Ephesians 2v11-22

Reconciliation

Racism in our country

In January a white South African woman, Penny Sparrow – posted on facebook

describing black people as monkeys.

In response, a black South African man, Velaphi Khumalo posted on facebook

calling for black people to do to whites what Hitler did to the Jews.

More recently we have witnessed black students wearing T-shirts openly

declaring their hatred of white people. And we’ve witnessed white students

beating up black students on the rugby field.

Furthermore there’s a growing tension in our country especially amongst black

people that the effects of apartheid have not been dealt with. And of course

there’s no denying the fact that the majority of

black people growing up in South Africa continue to miss out on the same

education, the same opportunities, the same basic privileges as white people.

And understandably there’s a growing frustration. And there’s this rising

tension. Racial conflict seems to be on the rise.

And so it begs the question: how should the church respond?

And I don’t think it’s a co-incidence that we working through Ephesians at this

time. I’m grateful to God. I feel like it’s His guidance over us. Because this is a

book that’s all about unity in Christ.

Remember our key verse. Ephesians 1 verse 10. God’s great purpose is to

gather all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, namely

Christ.”

And that’s not just something God’s gona do at the end. He’s already doing it

now. And the visible evidence that He’s doing it is the church. Its in the church

that we see a visible picture of God’s power to unite.

And so as the church we should be a model to the world of a united

community. A community that’s united across cultures and nationalities and

races.

And so let me just put in a disclaimer right at the beginning. I’m not gona be

talking this morning about the detailed questions: Like

Is it time to get over apartheid?

Or is BEE bad?

Or how can we provide equal opportunities for blacks and whites in the New

South Africa.

Those are all important questions. And tomorrow night in our ministry leaders

meeting we’ll be discussing them.

But that’s not my aim this morning. My aim is simply to show that the church

should be a model of unity.

I want you to see that in Christ wev got a source of unity that’s more powerful

than any other source.

And so this morning my prayer is that we’ll really come to appreciate what it

means to be a community in Christ. And that we’ll come to see that as the

deepest definition of who we are. Deeper than who we are by tribe or by

culture or by race.

That we’ll be able to say: Before I’m a Kotze or a Barrow or an Mkiva

Im a person in Christ

Before I’m a black person or a white person.

I’m a person in Christ

Before I’m a South African or a Kenyan.

I’m a person in Christ.

And I think there three main points that we need to grasp in our passage this

morning if we really gona value our unity in Christ.

Firstly, we need to remember who we were

Secondly, we need to see what Christ has done

And thirdly, we need to appreciate who we are

Remember who you were

See what Christ has done

Appreciate who you are

Firstly remember who we were.

I wonder if you ever take time in your life to remember what you were without

Jesus? To remember your sin? To remember your hopelessness? To think

about where you would be today if Jesus hadn’t changed your life.

Well in verse 11 Paul calls us to do exactly that. Look at verse 11

“Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called

“uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (that done in

the body by the hands of men) – remember that at that time you were

separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the

covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.”

You see, in the Old Testament God chose one nation to be His people. And that

nation was the Jews. And so if you were born into another nation. If you were

a Gentile, then you were separated from God.

And you were despised by the Jews.

According to the Bible scholar William Barclay,

“The Jew had an immense contempt for the Gentile. The Gentiles, said the

Jews, were created by God to be fuels for the fire of hell. God, they said, loves

only Israel of all the nations that he had made. It was not even lawful to render

help to a Gentile mother in her hour of sorest need, for that would simply be

to bring another Gentile into the world. Until Christ came, the Gentiles were an

object of contempt to the Jews. The barrier between them was absolute. If a

Jewish boy married a Gentile girl, or if a Jewish girl married a Gentile boy, the

funeral of that Jewish boy or girl was carried out. Such contact with a Gentile

was the equivalent of death.”

Seperated from God. Despised by the Jews.

And so in verse 12 Paul drives it home. He mentions five things that you didn’t

have as a Gentile person in the OT. Firstly you didn’t have the Christ.

And you might say, even the Jews didn’t have the Christ in the Old Testament.

But you need to understand, the word Christ isn’t the surname for Jesus. Jesus

Christ isn’t the same as Kyle Barrow. The word Christ is a title like Mr or

Doctor. And it means “the anointed one”. It was the One promised in the Old

Testament who would come to save Gods people. And so even though Jesus

hadn’t yet arrived, the Jews did still have this title. They were looking forward

to this Messiah or Christ. But if you were a Gentile you didn’t know anything

about Him. You weren’t expecting Him. You didn’t have this hope.

Secondly, you were excluded from citizenship in Israel. To be a citizen of a

country is to enjoy all its rights and privileges. And the great privilege of the

Jews was their relationship with God. According to Romans 9 theirs was the

adoption as sons. They were God’s sons and daughters.

Theirs was the divine glory. They had the glory of God living amongst them.

Theirs was the temple worship. They could worship God.

This was the great privilege of the Jews. A relationship with God. But as

Gentiles we were excluded.

Thirdly, we were foreigners to the covenants of the promise.

Over and over again God made promises to His people. Promises of salvation

and peace and life.

But those promises didn’t reach our ears as Gentiles. They weren’t given to us.

And so then fourthly we were without hope. Its hard to imagine a more tragic

condition than that. To not have any hope in this life. Of course we were very

good at deceiving ourselves with false hopes. Short term pleasures that hide

the hopelessness. But the reality is: without Christ you without hope. And

when that really hits home for a person. When there’s no light at the end of

the tunnel. Well that’s what sometimes causes people to commit suicide.

We were without hope

And then fifthly, without God in the world. Living in the world God has made.

But without any personal knowledge of Him. Not His friend. No smile upon

your life. No comfort from His love. As we saw last week, we were objects of

His wrath.

And so these are the things Paul reminds the Ephesians of. And my big

question is “why?”

Why does Paul do this?

I mean these aren’t happy memories. These aren’t the kind of things you like

to think about. When u’ve got a horrible memory from the past, don’t you

prefer to forget about it. To blot it from your mind. You definitely don’t

appreciate someone who keeps bringing it up.

But that’s exactly what Paul does here. And he doesn’t just do it once. He did it

in our passage last week. Verses 1-3. Reminding us we were dead in our sins.

Slaves of the devil. Objects of God’s wrath. He does it again here. Why does he

keep doing it? Why does he keep rubbing our past in our faces?

And here’s the reason why:

In the words of John Piper:

“adoration for Christ grows best in the freshly plowed soil of humiliation”

In other words the more humiliated we are about ourselves, the more we will

adore and be thankful for Christ.

And so if John Piper’s right. And I think he is.

Then actually we don’t help people when we encourage them to forget about

their sins or to forgive themselves for what they’ve done or to learn to love

themselves simply because theyv been forgiven.

When we say that to people we actually taking away an opportunity for them

to grow in their appreciation of Jesus.

Listen to Ezekiel chapter 16 verse 63. This is how Ezekiel expects us to feel

when we realize what Jesus has done for us. Ezekiel 16 verse 63. “Then when I

make atonement for you for all you have done,

(in other words when I take away your sins.)

Then you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth

because of your humiliation, declares the Sovereign Lord.

You see when we realize what Jesus has done for us, it should make us deeply

thankful. But it should also make us deeply humble as we remember what wev

been saved from.

Listen to these words by the famous preacher Charles Simeon. He says the

same thing.

“With this sweet hope of ultimate acceptance from God I have always enjoyed

much cheerfulness before men, but I have at the same time laboured

incessantly to cultivate the deepest humiliation before God. I have never

thought that the circumstance of God having forgiven me was any reason why I

should forgive myself. On the contrary, I have always judged it better to loathe

myself the more in proportion as I was assured of God’s being pacified towards

me.”

Sounds a lot like Ezekiel 16.

“Therefore there are but two objects that I have ever desired for these 40

years to behold, one is my own vileness, the other is the glory of God in the

face of Jesus Christ. And I have always thought that they should be viewed

together… …By this I think not only to be humbled and thankful, but to be

humbled in thankfulness before my God and Saviour continually.”

I think Simeon’s right. But let me tell you that’s very different from a lot of

popular Christianity today. Its very different from most of what you’ll find in

CUM bookstore. Most of those books are about positive thinking or about

having a high self-esteem. They not so focused on growing downwards in

humiliation before God. And growing upwards in appreciation for Christ.

“adoration for Christ grows best in the freshly plowed soil of humiliation”

But What’s this got to do with racism? And Unity in the church?

Well this is the first crucial thing that unites us. Whether we’re black or white

or Zulu or Xhosa. Or South African or Zimbabwean? We were all in this

hopeless position.

And if we wanna really appreciate our unity in Christ, then we need to think

bank and remember that hopelessness.

But now secondly, we’ve remembered what we were. Now we need to see

what Christ has done.

And its summarized for us in verse 14. “He Himself is our peace.” That’s what

verses 14-18 are all about.

The word “peace” is repeated four times in these verses.

Jesus is our peace

And the first thing He’s done to make peace is to destroy the dividing wall of

hostility.

Verse 14.

For He himself is our peace, Who has made the two one and has destroyed the

barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.

We all familiar with dividing walls of hostility.

On the screen there should be a picture of the Berlin wall. This is a wall that

divided East Berlin from West Berlin until it was finally demolished in 1990. It

divided the people. According to the people on the East, it was to protect

themselves from the fascist influence of the people on the West.

In South Africa we familiar with the dividing wall of apartheid.

Not a physical wall. But still a barrier preventing non-whites from going to

certain beaches or from living in certain areas or from attending certain

schools.

Well the dividing wall that’s being spoken about here also isnt a physical wall.

Its talking about God’s law. Look at verse 15.

He destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh

the law with its commandments and regulations.”

You see, God’s law was the covenant He made with Israel. Israel enjoyed a

relationship with God on the basis of the law. But it was an exclusive covenant.

It was only for Jews. Gentiles weren’t included.

And so therefore the law was a dividing wall. It divided the Jews from the

Gentiles.

And in fact, many of the laws were specifically given to distinguish the Jews. To

mark them out as separate. They had to wear certain clothes. They could only

eat certain foods. All those laws reminded the Jews that they were different.

But now this wall has been broken down. The law has been abolished.

And so you might be thinking to yourself. If the law’s been abolished, then why

don’t we just rip it out of our Bibles. Its got no value for today. But that’s not

what Paul is saying. The law still has value. It still teaches us about the

righteousness of God.

In fact in Matthew 5 verse 17 Jesus Himself says “Do not think that I have come

to abolish the law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to

fulfil them.”

And so these two passage seems to contradict each other. Paul says Jesus has

abolished the law. Jesus says, “I have not come to abolish the law.”

But its not a contradiction. These two verses are talking about the law in

different ways. Paul is talking about the law as the covenant between God and

Israel. Jesus is talking about the law as the revelation of God’s will.

And so even though the law has been abolished as the covenant between God

and the Jews, it hasn’t been a abolished as a revelation of God’s will. The law

of God can still teach us about God’s mind and about His righteousness. As 2

Tim. 3 verse 16 says: All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching,

rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.

And so we should still read the law. We can learn about how to love God and

how to love one another. We can be trained in righteousness.

But no longer is it the covenant between God and man. And so you don’t have

to go to the law and become a Jew in order to have a relationship with God.

That covenant has been abolished. The dividing wall of hostility has been

broken down.

But now if you really wanna make peace between people, its not enough just

to destroy the dividing wall.

After the Berlin wall was broken down that didn’t immediately create peace.

The people still had to come together. They had to get used to living together

and enjoying relationships.

the same’s true for apartheid. Just because apartheid is over. That doesn’t

mean we’ve got peace. We might be able visit the same beaches or attend the

same schools. Or sit together in the same church. But peace involves more

than just breaking down the dividing wall.

Peace involves the creation of something new.

And that’s why I don’t think we can solve the racism in our country just by

changing laws. Or just by having campaigns against racism. Or just by telling

people to love each other.

In fact its incredibly naïve to think that just by educating people we can solve

the problem of racism.

I heard this last week that when Hitler was carrying out his terrible holocaust

against the Jews. When he held those racist views. There were some people

who seriously thought that if they could just sit down with him. And have a

good opportunity to talk with him around a table. And explain to him that what

he’s doing is wrong. Then they’ll be able to stop him.

Incredibly naïve.

But I think that’s how some people view racism in South Africa. If we can just

educate people.

As Pumza said earlier, racism is a matter of the heart. And so true peace needs

something deeper. It needs the creation of something new.

Well in verse 15 we see that Jesus hasn’t just demolished the dividing wall.

He’s created something new. Look at verse 15 again.

verse 15.

“He has abolished the law with its commandments and regulations. His

purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making

peace,

You see Christ has created a new man. Or you could translate it as a new

humanity or a new race. If ur a Gentile you don’t have to become a Jew. If ur a

Jew you don’t have to become a Gentile.

If you black you don’t have to become white. If ur white you don’t have to

become black.

All uv gotta do is to become part of this new humanity. this body of Christ. You

need to find your identity in Him. And then through Him you can have access

to God. Look at verse 16.

You might be an unbeliever here this morning. Without Christ. Still dead in ur

sins. Without hope. Without God. Then you need to listen to this verse. This is

your hope.

“and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross. He

came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who

were near. For through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.”

You see Jesus has made a way for us to come to God. Its not through the law.

You cant come to God by obeying laws. Its through realizing that ur a sinner.

And that only Jesus can save you. He died on the cross for your sins. And so

you need to put your trust in Him. If you haven’t done that before, then please

do that this morning. You too can have access to God.

And so you see this is what unites us. it doesn’t matter if ur Jew or Gentile.

Black or white. Educated or uneducated. Rich or poor. We all in the same

position. We all equal at the foot of the cross. There’s only one way to get to

God. It’s through Jesus. And it’s through the cross.

As Billy Graham said, “The ground is level at the foot of the cross.”

And so I hope you can see: as the body of Christ we more than just a random

group of people sitting together in the same building. Trying to ignore our

differences. Trying to get on with each other. Trying to love each other. We

much more than that. We’r a new creation. new humanity. A new race. Even

though we might have different skin colours and nationalities. We might have

differences in terms of our cultures or our political views.

But in Christ we’ve become something new. And this is our deepest identity. Its

the deepest definition of who we are. And this is what unites us. It’s the most

powerful source of unity.

And now finally, And very briefly. 1) we’ve remembered what we were. 2)

We’ve seen what Christ has done. Now Finally, we need to appreciate what we

are.

Its amazing how the intimacy between us and God grows in this passage.

So In verses 11-12 we described as being far away.

In verse 13, it says we were brought near through the blood of Christ.

In verse 18 it says that we have received access to the Father by one Spirit.

But now finally in verses 19-21 it reaches the climax. We are nothing less than

the temple and dwelling place of God. Look at verse 19

“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with

God’s people

I hope no Christian in this church feels like a foreigner or an alien. Ur a citizen

of God’s people.

“and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and

prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole

building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And

in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God

lives by His Spirit.”

You see in the Old Testament, the temple was the place where the glory of

God lived with His people. But that physical temple’s been abolished. The

fulfilment of that temple has arrived.

And its not a physical building.

Please don’t think that this church building is the temple of God. Please don’t

think that you need to travel to any sacred place to meet with God.

The dwelling place of God is in His people. The community in Christ

Of course I know God also lives within each one of us individually as His

people. And so we can each enjoy our own personal relationship with God. But

in a special sense, God is present with His people joined together in Christ. And

so that’s where you must go to meet with God. To the gathering of God’s

people. When you go week after week without going to church. And you say,

ag its fine I’ll just listen to a sermon on the internet. Or I’ll just watch the guy

preaching on TV. But you not gathering with God’s people. Then You missing

out on an experience of God.

There’s a wonderful quote by CS Lewis where he argues that it takes a

community to really know an individual. And in the same way, it takes a

community to really experience God.

CS Lewis was part of a close group of friends that included JR Tolkien (author of

Lord of the rings) and a couple of others.

And one of his friends Charles Williams died. And after he died CS Lewis wrote

these words. Listen carefully

“In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can

fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man

into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now

that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s [Tolkien’s] reaction

to a specifically Charles joke. Instead of having more of Ronald, having

him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I actually have less of

Ronald…

You see what he’s saying? You don’t actually have more of a person

when its just you and him. Because you have him all to yourself. You

actually have less of him. Because you don’t have all the facets of him

that other people can bring out.

And he goes on to say the same is true with God.

“the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases

the experience which each of us has of God. For every soul, seeing Him

in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the

rest.”

And so that’s the great blessing of being in a diverse, multi-racial church.

Each one of us has our own personal relationship with God. And so we

each reflect Him in our own unique ways. In our own unique cultures.

And so actually it enables us to get to know God better and to

experience Him more, being in a church like this.

And so I wanna close by urging you:

Please appreciate the church. This body of believers.

I wanna ask you:

Please see this group of people as your primary family. You might think I’m

crazy. But these are your brothers and sisters in Christ.

And If Christ is your primary identity. Then surely this is your primary family.

Please lets open our hearts to one another. Please lets share our lives with

each other. Please lets love one another. Welcome each other into your homes

and at your braais. Don’t just hang out with those who have the same political

views as you or who support the same rugby team. Mix across the races.

Experience more of God as He’s reflected in different cultures. Different

individuals.

But most of all. I wanna ask you:

Please fix your eyes on Jesus. Because He’s the source. Our identity and our

unity is found in Him.

Lets pray