Brought Near - Brandon Scalf

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Ephesians 2:11-13 MAIN IDEA:

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It doesn't matter if you've been to war or if you've seen a war movie, there's always one situation that arises.
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Namely, men who see battle want to go home. And oftentimes, as a matter of fact, all of the time, there's this scene that plays out where situations get hard, bullets start flying, people start dying, and men and the soldiers, as it were, they pull out, in their most dire of circumstances, a picture, and that picture, whether it be in real life or in a movie, is always the woman of his dreams and maybe the family that he has left behind.
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And the question becomes, and of course, the answer is quite evident, why would a soldier in the heat of battle pull out a picture of his most precious loved ones?
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Well, the answer to that question is because pictures help us remember the beautiful reality that might await us.
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And memories have a way of giving us hope.
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And they have a way of showing us reality. The question before us as Christians is, how can we both progress in our sanctification and preserve the unity in the body of Christ, his church, while much in the same way that the soldier needed to remember what he had waiting for him, we need to do the same.
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We need to remember. And what better of a way to remember than to be consumed with a portrait of reality?
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As we look at the text before us, we get to Paul's first command.
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And that command is to remember, to remember.
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And what does he want us to remember? Namely, how far we've come.
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What God has done to redeem a people for himself.
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And so if you would please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy and fallible and all sufficient word. Starting in verse 11, this is the word of our
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God. Therefore, remember that formerly you, the
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Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by the so -called circumcision, which is performed in the flesh by human hands, remember that you were at that time without Christ, alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God and the world.
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But now in Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
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The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever, amen. Amen, please have a seat.
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Now, as we began many, many, many, many months ago, looking at the book of Ephesians, I told you that the book of Ephesians is all about the local church, her nature and her beauty and her character.
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It's one of the reasons that I wanted to begin our church plant with the book of Ephesians so we can begin to wrap our minds and our hearts around what it looks like to be
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God's church, the bride of Christ, his body.
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But as you have seen, as we have walked through Ephesians chapter one and now getting into chapter two, we have yet to talk about the church itself.
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And the reason for that is because Paul has to set a foundation for us to understand what the church is and what she's about.
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Namely that we need to understand God if we are to understand his church. And we need to understand how
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God saves sinners, namely because those are the people that are going to be saved. They are going to be the people that make up his church.
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The church is not for everyone out there, it's for those who are redeemed.
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Now, does that mean that we don't orchestrate ourselves in ways that are accommodating in some senses to people who are far from Christ?
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No, absolutely not. Does that mean that we don't do evangelism? Not at all.
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We absolutely do evangelism and we do it a lot. But the church is the outpost of heaven.
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And it is the place where, as Pastor Corey said in his call to worship, it is a place where believers are equipped and trained and it's where we are loving on one another and pushing on one another and helping each other grow in godliness.
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Men and women who are divorced from the local church have circumvented God's plan of salvation and sanctification.
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And so in verses three through 14 of chapter one, God is put on display. He's put on display in his triuneness, if you will.
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We are shown that the Father has planned foundations and before the foundation of the world.
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And that the Son was sent in the flesh. To die for our sins so that we might be forgiven.
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In other words, to achieve the salvation that the Father planned. And the Spirit was sent to apply the salvation that was purchased by the
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Son and planned by the Father. And it says over and over to the praise of the glory of his grace.
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So we see that God is all sovereign, that God is all powerful, that God is absolutely
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God. And of course, if we are to worship
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God as our primary objective, as the church, we must know this
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God. So Paul endeavors to show us just that in those 14 verses. Once we get into chapter two, we are presented with some barriers to the salvation that the
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Father planned, that the Spirit has applied and that the Son has purchased.
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The first one is that we are all, apart from Christ, dead in our transgressions and sin.
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That means there is a moral dilemma. How is God, in other words, going to create a church out of dead sinners who walk according to the course of this world and who are governed by the devil and their flesh?
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That's the question that Paul was endeavoring and is endeavoring to answer.
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How does God save people who are going to make up his church?
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And of course, we went through that, and that walks us up to chapter two, verse one through 10.
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And it shows us that sinners are sovereignly saved by grace and they are made saints, having no works to boast in of themselves.
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But now, Paul is going to turn a corner.
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And he's going to show us that there is another dilemma that needs to be dealt with if there is going to be salvation for sinners.
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If there's going to be a church at all, there's another dilemma that needs to be dealt with.
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In some ways, he's going back to chapter two, verses one through 10, but from a slightly, maybe not even slightly, a different angle.
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Namely, that you and I, unless you are born Jewish, which
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I don't think as many of us are outside of the plan of God, we're unsavable because we were never looked at with favor in the first place, of course, outside of the eternal plan of God.
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Look with me at verse 11. Paul says, therefore, or for this reason, remember that formerly you, the
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Gentiles in the flesh, were called the uncircumcision by the so -called circumcision which is performed in the flesh by human hands.
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The first thing that Paul tells the Gentiles he is speaking to, which is the majority of the people who make up the churches in Ephesus, and you and I, by extension, because we were not born of Jewish descent, he tells them to remember, to remember.
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Now, we must pause here because we oftentimes don't think of remembering as a proper application in a text.
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Right, we wanna know what to do. We wanna know how to live our lives.
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We wanna know what box to check. We wanna know when we're supposed to read our
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Bible. We need to know what kind of apps we need to put on our phone to control our sin habits.
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We wanna know what we have to do at work to make sure that we're working to the glory of God. Do I need to pick this up over here and move it over here?
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Do I need to do it fast? Do I need to sweat? We want to know how to live godly lives.
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When Paul, before he even gets to some very practical things which he will get to, he tells us that the starting place of all action is to remember.
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Because doing doesn't matter if your heart is not flooded with what
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God has done for you. And friends, what this verse here is telling us is the circumstance is far more brutal than what it appeared to be.
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And you're thinking, or at least you should be thinking, how in the world is that possible? We're looking at verses one through three and we are dead.
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That is, we do not respond to spiritual stimuli. We need the power of God in the new birth to wake us from our spiritual deadness so that we might see him and love him.
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Not only are we dead, but we're hemmed in on all sides. The world is influencing us and telling us what to value.
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The devil is whispering in our ear and the lusts of our flesh make us want to be dead.
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We don't want God, we want spiritual death. And you're thinking, or at least you should be thinking, as I just said, how does it get worse than that?
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Well, after Paul explains what salvation looks like from the perspective of redemption, he's now gonna show us what it looks like in relationship to reconciliation.
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And he's gonna show us why we must remember.
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Now, if it's not clear, when Paul is telling us here to remember, he's not telling us or the
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Ephesian church, who was the first audience, to remember because we forgot something or we're likely to forget something.
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But what he wants us to do is to remember so that we might have a greater understanding and appreciation of the past and the mighty reversal that Christ has effected on our behalf.
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And we know that because the next word is formally. It's formally.
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So the first thing that I want you to see as we look at the text is, remember that you were uncircumcised in the flesh.
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My first point is remember that you were uncircumcised in the flesh. We were formally, it was a precondition.
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We were uncircumcised in the flesh. Now, if you do not know what it means to be circumcised, it just means that the foreskin of the male organ is removed.
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But it's not just, if you read your Old Testament, a surgical procedure.
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No, it's not less than that. It had a lot of meaning to be circumcised.
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So to be uncircumcised had a lot of meaning as well. If I could sum it up in one word.
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When the Old Testament speaks of someone being uncircumcised, what they're essentially saying is that you are, or they are, cursed and cut off from God.
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And the reason is because circumcision is a covenant sign, it is a theological sign, and it is a social sign.
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It is a covenant sign because that is the same, that is the sign that God gave, if you remember,
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Abraham in the Old Testament, to give to his children that would set them apart as the people of God.
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And it meant that God, so long as they held to that procedure, that he would be their
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God. It says in Genesis 17, nine through 14, God said further to Abraham, "'Now as for you, you shall keep my covenant, "'you and your seed after you throughout the generations.
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"'And this is my covenant, which you shall keep "'between me and you and your seed after you. "'Every male among you shall be circumcised "'and you shall circumcise in the flesh of your foreskin.
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"'And it shall be the sign of the covenant "'between me and you. "'And every male among you who is eight days old "'shall be circumcised throughout your generations.
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"'One who is born in the house of one who is brought "'with money or from any foreigner who is not of your seed, "'a servant who is born in your house "'who is brought with your money shall surely be circumcised.
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"'Thus shall my covenant be in your flesh "'for an everlasting covenant. "'But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised "'in the flesh of the foreskin, "'that person shall be cut off from his people "'and he has broken my covenant.'"
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You see, so circumcision acted as a covenant sign that whenever they looked upon it, they knew my
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God is faithful and he has set me apart. And he is going to shower me with a blessing.
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It is a theological sign as well. They are marked out as God's chosen people to be a priest among the nations.
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And of course, it was a social sign. Now, what's interesting is that to be uncircumcised was to be a barbarian, to be filthy, to be nasty, to be unclean according to the
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Jewish people. This is why David, for instance, when he goes to fight Goliath, he calls him a filthy
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Philistine. You uncircumcised Philistine, he says. It was a derogatory term because they believed anybody that was outside of the
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Jewish people and were not circumcised were unclean and they were
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God haters and God rejecters. It was so important, in fact, that Paul made it a matter of pride.
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In Philippians 3 .5, Paul, who wrote this letter, claimed to be circumcised on the eighth day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a
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Hebrew of Hebrews, as the law of Pharisee. So Paul, prior to Christ, which is important to note, and we'll get to that in a moment, prior to Christ, saw being circumcised on the eighth day as covenant faithfulness to Yahweh.
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Not only that, but the Judaizers, who Paul actually goes to war with in Galatians, were trying to convert people to be circumcised, which is why
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Paul says, as many as are wanting to make a good showing in the flesh, these are trying to compel you to be circumcised.
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So Paul's saying, these guys over here that are wanting to look good outwardly are trying to get you to be circumcised.
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Simply, he says, so that they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For those who are circumcised do not even keep the law themselves, but they want to have you circumcised so that they may boast in your flesh.
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So there was a concerted effort by all of the Israelites to make sure that everybody was circumcised.
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The proselytes would come in, they would be circumcised. Why? Because it mattered to them.
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And Paul, somewhat in jest, shows his disapproval of such a thing.
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You can see in your translation, especially if you're using the latest standard Bible, you have these quotations, who are called uncircumcision by so -called circumcision, which is performed in the flesh by human hands.
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Because as we will see later on, human hands snipping skin means nothing when it comes to standing before God in Christ, which means nothing that we do has any bearing on our standing before Christ except for Christ alone.
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This is why, by the way, it says therefore at the beginning of this. We've just talked about this. We've just talked about how we are saved by grace through faith and how works do not add anything to our salvation, that we are
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God's workmanship, that he is creating and molding us into Christ -likeness.
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But Paul says, but remember, remember that you were uncircumcised. Remember that you were not of God's chosen people, which brings me to my second point, which is to remember that you were unprivileged in the world.
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So we just saw that Paul makes the claim that we must remember that we were uncircumcised in the flesh, and now he wants us to remember that we are unprivileged in the world continuing on.
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He says, remember, lest you forget. Remember that you were at that time without Christ, alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
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As you look here, there are five disadvantages that Gentiles, people who were not
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Jewish in descent, had that stood in the way of their relationship with God.
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The first one it says is they are without Christ. Now, of course, it's true that both Jew and Gentile, if they did not bow their knee to King Jesus, are without Christ.
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That is true of each individual person personally, as well as the group collectively.
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That they are not unified to the work of Christ by grace, but through faith.
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That is absolutely true, but that is not what this text is actually speaking about. Paul here very pointedly uses the term
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Christ here, which means, of course, anointed one or Messiah.
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So what Paul is saying here is that unbelieving Jews and unbelieving
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Gentiles were separated from Jesus, of course, but not from the messianic hope because they had been entrusted with the oracles of God.
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Unbelieving Jews had the oracles of God, so they were not separated from the coming of the
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Messiah. They had at least a superficial hope in Christ.
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They had the revelation, in other words, of Christ and his coming.
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Romans three, verse two, makes this argument when Paul says that they are great in every respect.
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First of all, he says, they, speaking of the Jews, were entrusted with the oracles of God, and these oracles spoke of the
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Messiah. And so we didn't even, apart from Christ, we didn't even have a shot of even knowing about a
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Messiah that was coming. We were often engaged in worship of self and false religion, and God was looking directly at one people.
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Well, that's not fair. You know what I find interesting? This is just kind of a side point here, as if I have time to do that, but I find it interesting that there are myriads of people that have a problem with the doctrine of election, which we've just talked about at length in verses one, three through 14, and even two, one through 10.
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And they will say, that's completely unfair and unjust that God would choose whom he saves, and he would violate our free will, as it were.
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But those same people would agree with me up to this point, saying, look, God had a chosen people, and he chose to work through them, and to look the other way, as all of the other nations were engaged in paganism and marching themselves to hell.
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And if that sounds incredibly hard to you, that's Paul's point. Paul is saying, that was you.
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You were off doing your own thing, and God was working through a people, revealing himself to a people.
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You were without Christ. Second, it says that they were alienated, you and I are also, if we were
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Gentiles, alienated from the citizenship of Israel. Now, there's a couple ways to take this, and of course,
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I think it's a both and type of thing here. Many commentators see this to be that we are alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, so that would be the way of life, or our conduct.
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Now, the big idea here is that Gentiles in the flesh are separated from a group of people that are in relationship with God, their worship, their practices, and their priorities.
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In other words, apart from Christ, and apart from God leaning in and bringing us into the fold through the evangelistic work of people like Paul, we were outside of the sphere of God's people.
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Special privileges were bestowed on the people of Israel by God, for God, and ultimately, which that's not the scope of this text, but for the whole world.
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Jesus says as much in John 4, 22, when he's sitting down with the woman at the well, and he tells her straight up, you worship what you do not know.
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We worship what we know, why? Because we have been given the oracles of God. We have direct relationship with him.
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For salvation is from the Jews, he says. If you remember in Ruth chapter one, verse 16, remember when
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Ruth is converted, as it were, Naomi is giving her this horrible gospel proclamation, and God uses it anyway, and she says, do not press me to forsake you in turning back from following you.
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For where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your
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God, my God. You see, the nation of Israel and their salvation was bound up in their nationality.
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In order for you to be one of God's children, you needed to be one of God's people. You needed to become a
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Jew in order to be saved, according to the way that they taught.
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Of course, we know that there's only one way that anybody was ever saved, namely Jesus Christ, but the point remains.
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This third thing is that we are strangers to the covenants of promise. Strangers to the covenants of promise.
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Now, this word promise here is used 50 times in the New Testament, 26 times by Paul, and four times in the book of Ephesians.
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And of course, the word promise just means something that is unconditionally given, especially from a biblical context, which is interesting because we have this word covenant before it, and covenants are treaties of sorts where a larger entity promises to a smaller entity to do something for them so long as they're obedient to him.
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But God makes covenants that are unconditional in nature, where he promises to fulfill those things regardless of how the other responds to beautiful, beautiful biblical reality.
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Now, there are lots of implications here, ones that I would love to get into. Namely, he says covenants.
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He doesn't say covenant. What that means very plainly from the words of Paul is that there is not one covenant with multiple administrations.
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There are multiple covenants, and Paul seems to differentiate here between covenants of promise and conditional.
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Conditional covenants. That is, covenants that need to be fulfilled in order, or stipulations that need to be fulfilled in order for that covenant to continue.
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I don't know, like Israel's status in the land, but I'm getting outside of the text here.
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Let me get back. When Paul is talking about the covenants of promise here, he's talking about, just for starters, the
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Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the new covenant. And these are all covenants that God is going to fulfill regardless of how other people respond.
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And he's namely going to do it in Christ. But in Genesis chapter 12, we see the
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Abrahamic covenant where Abraham is promised kin.
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He's promised a posterity, and he's promised that that posterity would bless the nations.
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Genesis 12, one through three says, "'And Yahweh said to Abram, "'Go forth from your land and from your kin "'and from your father's house "'to the land which
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I will show you, "'and I will make you a great nation, "'and then I will bless you and make your name great, "'and so you shall be a blessing.
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"'And I will bless those who bless you, "'and the ones who curse you I will curse, "'and then you all the families of the earth "'will be blessed.'"
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This is an unconditional promise that God has made.
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And the point is, if you are not in Christ, those were not for you.
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If you are a Gentile in the flesh, this is not for you. Same with the Davidic covenant, which states that God would make sure that his seed,
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David's seed, would be on the throne forever. Now, in one sense, that's a conditional covenant because they needed to be obedient in order to stay on the throne, and yet God had a bigger vision and was promising that Jesus Christ, his seed, would sit on the
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Davidic throne forever. And we know that happened because he's there right now. Amen? Amen.
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And then, of course, there's the new covenant promise. The new covenant promise in Jeremiah 31, and the same one in Ezekiel 36.
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Jeremiah 31, 31 through 36 says, "'Behold, days are coming,' declares Yahweh, "'when
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I will cut a new covenant with the house of Israel "'and with the house of Judah, "'not like the covenant which
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I cut with the fathers.'" Underline that, be Baptist. It's not like the covenant with the fathers.
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It's entirely different. "'The covenant which they broke, "'but
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I was a husband to them,' declares Yahweh. "'But this covenant which I will cut "'with the house of Israel, "'after those days,' declares
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Yahweh, "'I will put my law within them, "'and on their heart I will write it, "'and I will be their God, and they shall be my people, "'and they will not teach again each man his neighbor, "'saying, no
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Yahweh, for they will all know me "'from the least of them to the greatest of them.
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"'I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. "'I will remember no more.'" But Paul is saying that beautiful promise that should cause us all to fall down on our knees in adoration for the
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God who has enacted a new covenant to save us was not for you. It was outside of the bounds where you could go.
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Same thing with Ezekiel. He says, I will sprinkle water on you in 36 verse 24 and 27, and I will make it clean.
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I will cleanse you from all your uncleanliness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.
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Paul is saying, do you remember that all of those beautiful promises that God made to his people, you were strangers to them, you were foreigners to them.
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They made no difference in your life. You had no part in them. Nextly, he says, if it doesn't get bad enough, no hope.
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No hope, look with me. Remember that you were at one time without Christ, alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenant promise, having no hope.
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This is as if he is pausing to remind us that we are completely without any kind of hope, and that is the worst reality that could ever possibly happen.
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And it's hope that the Jews had, objective hope, based on the promises of God, revealed in the word of God.
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It means that there is no hope for this life or the life to come. There's no revelation of God to speak to them.
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Do you remember that about yourself, Christian? Lastly, without God in the world, without God in the world, the sad reality that lays behind what he wants us to remember is that we were completely unable to have a relationship with the
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God of Israel, the one true God. In other words, apart from the working of Christ that he's going to reveal to us here in the moment, we were
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God forsaken and cursed, and God had no dealings with us.
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I know it just seems like I've hit the bad news again, and we just got out of it, and we just started to feel some reprieve, but Paul is doing this for a very important rhetorical reason.
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He's trying to show us how deep the sin well goes and how deep and despairing we should be if we don't understand
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Christ, and we don't know Christ, and we don't love Christ. Not only were we morally unable to come to Christ, we were positionally and within proximity away from Christ.
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Not only could we not come to him in our own thinking and feeling, not only could we not come to him willingly and affectionately, we couldn't come to him if we wanted to by nature of the fact that he had blinders on, and the only thing he cared about was the people that he was working in and through.
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So Paul's wanting you to do this. Whoa, what am I ever to do?
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Well, you remember. You remember that that's true. Well, that's not very nice. You know, we wanna think positive thoughts about ourself.
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We wanna make sure that we're awesome. We wanna make sure that we do not hurt our self -esteem.
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Well, the Bible doesn't care about your self -esteem because it's those who are of low esteem that can see
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God's great esteem. When you realize how low you were and how far
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Christ had to reach, oh, it all becomes all the more beautiful.
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Not having God in the world is the worst thing that could possibly happen. Why? Because James 1 .17
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says that every good thing given and every perfect gift, everything that you love and cherish and need is from above, coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shading shadow.
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If you don't have God, you don't have anything worth having.
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Children, would you look at me for a second? I know it's been a minute. I have a lot more notes than usual. I'm sorry.
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I wanna sum up everything that I've said in a way that might help you understand. What God is saying through the apostle
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Paul here is that apart from God's working in Christ, we're like an astronaut floating alone in a vast expanse of space.
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Have you ever seen on the TV or anything like in a book and you see an astronaut just floating around, cut off from all communication with the earth?
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That's like being without God in the world. All the emptiness and isolation, that's what we were like.
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We were also like a ship that was adrift in the open sea. And all of the things that make it to where we can, that ship could communicate with people to help them.
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It was broken and it was failing. And there was no sense of direction.
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That ship would be aimless. It would be drifting into nothingness.
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That's like being without God in the world. That's like having no hope. That's like being strangers to the covenants of promise.
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We're doomed. But Paul doesn't stop there.
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He goes on and in another way gives us the gospel.
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The third thing that I want you to see now that we have taken time to remember that we were uncircumcised in the flesh, taken time to remember that we were unprivileged in the world,
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I want you to see here that Paul wants us to remember that you've been brought near to God, his promises and his people by the blood of Christ.
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Look with me here at verse 13. He continues on and says, but now in Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off.
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And by the way, that's what everything has been set up to this point. Everything is illustrating the point that we're far off.
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We're not only dead, but we're far off. Those of you who formerly were far off have been brought near, brought near by the blood of Christ.
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Look with me here at these first two words, but now, but now.
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This is just like we saw in verse four of chapter two, if you remember, but God.
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Here we have another dramatic and divine reversal. Just like God stepped in and revived us back to life and gave us a new heart in Christ Jesus and changed our fate and our destiny forever, he does the same thing.
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Though we were far off, he brought us near. But now, you were far off, but now, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, but God, you were,
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I want you to hear this very pointedly. Everyone in this room who identifies as a
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Gentile that is not born of Jewish descent, remember that you were at one time without Christ, but now, you were alienated from the citizenship of Israel, not having a relationship with God, but now.
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Strangers to the covenants of promise, but now. Having no hope and without God in this world, but now, you have been redeemed and reconciled to both
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God and man. Both the vertical and the horizontal has been fixed, which by the way, that's what this is.
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We needed to be reconciled with a holy God whom we sinned against, that's problem number one, that's dilemma number one.
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But we also have been alienated from one another, that's problem number two.
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And so God worked through the Jewish people to bring about the Christ, to reconcile us to one another, and he brings us near to God, brings us near to God.
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So when it says here that he brought us near, it means he brought us near to God, not by us being circumcised in the flesh, but as the
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New Testament makes clear, that was just a type in a shadow pointing to the reality that now exists in Christ, that we have been circumcised in our hearts, which the
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Bible calls the circumcision of Christ. And that's the only circumcision that matters, right?
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Because Paul's rhetoric and what we just read, especially in verse 11, implies very heavily that since becoming a
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Christian, circumcision has become to him and to everyone he preaches to, religiously irrelevant.
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So when people try to make the case that there is a one -for -one correlation between, for instance, circumcision and baptism, they're tying something that Paul sees as irrelevant to our standing with God.
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He's done away with this sign and this seal, because it had a very particular purpose for a very particular people.
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The circumcision done in the body by the hands of men is not real circumcision.
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The true circumcision was not made with hands. It is a circumcision, as I said, of Christ.
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You can find that in Colossians 2 .11, which is now available to you and to me.
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And yes, even Jews in the new covenant that has been established in the gospel of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. So who is a
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Jew? Well, Romans 2 .28 and 29 says, if we have been circumcised in the heart, we are actually true
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Jews, if you will. Romans 2 .28 through 29 says, for he is not a
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Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh, but he is a
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Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the spirit, not by the letter, and his praise is not from men, but from God.
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In other words, God changes your heart by the spirit, and his commendation is for you.
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When you get circumcised, you get the applause of men, but it means absolutely nothing.
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Okay. In Philippians 3 .2 through three, Paul warns against the men who would make much of circumcision.
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Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the mutilation, for we are the circumcision who worship in the spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.
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Colossians 2 .11, he says, Jesus, in whom you were also circumcised with, a circumcision made without hands and the removal of the body of the flesh, the circumcision of Christ.
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So we are brought near to God by him circumcising our hearts, cutting away the fatty sin, and cutting away the rebellion that exists within us, and killing the hostility that we have with one another, exemplified in the
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Jews and the way that they felt about anybody else who was not a Jew. Secondly, we are brought near to God's promises.
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We are brought near to God's promises. All of those beautiful covenant promises of the Messiah, all of the promises that he would care for us and love us, extend grace to us, that he would save us.
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I mean, look with me, we don't have to go very far. If we go back to Ephesians 1 .13, it says, in him, that is
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Jesus, you also, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed you were sealed in him with the
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Holy Spirit of promise. It's been famously said that all of God's yeses and promises are in Jesus.
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But not only that, but we are brought near to God's people. We had a five -fold problem and we have a five -fold solution.
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We are brought near to God's people. Where we were once alienated, God, as we will see here, as we will see next week, has created out of the two, that is
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Jew and everybody else, Gentiles, into one new man, a new humanity, as it were.
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He has caused peace to abound. And we have been brought near to God's people because we have a citizenship that is not in Israel, and friends, hear me on this, not in America, ultimately, but in heaven.
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Philippians 3, 20 through 21, Paul says, for our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a
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Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of his glory, by his working through which he is able to even subject all things to himself.
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Remember, spiritually, we talked about this weeks ago, that we have been risen with Christ and ascend to him into the heavenly places.
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And spiritually, we rule and reign with him, and it says here that that's where our real citizenship is.
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Much like Ephesus was a colony of Rome, we are a colony of heaven that meet together, love one another, and we have been reconciled to one another.
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Ephesians 3, 6, just a little bit further down the road, it says that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, that is the church, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospels.
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And then a little bit later, before that, in Ephesians 2, 19 through 20, it says, so then you are no longer strangers, see that word, strangers, to the covenants of promise, you are no longer strangers, and you are no longer sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
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Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. You can think about this like the story of the prodigal son.
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We weren't looking for God, and we were on the outskirts of any kind of hope, and like the father runs to the wayward son, so God has pursued us and runs to us, and makes it possible for us to be included in his people, to be brought near to him, to be able to, through Christ, come to the father.
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It says that we can run to the throne of grace without fear. Why? Christ.
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Christ. As a matter of fact, that is the crescendo of verse 13. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were formerly far off have been brought near.
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By what? The blood of Christ.
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So the cost of bringing us near to God, to his promises, and to his people was very dear.
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It was very dear. It cost the blood of his son. So the instrumental means, or the cause that exists so that we might be able to be brought near is the blood of Jesus Christ.
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The blood of the promised Messiah. 1 Peter 3, 8, 10 makes this absolutely clear. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that he might bring you to God.
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Yes, God crucified his son so that his glory would be put on display. He did it out of the great love with which he loved us, but he also did it so that he would bring us, reconcile us to God, so that we might be reconciled to one another.
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Christ is the centerpiece on which all of this hangs. Martin Lloyd -Jones says it this way. There is only one covenant of grace, and all it centers around the
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Lord Jesus Christ. The old points forward to him, the new reveals him and holds him forth to us in person or in flesh.
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He alone is the fulfillment of everything that is promised from Genesis 3, 15 onwards.
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It's all in him. And the covenant of promise were ultimately, as he says, fully and clearly made with him.
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So what is the payoff here? What this text is teaching us is that Gentiles did not join the church.
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Wait, hear me on this. Gentiles did not join the church.
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Jews and Gentiles became the church by the gracious act of God in the slaughtering of God's Son.
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It's a new covenant spilt in Christ's blood with a new mediator.
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Every time a covenant was made in the Old Testament, there would be a slaughtering of animals.
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Jesus was the sacrifice symbolizing the new covenant.
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He was also the mediator of the covenant. And he makes it possible for us to be in that covenant as well.
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Hebrews chapter eight, verses six and seven says, but now he, that is Jesus, has obtained a more excellent ministry by as much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant.
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So the covenant that we are in because of Christ's blood, where the Jews and Gentiles have brought together and made the church is a better covenant that existed in the past.
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The old covenant that existed where the outward showing of the flesh, the circumcision is obsolete.
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Hebrews continues on, says, for if the first covenant had been faultless, that is if it had been perfect, there would have been no occasion sought for a second.
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Covenant, another indicator that there's more than one covenant.
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More than that, there is a new covenant sign because it's a new covenant.
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If it was the same covenant, it would have the same covenant sign. And that is baptism.
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And friends, today we get to celebrate a baptism which signifies the changing of a heart and the reconciliation vertically and horizontally.
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And we get to celebrate along with our brother Brian that he has been brought into the fold of God.
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That Jesus Christ is his mediator and that he is his sacrifice.
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And friends, this is how the church is made. It's made by awaking dead sinners back to spiritual life and it's made by crushing the hostility between one another.
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So the question becomes, how do we begin to progress in the Christian life and how can we preserve the bond of unity in this church?
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Well, there's one answer, to remember. Because guess what?
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It's hard to think you're better than everyone else and that you have the best ideas around if you understand how far you were away from Christ.
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It's hard for you to hide your sin in the context of community that is able to help you fight against those things when you realize and remember how far you came.
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It's hard for you not to worship when you remember how far off you were, but that God brought you near.
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He brought you near. In closing,
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I want to remind you, if you do not know Christ, if you have not bowed your knee to him, if you do not love him, if you do not cherish him, then you are still aliens that is alienated from God.
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You are still strangers to the covenants of promise and you are still without hope and with no
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God in this world. But Christ extends to you his open bloody hands and he says through his servant
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Paul, but those who do not work for the ungodly,
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Christ died. All you need do is not work, but throw down your man -made crown.
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Throw down your autonomy. Throw down your self -righteousness.
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Throw down your pride and throw down your fake intellectualism that states there's no way a guy can rise from the dead.
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That's the point. The point is that people are not supposed to rise from the dead and our
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Christ got up out of the grave, conquering Satan's sin, death and hell and he extends to you his perfect record of righteousness.
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All you need do is lay prostrate at the foot of the cross. Will you do that?