Reconciled and Brought Near

Today's Bible reading will be from Ephesians 2, verses 11 -16.

Once you have that, please stand for the reading of God's Word.

Again, today's Word is from Ephesians 2, starting at verse 11.

Hear ye this morning the word of the Lord.

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 ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in

place of the two, so making peace.

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

the hostility.

You may be seated.

Sovereign God of heaven, we come before you this morning thankful again that you have brought us

throughout the difficulties, the highs and the lows of this week, and you've brought us here into your place of worship, into

your house.

That we may gather to sing psalms of praises, that we would also gather to hear

the reading of the word, and even now the preaching of that word.

May you grant us all strength and power from on high to receive that which you have ordained for us in your

word, and to you belongs all the glory, in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, this week we want to talk

to you about this glorious hope that we have in Jesus.

Over the last several weeks, we've been going through the book of Ephesians.

In Ephesians chapter 2, we begin with a somber reminder where the apostle Paul reminds the church

in Ephesus about their standing before God prior to their

receiving the proper lordship of Jesus Christ.

And Paul reminds the predominantly Gentile church that you were

once dead and trespasses in sins in the way that you used to walk according to the

prince of the power of the air, the spirit that does not work in the sons of disobedience,

and you were at one time children and objects of wrath.

Not very good.

Not very encouraging.

Not very hopeful.

Verse 4 begins to change the tenor of Paul's discourse to the church in Ephesus where he begins to

open up by saying, but God, being rich in mercy, God,

being rich in mercy, made us, what, alive.

You who were once dead, God made you alive.

And not only did he make you alive.

Paul goes on to say that he seated you, he raised you up, and he put you right next

to King Jesus in heavenly places.

How incredible is that?

That God is able not only to raise us spiritually from the dead, but also position us in Christ

next to Christ.

And he reminds us the mechanism by which God accomplished such a great task and such a great work.

It says in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8, for by grace you've been saved.

By grace.

What's so amazing about grace?

We talked about that last week as we got to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior.

What's so amazing about grace is that you and I, though we were dead, though

there's nothing that we can merit on our own strength, on our own power, there's nothing that we can do to earn

salvation.

God freely gives it as a gift to you and I through faith in Jesus Christ.

And Paul reminds us this is not of yourselves, this is the work of God so that no one may

boast.

You see, there's a conflict between boasting and working towards something and being able to

say, I earned it, I got it, I get the glory.

So when you go to work and you expect a wage because you accomplished a task, you

worked a certain amount of hours or you did what was required of you, therefore it is now merited to you.

But there is nothing that can be merited to us in regard to our salvation.

It is totally unmerited and that's where the word grace becomes all the more amazing.

Because you can't earn it.

It's a free gift.

As W. Tozer puts it, it's God's love.

Grace is God's love freely flowing to the unlovely.

That's why grace is so amazing.

And now in verses 11 through 16, we see how that grace of God is

put into action in redemptive history as Paul now in verse 11 reminds

us and reminds the Ephesian church.

He says, therefore remember, that is to recall, to look back, that at one

time you Gentiles.

Now a Gentile is a term which we get it from the Greek word, which means nations.

And so in redemptive history, God made all the nations out of

one couple, Adam and Eve.

And there was a flood and then from that flood, the Noahic family came about and all the nations ascend

from them as well.

And we get to a place in history in Genesis chapter 11 where we see humanity united.

But humanity is not united in true worship, not in worshiping Yahweh, the God of the Old

Testament, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not worshiping the one true God of Adam.

But instead they began to build for themselves a building, an edifice to reach the

heavens so that they can have dominion and be like God apart from God.

Therefore what God did is he begins to scatter the nations and he separates them.

He brings them into their appointed boundaries and places by his own sovereign hand and decree.

And Deuteronomy 32 tells us that God in that moment in history chose Jacob as his portion,

chose Israel as his people.

And out of Israel, before Israel, we have Abraham.

And God made a covenant with Abraham and said that through your seed, through your descendants, I will make you as

numerous as the sands on the sea and as numerous as the stars in the heavens.

And through you, all the nations will be blessed.

God made that covenant, that relationship with Israel, with the

covenant people, the sons of Abraham.

And everyone else became known as the nations, Gentiles.

And they were separated.

And that's what Paul is bringing up in this text in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 11.

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision and the

sign of the covenant was installed when God commanded Abraham to adhere to the

principle of circumcision.

It was a mark on the flesh.

It was to distinguish, to show, to demonstrate the uniqueness of God's covenant

arrangement, his commitment to his people and the people's commitment to him.

And circumcision is not a pretty act.

It is a bloody act, foreshadowing the piercing and the blood that would come in the

person of Jesus Christ who would bleed and die for us.

And we see that circumcision was a sign, a seal of the covenant.

So if you're following along in today's teaching inside the bulletin that you received, Gentiles were called the

uncircumcision because they were without a covenant.

You see, in Jewish theology and understanding of the covenant, the relationship that they had with God through Abraham,

the Gentiles were seen as the others, as the others.

Paul is reminding again the predominantly Gentile church in Ephesus that at one time they were on the

outside, not on the in.

They were on the outside.

They were the outsiders.

And Paul, again, is clearly conjuring up this negative connotation that some

first century Jews would have had in mind when he uses terms like Gentile and

uncircumcision.

These are terms to distinguish the others.

Like, oh, the Gentiles, these are the unclean people.

These are the ones who have not received the promise.

These are not children and sons of Abraham.

They're not part of our tribe.

Does that sound kind of familiar?

You know, are we that different from the Jews in the first century who put up these boundaries and

say, oh, well, everyone else outside of these walls, they're another.

They're not to be fellowshiped with, they're not to be accepted, they're not to be a part of.

They're the others.

Again, what Paul is beginning to demonstrate in these verses of scripture, and as he goes on to say

throughout the next couple of verses, and this is what I want you to have in mind throughout this conversation, this sermon,

is this, that the scripture points to us to the reality that the tent under Jesus

Christ is larger than we may even think.

It's an inclusive one, exclusive in that it is only in Christ.

So don't get it twisted.

There's only one name that saves.

There's only one person by which we can receive salvation, and that is

the exclusivity of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

But that tent that Jesus died for, his elect, his people, is bigger than what

we see gathered even on Sunday morning.

It may even confound or confound some of your presuppositions as to who

could be included in the family of God.

And that's what Paul is trying to break down into the minds of both the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers, is

that the tent of Jesus Christ is big enough for both of them, for Jews

and for Gentiles.

It's often time we see, even within Christendom, strife

between Baptists and Presbyterians.

We see the strife sometimes between those who adhere maybe to the, not so much, but

maybe to some lower degree, Westminster versus 1689 or New Hampshire.

I met a brother over the weekend, and I had lunch or dinner with a pastor this

week, and he says, well, you know, we're a New Hampshire confessional church.

He's like, is that okay with you?

And I said, yeah, you're allowed at the table.

You're allowed at the table.

And the truth is, is that we are all allowed at the table of Jesus Christ if you be in him.

If you're a child of faith, you are included in that table.

How precious, how incredible is this grace as it is outflowing in the actual working of God's covenant people,

the church today.

Remember that Jesus does not belong to our tribe.

We belong to his tribe.

We belong to him.

He's not our possession.

We are his possession.

Jesus Christ is Lord, not any one of us.

Again, Paul is reminding the Gentile saints that there was a time in which they were not included in the covenant of flesh.

That is God's covenant through Abraham with the sons of Abraham.

And again, the idea of a covenant is so essential into the next couple of verses as we see here.

A covenant is when someone makes an arrangement, when someone makes a

commitment, binding.

Some people would use the analogy of a marriage.

You know, a law really is a perfect example as well of a covenant

because it's binding.

There's consequences associated with either doing so or not doing what the law

requires.

And so God created his covenant people with a covenant,

and this covenant was by means of the inheritance that would come through Abraham that God promised to

Abraham that through him all the nations would be blessed.

And yet, God declared his intentions even beforehand with Abraham when he said to

him that through him and through his seed all the nations would be blessed and included into the promises of

God.

That promised seed, Galatians tells us, is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah

of Israel.

In verse 12 of Ephesians 2, the apostle Paul writes, remember, he uses this

term again to remember, to recall, to look back that you were at that

time, that time being before the ministry of Christ, before

the inclusion of the Gentiles by means of the gospel, before at that time you were

separated from Christ, separated from the promise of the Messiah,

alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of

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

Friends, it can't get any more desperate or gloomy or even

depressing than this.

Having no hope, having no God in this world,

being totally left without any choice or chance

of receiving redemption, is this what God has allowed and destituted the

nations to?

If you're following along in today's teaching, the majority of humanity was separated.

Separated.

Think of what it means to be separated.

To be separated means that you're now an outsider, that you're not included.

I'm not sure about your high school careers, but I had kind of a mixed bag.

My first two years, I was the outsider.

I wouldn't be picked for activities.

I wasn't one of the cool kids.

I started working out a lot and started joining some of the teams so that I could be viewed as

someone of value and that way I can be included.

But for the first two years of my high school career, boy, was it awkward.

Was it tough to be the outsider?

And especially because at that time I was one of Jehovah's Witnesses and I wasn't allowed to fellowship or have friends that

were not JWs.

And so I was just the ultimate outsider.

No one even barely knew who I was.

They just knew I was that weird kid who'd always grab a Bible.

And then when I became a Christian, I was known as the cool kid who always had a Bible.

Not too bad.

Not too bad.

And yet to be an outsider, there's a connotation of

looking at all those who have, so there's a haves and a have -nots.

Being an outsider often means that you probably have not.

You're probably looking at those who are the ones who have, and yet you look through the

mirror and you see other people enjoying the fruits and the labors and all the success and all the fame and all the glory.

Outside of God's covenant, I want you to know this morning, outside of God's covenant arrangement, there is no guarantee.

There is no assurance.

There's no promise.

And the nations did not gather together for true worship.

As I mentioned earlier, the Tower of Babel, the nations did come together, but they didn't come together to worship the one true

God.

Instead, they did so in a spirit of rebellion.

Therefore, God was able to disperse the nations under the sons of God, under the

heavens.

But God again chose Jacob as his portion, as his inheritance, and set them apart to be a nation, to be a

holy and special possession.

This separation from among the nations caused a chasm to exist between the covenant people,

those who had, and those who were Gentiles, who had not,

who had no hope, who had no future, who had no God, no true God of Israel.

They instead, the Gentiles, began to worship other gods, other deities, false gods who

could not truly save.

And there was a cultural and even racial division that existed between Jews

and Gentiles.

And the divisions were deep.

They were really deep.

Especially take, for example, the first century, where Jesus is living and breathing and working and

ministering, and you have the apostles coming in the scene.

This is a world where it is just on the brink of collapse.

Israel is bursting at the seams with high intensity of nationalism.

They have the Roman Empire standing over them, and the boot of Rome is right on the necks of

Israel.

And all of the Israelites and all the Jews are waiting in eager expectation for a savior, for a

Mashiach, for a Messiah who would come and remove the firm boot of Rome

off of their backs, off of their necks.

And that's why when Jesus comes into the city riding on a donkey, they begin to say, Hosanna, our

salvation's here, our savior's here.

He's going to remove the oppression of Rome from us, and we will

set up our Davidic kingdom, and it's going to be a reign of a thousand years.

And is that what they got in Jesus?

No, it's not what Jesus came to accomplish in his first coming.

It's not what the Messiah came to do in his first ministry.

And so the Jews would see the Gentiles as the absolute

embodiment of the bad guy, because Rome is ruling over them, lording over them.

They have to pay taxes to Caesar.

Foreign soldiers are occupying the holy hill, Mount Zion.

I mean, you can't begin to imagine the friction between these two people groups,

Jew and Gentiles.

Similarly, we have today in the United States, I would say to a lesser degree, because it wasn't as bad as what

the conflict between the Jews and the Gentiles in the first century would have been.

But even today in America, we live in a world that is, in a society that is, still

divided over boundaries and lines concerning race.

We're still fighting for people's basic humanity and rights, and

people are still having these frictions and protests over things of

injustice.

We see it today in the world.

But Jesus Christ comes into the picture.

He doesn't come to be a social activist.

He doesn't come to be a political activist.

Instead, Jesus Christ comes into the picture to offer what both sides desperately

need, to offer only that which the hand of God can provide, and

that's peace with God and peace with man.

And in the person of Jesus Christ, the boundaries between Jew and Gentile, black and

white, Asian, Hispanic, begin to melt away in that we have found in

Jesus a common Savior for all humanity.

What a blessing it is to know this Jesus.

If you're following along in the insert again, the second bullet point, the majority of humanity was separated from God, and the

covenant promises having no hope for eternal life.

But not only were there tensions and separations between the

Gentiles and the Jews, there was a greater separation at work that most of the Jews were unaware of as

well.

And it was this, according to the Word of God in Isaiah chapter 59.

I'll read it to you very quickly.

Isaiah 59 verse 2, the Lord speaking through the prophet says, but your

iniquities, speaking to the people of God, the covenant people, but your iniquities have made a

separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face

from you so that he does not hear.

So you know what?

Even though the Jews and the Gentiles were fighting and bickering over who were the haves and who were the have -nots,

God was speaking to his people and saying, you're in the same boat as they are.

Your sins, your covenant breaking, has caused a rift between

Yahweh, the holy God of Israel, and my people.

To the point where he won't even hear them.

He won't even hear the words of the prayers.

He won't even receive or smell the burnt offerings anymore.

It's like a ringing noise, a clamming cymbal to the throne of God.

God is no longer pleased just with the fact that they are children of Abraham.

They need to be children of faith just as all should be, and all desperately need to be.

I want to speak this word as well.

Both Jews and Gentiles are united in their sins against God.

And it is this common problem which requires a common solution.

The shed blood of Jesus, that God can take the two, Jews and

Gentiles, and bring unity.

Bring unity.

That's the overall tenor of what we see Paul describing here in this text for today's sermon.

That God is taking the two, the circumcision, the uncircumcision, the insiders

and the outsiders, Jews and Gentiles, and he's making them one through the shed

blood of the cross.

Therefore, when we see today's problems and the racial tensions that exist in

society, the church ought to be a safe haven where those things are not even of concern.

Where we do not see people by their skin color, by their culture, their national

origin, but rather that all people in this house can be received and spoken to as a

brother or a sister in Christ.

Isn't that amazing?

That while the world is out there fighting over this and that, we can have peace and unity in the

walls of this house.

That we can see each other for what we truly are.

If you be in Christ children of the Most High God.

God today can and is bringing unity where racial and cultural strifes can

be reconciled only by the cross.

And God desires unity among his people.

We mustn't allow then for a spirit of discontent or contention or strife

to separate us here in the local church from the fellowship of God's people

amongst the preaching and the teaching of the Word of God.

We shouldn't allow anything to separate us as brothers and sisters in our beloved Savior.

But we ought to strive for the spirit of unity, the spirit of peace, and the power and the bond of

love.

God honors such unity.

But God is not honored by disunity within the people of God.

And so with open hands we receive people who come into our midst here at Silicon Valley Reformed

Baptist Church.

We want people of every skin color, of every nationality, of every background to come.

Because God is in fact gathering of all tribes, nation, tongues, and languages of people for his own

possession.

Who will be standing before the throne worshiping the one true and triune God.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

What a hope we have.

What a marvelous future lays ahead for the people of God.

And we see this marvelous future come into focus in Ephesians 2 verse 13.

When Paul says, But now in Christ Jesus

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

Christ.

I love it when the Apostle Paul, notice his construction.

He tends to give you the bad news.

And then he inserts the word but.

To give us the expectation, the anticipation that there's going to be a change.

That something's coming that's going to change the trajectory of what he is saying.

And so just as he began to say in Ephesians 2 that you were dead in your trespasses and sins, but

God being rich in mercy.

And he's doing the same thing even here.

He says that you were one time outsiders.

You were of the uncircumcision.

You were alienated.

You were separated.

But now in Christ Jesus you who were

once far off have been brought near.

Near.

What incredible good news is that for you and for me?

That though most of us here, at least for sure, at least with one exception, we were all

Gentiles.

If God had not come in the person of Jesus Christ, we would all still be alienated.

Without hope.

Without the ability of drawing near.

And yet in the cross of Christ, through his shed blood, we who

were once outsiders are now the insiders in the house of God.

How incredible is that?

If you're following in today's teaching, those who were once far off have been brought near by the

blood of Jesus.

Notice again the position that we see in the text.

The position being this in Christ Jesus.

It's in Christ.

In Christ alone can we have this hope of now having

been brought near to God through the shed blood of Christ.

The position is only in Christ are the ones who were once far off who've been brought near.

God's intention, his design was not for the Gentiles to be cast out forever, but to gather them into the

covenant through the Messiah, the promised seed who would crush the head of the serpent and would

bring peace among all the nations.

Among all the nations.

It is only in Christ, again, that the far off can be brought near.

Only in Christ can the two warring tribes, two ideologies,

cultures, skin colors can find true and lasting peace and unity only in

Christ alone.

It's not going to be through cultural Marxism.

It isn't going to be through cultural revolution.

It isn't going to be by protest or this or that or even economics.

It's only going to be through the blood of Jesus that we can have true and lasting peace.

Peace that will last.

Because every world ruler, every revolutionary who thinks that they can come into the picture and that they can implement

their utopia, their version of reality, it always ends up in

tragedy.

Always.

The Lord, he sees what the nations are doing and what he does, he laughs.

He laughs.

That's his response when he sees the nations trying to continue to rule apart from

him.

Because the one who truly rules is King Jesus.

And he will bring unity.

He will bring peace.

Now, what is it about the blood of Jesus that can accomplish all this and more?

What makes Jesus so special?

What makes his shed blood so powerful and important that it can bring together two warring tribes?

Simple.

In the Old Testament, we've seen the sacrificial system.

We see how God had instituted forgiveness of sins through the shedding of blood.

That God's justice demanded the shedding of blood in

place of uninnocent life.

You have to put innocent life.

And so the sacrificial system we see is the blood of goats and bulls

and the blood of sheep being brought forward and doves.

And you see other forms of sacrifices also.

And God establishes his tabernacle in the wilderness so that he can be with his people, so they can be in

proximity to him, so that he can bring his people near to him.

But the only way by which they can be brought near was by the offering of blood.

The offering of innocent life.

And only then could they be clean because the people were unclean.

Because as we see in Scripture, all have sinned.

All have fallen short.

Jew and Gentile alike.

And the only way that God's people can fellowship with God is if he allowed them to come into his presence with

the shed blood of another.

Foreshadowing what would eventually come in the Messiah, in the cross of Jesus Christ our

Lord.

That Jesus Christ is indeed the one who offers his life for many.

He offers in his life a perfect substitute.

Not to be offered time and time and time again, but once and for all for all sin.

And in Jesus Christ, we find in the cross of Jesus, we find our forgiveness,

our redemption, our ability to be brought near when we were once far off.

So no longer do we have to shed blood, innocent blood every year in order to approach the holies of holies.

You can now approach the throne of grace itself with confidence, with boldness

through the shed blood of another, even the blood of Jesus Christ to whom be glory.

This is why it can be said in 2 Corinthians 5 .19 when Paul says this,

that is in Christ God was reconciling the world to

himself.

Not counting their trespasses against them, but entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

This phrase here, in Christ God was reconciling the world to

himself.

I want to break that down real quickly.

You know, oftentimes when we see Paul using that term world, it's not a reference to every

single person who has ever lived.

It's usually an analogy that he's using to draw the fact

that he's referring to not only the Jewish covenant people, but now to people of

the world, the nations.

And so that God is reconciling the nations to himself.

Not that every person we believe in, we're a Calvinistic church, believe in limited atonement.

We don't believe that he died for every single person in that

sense, but rather that he died for the elect who are drawn out of Jews and Gentiles, peoples of all

nations, of all backgrounds.

Another way of saying the word world could be all kinds of people, all sorts

of people from among the nations or the world.

God is indeed reconciling the world, all kinds of people, Jews and Gentiles to himself.

Not counting their trespasses against them.

And he entrusted to us the glorious message of reconciliation.

Isn't that marvelous?

That God has entrusted you with a message to share.

So when we look at the world and its condition, how the world seems to be breaking apart, we have in

our possession that which can reconcile the world, which can reconcile

two warring tribes, which can reconcile two ideologies, which can reconcile

man and woman and man to God, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Well, now, what does it mean to reconcile?

The word reconcile essentially means that there's, it presupposes two opposing views,

two opposing sides, and they're clashing.

And to be reconciled means that that clashing between the two sides now

is reconciled and there's peace.

And there's peace.

The war ceases to be, and in the place of conflict is peace.

That's what the word reconcile is conjuring up in its imagery and usage.

We see in Ephesians chapter two, verse 14, this incredible word from

Paul, for he that be Christ, he himself is

our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh, a

dividing wall of hostility.

You're following in today's teaching, Jesus has become our peace.

And he does so by a marvelous way.

In verse 15, it says, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in

ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the

two, so making peace.

You know how God does this incredible work of peace by making both Jew and

Gentile, you can write that in there, one new people.

He makes Jew and Gentile one new people.

This text is incompatible with a theological view and perspective

called dispensationalism.

Dispensationalism teaches, if you look at some of the prominent teachers in dispensationalism, people like John

Hagee, who say that there are two peoples of God.

Matter of fact, some people like John Hagee have written books saying how you shouldn't even evangelize the Jews

because they got Abraham.

They're good.

They're solid.

They don't need to be evangelized.

They're already saved by virtue of the covenant of Abraham.

And they say, and the church is something completely different.

They call the church the great parentheses.

They call us, you know, kind of an anomaly of redemptive history, that we were kind of the plan B.

Can I tell you that such a thing as folly and foolishness?

We weren't God's plan B.

We were his plan A.

His plan A has always been, from eternity past, to gather all the sons of men from all tribe, nations, and

tongues, including the Jewish people and the Gentile people, into one new

creation.

You see, it doesn't teach in scripture that there are two peoples of God with two hopes or two

destinies.

Dispensationalism is another, in my view, a heresy that's likened onto the teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses, who

they too believe that there are two peoples of God with two distinct hopes.

Jehovah's Witnesses believe that there's 144 ,000 that are going to heaven, and there's a great crowd that's going to go on earth.

Two groups of Christians or two peoples of God with two different destinies.

And that's what dispensationalism teaches about the Jewish people, and the Gentile church.

They said they're separate.

Jews will inherit the world, and then we will go to heaven.

But such thing is not taught in scripture.

And this text from Paul demolishes any resemblance to that theology when he says

that God has created himself one new man from the two.

So where there was once two, there's now one people of God.

Just like in a marriage when God says that the man should leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife so they may

become one flesh, though there be two people in that arrangement, God sees

one flesh, one unity.

In the same way God now sees amongst the nations and the Jewish people, there is not a Jewish

people and a Gentile people in that there are a Jewish church or a Gentile church, but

there is now one church made up of Jews and Gentiles, one hope to which we were

called, one baptism, one faith, one God and Father, one Lord Jesus Christ.

This is what the Bible is truly teaching.

And some people refer to this, especially the text that is in front of us, through covenant theology.

And brothers and sisters, the true covenant theology, as we see from the Apostle Paul, is that you

have been included.

You who were once far off had been brought near.

Brought near.

You were included in the promise.

But it's not two distinct promises now.

It's one, fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

What a marvelous word of reconciliation that he can bring the two, Jew and Gentile,

warring tribes and bring peace by the shed blood of his cross.

You see, even the prophets recognized that the glory that was to come by the ministry of the Messiah would be even more glorious

than the preceding ministry of the old covenant.

I want to read to you real quick from Haggai.

Haggai chapter two, verse nine.

The prophet said, or the Lord, speaking through the prophet says this, the latter glory of this house shall be

greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts.

And in this place, I will give peace, declares the Lord.

What does Ephesians two again promise us 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.

The hostility has been broken down.

Why?

Because the glory of the latter is greater than the glory of the former.

And the glory of the latter being the glory of the ministry of Jesus Christ, and the ministry of

reconciliation that you and I are now messengers of.

Praise God.

We see also in Zechariah chapter nine, we see this incredible prophecy concerning the Messiah.

And it says, after in verse nine, it talks about the Messiah coming lowly, riding on a donkey.

Verse 10 tells us what he will accomplish.

And it says, I will cut off the chair from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem and the battle bull

shall be cut off and he shall speak peace to the nations.

And his rule shall be from sea to sea and from river to the

ends of the earth.

He shall have dominion, even the Lord Jesus Christ, who has come and he has

spoken peace to the nations.

Peace to you, peace for everyone.

And because of this peace that the Messiah now brings and has spoken into us, he has

indeed dominion, rulership, kingship from nation to nation, from sea to sea, from

rivers onto the ends of the earth.

Jesus is today, now and forever, our enthroned King of Kings and Lord of

Lords.

We're not waiting for a future enthronement of Jesus.

He is enthroned sitting at the right hand of God, the Father, interceding for you and I even

today.

What a hope we have in Jesus.

And because of this fact that he is our peace and he's broken down the walls of hostility, abolishing the

law and commandments, we can have peace with God and peace with each other

because the Messiah reigns.

The last couple of verses here in Ephesians, it says, by abolishing the law of commandments

expressed in ordinances, verse 15, that he might create 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.

I want you to write this, Christ, by the ministry of his cross, can now reconcile

all men into one new body.

See, though the forces of darkness saw a defeated man on that cross, all the

Sadducees and the Pharisees and those who delivered up Jesus, even the prince of power of darkness

himself, they saw on that cross a defeated Messiah, but they had no idea what was

to come.

They had no idea that this was not indeed a defeat, but instead this was our Lord's joyful

triumph over the forces of darkness, over even our sin, even over

our death.

And this, by his cross, he even breaks down the walls of hostility

that divided us, that divided all nations and all peoples, where now

the mountain of the Lord has been firmly established.

I want you to know this, that throughout the prophetic writings, there's this anticipation of the mountain of the

Lord being established and being above all the hills, above all the nations.

And can I tell you, we are living in such days even today.

The Lord's mountain is firmly established, that the nations are now

streaming to Zion, the church of the living God.

And Jesus Christ is indeed today even our King and our Lord and our Redeemer.

He's the savior of the world and he has dominion even today.

It was again through the cross, through our Messiah's triumph, that

our Lord made a way for us to be reconciled and brought near.

If you feel like an outsider today, may you only be an outsider to the ways of the world.

Know that you are now included.

You who were once far off, you've been brought near.

Though you were looking from the outside, now you can look from the inside.

You are now and you have now approached the city of the living God.

I want you to know today that the cross was a triumph, not a defeat.

And because of this triumph, you and I can have life and life eternal.

My hope for you, if you have not come to make that decision, you have not yet received

the Lord Jesus Christ, you do so today.

For the Bible says that God commands men everywhere to repent of their sins and to

put their full trust in the Savior.

And if you'd come to him, he will by no means shut you out, but he will receive you.

And if you have come by faith into this place to make that public declaration, the Bible says you

will be transferred from death to life and you'll receive a glorious inheritance, even peace, peace with

God and peace with man.

And if you are a Christian this morning, may this word encourage you and remind you just as

Paul was reminding the Ephesian church of who they were before Christ

and who they are now in Christ.

May you be reminded that though you too were once far off, without hope, without God in this world,

alienated from the promises, you've been brought near, grafted in and made a child of

God through faith in Jesus Christ.

To him be glory.

Let me pray.

Merciful Father in heaven, I often

ask myself the same question the psalmist raised.

What is man that you should be mindful of us?

The son of man that you would even care.

But Lord, you have demonstrated your love not just for one particular

national people, but for the world when you sent forth your son, Jesus

Christ in the fullness of time, born of the virgin to live the life that we could

not live, perfect, holy, blameless, and then to

die to death that we deserved on a cross next to two criminals.

You then seated Christ not in the grave, but you raised him from the grave

and you placed him at your right hand where our Savior and our King and our Redeemer now lives

forevermore interceding on behalf of God's people until he returns again in

glory.

Lord, you have shown that you have given us the greatest gift of all,

the gift of grace, love, and kindness through the shed blood of your son,

Jesus.

Lord, may we marvel at all that Jesus has done and all that your mighty hand has accomplished.

Work in us that which is pleasing in your sight unto the glory of your name.

In Jesus' name we do pray, amen.