SPEAKER_01: Starting with verse 11, it says, Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, made in the flesh by hands, 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.
SPEAKER_01: But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: And he came and priest preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near.
SPEAKER_01: For through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father.
SPEAKER_01: 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, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: In him you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: So reads God's word.
SPEAKER_00: It felt a little bit like the introduction to today's uh sermon kind of writes itself because I don't know if you've noticed, uh, but as a culture, as a society in the West, we're a little bit divided.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that might be something that is familiar to you unless you've been living under a rock uh for the last uh, I guess, uh, well, certainly half decade, but possibly possibly more.
SPEAKER_00: Uh there are lots of divisions along lots of different lines, whether it's uh political or ethnic or cultural or class or religion.
SPEAKER_00: I imagine if I, and I'm not going to do this, uh, got even people in this room to say, put up your hand if you think Donald Trump is awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then got everybody else to look at uh who had their hand in the air, or the opposite, put up your hand if you think Donald Trump is the worst orange man who ever lived.
SPEAKER_00: Um you might get a strong division even in a room like this.
SPEAKER_00: Uh how do we handle these divisions?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, these uh dividing lines, whether it's political or ethnic or cultural or class-based or religious, uh, are dividing walls.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, walls which uh in some senses protect uh the community within them, uh, but walls which keep others out.
SPEAKER_00: It's them and us.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we can be tempted to look at the particular polarizing figures like the Donald and blame them for the division that they caused all of this hostility.
SPEAKER_00: But that would be too low a resolution view on human history because human history is riddled with separation and walls.
SPEAKER_00: Human history is the story of division, nation against nation, empire against empire.
SPEAKER_00: You keep on going further and further back, and you go back to tribe against tribe, and you go further back still, and you go back to uh family versus family, and you go back further still, at least in the pages of the Bible, and what do you get?
SPEAKER_00: You get brother against brother.
SPEAKER_00: Go back another page.
SPEAKER_00: What do you get?
SPEAKER_00: You get humanity against their God.
SPEAKER_00: Division and separation leading to hostility is the story of human history.
SPEAKER_00: Before Cain murdered Abel, humanity was estranged from the God who made them.
SPEAKER_00: So the fountainhead, the wellspring of all of our division and hostility, the breach that exists between peoples, is not one political figure.
SPEAKER_00: No, the fountainhead of division that exists between peoples is our vertical division between humanity and the God who made us.
SPEAKER_00: And so any solution that would bring lasting peace must take that vertical breach, that separation between God and man, God and humanity, into account.
SPEAKER_00: Or else it will never deliver a lasting peace.
SPEAKER_00: Some people have tried to offer solutions.
SPEAKER_00: They've said that the differences that exist between us are unimportant or inconsequential, and yet that is not how we tend to feel them.
SPEAKER_00: The differences that exist between us are sometimes deeply held.
SPEAKER_00: In the West, we have tried to say something like, well, all cultures are actually well, just they're all the same and of equal moral weight, value, and utility.
SPEAKER_00: And yet that doesn't seem to have worked either.
SPEAKER_00: And that is not Christianity's answer.
SPEAKER_00: Paul, in these passages that we've been looking at over the last few weeks, and we're in a series of uh of what the book of Ephesians has to teach us about the church.
SPEAKER_00: But two weeks ago, when we looked at chapter one, Paul prayed three things for the church.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to have the eyes of their spirits, the eyes of their hearts enlightened.
SPEAKER_00: So, what that basically means is I'm praying that you will see certain things that you can only see with the eyes of faith, right?
SPEAKER_00: And the three things that he thinks that we can only see with the eyes of faith are this.
SPEAKER_00: One, the hope to which we're called, right?
SPEAKER_00: The hope that is laid up for humanity because of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first one.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, the glorious riches of his inheritance in the saints.
SPEAKER_00: We'll come back to that.
SPEAKER_00: And the third one was the power that is at work within us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, last week we saw that power that is at work within us.
SPEAKER_00: What is that power?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's the power to bring the dead back to life.
SPEAKER_00: That just as Jesus was raised from the dead, so we, by his grace, received through the empty hand of faith, who were dead in our trespasses and sins, are raised to newness of life.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul has gone on to tell us about the power at work within us.
SPEAKER_00: And now, in a sense, he's circling back, and in this passage, he's showing us the immeasurable riches of his grace in the inheritance of the saints, that is, in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Put it another way, let's simplify the language.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's saying, I want to show you the amazing work that God is about in the church.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to have spiritual eyes to see how beautiful a diverse and united church is around the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what this passage is all about.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to see the beauty of the church.
SPEAKER_00: And in order to do that, he encourages us in three simultaneous ways.
SPEAKER_00: And they're going to appear on the screen behind me, I hope.
SPEAKER_00: The first is that he wants us to actually remember the walls that divided us, which might seem strange.
SPEAKER_00: You might think, well, I want to move on from that.
SPEAKER_00: But no, he says, start by remembering those things that divided you.
SPEAKER_00: Then, second, we are to trust the everlasting peacemaker.
SPEAKER_00: And then third, to live as God's new humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Look at that.
SPEAKER_00: So that's where we're going.
SPEAKER_00: Don't just nod off now that they're up there.
SPEAKER_00: Track with me.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Number one, remember the walls that divided us.
SPEAKER_00: Paul begins with this command to remember where they have come from.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 11, therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called, quote, the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: Why does Paul command this remembrance?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not nostalgia.
SPEAKER_00: It's not in saying, Oh, you remember, remember how great things were?
SPEAKER_00: Remember how you had it?
SPEAKER_00: No, he's saying, remember how divided you were, how hostile you were to those who you deemed as lesser, as other than you.
SPEAKER_00: And he is drawing on a particular division, uh, probably the deepest division that is ever run between humanity, certainly the deepest division that existed in the ancient world, and that was the one between Jew and Gentile.
SPEAKER_00: When Paul quotes, uh puts in quote marks the uncircumcision, they're in quote marks because that was a Jewish ethnic slur against the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: You might think in your own minds of other ethnic slurs that might be used in our day.
SPEAKER_00: And in the ancient world, the uncircumcision, we might we kind of read read read over it, but imagine if Paul had put in the N-word.
SPEAKER_00: It has that level of emotional force.
SPEAKER_00: That's how deep the hostility ran.
SPEAKER_00: An ethnic slur that the Jews uh said against the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: And equally, it is not as though you had uh one side was was oppressed and the other side was oppressor.
SPEAKER_00: The Gentiles give back as good as they did it.
SPEAKER_00: So they derided the Jews for their circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you weren't expecting lots of chat about circumcision this morning, uh before uh before your morning pastry, I'm sorry, but it's here.
SPEAKER_00: Um but this was the level of uh of derision, of hostility, of hatred and rancor.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants them to remember that tension that there was between them.
SPEAKER_00: Now, given that he's riding to a predominantly Gentile city in Ephesus, which is uh over over uh near uh modern-day Turkey, riding to a predominantly non-Jewish audience, he then spells out the implications of this division.
SPEAKER_00: What did it mean for for them to experience this wall, this hostility?
SPEAKER_00: And so he gives five little staccato points in the next verses as to the consequence of their division.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12 remember that you were one, separated from Christ, two, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, three, strangers to the covenants of promise, four, having no hope, five, without God in the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way the Gentile now Christians were separated from Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just run through so that we understand what each of them mean very briefly.
SPEAKER_00: Separated from Christ.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: See, Paul's saying, God had promised to the Jews a Messiah, a savior king, chosen by God, anointed by him who would come and rescue them.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, Gentiles, he was not your king.
SPEAKER_00: You had no share in the Messiah, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That is, that they were, they were not members of God's chosen people all the way through the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: God is saying, You are my particular treasure.
SPEAKER_00: And some other translations say, my peculiar treasure, chosen out of all of the nations of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's saying, Gentiles, that was not you.
SPEAKER_00: You were not part of God's chosen, treasured people, called out from amongst all the nations of the world, strangers to the covenant.
SPEAKER_00: That is, the covenant was this legal, uh, this legal document filled with blessings and responsibilities, and say, all of the blessings of being God's covenant people you could not enjoy.
SPEAKER_00: They were not your blessings, they were not your rights.
SPEAKER_00: For as a consequence of all of this, they had no hope in the world, no future to aspire to, no future to stabilize their present.
SPEAKER_00: And fifthly, without God in the world, their religions, their spiritualities, their belief systems were not all just different paths up God's mountain.
SPEAKER_00: They had no access to him as a consequence.
SPEAKER_00: You might think about your um your passport.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you traveled here uh recently.
SPEAKER_00: Your your passport identifies that you are a citizen of a particular country.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I have two, I have an Irish one and I have a British one because I grew up in Northern Ireland.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so I'm a I'm a divided person in my own being.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but my my British one's about to lapse, and I will enjoy my Irish citizenship uh into the next into the next decade.
SPEAKER_00: And our citizenship, which our passport identifies, it grants us certain legal protections, certain legal guarantees.
SPEAKER_00: So, in theory, the blessing of the constitution of your home country is yours to enjoy by rights as a citizen.
SPEAKER_00: But if someone is not a citizen, then those blessings, those protections of that shared cultural identity do not apply to them in the same way.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul is saying that the Gentiles by nature had no citizenship, had no standing, had no status in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: They were far far off.
SPEAKER_00: It is as though they were standing on the shores of that land.
SPEAKER_00: But they could be certain that they would be turned away at the border.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 14, he describes this great dividing wall between Jew and Gentile.
SPEAKER_00: And on one hand, on one hand, you kind of get the metaphor, and Paul is using it in a metaphorical way.
SPEAKER_00: But did you know that Paul is also talking about a literal wall that divided Jew and Gentile?
SPEAKER_00: Now, have a thing.
SPEAKER_00: Where was that literal wall?
SPEAKER_00: Well, that literal wall existed in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: The temple, if you can imagine a great rectangular structure, was a series of walls, a series of concentric courts moving out.
SPEAKER_00: So in the very heart of the temple, you had the most holy place where only one person, the high priest, could could go one time a year with a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: And it was divided by a great curtain.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first wall.
SPEAKER_00: Beyond that was the uh the inner court of the temple, the holy place.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where uh the priests could minister and they could offer incense and prayers, but they couldn't go behind the curtain.
SPEAKER_00: Then you come out and you have the the court of the court of the Jews, the court of the men, where the priests would offer sacrifices on the great burnt altar, where the great uh basin, the labor of ceremonial washings, set, and only uh Jewish men could go there.
SPEAKER_00: And then you had the court of the women, where Jewish women could offer their prayers behind another wall.
SPEAKER_00: And then you step out again, and there's another wall, and what at the furthest point, all the way back, furthest point from the most holy place, the furthest point from any sacrifice, what court was there?
SPEAKER_00: It was the court of the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: Thus far and no further.
SPEAKER_00: And on the doorway that connected the Gentile court to the inner courts, there was a sign.
SPEAKER_00: What did that sign say?
SPEAKER_00: That sign said that if you cross this line, you are responsible for your own impending death.
SPEAKER_00: You're responsible for your own shed blood if a Gentile crosses that line.
SPEAKER_00: And so any Gentile coming to worship God, any non-Jew coming to worship God, that's as far as they could get.
SPEAKER_00: They could purchase a sacrificial animal, but they had to then pass it on to a priest who would take it on in.
SPEAKER_00: They could never see that animal be sacrificed, they could never smell the sense of that burnt offering, offering atonement for their own sin.
SPEAKER_00: They were excluded.
SPEAKER_00: There was a dividing wall.
SPEAKER_00: Parenthetically, when Jesus overturns the table in the temple, you know that famous scene, even if you've only Sunday school knowledge, you know that Jesus got a little bit annoyed one day and he turns over all of the tables of the money changers and scatters all the livestock.
SPEAKER_00: Where was that market?
SPEAKER_00: It was in the court of the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: Why is Jesus so annoyed?
SPEAKER_00: Because he's looking at the Jews and he's saying, This is as far as a non-Jew can get.
SPEAKER_00: This is as far as a non-Jew can get to worship God, and you have turned it into a marketplace.
SPEAKER_00: A literal dividing wall that kept people tight.
SPEAKER_00: The Jew-Gentile divide in the ancient world was the hardest social wall of the first century because it was not only ethnic, but religious and cultural and legal.
SPEAKER_00: Why does Paul want us to remember those things?
SPEAKER_00: Why does Paul want us to remember those walls?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not because Paul wants to shame us, or indeed shame his first readers.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, he seeks to expose the depth of our problem.
SPEAKER_00: The depth of division that runs between human beings.
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, to encourage us to move forward together with gratitude and humility, not taking the unity that we enjoy for granted.
SPEAKER_00: We are to remember that this is the natural disposition of the human heart to each one of us.
SPEAKER_00: I feel this in my own heart.
SPEAKER_00: We gravitate by nature to tribes that we identify with.
SPEAKER_00: We gravitate towards echo chambers, our algorithms, our podcast feed reflect back to us the boundary lines that we instinctively draw.
SPEAKER_00: So we all have temperaments and we all have particular convictions, and some of those convictions are very deeply held.
SPEAKER_00: So we must know that we can be led to looking down upon and disdaining others as a consequence.
SPEAKER_00: So it is worth asking yourself, what what label instinctively triggers you that somebody identified themselves as being, oh I'm not sure that I want to be in a community group with them.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure that they should be a leader of a community group if that's the way that they think.
SPEAKER_00: What type of people do you tend to look down on?
SPEAKER_00: Even if you don't even if you don't mean to.
SPEAKER_00: You know that it kind of something has aroused in you in that moment.
SPEAKER_00: There are walls that we each need to acknowledge and repent of.
SPEAKER_00: And that is to trust the peacemaker.
SPEAKER_00: There is such a temptation to place our hope in a particular man-made system, whether it is a political party or an economic idea or a cultural system.
SPEAKER_00: If only our candidate were to win, if we could create policies that ensured X, Y, Z, if we could embrace these ideals, if we could take to ourselves these beliefs, then surely the world would be a better place.
SPEAKER_00: And look, please hear me.
SPEAKER_00: God has put in place a system of good governance.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible teaches on what good governance should look like.
SPEAKER_00: But in terms of our ultimate hope, in terms of our ultimate lasting peace, it can only be found in one place.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: But now in Christ, you who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, did you notice that we were talking about places there?
SPEAKER_00: What place can peace be found?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is a person.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_00: The place of peace is the person of peace, the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, but now, that decisive pivotal moment, given all of this hostility, given all of this division, we're switching, but now God has acted, something has happened, there's a bend in the arc of human history.
SPEAKER_00: But now in Christ, the prince of peace is the place of peace.
SPEAKER_00: He himself is the peacemaker.
SPEAKER_00: Peace, therefore, is not brought about by a policy, but in a person.
SPEAKER_00: And this peace is what God is showing to the world through his people in the church.
SPEAKER_00: This peace has been achieved by his blood shed on the cross, that is, his death.
SPEAKER_00: Because in his death, his shed blood, as a result, Gentiles have been brought close.
SPEAKER_00: Those who were far off have been brought near.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine for a second that if God had just brought the Gentiles close without making peace, well, it would cause even more conflict, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_00: But Christ doesn't just draw near under one roof two warring factions.
SPEAKER_00: No, he ends the warfare.
SPEAKER_00: He unites us together in Him.
SPEAKER_00: In his death.
SPEAKER_00: How?
SPEAKER_00: His death does three things in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Ready for them?
SPEAKER_00: His death demolishes, it abolishes, and it creates.
SPEAKER_00: See that verse 14, for he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down, that's demolished, is broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.
SPEAKER_00: By what?
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: How does peace?
SPEAKER_00: How does peace come about?
SPEAKER_00: By demolition, an abolition, and a creation.
SPEAKER_00: He demolishes the dividing wall.
SPEAKER_00: What ultimately kept us far from God was our sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's what alienates us on that vertical dimension.
SPEAKER_00: All those signs in the temple were actually for our own protection.
SPEAKER_00: Because if we were to draw nearer to a holy God, we would be obliterated.
SPEAKER_00: But Christ has taken our sin, and so we can draw near.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what happened when Christ died?
SPEAKER_00: Think of Mark chapter 15.
SPEAKER_00: When Christ breathed his last, the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's an end to the old sacrificial system because Christ has offered himself once for all, but it's also a symbol of access.
SPEAKER_00: All now draw near.
SPEAKER_00: And so the writer to the Hebrews says, therefore, with confidence, draw near to the throne of grace that you might receive grace and help in your time of need.
SPEAKER_00: You Gentile, though you were far off, Christ has brought you near by demolishing the wall.
SPEAKER_00: We all have access together to God through him.
SPEAKER_00: Not only does he demolish, but he abolishes.
SPEAKER_00: He abolishes the law expressed in ordinances.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what this doesn't mean is that Jesus is an anarchist and that he is just all for moral chaos.
SPEAKER_00: No, Paul here is referring specifically to those cultural markers that set the Jew apart from the Gentile, chiefly the food laws and circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: Circumcision was a very obvious sign, so to speak, of uh of denoting who was a Jew and who was not.
SPEAKER_00: And yet in Christ, he has declared all foods clean, and he has given us a new sign, not of circumcision, but of baptism.
SPEAKER_00: And our baptism, our shared one baptism is a sign of our unity together in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So he has abolished those old cultural markers in himself and therefore created something new.
SPEAKER_00: The Gentiles do not need to become Jews in order to worship God.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews do not need to become Gentiles in order to worship God.
SPEAKER_00: No, Jesus creates in himself a new thing, a new people.
SPEAKER_00: There's no longer them and us.
SPEAKER_00: It's not two, but one in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Our horizontal reconciliation between people of different political opinions, different ethnicities, different classes, different backgrounds culturally speaking is inextricably linked with that vertical reconciliation that we achieve, or sorry, that we receive by grace through faith because of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is how He makes peace.
SPEAKER_00: Our divisions may run deep, but Christ offers us a unity that runs deeper still.
SPEAKER_00: A unity that roots all of us together in the united God.
SPEAKER_00: Did you notice that the Paul here tells us that every member of the Trinity is involved in this?
SPEAKER_00: Let me read to you from verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: He came and preached Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, he came and preached peace to you who are far off and peace to those of you who are in year.
SPEAKER_00: For through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Through Jesus, we have access in the Spirit to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: The unity that roots us together, the unity that creates peace and joy in our midst, is the unity that God Himself enjoys in eternity.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, Paul would encourage us this morning to receive the peace that Christ offers.
SPEAKER_00: To embrace him as the only true hope for our world and the one who can heal the anger that we feel in hostility towards others.
SPEAKER_00: He would invite us to the foot of the cross again and to lay that hostility down.
SPEAKER_00: To bring every grievance to him, and where possible, to have a posture of forgiveness and to seek reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: He would encourage us to show hospitality, a cross difference.
SPEAKER_00: Not because our differences don't matter, but because if we are in Christ, our differences take on a relative importance.
SPEAKER_00: They are no longer absolute.
SPEAKER_00: City is a living example of this unity.
SPEAKER_00: Look around you.
SPEAKER_00: We're not perfect.
SPEAKER_00: But it is beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: The media team this week worked to show you just a little glimpse of the unity that exists between us.
SPEAKER_00: And so I hope as I talk slowly, and Jared runs to the back.
SPEAKER_00: He himself is our peace.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the absence of disagreement, it's not the absence of difference, but his presence amongst us.
SPEAKER_00: Incidentally, if you'd like to join the media team, you can talk to the uh uh to Ian, who is the last person on the video, and uh he is looking to recruit right now.
SPEAKER_00: God is doing a wonderful thing in our midst.
SPEAKER_00: And so our encouragement as we close then is to live as this new humanity, the new humanity that God is creating.
SPEAKER_00: What Christ has done plays out in the church.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul closes this chapter by giving us three three images of what he is doing.
SPEAKER_00: He says that God has made us citizens together, that we are members of a household together, and that we are being built together into a holy temple.
SPEAKER_00: Citizens, a household, and a temple.
SPEAKER_00: Citizens, we enjoy a new legal status in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: If you are not a Christian here this morning, stop standing on the borders of our land.
SPEAKER_00: Stop standing on the shore.
SPEAKER_00: You will not be turned away at border entry.
SPEAKER_00: You are welcome into the kingdom of God because Jesus has taken your sin.
SPEAKER_00: You can receive a new status in his kingdom, forgiven, blessed, never again to be turned away.
SPEAKER_00: We are a new household.
SPEAKER_00: Here, Paul has in mind that familial intimacy and connection that siblings enjoy, that we have all been adopted because of Christ into his family, that God the Father is our Father, and he rejoices over us with singing because of our elder brother, the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That we can know acceptance, that we can know intimacy, that we can know what it is like to be truly and deeply known and also truly and deeply loved.
SPEAKER_00: And temple.
SPEAKER_00: Temple is the place where God dwells.
SPEAKER_00: He dwells in his people, he dwells amongst us.
SPEAKER_00: When people encounter us, when people come into our gathering, they encounter him through us.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says that the foundations of this house, this temple, are the apostles and prophets.
SPEAKER_00: That is, that they are, that we are built and established on the biblical witness, on God's unfailing word, on the truthfulness of what he has said here in these pages.
SPEAKER_00: That is our foundation.
SPEAKER_00: So to lose the joyous embrace of the Bible would be like removing the foundations of our house.
SPEAKER_00: And as a consequence, and you see this in church after church and denomination after denomination, that when the foundations of the apostles and prophets, that is, the foundations of the biblical witness are undermined, disunity, peace.
SPEAKER_00: Peace goes, disunity enters in, hostility and fracturing apart is inevitable.
SPEAKER_00: Lots of talk in churches and in denominations that have long since uh turned aside from the truthfulness and the authority of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: They talk lots of unity.
SPEAKER_00: Let's be united together.
SPEAKER_00: Around who?
SPEAKER_00: Based on what?
SPEAKER_00: And yet unity is talked about in a kind of nebulous, pious sort of way, but it's rock solid in Paul's mind.
SPEAKER_00: It's built on a particular foundation, it's centered around a particular person.
SPEAKER_00: It's built on the word and around the word made flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Take those away, it's just pious nonsense.
SPEAKER_00: Christ Himself, Paul says, is the cornerstone.
SPEAKER_00: That is, he is the guide, the rule of our life together, the one who holds the whole structure in place.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who unites ethnicities and languages, classes, groups, friends, marriages, families.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a living structure.
SPEAKER_00: This temple is not a static thing.
SPEAKER_00: It grows and it develops.
SPEAKER_00: Our unity, friends, our unity cannot be taken for granted.
SPEAKER_00: It must be worked upon.
SPEAKER_00: It must be protected and guarded and invested in.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we serve and when we invite you to serve, you are expressing your solidarity with your brothers and sisters in City Church, and you're contributing to the strengthening and growing of this temple in which people will encounter the living God.
SPEAKER_00: When we make an effort to go and open ourselves up and offer our insights and thoughts and reflections in one of the community groups, you are strengthening the bonds of affection and of love that exist between us, that together we might become more mature in Christ, that we might stabilize one another's lives as we seek to follow Jesus so that we're not, as Paul will talk about later in the book of Ephesians, tossed to and fro.
SPEAKER_00: And so our life together is not incidental.
SPEAKER_00: When you give, you are investing in that life together, deepening your own commitment to our mission to see Christ made known in Dublin and beyond.
SPEAKER_00: So none of these participatory things, service, investment in community group, investment in giving, none of them are incidental.
SPEAKER_00: None of them are just the tick box to-do's of what a good Christian should look like.
SPEAKER_00: It's how we grow together.
SPEAKER_00: It's how we become that holy temple in which God is encountered, in which his presence is made known and felt.
SPEAKER_00: It is how others come to hear of Christ's peacemaking love for them.
SPEAKER_00: So as we close, consider those three images.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a citizen, commit to his people, join us, serve, give, shoulder the mission with us.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a sibling in the household of God, then join us not as a service provider, but as a family.
SPEAKER_00: Do not rob your brothers and sisters of the opportunity to get to know you, to bless you, and to be blessed by you, to laugh with you and weep with you, and to know the goodness of all of that.
SPEAKER_00: And if we are a temple, may we move forward, expecting to experience the beauty and goodness of God's presence amongst us as we gather and expecting that those who are right now far off would experience that in our midst also.
SPEAKER_00: As we speak his word and as we respond to him in our worship, that he by his spirit would change hearts, heal wounds, heal marriages, reconcile enemies, and pour out his joy on all of us.
SPEAKER_00: In a divided world, the church's unity is its only hope.
SPEAKER_00: And we have an opportunity to be a signpost of the power of the gospel and to show the immeasurable riches of his inheritance in us, his saints.
SPEAKER_03: If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, visit our website.
SPEAKER_03: Find in the links below.