A CALL TO REMEMBRANCE (Eph 2:11-13)

You say you're going to do and you promised that you would hold, you would provide for us. Lord, you told us that you would provide a sacrifice and you did with your son. And you have kept us and we know, Father, that you being the God that doesn't change, that we will never be snatched from your hand.

That covenant is everlasting. Father, thank you. I pray that you would be honored in our worship today for you are the one that is worthy of all praise. Lord, mold our hearts, mold our minds, restore us, renew us, God.

Help us to lay aside sin and indifference, Lord, and come before you in spirit and truth and worship you as you desire for us, your children, to worship you in Christ's name.

He has done great things. He has done great things. He has done great things. One more time. Psalm 71, and we're going to break it in half this week.

As we look at the first part, the first 11 verses of Psalm chapter 71, where the psalmist writes, Forsake me not when my spirit or my strength is spent. For in you, O Lord, do I take refuge. Let me never be put to shame.

In your righteousness, deliver me and rescue me. Incline your ear to me and save me. Be to me a rock of refuge to which I may continually come. You have given the command to save me for you are my rock and my fortress.

Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man. For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned, learned from before my birth.

You are he who took me from my mother's womb. My praise is continually of you. I have been as a portent to many, but you are my strong refuge. My mouth is filled with your praise and your glory all the day.

Do not cast me off in the time of old age. Forsake me not when my strength is spent. For my enemy speak concerning me. Those who watch for my life consult together and say, God has forsaken him. Pursue and seize him, for there is none to deliver him.

Seems like a weird place to stop here in the middle of the psalm because just as the psalmist often does, he begins with truth, he acknowledges his perceived reality, and then as we'll see next week as we finish off this psalm, he ends with truth.

And I love that the psalmist does that because I think what we're seeing as we walk through these psalms consecutively one after another, week after week, we begin to see that in these psalms is the reality of what we know and what we experience.

And sometimes what we know gets shadowed by our experience, doesn't it? We begin to look around at the enemy and the enemy seems to win. The wickedness seems to win. They seem to come in after us, and we seem to be losing these battles left and right with our own sin and our own lives even at times, don't we?

Oh, but remember what the psalmist says at the beginning. In you, O Lord, do I take refuge. Let me never be put to shame. That's a truth. That's a declaration right up front that even though I experience something different, oh, that doesn't change the fact that God is my refuge, God is my fortress, and God has made a promise to me.

And he keeps his promises. Amen? What a glorious truth.

Good morning. Wow, what a worship service. I remember there was, I was listening to a preacher once, and he said, it was after a really great worship service like that, and he said, well, if that doesn't want to make you charge hell with a squirt gun, I don't know what will.

But this is glorious Lord that we serve. Today we're being called to remembrance. I don't know if you've noticed that through the songs that we sang, through the prayer, through the scripture reading, the call to worship.

The Lord is calling us to remembrance, and we have plenty to remember in our lives. Just in the recent past, what the Lord has just done in this church, in the body of this church, we are being called to remembrance.

What the Lord has done in our lives, we are being called to remembrance. In the scripture that we're going to be discussing today, which is in Ephesians 2, 11, 13, twice Paul is calling us to remembrance.

And this word remembrance, that's a very important tool in our lives. It's used to give us assurance of things that we've learned, and things that we've experienced. We can remember what the Lord has done in our lives, and that gives us our blessed hope.

In sad times, we remember the good times. In times of loneliness, remember the times that we shared with our loved ones, and those that we shared time with. In times of forgetfulness, we even have one of these things in our pocket to help us to remember all the things that we forgot.

So all you have to do is pull that out. This word remember is used in the Bible over 150 times. And one could say that one of the main objectives of scripture is for us to remember. It's to remember what God has done.

All the promises that God has made to us, and how faithful He is. And you know, when it comes to God's word, when you go to the very first ten words of the Bible, there He's calling you to remember. It says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and earth.

He wants you to remember that we serve the most powerful God. The only one true God. He wants us to know about His power, about His sovereignty. And through His creation, that He is a God of order. And in the act of creation, God dictated this order.

We can see it all throughout nature, this order that He has built into His creation. Some examples of these are laws that He's given us in His creation. The laws of thermodynamics, which deals with energy.

The laws of gravity. The laws of planetary motion. And the laws of inertia are some among many. And when science wants to study these laws, they depend on this order that God has created in His creation.

Now they don't recognize that usually. They call it nature. Laws of nature. But they depend on that order to conduct their experiments. If they think they have discovered a truth, they will set it as a null hypothesis.

And then they will set up a series of experiments to try and prove that null hypothesis. And the main thing that they're looking for is something that's observable regarding that null hypothesis, and that that experiment is repeatable.

And they will continue to do this until they build up enough data where they will get a statistically significant result. So then that will remove all chances, or most chances, of error in the experiment they've done.

They'll take that as a fact now. Their null hypothesis has been proven true. They'll put that in their little box of knowledge over here, and they'll pat themselves on the back, and they'll say, look what we understand about nature.

Instead, they should be saying, look at what we understand about what God has done through His creation. However, things don't always go as they plan. There are times things are different. It's things happen that they can't observe, or they can't be repeatable, repeated in a scientific study.

A few examples of these would be a pillar of fire leading a people from one country to another, or water standing still in a river as a group of people go from one country to another, water being turned into wine, or how about feeding 5 ,000 from a small basket of food.

Most of these scientists would call those anomalies, or abnormalities, or deviations. But of course, as Christians, we know them as miracles, right? We know them as an act of the power of God. The definition for a miracle is an act or event that does not follow the laws of nature, and is believed to be caused by God.

So in short, it's the power of God that is completely outside of His laws of nature. And a lot of people refer to that as supernatural. It is above nature. It is beyond nature. So my question for you today, have you ever witnessed a miracle?

Have you ever seen a miracle take place? The power of God acting outside His laws of nature, or laws of creation. Well, for most in this room, the answer should be a resounding yes. You have. You've not only seen it, you have experienced it.

Because this is what Paul has been trying to get us to see. All through the very first verse of the first chapter up to now, Paul has been trying to get us to understand that this act of salvation is a miracle.

It is not an act of nature. It is an act of God. It is the power of God working in your life. Taking a cold, dead heart, and changing it and bringing it to life. Taking darkness and putting light in its place.

It's nothing less than a miracle. And that should affect everything that we do. Every morning we wake up, we should be in awe of this magnificent Creator who has, before the beginning of time, set these series of miracles in place so that we would come to know Him.

That we would have a relationship with Him. In Romans 1 .16 it says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God. For salvation to everyone who believes. To the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

Ephesians 1 .19 and 20, Nathan talked about this about a month ago. It talks about the immeasurable greatness of His power towards us. And Paul complains it, sorry, compares it to when he raised Christ from the dead.

The same power that was used to raise Christ from the dead and set Him at His right hand is the same power He has used to bring us out of the kingdom of darkness and place us in the kingdom of light. So today as we talk about remembrance, as we look back at what God has done for us, let's keep this in mind.

This great power that God has used. Let's pray. Father, we just want to thank You so much for what You have done in our lives. We want to thank You so much that where You've led us here as a church. We just praise You that You have determined before time our steps and how You loved us and how You've blessed us.

Lord, just please be with me. Help me to communicate accurately Your glory and Your holiness. I pray this in Christ's name. So if you go ahead and turn to Ephesians 2, 11 through 13, we'll be greeting.

I want to read the whole section before I get started. And what I would like for you to do as I'm reading this, and I will emphasize it, but I want you to focus on some action words that's in here. It's the commands that were given and then what it has resulted in us to do with Christ because that is what He's talking about.

He says, Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, 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 covenant of promise.

Having no hope without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, who you once were far off, have been brought near by the blood of His Christ. By the blood of Christ. So this section, it kind of mirrors and kind of reflects what Nathan preached about at the very first of this chapter when it's talking about the plight of sin.

Paul is shifting his focus to the Gentiles and the work of Christ and the Gentiles in particular. So what we have is what he's talking about. He's talking about this separation. What has happened that has resulted in a separation from Christ.

He says, 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. Basically speaking about two different people.

He's speaking about the Gentiles on one hand and he's speaking about the Jews on the other. And the Gentiles, the Jews hated. They despised the Gentiles. The Gentiles had oppressed them. They had often used them as slaves and they had often persecuted them.

And so they were given this term by the Jews as the uncircumcision. That was a term of criticism. It was an offensive term. If you remember back to your childhood stories in the Bible it was a term that David used when he came to slay Goliath.

He said you uncircumcised Philistine. In other words he was trash talking Goliath when he said that if you didn't realize it. So then we have the Jews. And I like what the New American Standard and what I just got through reading it says by what is called the circumcision.

In the New American Standard it says so called circumcision. And it gives more the feeling of what the point. Paul is really trying to make here that you have rested on this act of man that's an outward sign for your righteousness before God.

And he's all summing that up. So called circumcision. You see God's plan all the way back to Abraham and his descendants was for them to spread the knowledge of God to the nations around them. But that was God's plan.

But Israel the nation they never fulfilled that plan. They didn't do it. In Genesis 12 3 he said I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you talking to Abraham all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

But sadly Israel never fulfilled that. Israel never did it. Instead they perverted the blessings of God and became a source of isolation. They isolated themselves. They had pride about their relationship with God and they depended on self-glory.

In fact the Jews wanted the Gentiles to be judged and condemned. That's what they wanted. Paul kind of explains this a little bit further in Romans 2 this deal about them relying on circumcision. It says for no one who is a Jew whom is merely one outwardly nor is circumcision outward and physical.

But a Jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the spirit not by the letter. So he's saying it wasn't the outward that matters. And that's the same with us. It's what's inward.

It was a circumcision. It was supposed to be a circumcision of the heart by who? By the spirit. That's what really matters. So Paul goes on to say and kind of derides them even more by saying this was something that was just made in the flesh by human hands.

It wasn't done by God. It wasn't a matter of the heart. So we have this in this verse the separation between the Jews and the Gentiles between one people and another people. So then in verse 12 Paul is going to turn to the Gentiles' separation from God.

And once again he's going to call them to remembrance. He says, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ alienated from the commonwealth of Israel strangers to the covenant of promise having no hope and without God in the world.

So what he's trying to do is he's trying to show them what they once were and what that had made them and what that had affected them. He says remember that you were separated from Christ. This separation is your without that you're apart from.

Ephesians 5 .8 says and Paul carries this all the way to the bottom conclusion that you can make about this alienation. He says, for at one time you were darkness. Note that he doesn't say at one time you were in darkness or at one time you were of darkness.

He doesn't say at one time you were surrounded by darkness. He says for at one time you were darkness. In 2 Corinthians he goes on to say in their case the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.

And I love what John says in his first epistle. He said they were like the blind groping in the darkness. And Martin Lloyd-Jones said not only were we blind in darkness we were double blind. It was so bad.

This was their position and if you'll remember this was our position also. They were and we were without Christ. This without Christ resulted in five conditions that Paul goes on and expands on here. He says remember that you were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.

Alienation. You were set apart. You were isolated. Set against. You were cut off. You were made hostile to. So they were completely outside of the chosen people of God. The nation of which God was king and that was supposed to be Israel.

They were and we were without Christ. He says remember that you were strangers to the covenant of promise. They were outsiders. They lacked faith. They were strangers. This covenant that it speaks of is an agreement which God binds himself to carry out his personal promise to his people.

And there's five major covenants in the Bible. Scholars call as the covenants of salvation. There's the Noahic. The Abrahamic. The Mosaic. The Davidic. And then of course the new covenant. But many refer to as this one with Abraham as a supreme covenant.

A promise and we've already talked about this where God says and in all the families the earth the you shall be blessed. But the Gentiles never I mean the Jews never let the Gentiles forget that they were aliens and strangers to these promises.

They were and we were without Christ. He goes on to say remember that you had no hope. You had no expectations. You had no desire. No aim. No longing. No ambition. In Israel they had all the hope they thought.

They served the one true God that had the power to fulfill every promise that he had made to them. These idols that the Gentiles worshipped did not have this type of power. They had no such promises. They had no such hope.

And as a result they were and we were without Christ. He says remember that you were without God. That's the absence of deprived of destitute of privileged from. And this is a spiritual alienation that he's talking about.

We are spiritually alienated from God. The Gentiles had a myriad of gods but they didn't serve the one true God. They served idols made of hands that were wood and stone and could do nothing for them.

They were and we were without Christ. He says remember that you were in the world. This alienation are something that is a part of. And once again we're talking about realms. We're talking about kingdoms here.

They were in the kingdom of the world where the Jews thought they were in the kingdom of God. John 5 19 says we know that we are from God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And that's where they were.

That's where we were. If you go back to the first of Ephesians about this it says following the course of this world following the prince of power of the year the spirit that is not now working at work and the sons of disobedience.

It gives a clear picture of this is being in the world. They were and we were without Christ. So basically what he's talking about here and I've been talking about is that there's this barrier of separation.

They were separated strangers. They were without. Not only were they separated from each other but they were separated from God. There was this wall of hostility between them and God. And so what is the grand cause of this separation.

What is the grand cause of this wall of hostility. Well of course it's sin. It says it best in Ephesians 2 1 and you were dead it's our sin that has separated us from God. So another question this is test day.

What group has the ultimate unity has the perfect union has the perfect relationship. Jeremiah talked about it several Wednesdays ago. Of course it's the Trinity and there's a reason why it's perfect.

There's total absence of sin. There's pure righteousness pure holiness between them. There is no sin. And it was because of this sin that their separation was assured. But now Paul shifts gears in verse 13 and he talks to us about reconciliation attained.

He starts with another great two word phrase. But God but God in Christ you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. You know Nathan and I and he even said this is probably the best two word phrase in the Bible when it says but God.

Well you can't have but now if you did not have but God back in the first part of 2. So I kind of call them sister phrases. This one is dependent on the other one. If God did not do what he did what is it that he's done.

What he did resulted in us being in another wonderful two word phrase in Christ in Christ. And we've seen this phrase many times already all throughout verse 1. I mean it's like every verse and maybe he may skip one or two but every verse either has in Christ or in him.

And every time he uses this phrase we get this better understanding the depths of the riches of his grace that God has lavished on us. Every time he uses it we get a better understanding of this and this this phrase this deaths depths of the riches of his grace God has lavished two important word here words here riches which in the Greek is a Plutus.

It's an abundance of possessions exceeding the norm of a particular society. So it's an abundance. It's an abundance of riches and then lavished he has lavished on us per se. He has bestowed something in generous or extravagant quantities.

So the picture Paul is trying to make here is here God is giving us these riches this treasure and he's just piling them one on top of the other on top of the other on top of the other till it is so deep it is hard even for us to fathom everything that he's trying to make.

If you go back to chapter 1 you'll see in verse 1 he says we are faithful in Christ Jesus we have faith we have this blessed hope. He says verse 3 he has blessed us in Christ Jesus. We have these blessings that we cannot even comprehend that he has given us in Christ Jesus and verse 4 he chose this in him before the foundation of the world.

This just gives us some kind of love God had for us. He loved us before he even created the world. It gave him pleasure it pleased him to choose us. Verse 7 in him we have redemption through his blood in the forgiveness of our trespasses.

In him we are now light. We have been taken out of darkness which we'll talk about a little more in a minute. Verse 9 and 10 according to the purpose in which he set forth in Christ to unite all things in him.

We are part of the all things that are going to be united in Christ Jesus at the end of time. Verse 12 so that we were the first to hope in Christ to the glory of his praise. We have this blessed hope in Christ and it's to the glory of God's praise it is praising him by the way we live.

Verse 13 in him you were sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit. Assurance. We have this assurance that we have been sealed in Christ Jesus. Once we are in Christ Jesus there's no out of Christ Jesus.

Before we were without Christ now we are in Christ. Now we come to this verse 13 and he's given us even more treasures to pile on than the treasures that he's already given us. He says you were once far off and this was a term that the Hebrews used to talk about the Gentiles that actually they were separated from God there was no way for them to come to God because they were separated.

In Acts 2 39 it says for the promise is for you and for your children and for all who were once far off everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. It's amazing how that little phrase keeps cropping up calls to himself but we were far off and God has called us to himself and he goes on to say you have been brought near you have been brought near in Christ we have been brought to God and how by the blood of Jesus Christ is by the blood of Jesus Christ so being in Christ changed everything.

Think about it. I can think back to what I was before I was in Christ and that's a vastly different person that stands before you today. It has changed everything in our lives and Paul even mentions it here we have been brought near so what have we been brought near from he says before you we are in Christ we have been made whole through imputed righteousness we have access to our Heavenly Father.

Adam who was the federal headship he sinned and this original sin was imputed to us that resulted in our sin nature. Christ went to the cross our sin was imputed to Jesus Christ. He died he paid the price and I love what Steve Wilson says about it not one drop of blood was shed in vain it was a perfect transaction that was made.

So our sin was imputed to him he died on the cross and the transaction righteousness was imputed back to us in the place of that original sin. What a blessing what a blessing. First Thessalonians 5 5 for you are all children of the day we are not of the night or not of darkness.

First John 1 5 says God is light and in him is no darkness at all. These are very important because I just got through reading to you what we were before Paul said we were darkness. John says in him is no darkness at all.

We cannot come to God we cannot be part of God first Thessalonians you are all children of the light children of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness this is transformation from darkness to light and now we're able to come to God.

We now are in Christ. He said before you were alienated from the Commonwealth Israel but now we've been united in his epistle but you are a chosen race of all priesthood a holy nation a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you from where out of the darkness to where into the marvelous light.

Once you were not a people you were alienated but now you are God's people once you had not we are now one family all of us together in Christ. Before you were strangers to the covenants of promise but now we have an intimate relationship with each other and with our trying God because of the new covenant because of the new sacrifice we have the ultimate promise of eternal life with our creator and our king.

Ephesians 2 19 says so then you are no longer strangers aliens but you are fellow citizens with all the saints members of the household of God. We are now citizens in Christ. Before you had no hope you had no hope at all but now we have eternal hope we have a knowledge we have faith and these three things are tied together no matter how you look at it.

Second Corinthians 4 6 says for God who said let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give us the light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. So he's saying this light that we've been given the Holy Spirit coming to us coming in us giving us knowledge about the things of God Hebrews 11 1 the great definition of faith now faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen.

So this conviction that's evidence that's knowledge so we have this hope and it's based on evidence it's based on knowledge. I was going to try to kind of give you a better more fuller definition of this through a study every other Monday night where we've been going through the Institutes of the Christian religion that was written by Calvin and recently we went through one of the chapters and it talked about this faith and hope and he said it so well I thought I would use it today.

He says this assurance is about things that are hoped for in which are thus invisible until the day that they are fully revealed for the time being we possess them only by going beyond our mental powers by lifting our mind above everything on earth and in short by rising above ourselves.

And of course we can't do that on our own. What he just described we cannot do that on our own it takes the power of God for us to be able to do that to be able to rise above ourselves. He goes on to say it is bringing to light what is not apparent a vision of what cannot be seen a clear focus on things obscure a presence of what is absence and I'm making known of what is concealed for we cannot behold the mysteries of God principally those which concern our salvation.

We see them only in the word of God whose truth we seeing as an accomplished fact we regard our blessed hope we regard the return of Christ Jesus we regard our future glorification as an accomplished fact it is our blessed hope.

It is the hope that we have and we have this hope in who Christ Jesus he says before you were without God but now we are not only in Christ but Christ is in us. John first. John says in 413 by this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us a spirit of God.

We are in him and that's not all he is in us it is this union it is this blessed union together. This union in Christ is a central truth of the gospel that there has been a union established he is in us through the Holy Spirit we are joined in Christ in an inseparable union.

John 15 for Jesus says abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine. Neither can you unless you abide in me. We now operate in a totally different before in the world.

Now we're in the kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit lives at the center of the way we understand ourselves. Before we had no hope we were lost. Now we are in Christ. We no longer have to search for meaning or understanding in our lives because God Christ gives us true meaning of why we have life.

And what do we have. We have a new self. We have put on the new self. So finally it says before we were in the world but now we have been taken out of the kingdom of this world brought into and become a citizen of the kingdom of God.

Now we are alive in the spiritual realm we participate in the spirit. Now we have the mind of Christ and now we have a spiritual union with Christ riches on top of riches on top of riches. So now with a runway in sight I'd like for you to turn to second Peter one three and four.

I think Peter does a really good job here of just kind of in Christ. He says his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature having escaped sinful desire.

So here in this section of scripture we have his divine power. Here is the miracle worker the power that he's using to work this miracle in our lives. And it talks about through the knowledge of him. Here's the faith that we have been given through regeneration.

Who called us he was the initiator he predestined us before creation and excellence through imputed righteousness he has granted to us his precious and very great promises through the new covenant the gospel of Jesus Christ our blessed hope having escaped.

So here we have justification. We have escaped the kingdom of this world from the corruption that is in the world and we have escaped where to the kingdom of God. And we have the doctrine of original sin.

So what we've been talking about here is kind of the orthodoxy of being in Christ the doctrine of being in Christ the truth of being in Christ. So how can we apply this today. How can we apply this to our lives.

How can we not only apply it to our lives going forward but this very day. How can we apply this today. This church stands on a threshold. We're going to have a business meeting after the corn in the feast.

And there are some decisions that we have to make that could very well dictate the trajectory and the future of our church. And what we've talked about today this unity can very well dictate how that turns out.

So in chapters 1 through 3 in Ephesians orthodoxy and then in chapters 4 and 6 he's talking about the orthopraxy the application the practices. How do we apply this to our lives. So when I was thinking okay how can we really apply this to our life.

I was sitting there thinking who could say it better than Paul because he spends three whole chapters doing it. And so in Ephesians 4 1 through 3 I believe I want you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility all gentleness with patience bearing with one another in love eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

We have been reconciliated with God. We have now been brought together with God. We have been brought together with each other being in Christ. And it has brought us together in love. That is how we apply this to our lives.

The love we have not only for our Savior but the love that we have for each other. Well now we want to continue this call to remembrance as we approach the Lord's Supper. You may not realize but the Lord's Supper has theological ties back to the Passover celebration in the Old Testament.

In fact Christ is the ultimate Passover lamb. The first directive of the Passover is given in Exodus. It says this day shall be for you a memorial day and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations as a statute forever and shall keep it as a feast.

It was a memorial it was intended as a time of remembrance. And Jesus gives this same command to us in Scripture. And he took the bread and when he had given it he gave thanks. He broke it and gave it to them saying this is my body which is given for you.

Do it in remembrance of me. So as we go into the Lord's Supper today I'm calling all of you to remembrance what Jesus has done for us just like he calls us to do it when you take the bread and the wine and you sit down and you pray in Christ what he gave up for us to be in Christ.

So we'll come from around the edges and to each side and get the elements of the Lord's Supper and then go down the middle back to your seat. Father. I am just so thankful I'm so thankful of that you thought of us father that you loved us for what you were willing to give up for us from where we were to where we were to be blessed Lord help us to live a life that is honoring glorifying and praising to you Lord.

I pray these things in Christ's name amen.