Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Amen.
[00:00:02] Thankfully, that was just a microphone.
[00:00:06] So if you would turn in your Bibles tonight to Ephesians chapter 2.
[00:00:10] We'll be in verses 11 through 22 through the end of the chapter as we've gone through Ephesians here.
[00:00:20] You know, Paul began the letter of Ephesians with this beautiful eulogy, which is a name of a cool band as well, by the way. But this hymn of praise, this blessing to God, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, you know, that he has adopted us, that he's chosen us to be members of his family. He has made us holy and blameless before Him.
[00:00:46] He has redeemed us and forgiven us of all of our sins. And then he's given the Holy Spirit as a down payment on our inheritance.
[00:00:55] You know, I'm with you, Jason. That has always blown my mind that his down payment is Himself, it's the Holy Spirit, it's His holy presence. And so that's just a foretaste of all that is to come. And so, you know, then he prays in the second part of chapter one that we would just get this, that we would grasp all of this.
[00:01:16] And then he takes a moment in Ephesians chapter two to, you know, just describe how high God has vaulted us, that he has raised us with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places, but not without first reminding us of how low we were before then, that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, that we were in league with the devil. We were following the prince of the power of the air, Ephesians 2 says. And we were following the course of this world. We were God's enemies and we were dead to Him. We were unresponsive, unregenerate. But all of this has to deal with our vertical reconciliation to God. He has reconciled us to Himself and then. But where he's going to turn his attention next is our horizontal reconciliation that as he's reconciled us all to Himself, where has he brought us but near to one another in the process? And so the. The way we can picture this is if you could imagine Jesus Christ in the flesh standing here among us now. He is here. He is standing here among us by His Spirit. Amen.
[00:02:26] Amen. The Lord Jesus is here among us. But if you could imagine him standing here in the flesh, if you are brought closer to Jesus and this person's brought closer to Jesus, and this person comes near to Jesus, where are you in relation to one another?
[00:02:41] You've been brought near to one another as well, and so that is the church.
[00:02:47] That is how God has created the church is by bringing us all, reconciling us all to Himself and then to one another in the process. And so as we get into chapter two as well, he's going to just flesh out what a beautiful thing the church is that he has created.
[00:03:05] Yeah, so this is a very special passage to me. It's actually the first passage I have ever preached here.
[00:03:11] Just love its vision of who the Church is. And so we'll get into that and more this evening.
[00:03:18] So Ephesians chapter 2 and we'll begin with verse 11 again through 22 and it'll be up on your screen here if you don't have a copy of the Scriptures with you.
[00:03:30] So Paul writes, he says, therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands.
[00:03:43] Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
[00:03:57] But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
[00:04:06] 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 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
[00:04:30] And he came and preached peace to you who are far off and peace to those who are near.
[00:04:35] For through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but 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 the 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. Let's pray.
[00:05:09] Father God, I thank you for not just this place, but for these people. For these blood bought people who have been sanctified and set apart for your holy purposes. God, my confession is that I am the common ordinary broken sinner of the sparrow who has found a home here in your dwelling place. And I'm thankful for that. Lord God. I pray Lord that you would help us to see tonight to see what a great work you've done in reconciling us not only to you, but to one another as well. And so creating the church in the process. God, we pray these things in Christ's name. And the people of God said Amen. Okay, so, you know, very often you will hear in our culture, calls for unity, you know, after someone wins an election, a very divisive election, right. Which has held our attention for 12 months or more. Help us, Lord.
[00:06:04] But then there'll be this call for unity, and it's. Well meaning. I think that sounds good, right? But a lot of times what it ends up being is really a call to conformity, to uniformity, to get in line or else. Or we'll cancel you, we'll shame you, we'll, you know, whatever.
[00:06:23] But that's not the kind of unity that the Lord calls us to in the Scriptures. That's not a biblical unity. A biblical unity is not conformity or uniformity, but it's unity. It's, you know, where we get the word universe or university from is the one and the many. Right? Uni, one verse, many. So all you Marvel fans out there, there is no such thing as a multiverse. Okay? Sorry to disappoint. You can stop contemplating that. Like Dr. Strange, but it's a universe.
[00:06:55] And so there's unity in diversity. That we're not called to abandon who we are in terms of Clay doesn't have to become exactly like me. I don't have to become like him. We're not going after sameness here. But we have different gifts. We come from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, and we are united across those differences. But then how do we live out this life of unity, this life of reconciliation to one another?
[00:07:24] The first thing is that we remember.
[00:07:27] Remember whence you came, remember whence you came. Remember who you were before you were reconciled to God.
[00:07:36] Now, he's already gone over several things of remembering in the first part of chapter two, how you were dead in your trespasses and sins. You were captive to your flesh, to the devil, following the course of this world. But now, like I said, he's dealing with the horizontal dimension, and he's saying, you Gentiles, in the flesh, those of you who are, humanly speaking, non Jews, which I believe is all of us, probably. I don't know if there's any Jews here among us. I know if Tim were here, he'd try to say he has a little bit of Jewish blood and so does John Lockbaum, but you guys are Gentiles. Okay, let's just. But Gentiles in the flesh, okay, that's no longer your identity marker. You are in Christ now. But you who are Gentiles, humanly speaking, who were once called the uncircumcision, which. The literal term, there is a word I won't repeat from the pulpit, but it has to do with just the body parts that are removed from, you know, okay. When that happens. And so it's a derogatory term, as you can.
[00:08:42] Sorry, I've already said too much. But it was.
[00:08:46] That was a term that the Jews leveled at the Gentiles, just, you know, deriding them for who they were.
[00:08:54] But then Paul says, you know, you're called the uncircumcision. You're called this derogatory term. But they being the circumcision, those who have the covenant marker, that's just made in the flesh by hands. It's not a work of God. And so this would have been felt insulting to the prideful Jew as well. But he wants them to remember five things. Number one, remember that at that time you were separated from Christ, you were Christless, you are without the Messiah and the promises secured by him. And this is the most important, because without the Messiah, there is no hope.
[00:09:31] The Messiah, Jesus Christ, all the promises find their yes in him. And there is no hope apart from salvation in Jesus Christ. As he says in John 14:6, no one comes to the Father except through me.
[00:09:45] And so without Jesus, there's none of it. No grace, no salvation, no eternal life, no help, no hope.
[00:09:56] And so that's the first thing that we're to remember. Second thing is, before grace, you were stateless or you were homeless.
[00:10:07] You were excluded from God's covenant. People, you know, without getting political at all or saying what's right or what's wrong, just imagine being an immigrant living here for, you know, basically your whole adult life and then just being deported, suddenly, not having no rights, no rights as a citizen here, not able to vote, not able to, you know, not able to stay those. You know, that was the best that the Gentiles could hope for was to be among the people of God. But they didn't really have any rights as the people of God. They were absent from. They were removed from the kingdom. They had no place in the kingdom and all the blessings that came with it. You know, the Jews, we need to remember that they had manifold blessings. You know, Romans 9:4 says, they are the Israelites, and to them belong the adoption. They are the people of God, to them belong the glory. God's presence Dwelt among them in the temple. To them belong the covenants and all the promises there, the giving of the law.
[00:11:20] God's word. They had God's word. To them belong the worship and to them belong the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. You know, Israel was God's people and enjoyed manifold blessings for that reason. But you were excluded, we were all excluded from that before grace, before Christ. And as part of that, we were strangers to the covenant. Or in other words, we were loveless. We did not have God's covenant love set upon us.
[00:11:58] We did not have his steadfast love, his hesed, his mercy to rely upon.
[00:12:07] I don't know about you, but it just sounds so bleak.
[00:12:11] And that's where he goes next, is we were hopeless without a real, lasting, eternal hope.
[00:12:21] And you know, hope, we use that word. I wish I could find a better way. A lot of times we use the word like, I wish that this happened. I hope the Tar Heels will have a better year this year than last year.
[00:12:36] Not much hope in that, right?
[00:12:38] There's no real substance under that.
[00:12:44] But that's how we commonly use the word hope. But when we see hope in Scripture, we need to read that as a fixed expectation, a fixed expectation that this will happen. And so as Gentiles in the flesh, as those who were excluded from the covenant, we had no hope. And the Greeks at the time, they wrote comedies which just laughed off life, or they wrote tragedies about just how it all ends and it just fizzles out death.
[00:13:15] They had no hope for eternal life after the grave. They just imagined just lying in darkness forever, no hope.
[00:13:26] How does that shape your life? Not having any hope?
[00:13:29] And then like a sandwich, you know, the two most important things at the top and the bottom, they were without God. In the world before grace, we were without God. We were alienated from the one true God. Now, the Gentile audience at the time might have read this as we had so many gods, right? You know, there were so many gods as Paul walked through Athens that he, you know, there was even a God to the unknown God in case we missed one, right?
[00:13:58] But no, alienated from the one true God.
[00:14:01] And that's who we were before Christ.
[00:14:06] And so remember who we are. The purpose of remembering is that this might cultivate a sense of humility that we might all understand that we don't belong here.
[00:14:17] We're only here by grace.
[00:14:19] We're only here By God's goodness, we're only here because Jesus sought me out, a stranger wandering from the fold of God.
[00:14:28] Praise God that He has brought us into the fold, that he has saved us by his grace. And when you remember that only by grace have I been saved, that cultivates a certain humility in you that makes it possible to live in unity with your brothers and sisters, to bear with them in their faults, to forgive them as you have been forgiven, and so remember whence you came.
[00:14:56] Number two in terms of how do we live out this reconciliation with one another is to realize that unity is a gift of grace that is already secured by the blood of Christ.
[00:15:07] It is already secured by the blood of Christ. Let me show you this in Scripture as you look at verse 13.
[00:15:17] And let me say too before that this passage has sort of three progressions. You can think of it with the acronym art. We were once alienated from God. Now we've been reconciled to God.
[00:15:33] Then we are transformed. We were alienated, reconciled, and now transformed. And so it has these three time markers. @ one time you were alienated, but now you are reconciled. And then verse 19. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens. You have been transformed.
[00:15:49] But as we get to the R here, being reconciled, he says verse 13.
[00:15:54] But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
[00:16:04] You have been brought near. There's not something you need to work to do to be brought near.
[00:16:10] Amen. We have been brought near. We have been united to the Lord and by proxy to one another.
[00:16:18] And so one reason that why this is important is because you will hear people talk about things like racial reconciliation or any other type of reconciliation, and they'll point out these divides in the church and they'll say, you need to do your homework. You need to do more to understand where this person is coming from. That person is coming from. There's work that you need to do, like penance, in order to make up for the baggage of your past. And then we can experience unity.
[00:16:48] That's the Greek term, hogwash.
[00:16:51] We have been united. We are united in Christ. And so when we get over into chapter four, he's not going to tell us to work towards unity. He's going to tell us to maintain the unity that we have.
[00:17:04] We don't work for unity, we work out unity. And so when there is a conflict between you and your brother or your sister in the Lord, you need to stand on this, that you are reconciled. There has been peace made.
[00:17:23] This is not something you need to do to make it right. It's working it out. It's realizing that I love Jesus, you love Jesus.
[00:17:31] Let's work this out together. Let's confront the sin that's between us and let's stand on this unity that the Lord has given us. In verse 14, he says, Jesus Christ himself is our peace.
[00:17:45] Jesus is our peace. And you understand, too, this word peace is such a rich term. You know, the best that the Romans could conceptualize as they boasted about their Pax Romana, their Roman peace, was that there was no wars.
[00:18:04] And that's a good thing, right? Okay.
[00:18:07] And it really paved the way for the Gospel to make its way through the first century as fast as it did.
[00:18:14] They basically. If you opposed the Romans, they just kicked you behind, right? And they were a very brutal, tough, strong army. And so they subjugated peoples to themselves, and they boasted of this peace that they had. Okay? So that's one way to think about peace. But the Hebrew way of thinking about peace is shalom.
[00:18:36] It's harmony. It's wholeness. It's everything being back as it should be. It's as God created the world in harmony. Everything in harmony. Nothing broken, nothing out of tune, but, you know, harmony. There's like when you play, when these guys play music, they're plucking different notes, but they all go well together. They're singing different voices, but they're in harmony with each other. And that's what the Lord is for us is. He is our harmony. He's the one who's. Who's keeping Keith in line and Jake in line and Mike in line. He's keeping me in line. He's the one who is the mediator between each of us.
[00:19:16] You know, as we are walking in step with Jesus, he himself is our peace.
[00:19:22] He has made the both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. There was a literal wall that the Gentiles could not go past at the temple.
[00:19:37] And it was about four and a half feet tall. And I don't think I have the quotes here, but it's basically. It says something like, archaeologists have found this. And it says something to the effect of, anyone who passes by this wall has only himself to blame for his death.
[00:19:56] And so, you know, Gentiles could convert to Judaism, but without going through the whole. The full conversion, the circumcision and everything, you know, the best you could do would be to be in the court of Gentiles, which. That was the outermost ring, and that was the, by the way, that was the ring where. That was the part where the money changers were, where Jesus overturned the tables in the temple because it was to be a house of prayer for all nations, okay? And then the next most innermost would be the court of women, and then it was the court of men. It was some other different term for that. And then the court of priests, and then the holy of holies, the holy place, and then the holy of holies.
[00:20:42] And so no one could go into the holy place. Right? Only the priests, when they were serving on duty could go into the high priest once a year would go into the holy of holies and make atonement there to go into the very presence of God. But for Gentiles, we were literally far off.
[00:20:59] But Jesus has torn down that wall.
[00:21:02] Praise God. Hallelujah. He has torn down that wall. And we all can go into the holy of holies now. But he's torn down this dividing wall of hostility between us as well, between Jew and Gentile. It says in verse 15, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.
[00:21:20] Now what this is referring to is the many covenant markers that the Jews had. They, you know, of course, circumcision and what else? I mean, basically God had set them apart to be a peculiar people. And so they had food laws, they had the sacrifices, you know, all the different things that were ceremonial observances. They were symbols of the separation. They were meant to, to separate the Jews and to make them a peculiar people. Basically, the mission of the Jews in the Old Testament was a come and see, come and see. Let's put God's grace on display. Come and see this peculiar people. Let's put God's holiness on display and let's live apart as a holy people. In the New Testament that's, you know, drawing you in is what's called a centripetal. You're meant to come and see. In the New Testament, it's the opposite. It's centrifugal. It's a flinging out, it's a go and tell, right? And so things have changed in that regard. But at that time, it was a come and see. It was like the Jews were meant to be the kid who's caught up to the front of the class to do the math problem on the board. He is the example for all of them. There's nothing special about him. And actually he failed at his example. So go sit down, please.
[00:22:44] But they were meant to.
[00:22:47] Those many markers were meant to set them apart. But Jesus has fulfilled the law and he has abolished the ceremonial law. And so no longer do we have to be circumcised. No longer do we have to practice temple sacrifices. No longer do we have to make the annual pilgrimages.
[00:23:05] No longer do we have to keep the food laws. We can eat shrimp. Praise the Lord.
[00:23:10] Okay, you can eat a medium rare steak if you want to. Hallelujah. Let's give thanks to the Lord for these things. And the Jews can do that too, and that's good.
[00:23:19] But really, he has torn down those things that separated us. And he has created in himself one new man in place of the two.
[00:23:29] One new man. So what he's saying here, it's literally one new man or one new humanity, one new people.
[00:23:37] It's not that the Gentiles need to convert to Judaism.
[00:23:42] It's that from the two, one new people has been created. We are all now in Christ. It's not Gentiles becoming Jews or Jews dropping their ceremonial laws and becoming like Gentiles. No, a new people has been created. Christians have been created.
[00:24:02] And he has made peace.
[00:24:04] The word peace is all over this passage. And he has reconciled us both to God in one body through the cross. You know, Jesus came with a body like all of us, with a nature common to each of us, and living as a human who lived a perfectly obedient and righteous life.
[00:24:27] He satisfied the law of God.
[00:24:30] He was righteous to the very end, from the heart. It amazes me to think of. And then he died the death that we all deserve through the cross.
[00:24:39] He didn't just die for the Jews, he died for us as Gentiles as well. And he has thereby killed the hostility between each of us. And so this is something that God has given us as a gift of grace, reconciling us to one another.
[00:24:55] It's not something that we achieve or earn, but something that we maintain and work out.
[00:25:03] He preached peace to you who are far off, and peace to you who were near. And then through Christ, love the Trinity. Here in verse 18. Through Christ we both as peoples have access in one Holy Spirit to the Father.
[00:25:21] We all come into the Holy of Holies by the blood of Jesus, by the one Holy Spirit.
[00:25:27] And so, as we think again, as you were alienated, you've been reconciled and now you are transformed. Verse 19. You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, 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. We are to embrace these eternal realities over any temporary human markers. We are to root our identity in Christ.
[00:26:05] Root your identity in Christ. You might want to think of yourself primarily as, I don't know, white, black, Hispanic, Asian. You might want to think of yourself as a Carolina fan, a Duke fan, a State fan. I don't know why you'd want that last one. Don't see any merit to it at all.
[00:26:25] You might want to. I saw that.
[00:26:27] You know. You might want to think of yourself as American. You might want to think of yourself as a mom or dad, a husband or a wife, a son or a daughter, you know, brother or sister.
[00:26:36] All these things are only temporary.
[00:26:39] All these things will pass away.
[00:26:41] I'm a mortgage officer, but I won't be a mortgage officer forever. Praise the Lord.
[00:26:47] All these temporary human markers are going to pass away.
[00:26:52] So rather than rooting your identity in these things which are rootless, root your identity in Christ, who is eternal. Root your identity in these markers, this identity that he has given to you. This is who you are. Church. Embrace these realities.
[00:27:11] Four things here. Number one, as I've already got it, we are a new people.
[00:27:15] We are neither Jew nor Gentile, but a new humanity in Christ.
[00:27:22] John Chrysostom, the ancient bishop of Constantinople, he said, the Greek does not have to become a Jew.
[00:27:28] Rather, both enter into a new condition.
[00:27:31] Christ's aim is not to bring Greek believers into being as different kinds of Jews, but rather to create both anew. We are a new people. And as well, we are fellow citizens of a heavenly kingdom.
[00:27:45] We have a place in the kingdom. And not only are we citizens of this kingdom, with the rights of this kingdom, but we are deployed as ambassadors of this kingdom. Once you were strangers and aliens and you did not belong. And now you are representing the kingdom.
[00:28:01] Praise God. What a privilege.
[00:28:04] Embrace that reality.
[00:28:06] Thirdly, we are members of God's family.
[00:28:10] God has adopted us to himself as dearly loved children. And so what does that make us to one another, brothers and sisters?
[00:28:20] Do you regard your neighbor here as your brother?
[00:28:25] As your sister?
[00:28:28] Do you have that kind of familial connection to them?
[00:28:32] Let me ask you, Church, are you known?
[00:28:38] Your family knows you, right?
[00:28:40] And still loves you. That's what's great about family. You also drive them crazy and vice versa.
[00:28:47] But they know you. They know all your mess, and they love you anyway.
[00:28:53] And you don't lose the family name just for acting a fool.
[00:29:00] You know, if Christina and I are at odds, which rarely happens, she conforms and gets in line, right?
[00:29:11] No. If we can't decide what to eat for dinner, you know, that sort of thing.
[00:29:15] Just because we're fighting. Spatting, whatever term you want to use.
[00:29:21] Spatting. Is that a verb? I don't think so. Anyway, you know, we're still married. We still have that name.
[00:29:30] We're still united by the name Adams. That does not change.
[00:29:34] And so there's a man. There's all sorts of studies on why marriage is good for society, but that's one of them. I saw this very sad statistic a week or two ago of just actually several statistics on the results of divorce on a child and just how that affects the psyche and, you know, how it leads to things like, you know, increased level of divorce, increased levels of addiction, increased levels of incarceration, and just increased levels of brokenness.
[00:30:07] And of course, you know, they. They show you these stats and they don't postulate as to why, but it makes sense to me. If they haven't seen a mom and a dad work out their differences and work through conflict, then how are they going to learn to do it themselves?
[00:30:25] Now, that's not to put that on any of you. If you are a child of divorce or maybe you're divorced yourself, praise God. The gospel can heal all things. The gospel can teach us to live in unity.
[00:30:38] So we need that.
[00:30:40] The gospel teaches us to live out our marriages in a healthy way as well, right? To work out that reconciliation, to live out that reconciliation. To be picture of reconciliation.
[00:30:51] But where was I going? Just, you know, we're united, right?
[00:30:59] So let me ask you, are you known?
[00:31:02] Do people know you like a brother and a sister? Do you have those sort of connections? And do you know others in that way? I would exhort you to be known and to know your brothers and sisters because you need it.
[00:31:17] We are family.
[00:31:20] And if your brother and sister gets out of line, you go to your father and you work that out and you have your brothers and your sisters back, both when they're in need or when they're out of line and they're in sin.
[00:31:34] We're to have that sort of responsibility towards one another, to take care of one another, to watch one another's back, to be in covenant with one another.
[00:31:44] And so we're members of God's family. And finally, we are a holy temple where the Lord dwells.
[00:31:53] We are a holy temple where the Lord dwells. It says again, verse 21, in whom the whole structure.
[00:32:05] Well, no, I need to back up. So verse 20 is crucial. We are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.
[00:32:17] What is our foundation?
[00:32:20] It's the doctrine of the apostles and the New Testament prophets. I believe he's talking about New Testament prophets here. I won't get into why that is. But even if he's talking about Old Testament prophets, basically our foundation is the word of God, and we're not messing with that foundation.
[00:32:34] And chief among our foundation is Jesus Christ himself. He is the cornerstone. He is the crucial stone that holds everything together. He was the stone that the builders rejected, but now it has become the cornerstone. And the cornerstone was essential for the stability of the building of the temple.
[00:32:54] It was essential for the symmetry of, is essential for the health of it. And without Christ Jesus as the foundation, it really is not a chur church, it's a false church.
[00:33:06] But he is our foundation. The doctrine of the apostles and prophets, they are our foundation.
[00:33:12] And this whole structure being joined together. So it's being built.
[00:33:18] Peter says that you, like living stones are being built together.
[00:33:22] We are being joined together and we're growing into a holy temple in the Lord, verse 22. In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
[00:33:37] This is what I heard this passage preached, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago.
[00:33:44] And it's what really blew my mind that really cemented for me that the church is God's plan A and there is no plan B. If I want to know the Lord, if I want to encounter the Lord, if I want to serve the Lord, it's in the church.
[00:34:00] We don't have permission to go off and create something anew. Now, that's not to say you can't have parachurch organizations that partner with the church and are an extension of a church like My Life Matters doing, you know, ministry towards children or Peniel Gospel Team doing, you know, missions towards unreached people groups. That's not what I'm saying. But we don't have permission to go just, you know, watch online at home every week.
[00:34:27] God has called us here, he is fitting us here. And it may be that if you feel like you are, you feel disconnected from the Lord, that you have not been encountering his presence.
[00:34:42] Have you been leaning into the church?
[00:34:46] This is his temple. This is where his presence dwells, is in these people.
[00:34:52] And that's why these people are worth getting to know.
[00:34:57] Why these people are worth you investing your life in.
[00:35:03] And how beautiful is this that He. I don't know what you call the type of architecture, where you take all these stones that are shaped different ways and you fit them all together. But that's us, right?
[00:35:14] We're not these perfectly cut bricks, right? We're being fit together and. And Christ Jesus, his blood is the mortar that binds us all together.
[00:35:27] And how beautiful is this? What a gift is this? Do you see the Church as the gift that it is?
[00:35:35] People of God, remember where we came from.
[00:35:39] Realize that unity is a gift of grace secured by the blood of Christ.
[00:35:44] And may we root our identity in Christ.
[00:35:48] Let me speak to those who may be not in Christ.
[00:35:55] Do you have hope?
[00:35:57] Where is your hope?
[00:36:00] If it's not in Christ, it's only in temporary passing. Things that will not endure, that will not survive the judgment.
[00:36:10] Are you homeless?
[00:36:12] Are you loveless?
[00:36:14] Or do you have God's covenant love in Christ to rely upon?
[00:36:19] You know, I am a mess.
[00:36:22] My heart is full of sin. It is full of so much pride, I despise to see it. It is difficult to see it when the Lord brings it to light.
[00:36:31] And yet he knows me in the depths of my heart and loves me with his steadfast love anyway.
[00:36:39] He loves me with all the passion that he loves His Son, because I am in Christ.
[00:36:46] And so the invitation to you who are outside of Christ is to come in.
[00:36:51] To come in not just to this people, but to come in to Christ. Jesus lived an obedient life, a righteous life. And when you place your faith in him, when you identify with him, the Lord, when he looks upon you, he sees his perfect, obedient Son. And he regards you with all the righteousness and favor that His Son deserves. And that's how he can say, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, because all these blessings are deserved of His Son, who lived that perfect, obedient life and then who was vindicated by the raising of the dead.
[00:37:27] Jesus deserves all praise and glory and honor and all this inheritance and being in Christ, it's now your right as a citizen in him as well as a son in him as well.
[00:37:40] And so are you in Christ.
[00:37:42] Place your faith in Christ. Cry out to the Lord Jesus.
[00:37:46] Place your hope in Him. He will not disappoint.
[00:37:50] And to the believer, I've already spoken to you. Do you treasure the church as it is?
[00:37:57] If not, you need to repent.
[00:38:00] You need to repent and know the blessings of the Lord poured out upon you.
[00:38:04] Let's pray.
[00:38:12] Father God, how good and how kind and how generous you are to us in Christ.
[00:38:21] God, we were dead, we were devilish, we were worldly, we were fleshly, we were.
[00:38:29] We didn't have any rights here.
[00:38:31] We had no hope. And yet you sought us out and you made us yours.
[00:38:36] God, I just pray with Paul that you would give us the strength to comprehend this, to treasure this, to treasure all your manifold blessings that you have, have, and are pouring out upon us in Christ and God where we need to repent, myself included, of not prizing the church for who she is.
[00:38:57] Lead us in doing so. God, you promise that when we come to you, you will give us rest, you will give us forgiveness, you give us your grace, and you will establish us upon the rock.
[00:39:11] Praise you, God. In Jesus name we pray. And the people of God said, amen.
