The Sermon was preceded by the prayer of a “broken man” expressing his thankfulness for all the Lord had done for him. It was a prayer prayed in light of what Ephesians was teaching us about all the blessings from God in Christ, from the abundance of the Lord’s riches.
There are some things I/we don’t want to remember
• The time I stuck the cat in the freezer
• left the gate open and all the cows came out
• brought home some stranded motorists who ran up 400 dollar phone bill and stole silver coins from my grandma’s silver anniversary
• sitting in an airport restaurant and missing my flight to come home so I could preach
• the time I laughed at a German girl reading the Bible in English at our house during my missionary kid years in Germany
Some things i/we too easily forget
• to deposit my paycheck
• my sisters’ birthdays and parents’ anniversary
• my anniversary
• the meeting with the elders
• "Independence Day." The celebration for that may have meant much more to those in 1780 than in 2006. Yet our independence is owed those people, and our real world reality reflects what is done for us in the past.
• the sacrifice men and women give for us to have greater security as a nation
• half the things my wife tells me
• that I don’t know all the answers
• that I have done some horrible things in my life
• in the midst of an argument that I too, have many failures
• biblical call for humility and thinking of other needs ahead of our own
And yet, the Bible often calls us to “remember.” In fact “remembering” is the only thing we are called to do, in today’s text. Let’s take a look at Ephesians 2:11-22. READ TEXT
It’s impossible to embrace peace around a wall of hostility!
I vividly recall my days in Berlin, Germany, surrounded by a wall that kept a formerly united people, family, and friends separate, and in many ways hostile to one another. The wall made it impossible to connect or unite: tank barricades, land mines, barbed wire, dogs, guard towers stationed just far enough apart so that anybody attempting to cross the wall would be seen and shot.
It’s impossible to embrace peace around a wall of hostility!
(Then, turning to a wall of boxes, dominating the stage, that we adapted from a Group publishing Bible Sense study guide:)
This is a wall we made in our Wednesday night Bible study group. On it we have written all kinds of words describing the walls we have: race tension, pornography, defense mechanisms, religion, status, anger, depression, etc. All of us, in some way have and still experience walls keep us from embracing all kinds of people, and most of all, God.
This was similar to the situation in the city of Ephesus, and Paul wrote to the Christians in that area to declare that:
It is only in Jesus that we find real peace. And Paul declares that our remembering of what Jesus has done for us will be the basis for real peace to find its way into our lives:
1. We find peace where there was no Peace.
(Hopeless cause, barren wasteland, gulf/divide, wall)
We all have walls that need to come down
This text is not an easy one to get excited about on the surface. Christopher exclaimed at our Bible study (along with me, and half the group): “What’s the point?” It is difficult to grasp the Bible’s meaning when it seems so far removed from our experience. But one of the key principles in making the Bible relevant to us in the 21st century is to understand, as much as we can, what it meant to its readers and hearers back in the days it was written.
The point is that Paul is highlighting conflict between man and man, as he describes the incredible tension and conflict between Jew and Gentile
There is:
• Name Calling: v. 11
• “Status” issues: v. 11
• Wrong race/nationality
There was a great divide between, or as v. 14 declares, a “dividing WALL of hostility between them.”
There was real bad blood among them, as they were separated by religious laws, and political and racial barriers. This spilled out into the streets. One commentator noted that
“Around the time Paul was writing these words, arguing for racial unity in Christ, Jews and Syrians were massacring each other in the streets of Caesarea, a city where he had been not long before.” (Keener, IVP Bible Background Commentary)
We know ourselves the tension that exists between people based on race:
• Mel Gibson’s drunken rantings
• People in this area may remember the “race riots” in Detroit in years past
• Even if we aren’t having race riots these days, all you have to do is look around see how little races actually mix, and even so called “regular” folk may be guilty of “mild racism” in their language and attitude, whether they think of it as such or not
These are not things we like to think about, and yet we are called to:
“remember”
Mankind is FULL of
• hatred
• arguments
• stereotypes
• the desire to DOMINATE, DOMINEER, be #1
“remember”
YOU receive the brunt of it at times, too
• Others have treated you badly
• others don’t love you
• you will always be open to ridicule, slander, name calling.
IT IS the ugly side of humanity. It is WHAT WE DO BEST at times
“remember”
WE are NOT EXEMPT from committing acts of evil and hostility, either.
WE
• have despised our husband or wife, at times
• have done wicked and unloving acts in secret
• harbored anger and hostility against our brother or sister
• have looked with disdain, or at least “mild disapproval” upon another race, or person of “different economic means”
• cursed those who have mistreated us
“remember”
But the major conflict that all men have to deal with is the one between: man and God
v.12 says the Gentiles were separate from Christ/without hope (CONTRASTING Eph 1;18 “know the hope”) /without God
Rarely is it a good feeling to feel on the outside of things
• locked out of the church because I forgot my keys—helpless, annoyed
• starting school
• coming back to a work situation where you used to have all access and now you are denied
But the worst kind of separation there is is to be separate from Christ, without God, without hope
• while several sitting here today may see—or have experienced themselves—what it means to be outside of Christ, to experience lack of hope, love, or “power for living”, while others may be a bit hazy or even conveniently blind to their lack of hope and future with God.
• but this separation from God is a topic that often comes out most decisively near, or at death: The tears, the sorrow, the agony, the sense of finality: THERE IS NO HOPE!! “My loved one is dead in the grave and is only going to be eaten by worms, decaying in the flesh”
• let’s go ONE STEP FURTHER: on Judgment Day, at the sentencing: no longer can God be ignored, no longer do things vie for my attention that distract me from God and eternity: THIS IS IT!
o remember a MOVIE (the Rapture), where a woman finds herself in hell, separated from God, no chances left: bitterness, agony, anger, despair cascade on her as she realizes that she, like the rich man who ignored Lazarus, would be spending every single waking moment of eternal death . . . in hell
Then it sinks in: HOW DID I GET HERE?
The Bible says that without Christ, we are enemies of God, but did you also know we are—outside of Christ—God’s enemies?
It is hard to imagine this when we hear all the talk of the LOVE of God. And actually it is not an easy concept to balance, with all the very true talk about the love of God for the world. I just hold them in a kind of tension.
Here is what the Bible says:
Ephesians 2:3 you were: Children of Wrath. WE don’t have wrath: Wrath is being directed toward us! By whom? Not the Easter bunny. . .
Romans 5:9-10
9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son
Psalm 5:5 “you hate all who do wrong”
Now again, I don’t want YOU, or ME, to lose sight of the fact that God LOVES the world, but at the same time:
WE MUST NOT FORGET that no matter how care free anybody can appear—or actually feel—if you are outside of Christ, you are God’s enemy, under his wrath, which will come into full effect on judgment day if you persist in your separation from God!
“remember”
I may NOT want to remember this fact.
• feel uncomfortable, uneasy
• I just want to “think positive”
but I am called to “remember”
YOU were without God and one time
YOU were an enemy of God, and He of you
but here is the “kicker:”
Ohhh--Did I mention God is a God of Great LOVE? Of great MERCY? (last week’s text in Ephesians)
Did you KNOW that he goes AFTER US, seeking us, calling us, making a way for us to be RECONCILED to him?
Some walls just don’t last, aren’t meant to last. Standing near the famed Berlin Wall—the wall I had known every waking day of my life in Berlin, the one that seemed impossible ever to be broken down, the wall that would forever divide a once united people—President Ronald Reagan admonished: “Mr. Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!!!”
And it was.
Many of our walls are not meant to last either, even though we can see no way out of them.
And so, amid this great dividing wall of hostility between man and man, God and man,
2. We find peace comes Through Jesus Christ
In Colossians, sometimes called the “sister” companion to Ephesians because of their similarities we read:
COLOSSIANS 1:21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—
GOD has reconciled you!
But even this word “reconciled” hints that all was not well between us and God:
Emil Brunner, in his book “Mediator” says:
“Reconciliation presupposes enmity between two parties. To put it still more exactly: . . . Man is the enemy of God, and that God is the enemy of man” --“he is actually present in his anger!) (quoted in JRW Stott’s The cross of Christ, p. 198)
. . . And so, God takes the first step: he sends his son. And NOTE, it says that
God “reconciled” (completed action) us through his son. HIS work is done:
• He has opened the door for a renewed relationship with us
• He, who was angry, who was our enemy, who holds the FATE of our destiny in his hands:
o HE is the one who holds out his hand in love:
“remember” this!
Stephen Baldwin recounts in (chapter 3 of) his book “the Unusual Suspect” how God’s love was active in his life, even when Stephen was ignorant of and at odds with God:
• as a fourth Grader, singing the 23rd Psalm as David the shepherd boy in an opera that made women weep—and provided a rare “spiritual moment” with his distant dad
• his role in Godspell, proclaiming the Gospel night after night as a high schooler even though he could have CARED LESS about God—about which a friend years later remarked: “There’s NO WAY you could be a part of proclaiming the Gospel over and over and it not have an effect on you” (p. 36)
• his unusual circumstances in how he met his Brazilian wife (who was also unsaved at the time) and how years later, when she hired a Brazilian nanny,
o little did they realize that this nanny—who happened to be a Christian, asked her church to pray for her, AND
o that someone in that church received a “word from the Lord” that told of God’s plan for both Kennya—his wife—AND Stephen, himself. Both outside of Christ at that time
God SEEKS US even when we are NOT SEEKING Him.
JESUS CHRIST reconciles US to God, even though we may not have yet GRABBED HOLD of it
Let’s look at our Ephesians passage to see what Christ has done:
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
near to WHOM? GOD, and all his promises.
but not just to God. To our human enemies, too
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,
It doesn’t mean there won’t be fights between Jews and Gentiles, husbands and wives, Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites and browns, and reds and yellows,
in this specific sense between Jews and Gentiles Jesus destroys this barrier . . .
15 by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.
The law was what separated them in many ways. But when Jesus was born, he fulfilled all the promises of God made to the prophets, all the requirements (that man, even Jews, couldn’t keep) and promises found in the law, so that:
16 and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God
to put it simply: BOTH sides had “issues” with God
BOTH are LOST and ENEMIES of God, even the “good Jews” who tried to follow the law. They could not follow all of it.
NOW the Gentiles---never expressly named “children of promise” because they weren’t in Abraham’s family tree, ARE now reconciled to God!
As Galatians 3:29 says: 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise
as if there may be still confusion as to how it is done, Paul continues in Ephesians:
through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.
“remember”
• this love on the cross
• this love that reached out to you when you were HOSTILE to God
• this love that reached out to you, though God had every right to be—and WAS—enemies of us
Remembering the cross can have a profound effect on us:
Why then, let your mind come to rest in Christ’s Passion, and find in his sacred wounds the home it longs for. Take refuge in those wounds, those precious scars, as a devout soul should, and you will feel in all your troubles, a deep sense of consolation. How little you will care for the contempt of your fellow men, how easily you will put up with their criticisms. (Thomas a Kempis, The Discipline of the Inner life, p. 133 in H.T. Kerr’s Readings in Christian thought)
God doesn’t say ‘get your act together’ and right all the wrongs before you come to me, before I will think of loving you. No, he says: I make a path FOR you TO come to me . . . Amazing this love he has for us that makes all hardships with others pale in comparision.
“remember”
• this love of mercy, forgiveness, and sacrifice
o when you find yourselves at odds with another man/woman, husband/wife, brother/sister, boss/employee
“remember”
And with much more gravity and greater implications, God said to his son: “Jesus, My Son, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!”
Christ destroys and breaks down the walls with his nailscarred/bloodstained hands /of humiliity
[At this point I start tearing down the wall of boxes, and “remember by recalling,” vividly, what was happening when Christ offered his body, sheds his blood, tears down the wall: who WE ARE at that very moment: not loveable, not saved, mocking, apathetic, full of anger, abusing our loved ones, stealing from work, etc.]
But note!--
HE JUST DOESN’T TEAR DOWN. HE REBUILDS
HE JUST DOES’T DECLARE ENEMIES “Friends”, HE TRANSFORMS THEM
IN ENDING OUR HOSTILITY, HE BECOMES OUR PEACE
So, in Jesus,
3. We find peace that rebuilds and transforms what was hopeless into a holy temple where God dwells!
Eph 2:14 he himself is our peace. . .
Remember how Isaiah said
6 For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
And in Micah when it said the Messiah, who would be born in Bethlehem, “would be our peace”
And he WAS born, and the angels sang:
14 “Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”
He is our Peace. And because HE is OUR Peace, there is a point:
Colossians 3:15
15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.
“remember”
Because of what Christ has done for me, and as his disciple, God’s own child, I am to let the peace of Christ RULE in my heart.
I was CALLED to PEACE. YOU were CALLED to PEACE.
And we find that in Pennsylvania, these people, that many in the world would describe at best “different” or “odd,” and at worst, would ridicule them for their uniqueness (dress, customs), these people with whom we find ourselves SEPARATED from, these people have now invoked our amazement at the LOVE they show, that flows from their CONVICTION of PEACE. PEACE that they themselves know in the Lord.
Since the shooting,
• not only have members of the Amish community attended the funeral of the killer in support of his wife and two little children, but they
• have said they forgive Charles Carl Roberts IV
They REMEMBERED, and the walls of HOSTILITY were broken down.
THEY REMEMBERED, and the two have become one.
His (the shooter’s) wife, who herself is reportedly an active Christian, active in her church, hosting women’s groups at her house (EVEN as her husband was tormented in soul and angry and hostile toward God) responded to this outpouring of these “odd” Amish by writing this to them.
"Please know that our hearts have been broken by all that has happened," Marie Roberts wrote. "We are filled with sorrow for all of our Amish neighbors whom we have loved and continue to love."
"Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need," she wrote.
"Gifts you’ve given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. ...
Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you." (cited from an AP story)
"We know there are many hard days ahead for all the families who lost loved ones, and so we will continue to put our hope and trust in the God of all comfort, as we all seek to rebuild our lives," she wrote.
The Amish remembered.
Marie Roberts remembered.
We can remember(highlighting the points of unity or reconciliation in the text):
v.13 have been brought near
v.14 who has made the two one
v.15 create in himself one new man
v.16 in this one body to reconcile both of them to God
v.18 through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
DO we sometimes TOO EASILY forget what Christ HAS DONE for us? IF so, we need to
“remember”
Christ is to mean more than a glimpse on Sunday or a set of facts learned, he when formed in us, when dwelt and communed with, will have a profound effect on our lives.
Thomas a Kempis encourages: "Christ is ready to come to you, with what kindness in his glance! But you must make room, deep in your heart, to entertain him as he deserves; it is for the inward eye, all the splendor and beauty of him; deep in your heart is where he likes to be [with such a man] he is a frequent visitor (in H. T. Kerr, Readings in Christian thought, p. 132)
The depth of our heart is where Christ wants to go. He didn’t die for us just to give
• him 4 minutes during communion
• half hearted prayers before meals
• serious study time one hour a week
• occasional spurt of good deeds done in his name
He wants to go to the depths.
WILL you invite him in? In your quiet time? MAKING quiet time?
WILL he be YOUR peace?
WILL you extend HIS peace?
READ Ephesians 2:19-22
[I start taking the tumbled over boxes from the broken wall and build them into a “temple”]. I love this image, of Christ rebuilding what was broken. He can restore all things in himself!
And one of the key points in this passage is that we no longer identify ourselves in what divides: race, country, gender, etc.
This worlds is no native country of yours, go where you will, you are only a foreigner, only a visitor in it. Nothing will ever bring you rest, except being closely united to Jesus... This is no place for you to settle down. Heaven is your destination, and you should look upon this earthly scene only as a transit camp. . . . All your thoughts must be at home iwth God, all your prayer make its way up to Christ continually. (a Kempis, 132/133 in Hugh T Kerr, Readings in Christian Thought)
The temple used to be a place that knew division; the earlier temple had places only the priests could go, and the Herodian temple added more, separating women and Gentiles. But our passage declares, in God’s holy temple, there ARE NO divisions. Instead, the picture we get is that what was once Separated has now been United. The wall has been torn down and the temple is being built up to our Lord.
How often do we meditate on this picture of a holy temple, built on the foundation of the apostles and Christ Jesus, as the reality of what God’s church is? Not just Monroe Christian Church, but St. Paul’s Lutheran, Stewart Road Church of God, Christ Love Fellowship, all being built up as holy unto the Lord, indwellt by his Spirit?
In fact, earlier this week I ran across a young man who is on fire for Jesus, and loves what he sees happening in his own church family. But one thing he said was very interesting: that he, and others in his church are noticing what God is doing in bringing churches in the area to a greater sense of unity. Now, I have heard that comment from many people of different church heritages in this town. Being new, it is hard for me to assess it all, but I know that on the one hand, I have heard of splits and division all over this area, and I have even one person on a business call from California comment that she had experienced a “dark cloud” over the church in Monroe during her stay here years ago, but now, people from all over the area are independently telling me that the church is starting to come together. We shall see. But it just could be that God IS at work in his church, that in spite of all our petty and contentious walls, we really are coming to grips that in Christ, we are ONE!
Ephesians, though it is very “heady” and “abstract” in the first 3 chpaters is none the less very practical. A former minister of this church was telling me he is also preaching through Ephesians and constantly is coming face to face with the fact that he does not always live up to what he is preaching and that the message has a direct bearing on what he is to do in life.
And such is what we find today. Though much of the words in today’s text are very distant from our day to day experience, we are called on to REMEMBER that Christ is our peace, no matter what our situation.
We will still experience walls. We will still be at odds with God and man. But remembering what Christ has done and is doing for and with us will serve in the very least as a call to commitment to peace. He will be the grounds and the power for our peace.
How can we continue to despise our spouse, undercut our boss, nurse a grudge when Christ, on the Cross, so sacrificially brought peace with God and peace for man.
Today’s sermon is not a “how to achieve peace”, that will come later in the book. But today’s message does remind us to remember that Christ gives us every reason and reality to work for peace, to enjoy peace, to be people of peace
“REMEMBER”
(a kempis, 132) You must make room for Christ, then, and shut the door upon all intruders. If Christ is yours, then wealth is yours; he satisfies all your wants. He will look after you, manage all your affairs for you most dutifully; you will need to human support to rely on. Our human friends change so easily, fail us after such a short time! Whereas Christ abides for ever, and stands loyally, to the last, at our side.
WILL he be YOUR peace?
WILL you extend HIS peace?
It is hard to embrace around a wall of hostility but in Christ, whose hands tore down this wall, we now embrace those very nail scarred hands and together, rise up in unity and peace, finding ourselves a temple in which the very Spirit of God dwells!
We now Embrace!
