Unity and Peace in Christ

Please stand for the reading of God's Word. Today's Old Testament reading is going to be in Isaiah 57 verses 14 through 21, and that's on page 617 in your pew Bible. And it shall be said, build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people's way.

For thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of contrite, lowly spirit, to receive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite, for I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry, for the spirit would grow faint before me, and the breath of life that I made.

Because of the inequity of his unjust gain, I was angry. I struck him, I hid my face and was angry, but he went on backsliding in the way of his own heart. I have seen his ways, but I will heal him. I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners, creating the fruit of the lips, peace, peace, and far to the far and to the near, says the Lord.

I will heal him, but the wicked are like the tossing sea, for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt. There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked.

Christ the Door and the Good Shepherd

Our New Testament reading is in John chapter 10, starting in verse 7. So Jesus said again to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.

I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves and flees and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

He flees because he is hired. He is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me just as the father knows me. And I know the father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.

And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason, the father loves me because I lay down my life that it may take it up again.

No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again. This is the charge I have received from my father. Please remain standing.

Unity in Ephesians 2 Through the Blood of Christ

I'd ask you to open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter two, please. The second chapter of Ephesians. Let's start at verse eleven. We'll go to the end of the chapter. Ephesians chapter two. Verse eleven.

This is the word of the Lord. Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ.

You were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and you were strangers to the covenants of promise. So therefore, you had no hope and you were without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two.

So making peace, it might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

For through him, we both have one access. We we both have access in one spirit to the father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but rather you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the 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 also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirit.

Prayer for Unity, Peace, and Faithful Proclamation

Let us pray. Oh, God, we thank you, Lord, for this text that's before us. Oh, God in heaven, we know that this world yearns for unity and peace. Father, and we know that you have placed that yearning within us because we are meant to look to Jesus, who is the unifier.

God, as we are about to see here in a moment, there are deceptions about us. Satan loves to create deception and false hope in different areas so that our eyes would go off Jesus, that we would seek unity and peace and something else.

God in heaven, I pray that you would help us rather to look to Jesus instead. Lord, it's our confession that Christ Jesus is Lord. And so I pray, God, that we would never grow bored of that, but rather we would always be willing and desiring to turn from our sin to look to Jesus.

And because of the love he has given to us to have love for one another. God in heaven, help us, for we are weak and we cannot do it of our own power. But we know by your power we can do these things.

So let us all look to Jesus now. Let us have ears to hear by his work. And I pray that your word would be faithfully proclaimed now so that the end would be that sins would be forgiven. Jesus would be glorified and we would be unified under the banner of Christ.

Jesus, our Lord. Thank you, Lord. In Jesus name. Amen. Well, the Apostle James writes in James chapter four, verse one. He says, what causes fights or quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you?

James 4 and the Root of Human Conflict

James right there underlines the very foundational reason why we as humans like to fight one another. And that is because we are unified under a different banner than the one that God has directed our hearts and minds to.

And that is Jesus Christ. And you see, instead of being unified under Christ and God and his commandments, we are rather unified under our own selfish, sinful passions, he says. And whenever that is the focus of our hearts and minds, it then creates disunity between one another.

And so this is what James is highlighting, that there is division. There's disunity because your desires, your passions, your focus is on the wrong thing. And this is a good contrast to the whole point or the whole thesis of Ephesians, that all things come under the banner of Jesus Christ, that God has created all things so that it would come under the authority of Christ Jesus, our Lord.

If you remember in chapter one of Ephesians, look at verse nine. It's the the Apostle Paul writes, making known to us the mystery of God's will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Jesus, things in heaven and things on earth.

And remember, he says in chapter one, 22, he says, and he put all things under his feet and gave Jesus as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of of him who fills all and in all.

So we can say that as God is creator of all things, he has a unified purpose for his creation, that all things would be united or look to or under the banner of Jesus. That's the point of all of creation.

And, you know, Satan does something and he does this all the time. Very subtle things. When he recognizes the goal of something as God has instituted it, he will then create something that looks similar to it as a deception that will focus our minds and hearts on it, but really will lead to only death.

And this is what he does with this aspect of all things are for unity, for Jesus. He creates a deception and he makes it unity as the goal, but false means to it, which leads to our death. And he does this constantly.

We've been talking about the garden a lot and we see he did that in the garden. We'll see how he's doing it now in light of this text. You remember in the garden, you remember the goal of the garden. When I say garden, I mean Adam and Eve in the garden.

You remember the goal of the garden was for Adam and Eve to be the image of God. Right. They were supposed to image God well by obedience to not eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil so that they could then eat of the tree of life.

And it's very fascinating to see how the devil works deception. And he does this consistently, that he takes hold. There is a goal here in the garden. And he kind of proposes a different goal that's similar, but completely different that leads to death.

You know, again, Adam and Eve were supposed to be the image of God in the garden. That was the goal of being in the garden. But the deception, you remember what he says, you'll be like God. Right. Remember, he says, you'll be like God if you do what?

Well, the answer was, is that if you eat of the wrong tree at the wrong time. But notice it was centered on the tree. Right. Just like Adam and Eve were supposed to be the image of God as they abstain from one tree so that they could have the tree of life and eternity.

Well, Satan likes that little deception thing where it's like you can be like God. That's the goal, remember. But rather, he confuses it by saying abstain from one and so that or eat of one so that you will not be able to eat of the other.

As was the promise of God. God, Satan loves to work by deception. And since all the goal of creation is to be unified as God is unified under the banner of Jesus, Satan loves to toy with that unity desire within the hearts of man, but then curb it the wrong direction.

Which one of us doesn't hear people want peace on earth? Right. We all hear that. We all long for peace, don't we? We all long for there to be a lack of strife. We all hate fighting. We all hate quarrels.

We all hate these things. And so Satan works off of that desire that's within our hearts that's supposed to cause us to look to Jesus who unifies all things. And rather, he says to have unity, where do you look?

Not outside, not to Christ, not to God, but look within. It's all about getting your own passions fulfilled. It's all about getting your own desires fulfilled. And then you will get that blessed unity you look for.

And we see that in our fights with each other. We see that with our fights with our spouses. We see that all the time. As you can guarantee that fights and disunity happen when both parties prize obedience to flesh instead of obedience to God.

That's how disunity happens. That's how disunity and fighting and quarrels happen. It's because both parties have now decided that no longer are we going to obey God, but rather we are going to fight for obeying our own personal flesh.

And so Satan, with that deception, says, you want unity, don't you? Well, it belongs with getting your own fleshly appetites fulfilled. Instead of saying it belongs in the authority and the majesty and the beauty of obedience to our God.

And so we see Satan works in this and God throughout history shows the nature of disunity, the nature of what Satan has done, the nature of what he's doing now by giving us or by exposing his law to us.

Now, if you remember where we're at in the text. You remember that what happened in the garden created disunity between man and man and then it was exasperated or made worse by the giving of the law of God to expose just how sinful we are to him and just how disunified we are to one another.

And if you notice all the Old Testament, the whole purpose of the Old Testament was to highlight the law of God to show us just how alienated we are from God and therefore how alienated we are from one another.

That was what God was doing in the Old Testament. And we see that just gets worse and worse that Jew and Gentile, the one party having the law of God, the other party not, and showing just how disunified humanity is in light of the fact that we no longer want to obey God.

Instead, we want to obey our flesh. But then we had that solution, right? Well, look at that verse 12. You remember that chapter 2 of last week? Remember that you were at that time. You Gentile were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel where the law of God was, and strangers to the covenants of promise that were pointed to Jesus.

And so therefore you had no hope and without God in the world. You see that the Old Testament was a time in which God was exacerbating the disunity, the sin problem that no longer people look to God and so therefore there's no unity amongst one another.

So there is hatred and that is shown to the nth degree in the Old Testament. But that was for the sake that we would long for Jesus Christ, in which we see that great verse that we kind of went to, we'll look at again today, in which verse 13 says, but now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have now been brought near by the blood of Christ.

He says in verse 13, you who are far off in Jesus Christ have been brought near in him through his blood. We see that there's a solution to this problem that God shows, right? Because if we consider his law, we consider the Old Testament in which the law is very exemplified, we can grow very depressed and say what is this all about?

It's so that our hearts would be ready to say we need a unifier, we need one who will forgive us of our sins, we need one who will bring us back into conformity with God and so therefore conformity with each other, we need Jesus Christ.

And this is what's offered, this is where Paul goes to with that but now phrase, in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. There's two things that's being mentioned there, well there's more, but I'm going to point out two things that are being mentioned there.

Christ Jesus is the God man. He is one where we are very impure, where we are sinners, where we are alienated from God, alienated from one another. Christ Jesus is the perfect God man. He is perfect where we are not.

He does not suffer ever with the problem of alienation except for when he was put on the cross for our sins. See this is the God man and it's by his perfect blood that then it gets applied to us which is the solution to this disunity, to this alienation, to this sin problem.

Christ Jesus is the God man, perfect in all his ways, and he has a perfect sacrifice that brings reconciliation that God had imposed or enforced with the law. You got to see that all the laws of God, as we're going to be focused on that because in the next couple verses, all the laws of God focus on our lack of purity.

And it also focuses on the, I can't read my handwriting and I wrote it to where it was better. All the laws of God focus on our lack of purity and on the particular mediation. Oh man, there it goes. That's what I get for handwriting.

Let me just do it for my head here. All the laws of God, two purposes, okay? It is to show our lack of purity and it also is to show that there is a very particular need for us to be forgiven of our sins.

In other words, that God has a law that we all must obey in order to be right before his eyes. And there's another aspect of his law where it shows that in order to be forgiven, it's not just, well, I'll just forgive you willy-nilly.

I'll just kind of randomly forgive you. No, it needs to look like a very particular substitute. It needs to look like a very particular sacrifice. It needs to look like a very particular blood offering.

It is particular in God's eyes. And so God's law has those two major thrusts, that we would be pure and when we are not, because we're not, there needs to be a particular sacrifice needed in order to bring unity.

And so Christ is offered up as the perfect pure man who's the God man. And his blood is that perfect lawful sacrifice given so that we could be brought near to God, so that we can be forgiven. You see, Jesus is offered as the solution to our disunity, to our alienation problem.

And we see this in verse 14. For he himself, Paul says in chapter 2, 14. For he himself, Jesus, is our peace. Peace with God and peace with each other.

Why?

Because look what he did. Who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. Most likely, Paul's referring there to the wall that was in the temple. There was, you know, imagine going to the temple at this time, you would walk into the court of the Gentile.

And that was the huge big area where Gentiles were welcome. But then as you walked in that court, you got to a wall. And that wall said, any Gentiles, I'm paraphrasing, any Gentiles who go past this point, you're going to get killed.

Right?

That was the wall of hostility. That was the wall that separated the dirty Gentiles, the impure Gentiles, with the pure worship that was supposed to go beyond this wall. And we talked about last week that that was lawful.

The Gentiles were sinners. They were not clean. And so they were not welcomed into the worship service of God. But you see that that's also the Jews use that because of their hatred for neighbor as we naturally do because of our sins.

It was used as hatred to the Gentiles. You better believe that the Jews would be very happy to kill a few of them that would like to go over that wall. The point is that there was hostility. That wall was hostility that you were separated from God and separated from your fellow man.

And so what Paul is saying here is that wall that separated Jew and Gentile, that separated the Gentiles from being able to worship it with God, with the Jews, that wall right there is done away with in Christ.

Because Jesus Christ is our perfect sacrifice. He is our perfect worship. Where nothing unclean can come close to God, Jesus the clean one came close, sacrificed himself so that all people would be clean before the eyes of God.

So there'd be no wall of hostility. Jesus is our peace. Jesus is the one who's done it to take care of that wall that separated Gentiles from the worship of God. We see in the Old Testament God is very concerned with how he's worshiped.

God does not put up with our just any inkling or any desire we have for worship. I'll worship him in this way. I'll offer this kind of sacrifice. I'll offer this kind of animal. I'll do it in this way.

God doesn't allow that.

Why?

Why does he care so much? Because he had one particular lawful sacrifice for all time that would forgive us of our sins. And that one was Jesus Christ our Lord. And there could be no other but Christ.

So all the Old Testament law that was very particular with specific sacrifices that were acceptable, it was because there was only one acceptable sacrifice for the payment of sins. And that is Jesus Christ.

He's the one that broke down that barrier that cut off Gentile and Jew together to be together because of sin. Because of his sacrifice, God is very concerned with the purity of worship because he's concerned for the honoring, the glorifying, the looking to Jesus.

We see this all throughout scripture. Let's go to Deuteronomy 12 to look at it. Deuteronomy 12, 1 through 14. These are the statutes and rules that you shall be careful to do in the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess.

Talking to Israel. All the days that you live on the earth, you shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispose, dispossess, serve their gods on the high mountains, on the hills, and under every green tree.

You shall tear it all down. So you got all that pagan worship. You're about to take this land. There's all that pagan worship. Get there and destroy it all. Burn it all. And dash in pieces their pillars and burn their ashram with fire.

You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. But you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose, that's Jerusalem, out of all the tribes to put his name and make his habitation there.

He's talking about Jerusalem. He's talking about the temple that will be there. So notice the exclusivity of God in the worship. You will not worship like the nations. You will destroy all pagan worship and you will set up true worship.

He says there you shall go in verse 6. And there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contributions that you present, your vow offerings, your free will offerings in the firstborn of your herd and of your flock.

And there you shall eat before the Lord your God and you shall rejoice you and your households and all that you undertake in which the Lord your God has blessed you. So notice there's that pure worship that he is saying this is what needs to happen.

Destroy the Gentile false worship and notice in the unity of the brotherhood that's found there. You shall rejoice with one another. There should be unity there, right, when there's proper worship going on.

And so that's littered. I could go on there. And that's littered throughout the Old Testament, that the Gentiles were not welcomed into the worship with the Jew, with the Israelites because they were not clean.

They were unclean. They were sinners, right? And they were not welcome into that fold. There was a wall of hostility that was put there on purpose by God so that they would say, we need Jesus to come who will do away with that wall of hostility.

Because in Jesus, all of these commandments to keep the worship pure is found in him. It's completed in him. That all the worship practices that were on a very particular purpose was met in Jesus. He is the sacrifice.

And so that's why he says in verse 14, for he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his wall, in his flesh, the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances so that he would create himself one new man.

So there is a whole purpose of what's going on in the Old Testament, that there would be all these laws and commandments to keep the people apart so that Jesus would come and fulfill all righteousness and bring the people together and abolish all those laws that were the wall of hostility or kept Jew from Gentile.

This is the unity that Jesus brings and it's found in himself. But notice, it wasn't just the Gentiles who were cut off from access to God, was it? Because if you're going to that temple again, imagine going to that temple again, and you were in the court of the Gentiles and you know what's going on in the temple, the center of that temple was supposed to be the very presence of God.

That's what's there. So you go into that court, I want to be with God. Oh, there's that wall of hostility, right? You are not allowed to pass. But you, okay, so let's say you're a Jew and you can pass, right?

And you're going. Would you be able to get all the way into the Holy of Holies? Absolutely not.

Why?

Because you're not pure either. Because there's issues with you as well, even as a Jew. So even the sin issue that kept the Gentiles away in a particular way, we looked at, I think it was in Sunday school class now.

But nevertheless, the Jews were welcomed in closer, so to speak, because the law, because the prophets, because the worship was there. But they were even cut off from the full fulfillment of being together with God in the Holy of Holies.

You remember what the high priest, when he got to go into that place one time a year, remember he had to wear a bell on his ankle, just in case, so they could hear if it's still ringing. Because if it didn't, they know that God struck him dead because of his sin.

And even that, within the Holy of Holies, being the presence of God, that wasn't the completed thing as we see in Hebrews. But rather the full presence of God is in heaven where he is, right? That's made without hands.

And so the point I'm getting at is there's a disunity between God and Gentiles, in which they were cut off from the worship with the Jews. But there's even a disunity of God and Israel. Look at the Old Testament and see how many times God has to say about Israel, you guys are doing a fabulous job.

No, it's littered with, you guys stink. You guys have never got this right. You guys always go astray over and over again. So as there's a disunity problem with Gentiles and God, there's a disunity problem with Israel and God.

The Israel received the law in which they saw the particulars of what God commanded and demanded for the sake of being together with him. And one thing that we can conclude is Israel failed at doing that law.

They failed at keeping the worship pure. As we saw in Deuteronomy, this is what you're supposed to do. Did they do that well?

No.

They failed to destroy all the pagan worship, although they did destroy a lot, and then it just crept back in. And so as there's a disunity problem between God and Gentiles, there is a disunity problem between God and Jews, and Jesus came even for them.

You look, see what the passage says before us. He says in verse 15,. Notice Paul does not say that the Gentiles can then become Jews. That the Gentiles can then come in and become Jews, and we're all just Jews and happy.

No, we both leave what our identity was prior, and we become one new man. And that one new man is united in whom? Jesus Christ our Lord. He's the new man. He's the perfect one. He's the righteous one.

He's the one in which God said, I am well pleased with this one. And he's the one in which he suffered alienation on the cross for your alienation. And he's the one in which God said, I am well pleased with this sacrifice.

Why?

Because he was raised from the dead by the power of the Spirit. So it's this new man created after the image of Jesus that is acceptable to God. We got to understand that it's not like the Jews had it right, and so we just got to be engrafted in to the Jews.

Instead, from the Jews, from the Gentiles, Jesus was pleased to make one new man. And he does this by the fulfillment of the particular law that God demanded for unity. Jesus becomes our unifier because he is a perfect righteous one who perfectly submitted to God, who is perfectly united to God, so that when he dies in that sacrifice, he then gives you of that same righteousness when you have faith in him.

And so then you're united to God. And so all people who do this become united together. So God put all things under the law to show just how terrible sin is, as Galatians says. Why the law, Paul says?

To show our sin. To show our need. To show our disunity. And so as you look upon the news stations, as you look upon the news reports, and people bemoan the disunity in the nation, bemoan the disunity in the world, don't let that catch you by surprise.

If you're not looking to Jesus, who is the new man, there is no unity. And any kind of unity that is supposedly there, it is fickle and it does not last very long. I love, it's very fascinating to see history, to see certain things play out.

And one thing that you have is, you have what's called the Renaissance, and you have humanism. And humanism started off all right as it still looked to God and understanding humanity. But then it went astray as it said, well, actually, we don't need God.

Humans are pretty awesome of ourselves. We can find unity within ourselves. And then you have that separate reformation strand that says, no, we need God in order to understand ourselves. But nevertheless, I think you really see in history, you see a culmination of what happens when humanity thinks that they can have unity of themselves.

Because you have the 1800s was an era of peace, right? Prosperity. But then what does that culminate to? What happened in the 1900s? Pretty ugly stuff, isn't it? And it's like God, that's like God saying, this is what happens when you try to find unity with yourself.

It doesn't work very well. Unity only happens when we look to the new man. When we look to Jesus Christ. And when we try to find it anywhere else, we are going to be sorely disappointed. We have and oftentimes we can believe the lie of Satan.

We can yearn for unity within our hearts. I want unity, I want peace. But then the way that we get to it is that my own fleshly desires would be fulfilled. Humanism. But the only way for peace is for us to look to Jesus Christ, who is the perfect righteousness of God and obey him in all things by his grace and mercy.

And there we will find unity. As I said at the beginning of the sermon, if you look at the different conflicts you have with your spouse, with a fellow brother or sister in Christ, if you look at it and dissect it, which I hope you do, by the way, I hope you don't have a conflict and you just kind of go off with it and be like, oh, whatever.

God hates conflict. God hates disunity because it dishonors Jesus, who is our unity. I hope as you look upon the conflict that you had, you will start to see just how much both of you guys decided we're no longer going to honor Christ now, we're going to honor our flesh.

In some way or the other, that's fundamentally what happened in that conflict. It's that I wanted my own way and that's what created the conflict instead of I want the way of Christ, the new man. We got to understand that unity only comes through Jesus Christ and God put all things in disunity, all things under the law and condemnation so that Jesus would be glorified as we look to him and he is our righteousness.

He is our unity. It is a common deception from Satan and you can in your mind know that but yet in the moment of temptation, of that fleshly temptation, you'll have a desire within your flesh and you'll say, yeah, but I want that and you'll grab hold of it.

But it's in that moment that you guys say, no, I need to look to Jesus here. I need to look at the fulfillment of the law here. I am not the fulfillment but he is and I need to obey him for that fulfillment of the law and in that fulfillment, in that obedience, in that thing that's happening going on there, you will see that your brother and sister who's doing the same thing will then be unified with one another and what a time that we live in as the church that as the world hates each other, as families tear each other apart, as there's so much disunity and so much dysfunction going on, the church could be the example of this is what unity looks like and so we should not laugh at disunity.