Christ Breaks Down Every Ethnic Barrier — Tim Conway

Christ’s Peace Between Jews and Gentiles

Ephesians 2, if you'd like to turn in your Bibles, I would like to read chapter 2, verses 11 -17 perhaps. 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.

Two thousand years ago, Jew and Gentile, perhaps if you lived in Israel, perhaps if you lived close to a Jewish community, maybe Brooklyn or somewhere, we might have a better feel for this. There's lots of division.

There's lots of disunity in our world today. We right here in San Antonio, Texas do not feel this like Paul would have felt it in that day seeing what he saw. Now you have to think about this. In the days that Paul walked this earth, he could look into a church like this.

Antioch, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Corinth. And he saw Jews and Gentiles. To him, that was radical. Here in San Antonio, we might look out and we see people of different skin color. People of different ethnicity.

People of different social strata. Remember, he's talking specifically to the Gentile here. We're Gentiles. Remember that you were at that time. What time? Former time. Before we were saved. We were separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.

We basically were not citizens of Israel. And thus, we were strangers to the covenants of promise because the covenants of promise were made to Israel. We were having no hope and without God in the world.

That's where we were. In the world. But now in Christ Jesus. Now. Saved. And in Christ. You who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. And we've got that far. Weeks back. Here's where we pick up new material.

Christ Creates One New Man

What I want to deal with today is v. 14 and 15. For He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility by 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.

Lord willing, next week. And might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And He came and preached peace to you who are far off and peace to those who were near.

For through Him we both have access in one spirit to the Father. So then, you Gentiles, you're no longer strangers and aliens, but you're fellow citizens with the saints, members of the household of God, built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In Him you Gentiles are being knitted right into the fabric of this dwelling place, this temple of God by the Spirit. So, we read this. But the question I would ask you this morning is this, how's your life?

It seems like we're changing gears a little bit. But is everything good in your life? Not too long ago, I was taking a truck ride somewhere with a brother, he didn't use these exact words, but he was struggling with the fact of thinking that his life stunk.

Sometimes we get there. My life stinks. Is your life going just exactly how you want it to go right now? Does anybody have any problems? Can anyone say life is perfect? Or you might say, my life is a perfect mess.

Where am I going with all this? I'm going here with it. We have lives. We're living our lives. There's a reality that we live in. Typically, our lives are not perfect. Typically, there is something. Do you have all the finances you need?

All the money you need? Is your marriage perfect? Are your children well behaved? They don't cry out in the middle of the service? You see how long it is before somebody runs their child out of everything perfect?

Your car working just right? I was coming to church and somebody had two flat tires. I said, is everything okay? And I know it's pretty shady, but I don't know what they were doing. But they had flat tires.

Even the spare was already on there and it was flat. Sometimes our life is like that. Two flat tires. So what do we do to fix it? Brethren, do you realize that this great Apostle is writing to Ephesian Christians?

Do you ever think about who they are? You know, sometimes when people are far away in another time, we tend to... We tend to dramatize and spectacularize and we tend to think of people, even Paul himself, we tend to think of people in a way that isn't really true.

Do you realize that the people at Ephesus, do you realize who they were? They were men and women and children. And they ate and drank. And they were trying to make the ends meet financially. They were trying to figure out how to keep food on the table.

They were trying to figure out how to keep their bills paid. They were trying to figure out how to maintain their marriages. Some of them were single. Some of them were single and wanted to be married.

Some of them were married and probably maybe didn't want to be married. Some of them were married and having difficult times in marriage. Some of them had children. They were seeking to raise those children.

Brethren, you know, there's another place there in Ecclesiastes. There's nothing new under the sun. These people just like us. They were trying to make the meetings on time and brother so-and-so was always late.

It was the same, brethren. It was the same then. And what happens? What does the Apostle Paul think that people like that need to hear? In fact, even more than that, what does the Holy Spirit think that people like that needed to hear?

Well, you know, if you glance back up to 1 .19, because these verses 18 and 19, it really comes back to what Paul is praying. You remember, he's not ceasing to give thanks, remembering you into my prayers.

What was he asking for? He wanted God to give them eyeballs spiritually. He wanted them to be granted this spirit of wisdom and in a revelation of the knowledge of God and have the eyes of their hearts, their understanding enlightened so that they might recognize some things.

And the third thing here that he hits on is this, the immeasurable greatness of the power of God. And we've been looking at this, brethren. There's two demonstrations of this. The first one is found in 2 .1 -10.

What was it? We're dead. We're dead in our trespasses and sins. And nothing can raise us from that death except the exceeding greatness of God's power. That's it. It's regeneration, folks. But you know what?

There's another demonstration of the power of God. And that's what we pick up with in v. 11. The second problem that the power of God is confronted with, and you know what? It's somewhat of a legal problem.

Where do I get that from? Well, I get that from chapter 2, verse 15, where we're going to be at today. By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. When you start talking law, commandments, ordinances, you've got something legal going on.

What is it? It's the Gentile far-offness. It's a radical division, the separation between Jew and Gentile. And remember the situation with the Gentile. Look at v. 12. Separated from Christ. Alienated.

Separated. There's a division here. Now even though it's not specifically talking about our division from the Jew, he gets to that. Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. And strangers to the covenants of promise.

Now, it's interesting, because he's kind of dealing sometimes with the true Jew and sometimes with the physical Jew as he goes through here. You'll see that a little bit more clearly when you see what the remedy for all this is.

But there's this separation. There's this divide. We have no hope. We're without God in the world. God's power answers this as well. How? God's power came down like a hammer upon the head of Christ. And there was wrath, and there was blood, and there was punishment, and there was death.

And you see it in v. 13. In Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near. How? What did it take? It took blood. It took death. It took punishment. It took God's wrath. He brought the hammer down.

Stricken, smitten, afflicted of God. This is an unleashing of the power of God too. And it answers to this second problem. Now brethren, two things you don't want to do with this. We don't want to separate this from reality.

Someone will say, oh, would you just get real? What is all this? Commandments, ordinances, brought near. What is this? Making peace. Jew and Gentile. Get real. We live here. What does this have to do with us?

That's one thing you can't do with this. Or someone else says, look, I need preaching that's more practical than this. This isn't practical. Give me a list of five how-tos. That's what I want. Brethren, from the way Paul writes right here, I can tell you what he would say.

You can tell from chapter 1, verses 17, 18, 19. What he would say is this. He would say that a very good way of testing whether the Spirit of God is at work in your life. A very good way to test whether the Spirit of God is actually giving you the Spirit, or God is giving you His Spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of Him.

Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened is to ask this, are your hearts being enlightened? Do you actually have the Spirit to where your eyes are being enlightened to be able to recognize the hope of your calling and to be able to recognize the riches of His inheritance and being able to recognize in all of this the power of God and how it benefits you?

Brethren, and how do you recognize when that's happening? It's because you actually are following what the Apostle Paul is saying here and the Spirit of God is opening your eyes to it and you find it thrilling.

You find it joyful. You find it something that you actually can feast on. You find it bread for your souls. Brethren, let me tell you this, nothing could be more practical than this. When you actually find that the Spirit of God communicates the realities of these truths to you and you are given the Spirit of wisdom and a revelation.

You actually, things are being revealed to you and it's glorious and it fills you with joy and it thrills your soul because the joy of the Lord is your strength. And brethren, when you go out into this world full of joy because of the things that God has done for you through the death of His Son and through these Gospel realities and you're gripped by these and you're filled with joy and that joy is your strength.

Brethren, what could be more practical than that? See, it applies to everything. You don't need the list of five how-tos because when you're gripped by these realities, brethren, it is life changing.

What could be more relevant than that? And if you want to speak about relevance, all you have to do is look at the text. Look where we're going to be today. Verses 14 and 15. We'll grab some words out that are extremely relevant.

He Himself is our peace. Just think about that word peace. That's really what I want to deal with primarily today. Christ 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.

And here's the word again. So making peace. Now what's interesting is in v. 13, what he says is, we were far off. We've been brought near by the blood of Christ. But He doesn't stop there. He wants to take us further in.

He wants to delve deeper here. Deeper still. He wants to touch on this peace. Not just that blood was shed, but He wants to talk about peace. And you see it's precisely here that there is such relevance.

Maybe the word peace makes you want to yawn this morning. I don't know. But look around. And yes, you can look even in the church. But look out further than that. Look at the world around us. The whole world.

Brethren, when you think about the world out there, when you look at the news, when you watch the headlines, this world is in strife. It's everywhere. People are fighting everywhere. People harm each other all the time.

All around us. And you see it in these verses. Look at v. 14, 15, 16. All of your Bibles contain the word enmity or hostility in those three verses. And you know what? Your Bible contains one of those two words twice.

Enmity or hostility. Let your eyes just look through there. Those three verses. V. 14, 15, 16. Look for those two words. Enmity or hostility. All your Bibles have them, and it's there twice. And you know what's interesting?

The first hostility is man's hostility against man. And the second hostility is the fact that we need to be reconciled to God, thereby killing the hostility. There is enmity, man against man, and there's enmity, man against God, and God against man.

Brethren, we're going to deal with man and man today because we're dealing with v. 14 and 15. That's dealing with man. God will move us in His Word to being reconciled to Him next. And we'll deal with that next.

Next week, Lord willing. Brethren, think with me. Man. Just look around us. On Thursday, I just simply thought, okay, let's just get a snapshot. I went to the Drudge Report, and I just went up and down the lines.

The Dems fighting Trump. What's new? They hate him. In the political arena in this country, there is hatred. There is division. White supremacists are holding rallies. Have you seen that kind of stuff today?

I mean, I showed my wife a picture of people flying through the air. Because at one of these rallies, the anti-supremacists came to protest, and then somebody mowed them all down with cars. Anybody see that picture?

People flying through the air. That wasn't an accident. That's the hatred. That's the enmity. How about this? A third? Now, I don't know who polled this. Nobody called me about this. The Drudge Report says a third of the people in our country would cheat on their partners with a robot.

Brethren, that's where we've come to. And yet, really, there's nothing new under the sun. Clashes in Rome as police evict refugees. Tesla is pushing to create a self-driving car and it sparks dissent among its engineers.

This is just a snapshot. A Drudge Report. One day this last week. President calls journalists sick people. Russian nuclear bombers are flying close to South Korea and Japan. Of course, that has to do with North Korea who seems to hate everybody.

They're threatening us. They showed a picture behind Kim Jong-un that showed Austin being blown up. Anybody see that picture? Suspects shot by cops in hostage situation in Charleston. Dating apps are cracking down on hate.

You know what people do? They sign up for these dating apps and they put in there what they hate. And so people are getting together on that basis. It's happening so much that they're having to crack down on it.

Americans injured in Cuba by covert sonic device. There's 16 Americans in Cuba. I don't know what they're doing. And the Cubans are hitting them with this sonic device that's destroying their ears. You ready to go to Cuba, brother?

They might get us. See, there's this hatred. I mean, what is this? Brethren, the answer is simple. It's sin. Brethren, do you know what Scripture says? Romans 3 .17, one of the classic descriptions of man.

It says, the way of peace they have not known. Brethren, there are several places in our Bibles where you have these extensive descriptions of man. Let's look at three of them. You turn in your Bibles to these.

I want you to see them. I know you've read these before. The first one I want you to look at is in Romans. We'll take these in order. Romans 1 .29, 29, 30, 31. Description of man. And listen, we can be in denial and say, well, this isn't me.

This was never me. But you see, all that is is being ignorant. All that is is being deceived. And all that is is denying the reality. Because all these news headlines, they're the big picture. They're the things that are in the news.

They're the things that are famous. They're the things that are getting the notoriety and the attention. But the reality is that the things that are behind these are going on inside the hearts of every single man, woman, and child on the face of this earth.

And if there's any exception, brethren, there's only one people that have any exception, and it's those who Christ is their peace. That's it. And even among us. Paul and Barnabas can't get along at one point.

But brethren, look at these verses. Romans 1 .29. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness. Okay, well, that doesn't so much look like hostility towards one another. What I want you to ask yourself is this.

How many of these verses have to do with hostility against one another and hostility against God? Because that's really what we're dealing with there in Ephesians 2. Look with me. All manner of unrighteousness.

Evil. Covetousness. Now here we go. Malice. You know what malice is? It's just meanness. It's ill will. It's a desire to injure others. Malice. They're full of envy. Just wanting what other people have and more than that, not wanting other people to have what they have and you wanting what they have.

And murder. We want to end their life. We want to just eliminate them. Strife. It's an idea of just, we're fighting all the time. We're just a quarrelsome people. A quarrelsome race. Wars and rumors of wars.

Always. Brethren, the thing that describes history. Go to any kind of history class. At any level. And what marks history? It's all the wars. Deceit. We lie to each other. Maliciousness. Very much like the word malice.

Comes from the same Greek word as well. The gossips. Slanders. We speak evil of one another. Here it is. Haters of God. Insolent. Haughty. Haughty. We're just lifted up in ourselves. We're boastful. Inventors of evil.

Disobedient to parents. Foolish. Faithless. Heartless. Ruthless. Ruthless. We don't care about people. We don't care about others. Okay, let's go further. 2 Timothy 3, verses 2, 3, and 4. We get another one of these descriptions.

Brethren, this is reality. This is reality. You want to talk about reality? Oh, come on. Give me reality. Give me something practical. We walk around in this world, and even many in the church, and unsanctified people in the church.

See, this is the reality in which we live. Maybe it's so much like a fish that lives in the ocean, we don't even realize we're wet. Wet with this kind of hostility and enmity. It's just like the air we breathe.

Look at this. People will be lovers of self. You know what that means? When you love yourself. Brethren, this is the heart of the problem. Pride. We love ourselves. Self-consumed. Everything centers around us.

Lovers of money. Proud. Here it is again. Proud. Arrogant. Abusive. We abuse one another. We use one another the way we would never use ourselves. Disobedient to parents. Ungrateful. Unholy. Here it is.

Heartless. We get that word again. It was over in Romans. Heartless. We don't have a heart. Unappeasable. It means somebody angers us. Nothing will satisfy us except vengeance. We just can't be appeased.

Slanderous. Without self-control. Brutal. Not loving good. Treacherous. Reckless. Swollen with conceit. And here it is again. Before it was haters of God. Now it's lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

Sin as the Source of Human Hostility

Just turn over one book. Titus 3 .3. You get one more of these lists. And this one ends on just the perfect note. As far as our enmity one against another. Titus 3 .3. Passing our days in malice. That word again.

In envy. Hated by others. And hating one another. Sin. It puts man at enmity against God. Enmity against his fellow man. You hear it there. Arrogance. Pride. Self-love. Brethren, this is the great problem.

Sin can always be boiled down to these very things and you can trace it all the way back to the garden. See that was the appeal of the devil to that first woman and that first man. Yea, as God said. You see the real issue here is God knows that if you ate of that fruit, you'd become like God.

What are you waiting for? Who is God? He's keeping something from you. You need to exalt yourself. Eat that fruit. You'll be like God. God knows that in the day you eat it, He's just holding back on you.

God is holding back. Don't you realize if you eat that fruit, you'll be like God? That's what you deserve. Stand up for your rights. Do it. Do it. It doesn't matter what God said. Do what's going to make you happy.

Do what's going to make you God. Do what's going to make you important. Do it for you. You. You are going to become like God knowing good from evil. You are. Do it for you. You. Come on, man! And man did it.

And this is all our pride. And you see, this is the problem. We by nature, we all want to be God. Just like they wanted to be God. They wanted to be like God. So we all want to be gods. And each one is asserting ourselves.

And each one of us wants to be at the center. When these little children cry, that's what that's all about. The more you hear that anger, that self-will, I'm not getting my way. My parents are wanting me to sit still.

Who are they to think that should happen? I think I'd be happier if I could be doing something else. If I could be doing anything. I want to be playing. I don't want to be sitting in this chair. That's where Adam was.

I don't want to be in this garden with all this fruit that I can eat when there's this one over here that I can't eat. Who's got to tell me that? Yeah, the devil's right. I'm going to go over here and eat this.

And I want my way. And man's been like that ever since. I want my way. And you know what the problem is? You take a bunch of these. You've got the sun, and everything else rotates around it. And when you try to throw two suns into the same solar system and watch the chaos.

You know, the planets all spinning around. That's us. We all want to be the sun. We want to be at the center. Everything needs to spin around us. Everything's great. As long as everything spins around me and everything caters to me, and everything answers to me, and everything is about my self-worth and my self-importance.

And you know, don't fool yourself. I know in this world, we look at some people and we say, oh, he's proud. You know, you see the athlete and he does something outrageously proud. And you say, that guy's proud.

Or you see a child and give me that toy! And you say, oh, that's selfish. Don't fool yourselves. This world is not full of really giving people and then a few selfish people. Or a few proudful people like those athletes, but most of the people are relatively humble.

Don't fool yourself. We are full of a world where we are self-important in our own mind. And I'll tell you this, you just let somebody cross over into my lane and come too close and there's road rage.

Brethren, this is it. Man puts him at the center and everything else must revolve around him. He's haughty, boastful, proud, arrogant. Man is a lover of himself. And you take all these little gods and you get a tank over here and you drop them all in there together just like throwing two suns into a solar system together.

And you know what happens? Everything's out of whack. Everything's in enmity. Everything's in hostility. Everything's clashing. Things are smashing into each other. That's exactly our problem. And you know what?

We've all got this. A bunch of little gods going around and we're all fighting each other. But then you've got the true God and the King of Kings. And He's above all this. And you see, we all hate Him.

But just because we all hate Him doesn't mean that we're like Pilate and Herod where we're friends in all of this. Pilate and Herod might have been friends for a little while, but before that they were at enmity.

And probably after that, they went back to being at enmity. Why? Because that's the way people are. And you know what? Even if they've got friendship for a little while, it doesn't mean that none of this is true.

Brethren, the truth is that in the lost state, men are friends with some people. But only as long as that friendship builds on their own self-worth, their own self-esteem, makes them feel good. Why do you think the divorce rate's so high?

People get married all the time. Why? Oh, because they're attracted. They want something. The guy wants the sexual intimacy. He wants that woman. He's got a desire. The woman wants to be taken care of.

She wants the intimacy. But then they come together and what happens? As soon as they're not happy with each other, they go their own way. That's how the world is. And you know what? Some of them stay together.

Why? For the children's sake. Some of them stay together. Why? Because they're in perfect harmony? No, that's never the reason. Unless Christ is our peace. Brethren, this is the world around us. This is that child crying out.

Why? Why do they cry out?

Because me, I want something. Even in the beginning when you say, well, if they're hungry, they need to do that. That's how they communicate. I'm not going to say that's necessarily totally bad. But again, they're not concerned about feeding you.

They're concerned that they get fed. Because that's how we start out. And that's how we go through life. And you know what? As long as you are patting my back, it's good. But when that stops happening, all you have to do is have a parent die and watch siblings argue over an inheritance.

You have brethren, husbands, wives, parents, children, best of friends. Those relationships are dashed on the rocks all the time in our world. All the time. And the only relationships that are maintained at all as long as we keep patting each other's back so it feels good to both of us.

Or, we just stay out of each other's way altogether. We don't tend to get upset with people that we don't know and are far away and we've never met. Unless, of course, they're of another religion or another race or something where we can just categorize them all together into a group that I hate.

Brethren, that's us. You have the battle of the gods. Our lost state. It's wreckage. So, to come into the possession of Christ Himself as my peace, what could be more relevant? And you have to remember this, brethren, we are not dealing today with our peace with God.

We're dealing with our peace with one another. Notice it. Ephesians 2 .14. For He Himself is our peace. He's the Prince of Peace. But this verse is specifically dealing with our peace with one another.

We're going to look at our peace with God next week in v. 16. But today, it's peace between men. You will notice the word both in v. 14. For He Himself is our peace who has made us both one. I just wonder, we often think about being reconciled to God.

We often think about that. We often think about peace. We heard about it in the first hour from Romans 5 .1. We're justified. And therefore, there is this peace. But brethren, this verse specifically deals with peace among men.

It's very interesting that Paul deals with that first. You might think, wait, wait, the relationship with God is more important. Shouldn't God come first? Paul thought best to go to man first. You can imagine, Paul, looking at all those churches, how is this possible?

That these people who for 1 ,500 years since the law was given, maybe longer, these people have hated each other. If ever there was enmity, Jew against Gentile, Gentile against Jew. We may not feel it, but there's a reality there.

How can these people be worshiping together in the same church? How can these people be where they are? Notice the term in v. 14 and 15. Both. Who has made us both. See, Christ is our peace, and He immediately goes here.

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.". Notice this, one new man in place of the two.

Notice both those words. Both and two. Both and two. You see, that's the divide between man and so making peace. Maybe your Bible says twain in v. 15. We are both and we are two. Who are they? Well, we've been talking about them, but notice from the text who they are.

You get them back up in v. 11. The uncircumcised and the circumcised. That's who they are. They're the Jew and the Gentile. Notice something else. There at the end of v. 15, it says, Christ makes peace.

You see that? Christ makes peace. Or, if you've got the New American Standard, it says establishing peace. But at the beginning of v. 14, Paul says Christ is our peace. Now brethren, that is not two different ways of saying the same thing.

No, I know they're related. Look, you've got a situation in a school. Jonathan was just telling me how he's working with students in all these different grades, pre-K through fifth. Let's say Jonathan in his school has two fifth graders who are fighting.

There's hostility. If Jonathan goes and seeks to bring these two guys together and is a peacemaker, it would be really weird for one of the students to say, Jonathan Payne is my peace. No, Jonathan, Mr. Payne, helped us to be at peace.

He was a peacemaker. He made peace between us. But to say, Mr. Payne is my peace, that's different. You see what this is saying? Jesus doesn't just come to make this thing happen. Now, He does that. Because it says that at the end of v. 15, He makes peace.

Definitely. But to say that He Himself is our peace means I have to have Him to be at peace. Not just what He did. I have to have Him. He is the price of my peace. I have to be in Him. Oh, how often Paul says that through this letter.

In Christ. In Christ. In Himself. He has brought together the two. In Him. We've got to have Him. We've got to be in Him. We've got to abide in Him. We've got to be one with Him. We've got to be connected to Him.

That's the reality. So how has Christ made peace? That's what the Apostle's interested in. He looks at all these churches. In the Roman letter, you see specifically how Jew and Gentile are dealt with back and forth.

Chapter 2, you then who are Gentiles. You get over to chapter 11, it's very clear Paul's talking to the Gentiles and telling them not to be haughty or to be arrogant or lifted up because they've been grafted in.

But you've got both of these. Paul looks at these churches and it's amazing to him. Jews and Gentiles at peace. They're worshiping the same God. Trusting the same Savior. Depending on the same atonement.

They're singing the same songs. Christ whose glory fills the skies. They're all there together. Even when the piano's not working. And they're off tune in the first. They're doing it together. Brethren, this is a miracle.

And I know this full well. There are lots of people in this room who would not have any sort of relationship whatsoever if we weren't converted. We come from such different places of life. Some of us similar.

But a lot of us, not so much. The truth is, if we were all not united in the things of Christ, we would not be here any more than they would have 2 ,000 years ago in that church at Rome. And Paul looked at that and he recognized that is a downright miracle.

You've got these people, Jew and Gentile, they're hugging each other! They're giving each other these kisses of love and affection. We give each other hugs. They're trusting the same Savior. Hoping in the same heaven.

Fellow citizens. Belong to the same redeemed family. Peace and reconciliation. Not only between us and God, but with each other. So what is it that brought the Jew and the Gentile together in the Christian church?

Christ Destroys the Dividing Wall

The answer is right here. The Lord Jesus Christ has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of separation or the dividing wall of hostility. So look at it there. He Himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility.

And what's Paul doing? He's using a figure that was true of the temple. In the temple, there were lots of divisions. There were lots of dividing lines. Lots of different courts. You can look at that. You can see that they had courts for different things.

We talked about this before. But any kind of divisions that were made, abolished. They've been knocked down. They've been decimated. He has torn these things down. The temple was full of barriers. It was full of separations.

There was a veil. You know that. There was this inner court. There were outer courts at different levels working all the way out to the court of the Gentiles. The Jew went beyond that. There was divisions.

There was dividing lines. Women could go so far. Jewish women. The Jewish men could go further. The priests could go further. There was all these separations. Brethren, the Lord smashes that. How does He do it?