A WHOLE NEW MAN (Eph 2:14-16)

Welcome. Welcome to church this morning. Welcome to this beautiful representation of rest.

Because that's what the Christian life really is, is rest, isn't it? We rest in Christ. That's what we're going to be hearing about this morning as we continue our study through Ephesians.

More of being in Christ and that wonderful rest that we experience. And then when we come through those doors on Sunday morning and we come together as a community, as a body of believers, there is a beautiful representation of that glorious rest that we have.

Amen? Amen. Well, let's jump right in. Let's start with a call to worship. Please stand.

Our call to worship this morning comes from Psalm 40. And it's verses 9 through 16 where the psalmist says,

We have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation.

We have not hidden your deliverance within our hearts. We have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.

Oh, your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve us. May those who love your salvation say continually,

Great is the Lord. And all of God's people said, Amen. Let's go to that great

God in a prayer of adoration this morning. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you today and we thank you for who you are.

We thank you for your steadfast love and your faithfulness. And your steadfast love and your faithfulness comes from the fact that you are the

God of love. You are a God that is faithful. You are a

God that doesn't change. You are steadfast. You are immovable. Oh, Lord, let us rest in that today.

Let us see you in your majesty and in your glory. Let us glean from your very words this morning and grow in the knowledge and fear of you.

May it mold our hearts. May it guide us as your people to live holy lives.

God, that we ourselves could emulate that love, that faithfulness, and that steadfastness, knowing that we fall so short.

But you are the source. Father, help us to worship you this morning as we worship you in spirit and truth.

Those of us in here today that have come to faith and knowledge in your son,

Jesus Christ, we stand holy and we stand here with the indwelling of the very person of the

Holy Spirit. And so when we worship, it's coming up before you as a sweet -smelling aroma.

Father, help us to lean into that as your people as we worship you today in Christ's name.

Before we sing, I would like for us to read the last half of Psalm 71. We read the first 11 verses last week, and today

I want us to finish out this psalm together where the psalmist says,

Oh God, be not far from me. Oh my God, make haste to help me.

May my accusers be put to shame and consumed. With scorn and disgrace, may they be covered who seek my hurt.

But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more.

My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the day, for their number is past my knowledge.

With the mighty deeds of the Lord God, I will come. I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone.

Oh God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.

So even to old age and gray hairs, oh God, do not forsake me until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.

Your righteousness, oh God, reaches the high heavens. You who have done great things, oh

God, who is like you? You who have made me see many troubles and calamities, will revive me again from the depths of the earth.

You will bring me up again. You will increase my greatness and comfort me again.

I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, oh my God. I will sing praises to you with the lark, oh holy one of Israel.

My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to you. My soul also, which you have redeemed.

And my tongue will talk of your righteous help all the day long. For they have been put to shame and disappointed who sought to do me hurt.

Who commands the nations, building up and tearing down, silencing his rivals, there is only one.

He is our God. He is our

God. You are matchless in your glory.

Holy God. When we turned away his love, he conquered us with kindness.

There is only one. He is our God. He is our

God. He is our

God. You are matchless in your glory.

Holy God. You are matchless in your glory.

Holy God. You are matchless in your glory.

You are matchless in your glory. To go on this life and work.

You alone are worthy. We adore you holy.

Holy. He is our hope.

Christ alone. Christ alone. He is our only confidence.

That our souls to him belong. He holds our days.

When he holds his hands. When he comes upon. He will lead us to the end.

The love of Christ in which we stand.

We sing hallelujah. We sing hallelujah.

Now and ever we confess. Christ our hope in life and death.

The troubled sinner.

God is good. God is good. His grace and goodness know.

In our grave redeemer's blood. He holds our faith when fears arise.

He stands above the storm. He trusts the waves that bring us by.

And to the shore the rock of Christ is high.

We sing hallelujah. Our hope screams eternal.

We sing hallelujah. Now and ever we confess.

Christ our hope in life and death. To the grave what shall we see?

Christ he lives. Christ he lives. The reward will heaven bring.

Everlasting life will give. We will rise to him above.

And sin and death will be destroyed. And we will feast in his joy.

Christ is ours forevermore. We sing our screams eternal.

We sing hallelujah. Christ our hope in life and death.

We may be seated for a moment.

If you've been with us any amount of time, you know that as a church we make a habit of going to the

Lord's table weekly. We see great benefit in it from scripture.

There is no prescribed thing in scripture that says you have to do it every week or you have to do it once a month or whenever.

Only thing Jesus said is as often as you do it in remembrance of me. But we see, as I said, great benefit.

I hope that you have experienced that if you've been here for any amount of time in coming to this table.

It's a moment of reflection. It's a moment of remembrance. It's a moment of worship.

And it molds our hearts to our Savior. It molds our hearts to each other.

And this morning we're in a section in Ephesians that is really driving home unity and peace amongst the brothers.

And so I thought it would be a great time for us instead of ending this service with the

Lord's Supper, of let's go to the table together up front.

Let's go to the table and worship the Lord in this way through the elements of the

Lord's Supper. And then we'll come back and we'll sing some more. And then

I'll preach and we'll do our Koinonia Feast Fellowship and our Q &A and all that comes with it.

But I wanted to read one of the accounts of the Last Supper where Jesus institutes this ordinance to the church.

And this one comes from Mark chapter 14 starting in verse 22. It says,

And as they were eating, he took bread. And after blessing it, broke it and gave it to them and said,

Take, this is my body. And he took a cup.

And when he'd given thanks, he gave it to them. And they all drank of it. And he said to them,

This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I say to you,

I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.

And as I said a moment ago, we have another account where Jesus has told us as often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me.

But I love what Jesus adds here in Mark's account. He says,

I'm not going to drink of this vine until I drink it anew in the kingdom of God.

And I'm reminded that we're here. We're called to go to this table.

We're called to remember. We're called to worship in this way. But we're also going to once again drink it anew.

As we said at that great feast, I know I remind you of it every week, but I can't encourage you enough to look forward to that.

Because this is just a taste, right? This is just a small piece of unleavened bread and a small sip of wine.

Oh, but we will feast one day. But as you come and take of these elements this morning,

I ask that you evaluate your own life. I ask that you're not seeking penance in this.

That's not what this is about. But for you to be able to search your own heart and say, do I have unity with the brothers?

Do I have unity with my sisters? Do I have anything standing between me and my relationship with the

Lord from my end? I stand righteous. If I'm in Christ, I'm righteous before God. Thank the

Lord. But am I holding something back? Am I refusing to repent?

And so I want us to take a moment now of kind of just some silence and pray.

And then I'm gonna pray for us. And then we're gonna open the table. And I want, just as we normally do, we come around the outsides, take of the elements, go back to your seat, pray with your family, take the elements together, and then we'll come back and we will sing.

And I wanna remind you, too, that if you need to talk to someone, if you want to pray with one of us, me and Pastor Jeremiah are up here.

You're not distracting us from what's going on. If you need to pray, if you wanna talk, we're here.

And we wanna be able to help you as you come to this, this wonderful time of worship that we participate in as His children.

So let's take a moment of silence and prayer, pray in your own hearts, and then I will pray for us.

Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you now and we thank you for the sacrifice of your

Son. Jesus, we thank you for what you have done, the life that you lived that I could not, that we could not, of perfection, fulfilling the law of God to a point to where we, no man, no woman has ever been able to live up to this, but not only did you surpass us, you fulfilled it perfectly, sinless.

And then you died the death that we deserved and you took the wrath of God that I deserved. The wrath of the

Father was poured out upon you on my behalf, on our behalf, those of us that are in you this morning.

But it didn't stop there. We get to rest in the miraculous working that you continued to do, even after that death and that intercession for us,

Lord, you rose from the dead and you defeated death. And with that, you purchased us.

You made a way for us. So I pray this morning as we come to this table that we would know there's nothing special in these elements, the wine and the bread.

Oh, but there is something, something wonderful and special in your body and blood that it represents.

Lord, I pray that this would incite worship in our hearts, that it would incite gratefulness within us, be honored in our worship in Christ's name, amen.

You're welcome at the table. The mind is open, my

Redeemer Though I fall, His love is sure

Christ has paid for every failing

I am His For have not tears in times of sorrow

Darkness not yet understood Through the valley

I must travel Where I see no earthly goal

But that is peace that flows from heaven

And the strength inside of me I know my pain will not be wasted

Christ completes His work in me Our days here as a stranger

Filled with Christ I will encounter

Gone in vain, tripped for His name The mind is honored through this battle

Strong enough to last the war And He has said

He will deliver Safely to the goal

And my keys to Zion's city

Where beside the King I walk For there my heart has found its station

Christ is mine forever Rejoice now,

O my soul For His love is my reward

Fear is gone and hope is sure Christ is mine forever

Rejoice now, O my soul For His love is my reward

Fear is gone and hope is sure Christ is mine forevermore

And my keys to Zion's city

Where beside the King I walk

For there my heart has found its treasure

Christ is mine forevermore Christ is mine

Christ is mine O sweetest words that receive this gracious gift

I've first been taught and set free

My God, my Savior, has ransomed me

And I confess His mercy grace

Unending love, unceasing grace

Christ is mine

My chains are gone,

I've been set free My Savior has ransomed me

And His mercy reigns, unceasing grace

My chains are gone My Savior has ransomed me

And His mercy reigns, unceasing grace

This city is set on a hill, Father God. People are drawn to You by Your Holy Spirit. Thank You, Father.

Thank You, God. Thank You for Your love and Your mercy. Thank You for that grace that we sing about this morning,

God. Praise You, Father. Well, go ahead and open up your copy of God's Word to Ephesians chapter 2.

And our primary text for today is going to be verses 14 through 16. However, in order to immerse ourselves into the context of what the

Apostle Paul is writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit here, I want us to start reading in verse 8.

So Ephesians chapter 2, we're starting in verse 8. Paul says,

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God.

Not a result of work so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. 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.

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 expressed in the 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.

This is the reading of God's holy inspired word. Won't you join me in prayer once again as we ask the

Holy Spirit to illuminate our hearts and minds to this truth. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you again, and we ask that you work in our hearts.

Prepare us to hear your words, and we ask Holy Spirit that you would illuminate this truth to us, that we would see it clearly.

Guard my words from error. Stop me from speaking any untruth that doesn't align with your words.

In Christ's name, amen. Well, last Sunday, Brother Keith, he called us to remembrance.

If you were here with us, he did an excellent job calling us to remembrance just as the Apostle Paul called the

Gentiles to remember. These readers that he started there in verse 11, where he's reminding them that, hey, you

Gentile Christians, you were once separated from Christ. You were once alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, God's chosen people, and you were once strangers of the covenants of promise.

You were without hope. But Paul also reminded them to remember that they have now been brought near.

They've been brought near by the blood of Christ. And that's the key here, the blood of Christ, meaning that they are no longer separated.

They are no longer alienated. They are no longer strangers. They now have a great hope.

What a thing to remember. And these Gentile readers and listeners, they needed this great truth because the residue that they must have felt, these first -century

Gentile Christians, from their experience of being alienated for centuries, that's all they had ever known, this experience has left them feeling, in a sense,

I believe, kind of like hybrid Christians, almost like second -hand children of God, in a sense.

And the Jewish Christians of that time, unfortunately, they often perpetuated this divide and this distinction between Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian.

And we know this because of accounts like Paul having to rebuke the apostle

Peter, as he mentions in Galatians 2, if you remember the account where when Peter, he was dining with the

Gentile believers, but then when the circumcision party showed up, the Jewish believers showed up, he no longer associated with the

Gentiles, he would only eat at the table with the Jewish Christians. And Paul had to rebuke even the apostle

Peter of this. You can imagine this struggle. For centuries, for centuries, the

Jewish people were God's chosen people and the Gentiles were dogs. And so you can imagine having to let all of that go.

I think often we romanticize the New Testament church a little bit, don't we?

We think of them as some sort of commune, socialist hippies that lived in perfect unity with perfect selflessness at all times.

However, that's just not the picture that the New Testament gives us of that New Testament church.

And yes, we see glimpses of it. We see accounts where they're selling what they have in order to meet the needs of each other, but we also see sin creeping in, don't we?

I don't know about you, but that gives me encouragement because if I only saw this perfect little picture of the

New Testament church, I would think, what's wrong with us? But we see glimpses of this sin.

And that's exactly what was happening between the Jews and the Gentiles during this time.

The Jews were so used to being God's chosen people and the Gentiles were so used to just playing the role of unclean dogs, at least from the

Jewish eyes, right? They understood this to be, this is the divide. This is what it is.

And so you can only imagine how difficult it must have been, one, for the Jews to accept the Gentiles as brothers, but two, for the

Gentiles to fully experience that acceptance. This was difficult for them,

I can only imagine. Now you could say, looking back, you could say, well, if that was me,

I would just be glad to make it in at all, right? I mean, the fact that even if I was a second -hand child of God, it's better than being his enemy.

Who cares? Let's just all move forward with the gospel. Why don't we just, let's just not worry about all of this.

I'm okay being a second -hand Christian or child of God. I'm at least at the table.

And if we're honest, that's the way some of us feel with our relationship with God at times, isn't it?

Let's put ourselves in those shoes. I don't like eisegesis very often, but I do want you to be able to put yourself in your current circumstance in this scenario at some level.

I think sometimes within the church we think, well, man, God really loves the preacher. I mean, he commits his life to studying the word of God, and he's up there preaching, and he prays all week, and all the stuff that goes on with it.

But we think, well, God must really love that missionary. That missionary's given up everything in his life to go overseas, and he's left everything to share the gospel.

God really cares for that godly woman in the church who knows so much more scripture than I do.

God must really care for her. And yeah, I know he loves me, but it feels like a tolerating love, doesn't it?

I felt it before. It feels like, yeah, I made it, but by the skin of my teeth.

I guess that's a saying, isn't it? That's what I feel at times, and I know some of you feel that.

And this is just a small glimpse of how these Gentile Christians must have felt during this time.

You've got these Jews who are God's loved children, and then you've got us who are just simply tolerated stepchildren.

Yeah, we're at the table, but just barely. And I think this is why

Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, mind you, I think he spent so much time ripping this perspective to pieces and striving for unity in the body.

Because he knew. He knew that Christ had come to bring shalom. Some of you may have been with us a few weeks ago.

Maybe it's already been a couple months, but we talked about shalom. How the word peace just doesn't cut it.

Because we think of peace kind of like an absence of conflict. But shalom is so much more.

Shalom is a wholeness. It's not only the absence of conflict. It's even wholeness and completeness within conflict.

It's perfect. And he knew, Paul knew, Christ has come to bring shalom.

To bring shalom with God. To bring peace with God. To bring peace on earth. To bring peace within the body of Christ, the church.

To bring peace within each one of his children even. Each one of us experiencing shalom.

And Paul wants these Gentile Christians to truly experience and rest in that. To rest in this peace.

And they cannot do that until they understand their true identity that is in Christ. Can they?

They're not the stepchildren of God. They are now the children of God.

This is an important distinction here. And this is why Paul's making it. Look at verse 13 that Brother Keith addressed last week as we build into 14.

When he says, But now in Christ Jesus you who once were, that past tense, you are no longer, but you were, far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

The blood of Christ has brought you near. In verse 14, For he himself, who?

Christ, right? He himself, Christ, is our peace.

I love how he uses this word. I want to break some of this down a little bit for you. Notice how he uses our peace.

Paul's a Jewish Christian. He's speaking to Gentile Christians, isn't he? Our. Not your peace.

Not my peace. Not mostly my peace and some of your peace. It's ours. It's our peace.

Now, this word here, this is not Shalom. This is actually a

Greek word, Irenae. Irenae, I believe is how you pronounce it. Irenae, which means national tranquility.

National tranquility is the word that he uses. Why would he use this? Well, remember, Paul is breaching that divide between Jew and Gentile.

Previously separated nations. There was a divide there, right?

And so now he's using a word where he says our national tranquility, our peace, together.

But he uses this word to suddenly interrupt that previous reality and point to this new reality. This new reality that we are now a whole new nation.

There's no longer the divide. There's no longer your nation and our nation and this nation and that nation.

It's, oh no, this is one nation. Notice how he suddenly does that. Language matters.

He's using this word specifically and he's driving home this point. So what does Paul say is this national tranquility, this peace?

What is it? Look at the verse 14 again. For he himself is our national tranquility.

He himself is our peace. This language that Paul uses here is emphatic when he says he himself.

What does that mean? It simply means that Christ alone, Christ and no other, has solved the problem of our relationship between not only

God, right? We've talked about that over the past two, two and a half, three years. Yeah, Jesus is solving the problem between the relationship between God and me.

But he's not only solving the relationship problem and the divide between me and God.

He's also bringing unity and restoration with each other, together.

He has drawn us and bought us to God and to each other. And here's the kicker.

There's a distinction in his person.

Now hear me. It's not simply the message that he proclaimed that brings peace.

We know that because that message gets proclaimed to a lot of people that never experienced that peace.

It's not the message that he brings that brings peace. We forget that sometimes. We say phrases like the power is in the gospel.

And that's not a wrong phrase, but we're misidentifying what the gospel really is.

There is power in the gospel. But what is the gospel? He's proclaiming that we are reconciled in himself.

It's him. It's Jesus himself that reconciles us. His own person.

Not necessarily just what he did, but who he is. This is what has reconciled us.

It is not merely the message of the gospel, but the substance of the gospel that has reconciled us.

And that is himself. Now how do we know this? Well we see this in places like Colossians chapter 1. Flip over there with me if you want to.

Colossians chapter 1. I want us to look at starting in verse 21. And we see this very principle laid out by the

Apostle Paul. And while he's using very similar languages he's using back here in Ephesians. But in Colossians chapter 1, starting in verse 21, he says,

And you, I'm jumping a little bit ahead there. But and you who once were alienated, right?

It's that same type of language. You were far off and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds.

He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death.

Did you catch that? In his body. You see, we have been brought into him, into his very body.

And we know it externally as the church. Right? The church universal is the body of Christ, isn't it?

It's like our passage over here. We though many are one body in Christ and individually members one of another.

There's a body that's going on and we've been brought into that body. Into his very body.

Because this is the body of Christ. This is why it is he and he alone who is our peace, our national tranquility, our unity.

He himself, Jesus Christ. Jesus' blood was shed in order to bring you and I into the very life blood of his body, wasn't it?

He brought us in through his blood shed. You see, modern

Christianity, I'm afraid, has denigrated the Christian life down to a mere individual relationship with Jesus.

And don't hear me wrong. Some of you are perking up like, what do you mean? Yes, it is an individual relationship with Jesus.

That is part of it, but it's not the whole. And we've stopped there. That's why people think of church as optional.

They think of being a part of community as optional. Because they say, well, I have my relationship with Jesus.

It's me and Jesus. And whatever Jesus tells me, I'm just going to read the words in the

Bible however I interpret them and I'm good. Me and him are good. And completely disregard the church universal.

And especially disregard the local representations of that church universal, which is the local church, right?

But we've been brought into a body. It's not merely an individual relationship with Christ, but we've dumbed it down to just that.

It is much more than that. It is union, isn't it? It's his body.

It's in him. We are in Christ. We've been talking about that for weeks now as we've been in Ephesians.

But that's the big question. What does it mean? What does it mean to be in Christ? Yes, I know Jesus died for me.

Yes, I know God chose me and Jesus paid the price for me and the Holy Spirit has sealed me. But what does it mean to be in Jesus?

This is what it means to be in Jesus. Union. We're part of his body. His shed blood has brought us into that very life blood.

We see this in the next part of verse 14. Look at it with me. And he says,

And who is that? Jesus himself. Remember, Jew and Gentile.

No matter what it is, it's both of these, Jew and Gentile, one. He's made two one.

And has broken down, and here's the key, in his flesh. If you write in your

Bibles, underline or circle that. He has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.

And we'll get back to that in his flesh here in just a moment. But I want to explain this phrase here. Paul could be referring to a figurative wall of hostility, couldn't he?

I mean, that's what we're talking about. There's this figurative wall, this divide that's present between the

Jews and the Gentiles. However, most scholars believe that Paul, though speaking of this figurative wall and divide between the

Jew and Gentiles, has a tangible example in mind. You see, in the temple, there was this short wall called the soreg.

Anybody ever heard of the soreg? There's a wall that is in the temple, and it had multiple gates.

And at every gate, there was a little sign there that informed you that only

Jewish people could enter through these gates. What does that mean?

That means that there was a portion of the temple that was meant for everyone behind the wall.

Yeah, you're in, but you're not really in. You don't pass this wall. And those who were considered clean, who were considered holy, could enter into these gates.

And guess what? That was only the Jewish people. They were the only ones allowed.

For a Gentile to enter these gates, and it was clear on the marker at every gate, for a

Gentile to enter the gates meant the death penalty. You crossed this gate.

You went through the soreg into the temple. You were put to death. Now mind you, this wall was not in the original plans of the temple.

This was not God's original plan for the temple. But like many of the Jewish regulations, this was added on top of God's prescription.

You see, the Jewish people of that time, they would look at the law of God, and they would say, okay, well, we have to obey this.

We have to follow this. This is really important. So they started making up other laws that built barriers and guardrails to keep you from even getting close to breaking the law.

So they added thousands and thousands of laws that God never added, just so that they could then try and keep the law of God, which, mind you, goes to show you that following the law of God is impossible, because even with the guide rails, they couldn't do it, even though they made up thousands and thousands and thousands of more laws and rules and regulations, and this was one of them.

They added on top of God's prescription for the temple. They read passages like Exodus 19, 12, where it says, and you shall set limits for the people all around, saying, take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it.

Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death. And they read this and assumed that this wall was the best way to do that, to keep the unholy from entering the temple of God, and only allow the holy.

There was a separation. There was the sinful people and the righteous people that could cross this wall.

One of the reasons that scholars believe that Paul is using this wall as an example is because he was actually accused of bringing one of their very own

Ephesian Gentile elders in through that gate back in Acts 21.

You can go back, jot that down, and you can read that account where he takes one of their very own to the temple, and he's accused of bringing him through the gate, and that's what caused such an uproar there in Acts 21, and led to Paul's arrest in the temple.

They wanted to put that Ephesian elder to death, and they wanted to put Paul to death for bringing him in.

So this would have been a very sore subject for these people, right? They would have known, well, we're Christians.

We follow the one true God now, and we're still not allowed past that wall, this serag.

You can't go past it. There's a barrier. We must be second -hand children of God.

And so this would have been fresh in their minds. Well, look at the passage back in Ephesians, though, when he says,

Who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility?

Notice there's a new temple. That's what

Paul's saying, isn't it? There's a new temple. It has no walls. There are no dividers.

If you are in there, if you're in Christ, you are in his flesh.

There is no serag there. There's no divide. That wall in the temple was meant to separate sinfulness from holiness, but in his flesh, by his blood, we are each made holy, and there is no longer any need for the hostility, is there?

So these Ephesian Christians, these Gentiles, are reading these words from Paul probably like,

Oh, what a relief. What a relief. There's no wall. There's not a super Christian and then us.

There's not a real child of God and then a stepchild of God. We are all in the temple of God now.

We worship God outside of this man -made temple. Christ himself, his body, has brought us in.

That's why Paul declared in Galatians 3 .28, a passage that Brother Keith mentioned last week, there is neither

Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Not some of you are one in Christ Jesus. Not all of you are partially in Christ Jesus.

No, you are all one in Christ Jesus. You've been brought into the temple. You've been brought before the holiness of God all together in the body of Christ.

One. There are no favorites. There are no elites. There are no barriers.

We are all one. This is comforting, isn't it? Brings us into the holy of holies.

Even still, both Jew and Gentile of that day still struggled to make peace with the fact that the

Jews were God's chosen people for so long and the Gentiles were simply added on.

This is fresh to them. You have to remember that many Jewish Christians of that time, they were still participating in Jewish ceremonies and practices, weren't they?

You can imagine how difficult it would have been. They've been immersed their whole lives doing this habit and that habit and following this principle and that principle and doing all of this in a culture with traditions and ceremonies.

These habits were still prevalent in their lives. We see it in Christians today. We don't break all of our habits the moment we get saved, do we?

We still carry some of that baggage in. We carry some of those habits, some of those things that were being sanctified and redeemed and some of those things were coming to the knowledge of the truth and were dying to self, but these

Jewish Christians are still struggling. You've got to remember, too, there's no New Testament for them. They're hearing the apostles teach and they're trying to teach them, but they're still struggling here.

And here they are, the Gentile Christians, without this history and tradition, thinking, do

I need to do these things? Do I need to follow them? Are they the super Christians?

Are they the real children of God that obey what God has commanded? And now here we are just kind of barely getting by?

Is that what that looks like? Yet again, Paul clarifies this. Look back at our text. I want to start reading in verse 14, end of 15.

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...

Now, how has he done it? Right? How has he broken down this dividing wall of hostility?

How has he brought us both together? He says, by abolishing the law of commandments.

I'm going to stop there because, unfortunately, many people stop there.

Some actually use this passage to claim something as absurd as saying, see, Jesus abolished the law.

That's what he says. By abolishing the law of commandments. Jesus abolished the law.

There is no more law. I don't have to live under the law. I don't have to obey the law.

The Old Testament means nothing to me. Pull in Andy Stanley and be like, oh, we just need to unhitch from the

Old Testament. We need to remove from the Old Testament. But that's not what Paul is saying. Notice Paul doesn't stop there.

Let's read the whole thing together. He says, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.

You see, what do you think all of those ordinances were? What do you think those ceremonies were for? What do you think those rituals were for?

What do you think they were pointing to? Those were only pointing to something. They were representing something.

They represented, one, the moral law of God, right? The ten commandments. This is what God requires.

This is who God is. This stems from the very character of God himself. This is what it represents.

And it represents the Messiah that would fulfill them. That was the whole purpose of them, isn't it?

God set a people for himself, the Jewish people, that he had set for himself to follow all of these ordinances in order to show the world this is what

I'm bringing about. And my Messiah that I'm sending will fulfill it all.

But you see, now that that Messiah has come, now that he has fulfilled the law of God, there is no need to express it through these ordinances.

It doesn't exist any longer, is there? That's what he's abolishing. And so when these

Jewish people practice circumcision, when they participate in the

Passover meal, and all of these ceremonies, when they follow their Sabbath -keeping habits, and all of the things that they've grown up doing their whole life, you name it, whatever it is, they are merely practicing a shadow of something no longer necessary, something abolished.

It's gone. And look at what Paul says in the last part of verse 15, that he might create in himself.

Notice he's abolished the law that's followed in the ordinances to point to the law, that he might create in himself.

Remember, no more temple. We are now in him. We are in Christ. There's no more physical temple anymore.

He might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace.

He's replacing one new man in place of the two and making peace through this.

Now Paul could be referring to the Jew and Gentile as the two men. I think there's room for that, and I think that there's an element of that, but I think it's something deeper there, actually.

Remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15 -22 when he says, For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

You see, these Jewish Christians were those that were in Christ while everyone else was in Adam.

Remember, he was our federal head. If you're not in Christ, then you're in Adam.

Adam sinned, hence we are born in sin, because he is our representative. Can't get around it.

Everyone is born in sin because he was our federal head. But now

Paul is saying that distinction is no more. All who are in Christ now have

Christ as their federal head. Once you were in Adam, he was your representative.

He sinned, he failed. The better Adam came, and he didn't fail, and he brought you into himself, and now he is your federal head, he is your representative, meaning we now have peace.

We are in this together. There's no longer Jew, no longer

Gentile. There's no longer divide. There are no longer two nations.

We as Christians are one nation, one body, and in him we have national tranquility.

We have great peace. At least we should. He's purchased it for us.

We're the ones that distort it. We're the ones that don't pursue the peace. We're the ones that don't rest in the peace.

Paul ties all this together. I need to wrap this thing up. Come on. Y 'all gotta listen faster, okay? I'm sorry.

Paul ties this up in verse 16. And might reconcile us both,

Jew, Gentile, male, female, poor, rich, every human being that God has set his love upon.

Christ might reconcile us to God. That's the ultimate reconciliation, isn't it?

We were in enmity with God and he reconciled us and we have perfect relationship with God. We don't fully experience it in the moment because we still sin at times, but even our sin has already been paid for and the reconciliation is clear and it is obvious and it is there.

That Christ might reconcile us both to God in one body.

Christ body. In Christ. Is it starting to click now? That's what it means to be in Christ.

The body. Christ body. And now, how did he do this? He says through the cross.

Oh. I pondered on that this week. What a beautiful thing. The cross is a beautiful thing to us, isn't it?

Now to the early Christians, the world was looking and going, the cross, what an ugly despised thing.

We wear it around our necks. Mr. Danny's got a big one right there. It's a beautiful cross, but that wouldn't be what people of that time would have seen, right?

They would have seen something ugly and distorted and gross and despised. Oh, but for us as Christians, we see that Christ has done this.

He's brought reconciliation through the cross, through what we just represented and remembered as the shed blood at that cross.

And what happened there? He says thereby killing. Dead. No more.

Non -existent. No heartbeat. It's dead.

He is killing. Thereby killing the hostility. That hostility is gone.

We no longer have a divide. Any divide that we have as Christians is a divide that we build.

We walk into the temple and build sore aches. We build a wall and we put the little stamp on it.

We say, well, that Christian isn't allowed through that gate. He's allowed in the temple, but he's gotta stay on that side of the temple.

That's not the body of Christ. That isn't what was prescribed, is it?

That's our doing. We seek unity. And we look around at other believers around us in the community, okay?

And we start to think, well, we're real theologically minded and we've got a lot of the theology figured out and they don't think the same way we do.

There's a wall. There's a divide. Oh, man, that grieves the

Holy Spirit, doesn't it? We sit and we build those stones up.

We build a wall in the very body of Christ. Now, I'm not saying that we just loosely accept everyone that claims to be in Christ.

We see that all the time. Not everyone who claims to be in Christ, it must be the Christ of the

Bible. It must align with the truths of God's word. But if it does, and they proclaim to be in the body of Christ, we have to take them at their word and at their life.

If they're living a godless life and claiming Christ, well, there's things in Scripture that show us we have to remove them from the body and let them know that they're removed from the body.

We can follow all of those, but somebody that seems to have the light of Christ within them, oh, that's a brother, that's a sister.

The wall of hostility is gone. And we seek unity. We want unity with the other brothers and sisters of this community, don't we?

We long for it, we should long for it. And we should tear down these walls because, oh, in the body of Christ, those walls have no place.

Especially have no place in these walls. We're gonna see that as we go on and we get to the later chapters of Ephesians.

A lot of it is about unity in the body. And we're gonna see it more and more, but this is just a taste.

This is the theological reason why we should seek unity. It's because Christ has torn down the wall of hostility.

He's killed it. It's gone. We are in Christ, we are in one body.

We are unified. Amen? Amen. Well, let's go to the

Lord in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you.

Many of us, if not all of us in this room, are

Gentiles. And God, we would have been without hope.

Well, let me rephrase that. We were without hope. Oh, but you made a way through your

Son. Thank you. Thank you for the sacrifice.

And in light of that, oh, Father, help us as your people to rest, that that temple is no more, that we have a new temple, that we are brought into the body, the very body, the very lifeblood of Jesus Christ himself.

And there is no divide. There is no wall of division here.

There is only oneness and unity. Help us as your children to strive for it.

And when we see the walls, that we tear them down, that we repent of them, and that we lay them at the foot of our

Savior who already paid for them, and that we seek to live in unity together and love together.

Oh, Father, mold our hearts and minds towards this, that we would be more like our

Savior, that we would represent our Savior well, that we would love our Savior, that we would love like our

Savior, that we would live sacrificially. God, help us as a people.

Bring about great unity, the unity that you've already purchased, that you've already placed us in.