to ask ourselves, do you believe that? Do you believe that only because of God’s love for you are you able to enter into His presence? Do you believe that the blood of Christ really has paid for every sin you’ve made, every sin you will make? Do you believe that the righteousness of Christ covers you and makes you presentable to God, ushered into His presence? Do you believe that when God looks at you, He doesn’t see a failure, He doesn’t see an outcast, He sees His Son, He sees His daughter, who He’s brought into His family? When we’re in Christ God, He no longer holds us at arm’s length. He brings us in, He embraces us. And if you are still running and rebellion and rejection of God, if you’re still trusting in your own words, your own righteousness, this is a calling to come and place your faith in Christ, as the only one who can gain you this favor with God, this holiness, this peace. And like I said, without an understanding of this peace that we have with God, we can’t have peace with one another. Let’s go back to our text. Paul’s going to elaborate on this starting back in verse 14. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing the law of commandments, express and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace. And might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. So as we’ve mentioned throughout this series, peace is something that we desperately need in this world. Peace is something that we lack in this world. Hostility runs rampant. You can even think about the events of this past week, mass shootings at Brown University, mass shootings in Australia, still division in our own country, conflict in the Middle East. It’s not hard to look around and see that there’s hostility. We know that, but do we know how Christ brings peace to the world? Do we know how Christ is actually the solution to worldly hostility and division? I think instead of talking about major world conflicts, it’s helpful to think about conflicts in our daily life, what makes us hostile to others, what makes us hostile to other groups of people. There can be a number of reasons, but I think oftentimes it centers on exclusion, either being excluded by someone or excluding other people. In his book, Weight of Glory, he talks about the inner rings of life, these tight-knit groups of people that have this intimacy, that have this connection with one another. Here’s what Lewis says about these rings. He says, One of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local ring and the terror of being left outside. So we have this innate deep desire to belong to this tight knit group of people. We want to be on the inside. We want to be included. And when we’re excluded, we respond in hostility. You’re saying, I’m not good enough for this group. You’re saying, I don’t belong here. It turns into anger. It turns into bitterness. It turns into forming our own group after being excluded from the previous one. And then you have division. You have hostility. Or you are included into this group. You’re brought in to the inner ring. And you exclude others to protect your own inclusion. This is exactly what’s going on with the Jews and Gentiles here. The Jews, they viewed themselves as above the Gentiles as we talked about. They mocked them. And the Gentiles, they despised them because the Jews viewed themselves as better. Hostility raged between them because of this exclusion. And yet Christ, he comes and he tears down this dividing wall of hostility. So what is this wall? There was an actual wall in the courts of the temple, the Jewish temple, that divided where Gentiles can enter and where Jews could go beyond into the inner courts where sacrifices were made. So there’s this inner wall that separated Gentiles, allowed Jews to go in. This very visible kind of division. And yet this wall represented the whole ceremonial law that divided Jews and Gentiles. Circumcision, rituals for cleansing, purification, separated clean from the unclean. And Christ, this is the wall that he tears down. He tears down this wall by fulfilling all of his demands by becoming the holiness for the Jews, by becoming the holiness for the Gentiles. Jews are no longer included because of their practices, because of their culture, their ceremonies. They’re included because of the righteousness of Christ. Gentiles, they’re no longer excluded because of their race, their nationality, their paganism. They’re brought in because Christ has shed his blood for them. And so here’s what that means. It means that Christ, he doesn’t open the inner ring of the Jews to bring the Gentiles in. He abolishes the inner ring of the Jews and he makes one new inner ring, this new intimate group of people who are bound by his blood and nothing else. One new man in place of the two, as Paul says. Another way to say this is that we are all one in Christ because we are all saved in Christ. This new humanity is a reality in our church today, in our church here. None of us can say, I belong to this community because I fulfilled the requirements needed to enter, and you haven’t. We all must say, I haven’t fulfilled the requirements needed to be in this community of Christ. I haven’t done what I’m supposed to do. I haven’t fulfilled these requirements. But the only requirement that we have is trusting that Christ has fulfilled these requirements on our behalf. That we look at one another and we say, yeah, you have fallen short, I have fallen short. The Christ stands in our place. This doesn’t mean we’re left to our former life, doesn’t mean we walk and sin and are just included regardless. It means that we turn our lives around, that we rejoice, we obey Christ because of what he has done for us. Let’s just change the way that we view each other. When we see one another as fellow sinners who have been saved by grace, we begin to extend grace to one another. When we realize that we’re forgiven, we’re able to forgive others. We love one another because we know the Father’s love in Christ. This should also make us hesitant to put any extra requirements on being in this covenant community. Christ abolished the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile. What requirements do we unintentionally or intentionally put on belonging to the community that Christ has already abolished? What earthly distinctions do we try to make mandatory? What minor theological points do we use to create an inner circle saying, if you don’t believe this, you’re not really a Christian. You don’t really know what it means. What political views do we impose on others saying, if you don’t hold to this view, I can’t really extend my fellowship to you? What cultural practices do we even place on people saying, yes, we want you here, but you have to do these certain things in order to belong? I’m not saying these things don’t matter. There’s a lot of secondary things that are important. I’m Presbyterian, so we care about secondary things, right? And that’s good. But the point is these things should never be a barrier to the way that we love one another. At the end of the day, we are all sinners saved by grace. We all live in Christ’s righteousness, cleansed by His blood. God’s call to us is the same call He gives to the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son. The older brother, he’s angry that his younger brother has been welcomed back into the family after rebelling, after turning away from the father, after despising him. The older brother is prideful, he’s angry as brother is welcomed back. And yet here’s what the father says to him. He says, Son, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad. For this, your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found. Through Christ, we all have access to God in one spirit, to our Father. And all that the Father has, it belongs to you. If you are in Christ, the Father, all that He has for us belongs to us. And it belongs to our brothers and our sisters in Christ as well. Living in peace, it means celebrating the redemptive work of Christ in each other’s lives. Celebrating that not only have I been rescued from my sin, but that this person has been rescued as well. That my Father sees this person as his child and as my sibling. This is the peace that we have with each other, the peace that we have in Christ. So what does it mean to live in this peace? How do we walk in this community? How do we love one another? Let’s go back to our text starting in verse 19. So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. In whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place by God for the Spirit. So Paul, he’s giving a definition of what the church is here. He’s describing the church. People that have been made into this new humanity who are one in Christ. He’s saying, this is what it looks like. This is what it means to belong in this church. So two things I want us to realize about the church from this text. First thing I just mentioned is that you belong here. I’m not just talking about the church in general. I’m talking about Christ Fellowship Church that you belong here. You have a place here. Regardless of your background, regardless of your past, regardless of your current struggles, your current sin, you belong here. Paul, he started this text by calling the Gentiles to remember how they were. He wants strangers, he wants aliens to the people of God. And now he says, you are no longer strangers and aliens. You are fellow citizens. You are members of the same household of God. So what is he saying? He’s saying, you have a family now. You have a place where you belong. You have a place where people know you. A place where people care about you and support you. This text was encouraging to me. Encouraging. Because I didn’t read it and think, man, I wish our church was like this. I read it and I thought, wow, our church is like this. Our church is like a family. And we’re not a perfect family. No family is. But I genuinely believe that we do offer people a place to belong. A place to be known, a place to be cared for. As Mike mentioned in the announcements, we’re going out at one to pray with people, to invite them to church. I’m excited for this because each time that Mike and I go out to pray, and we’re getting to know people, we’re talking to them, we’re hearing their struggles. I always think, man, if you could just know our church, if you could just know how we care for one another, if you could just hear the gospel preached and see the fruit of the gospel and the way that we welcome you, the way we care for you. This is what I desire for them. To know God’s love through his people. But they can see how we love one another and be drawn to him. So this church is a place to belong, whether it’s your first Sunday, whether it’s your 100th Sunday, we’re a family that you have a place in. Second thing we realize about the church is this. You have a purpose here. So you belong and you have a purpose. Paul, he compares the church to a temple being built. In the church, it’s founded on the New Testament proclamation of the gospel through the apostles, through the prophets. Christ being the substance, being the cornerstone, being the key piece of this foundation that everything rests on. And yet we’re called to participate in the building of this church that rests on Christ because we are in Christ. We’re called to participate. Paul says that the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. And so this term here being joined together, it’s this imagery of walls being constructed into a building and the pieces, the wood of these walls being connected together as the building grows. Being joined together, bringing support to the whole building. And this is the role that we have in the church, that we’re not a bunch of two by fours laying in someone’s yard with no purpose. We’re all important integral pieces that are being joined to one another. And as we’re joined to one another, the building of God grows. God comes and dwells in this building, in this people. And so that is your purpose here. Your purpose that is given by God, that is empowered by the spirit, that each of us are uniquely gifted to contribute to building this holy temple that God dwells in. So we see that this piece that Christ brings, it means that we belong here. It’s a piece that draws you near by his blood. It’s a piece that gives you a father, a piece that gives you a family. It’s a piece that gives you a place to belong and a purpose to fulfill. So let us come, let us trust in this king of peace. Let us find our purpose and our belonging in him and among his people. Let’s pray. Lord, we praise you. We thank you for drawing us near through the blood of Christ. I pray that you continue to knit us together, to join us together as a church so we can display your glory. You can be a place where your presence is found. I pray that you draw people near to yourself as we go out, as we pray with them, as we know them. Most of all, we thank you for Christ who shed his blood for us, who has brought peace between us and you, who has brought peace between us and others. I pray this in your son’s name and in them.