Ephesians 2:11–22

0:00 Did you ever have a time in your life when you felt well and truly left out? I don't mean just a little bit. I mean like totally left out in the cold in a sort of humiliating and embarrassing way. You ever had a time in life like that? My guess is that at some point or another, no matter how cool and popular you are or were, you probably have had times like that. I remember in elementary school thinking that the very cruelest thing that any PE teacher could ever do was the choosing of teams to play kickball or whatever.

0:35 Because, I mean, you know what they do. They line all the kids up, and they pick the two most athletic kids in the class, and they become the team captains, and then they start choosing the kids to be on their teams. And usually what ended up happening at the very end of that is that you had one sad little Greg standing there all by himself. Maybe you never experienced that. Some of you experienced being the new kid at school. Your parents got a new job in eighth grade or so, maybe even middle of the year. You had to come into a new school, and it felt like all the eyes were on you, and simultaneously, nobody was seeing you at all.

1:15 Being the new kid at school is tough. Maybe more recently, you've had an experience where you sort of made the mistake at a, I don't know, a get-together, a party, whatever it was, a reception of some kind, everybody's standing around talking, right? And you see a little group over there. Maybe it's two or three people, and they're kind of talking to each other. And, you know, you do what you do at these parties. You kind of walked up with your plate, right, or your drink, and, you know, you're standing there, and you walk up, and you kind of complete the circle. And they just keep talking. They don't acknowledge. Maybe they look at you and nod a little bit, but they're talking about whatever work or whatever it is.

1:46 And then you're left with the incredibly awkward situation of having only about two options. You can either stand there awkwardly doing, you know, a variation of the evangelical and just going, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Or you can sort of slink away awkwardly and finally turn your back and pretend like you see somebody else you know, right? It's awkward to be left out. For some of you, that sense of being left out or alienation is deeper.

2:19 There's nothing funny about it at all because for whatever set of reasons, maybe you found yourself estranged from family, cut off from children, cut off from parents. For some of you, you have that sense of alienation precisely because of your faith in Jesus Christ. You've been cut off because you've declared yourself to be a Christian. Alienation is a terrible, sinking feeling. Whether it's silly or whether it's serious, you know what it's like to be left out in the cold, to be separated and cut off from and alienated from other people.

2:57 But, of course, the flip side of that is exactly the opposite. When alienation ends, when separation ends, when that feeling of being cut off is ended and you're reconciled to someone you've been alienated from, the feeling of reconciliation and happiness and joy is glorious because the separation's ended. Well, that's what we're talking about today as we continue this study through the book of Ephesians. We're going to be looking at the second half of chapter 2. Last week we looked at the first half of chapter 2 where Paul is beginning an argument.

3:28 It's going to run through chapter 3 and it's going to culminate with him being able to say to these Gentile readers of his. So Gentile means non-Jew. So he's going to say to these Gentile readers, look, you Gentiles, even though you're not Jews, You are, it turns out, not second-class citizens in the kingdom of Jesus. You don't stand in second place to the Jews. You're citizens, full-on citizens belonging to a brand new nation, the kingdom of God that's all centered around King Jesus.

4:01 You're citizens of the church of Jesus Christ. That's where he's going. That's where he's going to get to in Ephesians chapter 3. But to get there, he's basically got to deal with two strikes that were causing a feeling of separation and alienation in the Gentiles. Sort of two things that they were kind of misunderstanding and thinking of themselves as second-class citizens. So he's got to deal with two strikes. We dealt with the first one last week, the first strike, which was, well, okay, you Gentiles, like all humans, yeah, you're rebels and sinners against God.

4:32 Your sins have created a separation between you and your God. You're cut off from him. You're alienated from God. And in the first half of chapter 2, he deals with that strike. Okay, that's true. You're rebels, but God, by his grace and love and goodness and kindness, has made you alive together with Christ and seated you with him in the heavenly realms. And the separation between you and God is ended. So strike one is off the table. Well, today, he's going to deal with the second strike. And that second strike against him is really simple. It's that they're not Jews.

5:05 And that's a problem. Now, you may not feel that when I say that, but by the end of this sermon, I hope you will feel what a problem it was for these Gentiles to realize we're not Jews. Because what it meant was that they're not part of God's chosen people. They're not privy to the kingdom and the covenants and all the rest of it. They're not part of the nation of Israel. So their question would have been, okay, Paul, so we're rebels and sinners against God. That's strike one. God has dealt with that one, but we're still not Jews. We've read the Old Testament. We know that the Jews are God's chosen people, and we're not. We're outside. So Paul, at best, doesn't that make us sort of the orphans in the kingdom of God? We're just like, you know, the scruffy little street urchin that's been brought in off the road and out of the muck. Isn't that what we are? And don't we shine the shoes, basically, of the people who are the true sons of the kingdom? So what Paul does in this section, 11 through 22, the second half of chapter 2, is take care of that one too. He deals

6:08 with that objection, that problem. He says, yep, you're a sinner. That's strike one. God's dealt with that through Christ. And yeah, strike two, you're a Gentile too. You're a non-Jew. But guess what? God has also dealt with that through Christ. Okay, let's read it. It's not that long. And then I'm going to tell you why this matters to you. So Ephesians 2, verse 11. He says, therefore, remember, you Gentiles, remember, that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision, by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

6:54 But now, in Christ, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both, Jew and Gentile, 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 humanity in place of the two. So making peace. And might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

7:29 He came and preached peace to you who were 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, you Gentiles, are no longer strangers and aliens, but your 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 of the Lord. In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

8:02 So you see it, right? You see what Paul's doing here. You might think of it, if he's talking to these Gentiles, you might think of it as him kind of breaking two shackles that were holding the Gentiles prisoners. So the first shackle was sin, right? And in the first half of chapter 2, he breaks that one. Second shackle was alienation. You're not a Jew. And here he's saying that separation in Christ is ended. He's united you together as one new nation. Okay, so why does it matter? I mean, I'm talking about Jews, talking about Gentiles. All of this is 2,000 years old. Why does this matter to you?

8:34 Well, it has everything to do with you because guess what? My guess is for the vast majority of you in here, you are Gentiles. I know you don't think of yourself that way. You think of yourself in all kinds of other categories. You're an American or you're British or you're, you know, you're a Kentuckian or a Texan or whatever you are, right? You're a Christian. You don't think of yourself very often as a Gentile. But today, what I want to do is invite you to imagine yourself as none of those other things for now, but as a Gentile, a non-Jew.

9:10 And I want you to feel, not just hear about, I want you to feel the chill winds of being shut out. Which I think, if you feel it, will ignite new gratitude in you for God bringing you in in the first place. Because he didn't have to do it. See, it's a good thing. You know what the Jews used to call the Gentiles? You know what the word was for them? They called them the goy. The goy. It had a meaning. It means the nations, right? The peoples. But I imagine they understood as well as you kind of feel.

9:43 It was an ugly word. And they were just fine with that. Those are the goy. Those are the dogs. outside the gate. Well, friends, it's good for us every once in a while. It is good for us who are Gentiles, that's going to be the gigantic majority of us, to feel our status as the goy. Because it'll make us more grateful that we've been made children of God. Alright, structurally, this thing breaks down nicely into three parts. Real quick, 11 to 12, you've got the initial position of these Gentile people, right? The initial position of you and me, actually. This is what the we are. That's 11 and 12, and it's a dire situation. 13 to 18 describes how Jesus Christ, the King, overcomes that situation. How does this actually, you know, work? How are the Gentiles brought in?

10:31 And finally, 19 to 22 describes who we are now because Jesus has done that work. So bringing it all together, the main idea is this. For all you Gentiles, in Christ, your hopeless alienation from God and other people has been ended forever. In Christ, because of Christ, through Christ, by Christ's work, all of that, your hopeless alienation from God and other people has been ended forever. And that's something to rejoice about. So just running through those three sections, three things that we are.

11:04 Number one, we are first alienated. Number two, we are now brought near. And number three, we are being built together into a new nation. We are first alienated, second, now brought near, and third, currently being built together into a brand new nation. All right, let's look at it. We are first alienated. That's point number one, and it's Paul's point in verses 11 and 12. So just like up in 1 through 3, if you look at chapter 2, 1 through 3, we talked about this last week.

11:37 The point of verses 11 and 12 here, just like 1 through 3, is to paint a picture of the utter hopelessness of these Gentiles. And what he says there is that they were completely cut off from all the blessings of God. They had no hope of ever getting those blessings. They had no plan to get those blessings. They had no reason to think at all that they would ever be invited into the kingdom of God. And Paul makes that point by piling up phrases that sort of, I mean, it's almost like, you know, chest punches.

12:11 Where, you know, the Gentiles are sort of sticking their head in the door. And Paul steps up to him and says, no, you are not this, and you are not this, and you are not this. Get out. And he punches him outside the door. Just one phrase after another. Look at it. Therefore, remember. Stare at it. Look at it, Gentiles. Remember. At one time, you Gentiles in the flesh, you goi. You were called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision. So what he's saying there is that circumcision was a physical mark of being a part of the Jewish nation, right?

12:48 Paul's well aware that circumcision doesn't do anything spiritually. You can see he says it there. It's made in the flesh by hands. That's all it is. It's not God's work. And yet, it was a stark, physical, visible reminder, a delineating line around who were the insiders and who were the outsiders. And it was such an important line that the Jews referred to themselves in pride as we are the circumcision. We are the clean ones. We are the marked ones. We are the chosen ones by God. Which means that the goy out there, you guys, are the uncircumcision.

13:23 You are those who are the unclean, the unmarked, the unchosen, the garbage. That's how they thought of themselves. Remember, you Gentiles, that you were the uncircumcision, the unclean. But why was it so important to be an insider? Why was it so important to be the circumcision? Well, Paul goes on to list out a few things. And it's significant stuff. You just keep looking at what he says there in verse 12. Remember that at that time you were separated from Christ, he says.

13:59 Now, we use that kind of phrase sometimes to talk about non-Christians. And so it's easy for us to just run over that and think, well, he's talking about them as just non-Christians, right? No, he's not. He's not. He's talking about them as Gentiles. So what Paul is saying here is that Jews, whether they're Christian, like the Old Testament Jews, whether they're Christian or not, if you're part of that nation, you are not separated from Christ. In other words, you're not, Christ is a word for king. You're not separated from the kingship. You're not separated from the promised Messiah.

14:30 You're not separated from the great promise of the coming king. You're a part of it. And when he comes, you're going to be a part of his kingdom. You go out there? Nah, you're separated from the king. You have no place with the king. The king does not welcome you to his table. You have no hope of being a part of his kingdom when he does come. Same thing with commonwealth of Israel. You're separated from the nation of Israel. You have no part, you have no portion in the great messianic hope and the new life and joy that the king is going to bring when he establishes the nation.

15:06 You're outside, you goy. Get out. I remember this past summer having a little bit of that sense when my family and I, during sabbatical, were in London. And we got to go to the changing of the guard, right? And it's a huge deal because there's all this royal pomp and circumstance and huge crowds of thousands of people gather around Buckingham Palace. And you can, you know, everyone's cheering as the guards go by. And in our case, there was this black, you know, very London-esque limousine that rolled by very, very quickly.

15:38 And we realized that, oh, my goodness, that's Queen Camilla sitting in that limousine. And the crowd just went crazy as Queen Camilla went by. I can't imagine what they would have done if the king himself had gone by. And I kind of went crazy too, right? I'm an Anglophile. It's like, yeah, Camilla, you know. But I had this sense, too, that, you know what, this is not mine. I'm just a spectator here, right? I'm a spectator. And any time the British decide that they don't want me here, they can kick me out back to my own country.

16:12 This is not mine. I was celebrating it, but I was sort of, you know, I had my face pressed up against the glass, right? I was an outsider, a non-British person looking in on something that they loved. He says there also, you were strangers to the covenants of promise. Strangers to the covenants of promise. The whole Jewish hope, the whole thing, the whole story of the Jewish nation, the great hope of the Jewish nation was based on a series of covenants that God made with them through the story of the Old Testament.

16:44 So first the covenant of Abraham, then it took shape, right, at the covenant of Moses at Sinai. Then it sort of narrowed down into the covenant with David. And then there was this great promise of the new covenant that God was going to create with his people. It was their national story. It was their national identity. But it was way more than a story because those covenants were real promises of God. It was the God of the universe looking down out of all the nations of the world and saying, you guys, like we talked about last week, not because you're big, not because you're powerful, But just because I choose you, I'm going to pour out all the blessings of eternity on you.

17:25 They were promises from God. And what Paul is saying is that you, you goi, you non-Jews, you don't have to be part in that. Those promises are not for you. I mean, yeah, of course, if they had paid attention, they would have seen flashes of promise that all the other nations and families of the world were ultimately going to be blessed through those promises. But the expectation of the Jews was that all that good, all those promises of all those covenants would be for the Jews. And anybody else that came in was just going to be a sort of hanger on.

17:58 So Paul says, you Gentiles, you're strangers to all of those covenants, all of those promises. They're not yours, if anything. At best, you've got your nose pressed up against the glass. You are outsiders looking in. And some of the light of that glory might fall on your face, but it ain't going to be much because you're an outsider. the last two phrases there in verse 12 sum up their situation. They had no king, they had no nation, they had no covenants, and therefore, Paul says, they were, you were, without hope and without God in the world.

18:36 Yet no future other than God's wrath and no hope of that ever being changed, No promise from God that that would ever change. That was the idea. And here's the thing. I don't want you guys to think of all of this as just a kind of academic exercise. Ah, yes, those poor Gentiles. What a hard time of it they had. Now, I want you to feel the chill of it for a few minutes because, like I said, the vast majority of you are Gentiles.

19:10 When you look down at 14 a little bit, Paul refers to the dividing wall of hostility. That's referring to a wall that ran around the outside of the temple in Jerusalem. So the way the temple was set up, and Paul has this picture in his mind. The way it was set up is that you had the main structure of the temple in the center on the temple mount with the Holy of Holies in the center of it where God's presence had dwelt in the past, no longer by the time this was happening. But in the center was the main structure of the temple. And then around it, you had three courts that you could sort of make your way into if you had more and more status.

19:45 So the outside court, the very far outside court, was known as the court of the women. And basically anybody that was a Jew could get in there, right? You could get in there if you were a woman. You could get in there if you were a man. You had status, right? So anybody could go into the court of the women. The next one was just called the court of the Jews. And the only people that could go into the court of the Jews were not Jews. it was Jewish men. So women were locked out of the court of the Jews. You couldn't go in there unless you were a Jewish man. Beyond that was yet another court closer to the center, which was known as the court of the priests. And guess who could go in there? Well, it was the Jewish males who were also part of the priestly caste. Those were the only people that could go in there. And then the Holy of Holies, of course, only one of those priests once a year could go in there. So this increasing sort of status that you needed to get closer and closer to the center.

20:33 Now all three of those courts, the court of the women, the court of the men, the court of the priests, they were all on the same geographic level of the mountain, right? They were all in the same thing. But once you stepped outside of the court of the women, a couple of things happened. First of all, you had to walk down five steps to get to another sort of promenade in front of the temple where there was a five-foot wall. It wasn't that tall, right? It was about this tall, but it bifurcated that that sort of promenade right all the way around the temple five feet tall it was a wall with openings in it from from here and there then you walk out through through one of those openings and then you would go down 14 steps down down down down lower lower lower no status until you got to what was called the court of the gentiles which ran again all the way around the temple, but it was the lowest. And if you were a Gentile, you were not allowed even to step foot on the first step leading up to where the Jews could go. You were an outsider, you were a goy.

21:39 They've actually found at the temple mount signs printed in Greek and Latin, not Hebrew. They didn't print them in Hebrew, but they printed them in Greek and in Latin. And what they said was, no foreigner may enter within the barrier and enclosure around the temple. Anyone who is caught doing so will have only himself to blame for his death which follows.

22:12 It's like our no trespassing signs, right? Trespassers will be prosecuted, except in this case, it's trespassers will be shot on the spot. They were outsiders. Here's why this matters to you. It's because you're one of those people who couldn't set foot on the first step. You're one of those people who couldn't set foot on the first step. I want you to imagine, this is a sort of mental exercise, but I want you to imagine right now that you as a Christian believe the gospel just like you believe it right now.

22:51 You believe that Jesus existed. You believe that Jesus lived and taught and did miracles. You think all of that's true, just like you do now. You believe that Jesus died on the cross for sinners and rose from the dead. You believe that all human beings are destined for hell unless Jesus stands as their substitute. And you put your faith in him. I want you to think that you believe all of that to be true. And that there's no other way of salvation except by Jesus. And then I want you to imagine that there's a sentence in the Bible where Jesus himself says, this is only available for the Jews.

23:27 Eternal salvation is only available to the Jews. I am the king of the Jews. I don't stand in the place of dirty Gentiles. And you, you, yourself, believe it all. You believe it all, but you have no access to it. And all there is for you is the expectation of an eternity in hell. Because you can't get to the gospel. It's horrible, isn't it? Well, that's where Paul says you were.

24:02 You're cut off, separated, alienated from God. Friends, we live in a deeply ironic age when it comes to this alienation thing. We really do. We live in an age in which everyone and everything is constantly trying to get connected with each other. And yet there's never been a stronger or more bitter sense in a society, I think, of alienation than what we feel now. We want to be connected to the Wi-Fi.

24:33 We panic when our phone says the connection is weak. Every website you go to has a pop-up to subscribe to their newsletter and get connected. we gather friends and likes and plus ones like it's a sand collection and yet no generation has ever been more alone than this one I wonder if you feel that I wonder if you feel that for all the scrapping we do for connection for all the scrapping we do to end our alienation because we know that ending alienation is a good thing. We want that. We strive for it. And yet I wonder if you still feel it. I wonder if you still feel the separation from other people and from God. What's the solution to that?

25:25 Well, the first step is to recognize that sense of alienation in your own heart and realize that that's not a good thing. That's not what you were meant to be as a human being. You're not meant to be just a sort of digital ATM for companies to milk for a few years before they bury you in the ground and then build a strip mall on top of you. No, you as a human being created in the image of God were meant for so much more than that. You're a person, you're a human being who's loved by God and who's loved by others who love God. That's who you're supposed to be.

26:00 And I hope you long for that. I hope you long for that. And I hope you see where you can get it faith in Jesus Christ. If you're a member of Third Avenue, I hope you feel that too. I hope you feel that too, because as a church, we are supposed to be, and I think we are in the business of putting an end to alienation. That's what we do. We put an end to alienation. We bring people in from the cold and remind them that they're humans. So my hope as we sing these songs and pray these prayers on Sunday morning, I hope that you come here and all of that stuff happens and you feel separation from God closing in your own heart and mind. It's not that that separation closes because you've been here. Your separation from God has been closed by Jesus. But you know what we do here as a church? We just remind you of that. Because through the week and your own sin and

27:01 your own misplaced priorities and chasing after that and this obligation, that responsibility, your sense of connection to God, which Jesus has won for you and which is cemented in place and never changes, it can get so mucked up that you lose the sense of it. And what we want to do when you come here is through the songs and the prayers, we want to take a chisel to all that muck and knock it off so that you feel that access to God again that Jesus has won for you. That's our situation apart from Christ, though, alienated, separated from God and his promises.

27:37 But number two, we are brought near by Christ. We're brought near by Christ. In other words, through Jesus and his work, the alienation is ended. We were once far away. Now the alienation is ended and we're brought near. Look at 13 through 18. I want you, we read it a minute ago. I'm not going to read it again. But I want you to see the sort of grand logic in what Paul is saying here. Because what he does in 13 to 18 is that basically he tells a story that's got three actions in it. Three things happen in this story. The first thing, if you look at verse 13, is that through his death, Jesus brings near those who have been far off.

28:13 That's the first action. He takes those who have been far off, the Gentiles, alienated, separated. He dies in their place. He forgives them of their sin. He brings them near. That's verse 13. Breaks down the wall of hostility that we looked at. It brings the Gentiles in. But he doesn't stop there. He doesn't just bring them in. Once they're brought in, look what happens there in 14. He says he makes us both one. Jews and Gentiles basically brings the far off in and then crams them together with the Jews to make them one.

28:47 15 gets even more specific. It says he creates in himself one new man in place of what used to be two. Now, the word man actually just means humanity, right? It can mean an individual man, but here it means humanity. So he's taking these are far off. He brings them in. Then he makes them one new humanity together. Two things have now become one. And then look what happens in 16. He then reconciles the whole thing to God in one body. You see the three movements? Brings them in, crams them together into one, reconciles them as one into God.

29:21 You see how that works? Christians sometimes talk about reconciliation being both horizontal and vertical. You've probably heard Christians talk like that. We need to be reconciled horizontally with other people and we need to be reconciled vertically with God. That's what Paul's talking about here. That's where that language comes from. First, he reconciles human beings horizontally, Jews crammed in with Gentiles, one nation, and then he reconciles them vertically to God. It's just a total, total reversal of the destruction of Eden that we studied in the book of Genesis.

29:52 You remember what happened there, right? When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, you remember what happened? Their relationship with God was shattered. They fell away from Him and were therefore separated from Him and alienated from Him. We were naked, God. So we were afraid and we hid ourselves from You. They were alienated from God. They were also alienated from each other. Your desire, woman, will be to dominate your husband, but he will crush you.

30:25 Conflict. They're alienated from each other. It's just total obliteration. Alienation from God and alienation from each other. Like an explosion outward and downward. But here's the reverse. Here's the reverse. It's not obliteration. It's reversal, a bringing together and a reconciling to God. It's a total reversal of the obliteration that happened in Eden. And it all happens, Paul says, over and over again, through Jesus.

30:58 And you can look down 13 to 18. You'll find about half a dozen times, at least in those verses, where he says something like this happened through Jesus, or it happened in Christ, or through him, or by him, or something. It's everywhere. I think maybe the most profound is what he says in verse 14 about Jesus. He himself is our peace. It's just an incredible thing to say. It may be one thing to say, he himself brought our peace or he himself won our peace. But it's a whole other level altogether to say he is our peace.

31:34 And so dependent on him is this double reconciliation. So dependent on him is the reversal of Eden's curse that Paul can say right, right, right there. Right there, he's our peace. The only way it happens is through him. And if he were to cease existing for some reason, our peace would too. Apart from him, we got nothing but alienation from each other and separation from God. But with him, we're brought near and made part of God's family. Look how he says Jesus accomplishes all this.

32:07 So in 14, he says he's done it by tearing down the dividing wall of hostility. Then he gets a little more specific, like kind of drops the metaphor in verse 15 and says he did that. He ended this hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. It's a complicated phrase. I think what Paul is doing is just taking a lot of things that kind of refer to the same thing, law, commandments, ordinances, and putting it all together so that it's unmistakable what he's talking about. There's a little bit of debate about exactly what that's referring to, but the best answer by far is that he's talking about the Mosaic law.

32:39 It was the whole system of law, ceremony, command, ordinance that organized Jewish life. This was the Mosaic law from Sinai. Now, the fact that Paul says that Jesus has abolished that law is interesting. Because in Matthew 5, Jesus says he didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. Paul says he abolished it. Jesus said, no, I'm not abolishing it.

33:12 What's up with that? Anybody want to give a shot at it? Raise your hand. Well, abolish here and abolish in Matthew 5, it turns out, are two different words. And they do not mean the same thing. In Matthew 5, that word that's translated abolish means it's a violent word. It means to destroy, to overthrow, to cast aside, to knock down. that's what it that's what it means the word here is softer it just means to bring an end to something to make it no longer a force and that can happen in many ways it could happen by destroying it throwing it down violently it could happen in a very honorable way by completing it like a contract we have we have both you know accomplished what we were required to in this contract and this contract is now closed and it is laid aside it's not it's not a violent end it's an honorable end because the contract has been fulfilled. So both these things can be true. Jesus

34:13 didn't, in fact, come to destroy or cast the law violently aside, but he did come to end it by fulfilling it like a contract. He brought it to the end that God intended it to have, and then he laid it aside. And that's what Paul is saying here. The Old Testament law that organized Jewish life, that separated Jews from Gentile, all of that has now been completed. It's been closed out. It's been fulfilled, and therefore it's abolished, it's laid aside, and is no longer in effect. Look what Paul says is the result of all of this.

34:50 18, through him, we both have access in one spirit to the Father. He preached peace to you who are far off, peace to those who are near, reconciled you to the Father. Now, now in 18, through him and all that he has done, we both, Jews and Gentiles, as this one new nation, have access in one spirit to the Father. Look at that. I mean, first of all, just notice the Trinitarian formula there. In the Son, through the Spirit, we have access to the Father. But look what he's saying.

35:21 You have full access, because of Jesus, full access to the God of the universe. Anytime you want to go. I mean, what you've got here with that word access, kind of technical word, it's an image of a throne room. And the king sitting at the far end, you know, on his grand throne and, you know, the guards on the outside of the door. And in order to go in to this king, you've got to have access. You've got to have an invitation to come in. Now, there were different levels of access, different levels of invitation from the king, right?

35:52 So you could get access to the king, for example, as a prisoner. You could be invited into the throne room of the king so that he could pronounce you to be executed. That's one way to have access to the king. Maybe there's another level where you were invited to come make your case as a prisoner to the king in the hopes that he wouldn't execute you but let you off the hook. Another form of access was as a guest. You come into the throne room and you receive the king's welcome and hospitality and the king says, my friend, welcome. You know, set the table and let's have dinner together.

36:25 There's the guest. But then there was another level of access entirely. That of a son or a daughter of the king. Son or daughter of the king didn't have to ask guards for permission. Didn't even have to ask the king for permission. A son or a daughter doesn't walk in primly and properly and bow before the king. The kid just runs up to the throne and jumps up in his lap and is welcomed by the king with a laugh. You have 100% confidence that your welcome in the king's presence does not change.

36:59 One of the most famous pictures of the Oval Office in the White House in Washington, D.C. is from the 1960s. You've probably seen it where JFK, President John F. Kennedy, he's on the phone on his desk working. And underneath the resolute desk, like down at his feet underneath, peeking out from under the desk at the camera is little John John, his son. jfk jr and john john is just right there in the seat of the highest power in the united states of america maybe the world and he's just playing under his daddy's desk and he's totally welcome i don't know if any of you have ever been invited into the oval office i have not been to the oval office but if you ever get to go into the oval office if you're ever given access to the oval office, my strong advice to you is do not crawl under the president's desk.

37:59 You do not have that kind of welcome. Not with the president. But you do with the God of the universe. Crawl around the throne. Crawl up in his lap. Because you are welcome there. If you're a Christian, That access also, you need to understand this, it never changes. Never, not once. Sometimes we as Christians can think that our access to the Father is somehow, in some way, dependent on us.

38:32 How we've acted, what we've done or not done, who we got mad at, who we snapped at, whatever it is. We have this deep, deep-seated fear somehow that we are going to show up sometime before the throne room of God and we're going to walk up in prayer or in worship, And the angels at the door are going to cross their halberds and say, no, he won't see you today. You're not welcome here today. Try again tomorrow, and we'll see how his mood is. But listen to me, friend. Listen to me. If you are a Christian, if you are united to Christ who sits at the right hand of the Father forever and ever, that will never happen.

39:06 When you go to the Father, when you bow your head to pray to him, when you sing praises to him, you will never find him turning away or closing the door. Your access to him is wide open and unchanging because of Jesus. Because every debt that you ever had has been paid up in full. Every drop of wrath that you ever deserve for your rebellion has been exhausted in Jesus when he died on the cross. And you are welcome there because of him. And as long as he's there, no tongue, as the song says, will ever, ever bid you depart.

39:47 We're brought near. Here's third. Third point, we are being built together into a new nation. So in 19 to 22, Paul turns to the upshot of all of this. If we've been reconciled to each other and if we've been reconciled together to God, then how are we supposed to think of ourselves now? This new thing, Jew and Gentiles smashed together into this new thing. you know, our unseparated, unalienated selves. Who are we? Well, as Paul tends to do, because he gets excited as he's writing, in these verses he smashes together three different images to answer that question of who you are now. What he's driving at, to chapter 3, I've already told you about this, he's wanting to get to the church, right? He's wanting to say to these Gentiles, look, you are now full members of the kingdom of God, and therefore you're full members of the local church that you're a part of here in Ephesus or in Laodicea or in, you know, wherever it is that you are, you're not a second-class citizen. You're in the church, full on. That's where he's getting to.

40:47 And in 19 to 22 of chapter 2, he's gotten there, even though he doesn't use the word church yet. You're not going to find the word church. Instead, what you're going to find are three other images that he uses to describe the people of God. But you don't even have to squint your eyes very much at all, before you can see that he's already talking about the church. So what are the three images? Well, look at 19 to 22. So first, he says, you're no longer, you Gentiles, you goy, are no longer strangers and aliens, but now you're fellow citizens with the saints. You've been clothed in the robes of the kingdom, right? You're fellow citizens with all the saints, all the holy ones in the kingdom of God. You're part of this brand new nation that God has formed out of all kinds of people Jews Gentiles men women everybody and all of it is centered on King Jesus you're part of that no longer strangers and aliens next he says you're members of the household of God your family your sons and daughters you're not just guests much less are you servants your little John John under the desk now that's who you are in God's family with a total welcome into his

41:51 presence and then finally he slides into this image of a building right and at first you you wonder what kind of building it is, and that's where the, you can really tell once he starts talking about a building that, oh, we're talking now about local churches. Because look what he says about this building. This metaphorical building, he says, is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. So that is on the teaching of the apostles and prophets, on scripture is what he means there. That's the ground and foundation of everything. It's what we build our lives on as a church. As the church rises, as it grows, as it builds up, it's being built on the foundation of the teaching in this book right here, which is why we give it so much time on Sunday mornings.

42:31 This building has Christ for its cornerstone. He's the rock-solid base on which the whole thing rises. He's the one thing that's common to all of us, right? We're here not because we all share the same fandom in football. We're not here because we're all UofL fans or all UK fans or, you know, God forbid, all Dallas Cowboys fans, right? Y'all would never do that. We're all here. The one thing that we've got in common, the cornerstone of the whole thing, is our faith in Jesus Christ.

43:02 He's the cornerstone of this whole thing. That's what that means. And then, you know, we finally get specific. It tells us what kind of building he's talking about. This building that he's talking about is a temple. It is the dwelling place of God. So you see the picture? When God reconciles us to each other and to himself, he also starts building us up. And if you look at the very last verse, you can see he says, you're being built up. In other words, the image is like each one of us are little living stones that are being built up into a metaphorical temple in which God now dwells.

43:38 Which is mind-blowing. And yet Paul says it several times in his writings. Church, you're the temple of God. Do you want to know where God dwells in this world? He dwells in you. People have always wanted to know where God dwells. In fact, humans for all of history have tried to build houses for God. The Ephesians did it, right? I mean, when you go to Ephesus, like I did on this tour back in the fall, there's this multimedia presentation in Ephesus that you can go to.

44:10 It's this gigantic room, 360-degree LED screens, and it's telling you the story of Ephesus in an extremely Disney-fied way because what they do is they try to tell the story of Ephesus through the great goddess Artemis. It's like Artemis protected this city and then on such and such a day, the temple of great Artemis was thrown down to the ground and then the fires came and the armies came and where was Artemis? Where was Artemis? And then at the very end, you go into this new room and there's this other video playing and it says, Artemis has always been here.

44:50 In the flutter of every butterfly's wing. In the breath of every wind. And in the step of every tourist like you. It's supposed to be this big gigantic thing and you walk out and you're like, that was silly. And then you walk, you walk like, it's quite a ways, it's better to drive it. But you walk out there and all of a sudden there's this obviously gigantic temple to Artemis. Where they thought the goddess dwelled, and there's like two stones, one on top of the other, and that's it.

45:23 It's gone. The Jews tried it too. Herod's temple there on the temple mount. And yet, not five to ten years after Paul wrote this, every stone of that gigantic temple was thrown down to the ground. God doesn't dwell in houses made by man. He doesn't dwell in a temple built by the Ephesians. He doesn't dwell in a temple built by the Jews.

45:54 Or he dwells right here among you and me. We're his temple. We're the body of Christ. And what does that mean? Finally, what does that mean for us? Well, think of what's happened to you horizontally and vertically. Horizontally, it means cherishing and protecting the peace and reconciliation that God has created among us as believers. It means protecting those places where the walls have been torn down between us. Now maybe that main wall is not Jew-Gentile, but you guys know as well as I do that we humans are masters at building dividing walls between human beings, between men and women, between young and old, between rich and poor, between conservative and more conservative than you.

46:44 Friends, be on the lookout in your own heart for a spirit of the exact same kind of hostility that Jesus died to destroy. Be on the lookout in your heart for a spirit of alienation and ask the Lord to help you work against that. What about the vertical axis? Well, what that means is cultivating your relationship with this God who has saved you, among other things. Being here to worship him, being here to praise him, being here to let your heart be filled up and all the junk from the week chiseled off. so that you have a sense of his presence again.

47:17 You know what else it means? It means actively calling other people to know the peace and reconciliation with God that you now know through Jesus. If you look down at verse 16, Paul says there that Jesus preaches peace to those who are far off, to those who are near. What does that mean? Well, you remember in John, when we were studying the book of John? We noted this when we were studying it. How does Jesus greet his disciples almost every time he greets them after his resurrection.

47:50 Peace be with you. Peace. And you know what Paul says in 2 Corinthians? He says that as Jesus offers peace to the world, he does that very thing through us. Friend, if you're a Christian, then you have the only true message of salvation that the people around you are ever going to hear. Call them to peace with the Savior.

48:21 One last little thing, especially to you who are not Christians. The fact is right now, given what I just said, that Jesus offers peace and he offers it through his people, the fact is Jesus is making that offer of peace to you right now as I stand here talking to you. There's an offer of peace from the king of the universe. And friend, if you don't know him, you need to understand where you are apart from him, alienated and cut off from everything that's ultimately good in this universe. You're a rebel, and you deserve to die. But for right now, the king offers peace. The king's hand is extended to you and says, take this mercy and grace from me and I'll save you, I'll welcome you into my throne room forever. And we'll fellowship for the rest of eternity together, you and me.

49:10 Right now, that offer's open. Right now, the hand is extended. But listen to me, there will come a day when the hand is withdrawn. Don't let that day come before you find forgiveness in him. Let's pray. Our Lord God, we thank you and we praise you that you are a God of great good news. You're God of great mercy and great compassion and you've acted in Jesus Christ to save us, to reconcile us to one another and then to reconcile us to yourself and make us a new nation centered around our King Jesus.

49:52 Father, help us to remember these things. Chisel off all the junk that we tend to allow to accrue around that truth in our daily lives. Take it all away and let us see with new eyes the glory of what you've done for us. We pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you.