07-Ephesians: “Unity was always the plan.” | Ephesians 2:14-18

Chapter 1: Brought Near by the Blood of Jesus

Well, last week Paul told us to remember who we were. He reminded us that we were far off, that we were Gentiles in the flesh, that we were outside of God's covenants that he had given to the Jews, that we had no hope without God in this world, and that we saw two words that changed everything. these two words. But now, but now in Christ, we who are a far off have been brought near by the blood of Jesus. So that we have been brought near, but near to what? This is what this morning is about.

This is what Paul is going to answer for us today. We were not only brought near to God, but we were brought near to one another. This is what Paul has been building towards all the line along. And today we're going to see that all along unity was always the plan. We pick back up in Ephesians chapter 2 starting in verse 14 where we read this.

Chapter 2: Jesus Himself Is Our Peace

For he himself is our peace who has made both one and has broken down the middle wall a separation. He himself, this is Jesus that we're talking about. Jesus is our peace. Jesus is the reason that we have peace and that we can have peace. Now, it would be easy for us to move on from here and be like, "Yep, it's all because of Jesus." But this is not what Paul is getting at.

Paul here is saying something that our language doesn't quite grasp well enough. Paul is being emphatic to his audience. He's helping them try to understand. No, no, no. You need to understand something.

Jesus is our peace. Are you understanding the words that are coming out of my mouth right now? Jesus is our peace. This is similar to what Paul is communicated to the Philippians. Now, you might remember

Chapter 3: The Peace That Surpasses All Understanding

Paul is in prison at this point. And one of the books that he wrote also well in prison was Philippians. And Paul said something very specific about peace to the Philippians. Maybe some of you know this passage. Paul says to the Philippians, "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God." And what happens as a result?

And the peace of God that what surpasses all understanding, how much understanding? All understanding will do what? Guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. And those of you that were here a few weeks ago, you might know when Paul is using the word heart, this is everything. There is nothing of you that the peace of God cannot touch.

Every part of who we are, this peace that surpasses all understanding can come in and transform our lives and can give us a peace that we just cannot understand. There's nothing that God cannot touch. There's no peace that God cannot give us. There's no situation in your life that God cannot bring you through with peace. And you're like, but what about the No, even with that.

Well, what about the No, even in that whatever that thing that's coming into your mind, God's peace, this peace that surpasses all understanding can touch in your life. And it all comes through who? Jesus. So we start with this peace of Christ.

Chapter 4: Jesus the Great Unifier

And then Paul tells us this this strange thing. He says, "So he himself is our peace who has made us both one." Well, who are these two? And why do they need to be made one? Well, if you were here last week, you might remember that we talked about two groups, the circumcised and the uncircumcised. This is the Jews and the Gentiles.

So the two are becoming one under the person of Christ. What we see is that Jesus is the great unifi unifier. Now I'm going to talk about an elephant in the room like we're going to be talking about unity was was always the plan. But Jesus being the great unifier is also the great divider because if you're an enemy of Jesus, guess what? You're divided away.

But what Paul is talking about here specifically is with this group of Jews and these Gentiles that Jesus is this great unifier. Now for those of us who are here in 21st century America, we might not necessarily know what that means. Like what does that even mean anything? If you don't understand the Jews, Jewish people usually associated with Israel, Gentiles, everybody else. Okay, that's the easy way to go about saying it.

Jews, Israel, Gentiles, everybody else. Anybody here ever been in a society or around where maybe different ethnicities are kind of at each other? No. Nobody. Never seen that.

Never seen people from different groups, parts of the world that are after each other because of where they come from, the color of their skin, their ethnicity, their culture, those kinds of things. That that's what Paul is getting at here. The Jews kind of separating themselves out. And then again, all of these other cultures. Now, the predominant culture here being a more Greek Roman culture.

But what Paul is saying is Jesus is this great unifier that comes together. In fact, he tells the Galatian church is this. He says, "There is neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female.

For you are all one in Christ Jesus." I'm going to tell you right now that preaches in 21st century America. Because what is this world constantly trying to tell us to do? You got to divide yourselves. I mean, you got to divide yourselves with your ethnicity and your culture, all the things. Of course, male and female.

Oh, you can't have unity as a male and female. Well, family causes a problem, does it not? Right? That's kind of important. But what does Jesus do?

He makes us one. He brings us together in unity. He literally has broken down the walls of separation. He is the one that holds us together. Another phrase that we use from the word is he is our chief cornerstone.

He is the one on which relationships are built. He is the one on which churches are built. The thing is is when I look out here and I see all of you from all of these different places, right? All of us are from all over the place. Different parts of the world are represented here.

Different parts of the country are represented here. Different cultures are represented here. Different political views are represented here. Different ideas on how finances should be handled are represented in this room. What binds us together?

Jesus. Jesus is the one who

Chapter 5: How Easily We Divide Ourselves

binds us together. I mean the thing is is we are really good as people at dividing ourselves. Really good. I mean politics is the easy one. But even this morning I was I was showing one of the folks this new app and of course it's only on iPhone right now.

I was like I'm not on iPhone. Right. Some of you take pride in that. I'm not on iPhone, but then it could be like I I I'm just going to say Holly doesn't usually like it when I mention this. So, we're from Oregon.

I'm an Oregon Duck fan, right? I was born 10 minutes from the University of Oregon. Well, where do I live? I live in Ute country. That's a way that we can se, you know, separate ourselves.

We can absolutely do that. In fact, one of the things I had fun I I know some of you don't like AI, but AI can be really, really fun. And I wish I'd put this in here because it was funny. gentleman I did ministry with 10 years ago was an Ohio State fan. That's when we go, right? And so he's he's making fun of his niece who's wearing Michigan stuff.

For those of you who don't know, that's where Coach Whit just went is Michigan. And then somebody crops off his niece from him just using Ohio State right there. So what do I do? I respond with putting him in Oregon duck gear. and then respond again with putting the Oregon duck with its arm around him, right? Just having fun.

But again, we can separate ourselves so easy over all kinds of different things. But Jesus, he bridges those gaps.

Chapter 6: Abolishing the Enmity in His Flesh

But how does he do this? Paul continues, "Having abolished in his flesh the emnity that is the law of commandments and ordinances." Now he abolishes this something in his flesh. What does he abolish? He abolishes this immity. That is the quality of being an enemy.

This quality of of just hatred, this hatred that what we're seeing is we're getting this this clue into this group in the first century that there was a hatred between the Jews and the Gentiles. And what it's saying is that what Jesus did on the cross, he broke down those walls of separation so that they mo might no longer be enemies and that they don't have to share in hatred. But why would Christ's death on the cross abolish these two groups from being

Chapter 7: Gentiles Were Always in View

enemies? I mean, this is the thing that's interesting to me. A lot of people when we look at this, they'll go, "Well, pastor, that was seated all the way back in the day when God called Je the Jews out as his chosen nation. That's when they all became enemies. Family, let me ask you a question. [clears throat] Does that sound like the character of God?

Does this sound like the character of God to say, "Hey, I'm going to make you Abraham, a a chosen nation, a a a people for my own purposes, and then I'm going to make you the enemy of everybody else." Does that sound like our God? And and some of you are saying like, "No." In fact, let's look at what actually is being said to Abraham when this happens in Genesis 12. Here we go. I got to get it. Maybe I deleted it.

Oh, I may have deleted it. That's okay. I'll read it to you. Genesis 12:3. I will bless those who bless you.

This is God to Abraham. And I will curse him who curses you. And in you, now catch this. All the families of the earth shall be blessed. Now family, how much is all?

All so here's God calling Abraham who's going to be the father of his chosen nation and that nation is supposed to be what? A blessing to all the families of the earth. This was an early prophecy of the coming Messiah. But here's the thing. There's more to that that you're going to see.

Because again, we love to make excuses for people. Do we not? Anybody ever meet anybody who likes to make excuses for people? Not in 21st century America. Right.

No. No. We don't make excuses for people. Right. So even as the Jewish nation was being formed hundreds of years before the law and commandments, the Gentiles were in sight.

This is the thing that we need to understand here. Even when God is choosing Abraham, the Gentiles are in sight. Then even after the law has been given, Gentiles remained in sight. This is the thing that we often mention. Now, I'm not going to call anybody out, nor am I going to try and look at anybody, but we do ourselves a disservice when we say that the Old Testament's irrelevant.

That's right. Sorry, I looked at my daughter, but that's not she she's actually really good at that stuff. Sorry, sweetie. But but we do ourselves a disservice because the New Testament is informed by the Old and the same God of the Old is the same God of the New. And let me show you a reason why why this is the case, right?

So, we're going to go to Isaiah 49. And now the Lord says, "Who formed me with the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him so that Israel is gathered to him? For I shall be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength." Indeed, he says, "It is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel. I will also give you as the what? light to the Gentiles that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth. Family, hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus, first of all, we see Jesus being prophesied, but second, we see the Gentiles are right there.

What are one of the names of Jesus? I am the light of the world. What do we see here? I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles. So the servant there is obviously Jesus.

But what about the rest of the nation? Again, it's like, all right, so you got Abraham. I'm going to make you the father of many nations. I'm going to bless you. You're going to bless people.

Well, obviously that blessing is only supposed to be through the one who comes almost 2,000 years later in Jesus. Except no, that's not the case. again making excuses like well obviously God picked Abraham so that he could bring about Jesus and then none of the rest of Jews had anything to do with being a light to the world except that's not the case. That was never the case. We continue on. This is something that comes from Moses.

Chapter 8: Israel Called to Be a Light to the Nations

This is Moses some 645 years after Abraham. If you don't know Moses is the one who's like, "Let my people go." He's the one who goes into Egypt, 10 plagues, parting of the Red Sea, that whole thing, right? So after that, Moses ends up giving the people the law. Now, let's take a look at what God speaks through Moses to the people in the giving of the law over a thousand years before Jesus walks the earth. Go to Deuteronomy chapter 4.

Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore, be careful to observe them. For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all of these statutes and say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." The world needed to see Israel living for the Lord, becoming a testimony to the Lord, a light to the world by them actually following God's commands. Right? This is Moses giving the people some context for what they heard in the law, what they have been commanded. them living out the law is clearly meant to make an impact not only on themselves as a nation but on the nations that surround them.

Their wis witness is meant to trans to transcend to go beyond their own borders. This lines up again with the promises of Abraham not only through the the Messiah to come but also through Abraham's descendants. Now this is something that's important for us to understand. This ties to the church as well. It is really easy for us to say, "Well, we got what Jesus did.

We got what the apostles did. And now we have the pastors and we have the deacons and we have the elders and I don't have to be concerned about the great commission. That's somebody else's job." except that the great commission tells us to make disciples and to teach them to obey everything that he's commanded. Now, here's the little thing that we don't have time to to go into deeply. If you look at the people of Israel and you look at the church, you will see a lot of parallels.

And the reason why you see a lot of parallels is the church knows what it should do. And guess what it doesn't do? It doesn't do it. It's almost like people are the same generation after generation after generation after generation after generation. And the thing is is I can't change any hearts.

Again, I'm not trying to look at any particular person and saying like you you're not doing it. But we have to ask ourselves, are we being who we're supposed to be? There were people in the Jewish nation who literally were lights to the world, but they were not the norm. They were not the norm. Again, I don't want to get too ahead of myself.

Chapter 9: Rebellion, Exile, and Ezekiel's Warning

I'm going to end up breaking the rest of my sermon if I do. But so, so how do you suppose Israel ended up responding to this idea that they had to be alike, that they had to be a vegan? They they actually turned in. They rebelled. Not long after this, we have this thing called the time of the judges.

And if you've ever read Judges or you haven't read Judges, you may have heard this famous phrase from Judges that everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Now, tie this back to the modern church. You ever see that? You ever been in a church where everyone did what was right in their own eyes? Is there any reason why we have thousands of different denominations in America alone? because people shatter over things that are right in their own eyes, we still continue to do the same kinds of things.

And this is what ends up happening. So, we get through the time of the judges and then what we end up getting after this is this mishmash of all of these kings that are either following God or not following God. And if we're being honest, most of the kings didn't follow God. In fact, we get to the point where you have King David, then you have his son, King Solomon. And you might know what happens after Solomon. the kingdom splits.

You no longer have Israel. You have 10 of the tribes form Israel in the north and then you have two of the tribes form Judah in the south. And so when I'm talking about that, you'll hear me start talking about Judah. It's because you end up having Israel ends up getting wiped basically wiped off the map. A superpower of the time in the 700s BC called Syria.

Maybe you guys have heard of their capital city Nineveh. It's where God had sent a prophet you might know named Jonah to go and minister to them. Well, sometime after Jonah, they actually come, they attack the northern kingdom, they overwhelm the northern kingdom, they conquer the northern kingdom, and it leaves only Judah in the outh. And what ends up happening about a hundred or so years after that, another king that you might know named Nebuchadnezzar comes in from a country called Babylon. I I'm having veggie tale songs going off in my head at the moment for those of you that know what I'm talking about.

But so you end up having this this happen and comes in and actually conquers them and then exiles the people. And you would think that, well, why wouldn't God save them? Family, they had rebelled all the way through. They had been rebelling. The northern kingdom had rebelled.

The southern kingdom had rebelled. In fact, during the time that Nebuchadnezzar is coming in, it's over the course of well over a decade. It's like we talk about long wars here that we've been in 605 to about 586. So you're looking about a 19-year period of time it took Nebuchadnezzar to finally I guess he he could have done it earlier but he was actually trying to be a little bit merciful say like hey you guys just be my vassel and then they kept rising up and then finally he comes in 586 and just like we're done and he takes the people in exile out that's when you end up with Daniel and Shadrach Mach and Abednego but during this time frame there's a prophet prophet that we don't talk a lot about because his book is a little hard to read but a guy named Ezekiel Anyone hear of Ezekiel? Okay.

So, Ezekiel gives a prophecy during this time and it's powerful for us to understand. So, in Ezekiel chapter 5, this is what we read. Thus, the Lord God, says the Lord God. This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the midst of the nations and the countries all around her.

Right? God is saying, look, I set up this this city for me, but she has rebelled against my judgments and by doing wickedness more than the nations. Like this gives you an idea what's happened to the Jews. This people that have been set aside for God, this people who are supposed to be the light to the world have actually become darker than the people that are around them. And so then God says, "They've come up against my statutes more than the countries that are around her.

For they have refused my judgments and they have not walked in my statutes." They've just completely rebelled against God at this point. And so what ends up happening, we jump to verse 11. Therefore, as I live, says the Lord God, surely because of you, you've defiled my sanctuary with your detestable things and with all your abominations. Therefore, I will diminish you. Notice, he doesn't say, "I'm going to destroy you." He's not saying, "I'm going to go back on my covenant with you, but I'm going to diminish you." Meaning, they're going to end up getting scattered for about 150 years before Cyrus allows them to come back.

You guys know guy named Nehemiah comes back. That's how all of this stuff works together. My I will not spare nor will I have pity. So you have Israel, you have Judah that been diminished. They would suffer under the rule of multiple multiple kingdoms at this point.

So you had the Assyrians and then you have the Babylonians and then you have the Persians. That's with Cyrus and Xerxes. Then you end up having the the the Greeks come in, Alexander the Great, and then you have the Roman Empire coming in. And by the time you get to Jesus and you get to Paul, the Romans are ruling at this moment. They have not been their own independent kingdom for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

Now, you might be asking, well, why does this matter? It matters because something changes in the people between the time of Ezekiel and the time of Jesus. But you might be asking, well, well, what has changed? Well, let me ask you a question first with a question. What often happens when you suffer a trauma?

Are you more or less likely to do that same thing? I mean, I'll tell you, back in 2021, we had this brand new Honda. was like 5 days old. I was like, "Okay, honey. I want to take it to work." She's like, "Really?" Like, "I'd love to take it to work. Can I drive the new car to work?

Love to drive the new car to work." Mile down the street driving through a light, driving past a gas station, smash. Someone jumps right out in front of me. She was just sitting there. Went just jumps out. You know what I'm talking about.

Guess what still happens to this day? 25 years later, I see someone sitting right here. I flinch. Right? When we suffer a trauma, it stays with us. And sometimes we can tend to overreact.

So, think about with Ezekiel who just told us about a nation condemned because of how they had strayed from the Lord, how they defiled the temple. They'd violated the commands and ordinances. But by the time we get to Jesus, there's a totally different looking group of people. We have religious zealotic class of people who pride themselves now in being keepers of the law. Doesn't that sound a little bit different?

So, so much so that this group calls Jesus a lawb breaker. Now, this should be peing your interest at this moment. Like, what has happened? Well, I'm going to give you a hint. They've gone from one extreme all the way over to another extreme.

So, how do you go from a people who had wickedly rebelled against God's commands to a people who claimed to perfectly follow the commands only to crucify the God who had given them the [clears throat] commands?

Chapter 10: When Men Add to God's Commands

Well, one of the first things we need to understand is that just because someone claims something is a commandment from God doesn't mean that it is. You might be going, "What? What? What do you mean?" I mean, literally, the religious leaders of Jesus day had added to God's commands. This is how Jesus violated them without sinning because they weren't his commands.

They were his commands plus other things. Now, to understand this, we need to go all the way back to that Babylonian conquest. This is why I told you about this because this is what ends up happening. When the Jews returned from exile under the rule of Cyrus, the religious leaders concluded that they were exiled because they had compromised with pagan culture. To prevent this from ever happening again, they thought to themselves, "We need to elevate the law." Now, that should make you pause for a second because where does the law come from?

God. Do we need to elevate what comes from God? No, we're in danger zone at this point. Now, I'm going to give you a little bit of a hint. Guess what the church has done?

Some of you could probably think of this right now, and if you can't, we might drop one or two here and there. But think about some of your church experience about how this stuff goes, right? So, here's the thing. This is the line of reasoning. So, if the if the law tells us, not that one, that your daughter shall be not be given to their son.

And so we're talking about non-Jews, right? We're not going to we're not going to marry pagans. We're not going to worship foreign gods. We're not going to have our our kids turned away. So if the if the Bible tells us, if the law tells us, hey, don't marry their kids, don't let your kids marry their kids, and don't let your kids worship their gods, what are we going to do?

We're going to tell them, you can't even interact with them. Don't even have anything to do with them. sound like the church. Yeah, we're supposed to be in the world but not of the world. But what has happened? Oh, you can't you can't even talk to that kid.

You didn't go to church. Oh, we're not supposed to have sexual immorality. It's against God's will to dance. And how many other things have we piled on adding to God's best practices? So over the centuries, these protective strategies hardened into absolute legal requirements known as the oral law.

This effectively elevated the words of man to equal with the words of God. family. If you are in a position or you've had a pastor in a position who's trying to elevate their words to the level of God, run or turn yourself from that. So what do I tell you all of these things? Because we need to differentiate between the commandments of God and the commandments of God plus man. How many people have been driven from the church?

How many people have fled from even hearing the true gospel because man has added to what God has already perfectly given? You see, the commandments and the ordinations alone were a barrier in and of themselves as we talked about, right? Jesus says, "You're either for me or against me. You're either going to follow my commands or you're not going to follow my commands." That alone is hard enough. But our God, right, he is the one true God.

His commands are the only true commands. His ordinances are the only true ordinances, right? The exclusive nature of these claims alone was enough to separate the Jews and the Gentiles. These Gentiles who have like in this case for the Ephesians, the goddess Artemis or Diana as their god. That's enough is a problem.

But now add on piled on requirements. It made even basic interaction with the Gentiles a struggle for ethnic Jews who walked with Jesus. Right? This is one of the things that they struggled with. Any of you that have a lot of life that was behind you before Jesus, you've likely struggled to let go of some of those things as you come into the faith because the faith has told you you need to go in a different direction from that.

And so now what you end up having is these Jews who have grown up in this very racist mindset that they are God's chosen people above and beyond anybody else around them. And now what's happening is you have people like Paul coming along and saying like look we're one in Christ. Christ is the great unifier. He's the one who brings us together. When their entire lives they've been taught no we can't have anything to do with these people.

And some of you are starting to get uncomfortable again as well because you've experienced that in your Christian life because we've done similar things even today. And so they're struggling with this. In fact, we have a great example of exactly what I'm talking about with not just any average ordinary believer. We have the one of the best examples in Peter himself as in the Apostle Peter who walked with Jesus. In Acts chapter 10, he Peter has this experience with God.

Okay? He has this experience with God. God gives him this vision and he's he's shown all this stuff around him and it's all of this stuff that they've been told that they can't eat. And and God's like, "Hey, eat it." And he's like, "I can't. I can't eat it.

I'm not supposed to." And and this happens three times. And finally, God in his infinite patience says what God has cleansed, you must not call common. It's like, look, you can have this stuff. And again, this is not God saying like, "Oh, well, now you can actually talk and interact with the Gentiles." That's not what's happening. A lot of times we misunderstand this.

Oh, yeah. In the Old Testament, you couldn't relate. You can have any interaction with the Gentiles. That was they added stuff from the religious leaders at this point that Peter had grown up in Peter's entire life had been told you don't interact with these people. You don't have these connections.

And yet God is calling him to go and speak into the life of this Roman centurion who is guess what? A believer in Christ. And so you see this happening here. In fact, if if we went back into into Galatians, you would find the Apostle Paul had to call out Peter because Peter had separated himself from Christians who were not circumcised. And because they weren't circumcised, he wouldn't eat with them.

And Paul challenges him on that because that's absolute nonsense. Again, they were giving into these laws of men. This group, these guys that were Judaizers at the time that were saying like, look, if you want to be a good Christian, you got to keep all of the oral tradition and you have to keep all of the the laws of Moses and you have to have Jesus. That's what we call Jesus plus here. And it's like, no, no, you have Jesus.

Chapter 11: One New Man Through the Cross

So, so what do we do? How could centuries of separation and an animosity be addressed? Well, Jesus would create in himself a new man from the two, thus making peace. This was no longer Jews versus Gentiles or Gentiles versus Jews. The question is, are you a Christian?

Which, by the way means little Christ? Are you a little representative of Christ? Again, it's in Christ that we find our unity. It's in Christ that we see old rivalries fail and we finally have peace. But not only peace one to one to another, but peace with God that he might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death emnity.

Now, this reconciliation word, this is a debt term. This is a hey, you've got a debt. You need to reconcile with the person you owe the debt to. That's what happens here. that he might reconcile to them both to God in one body. That the debt that we owe because of our sin could be reconciled.

Even the Jews, the keepers of the law, they themselves have the ability to be reconciled because there is no keeping of the law that's ever going to reconcile you to God. As we talked about in recent recently, all the works that we do just add additional debt. There is no reconciliation in ourselves. But Christ through his flesh brings reconciliation. Christ through his flesh brings payment of our sin.

And the only way for reconciliation was through one body. That is through Jesus's sacrifice on the cross. Thus the enmity between God and man was put to death. But also the emnity between Jew and Gentile because of our shared tragedy. But the salvation that we share in Jesus if we have believed which we further see in verse 17 and he came and preached peace to you who were a far off and those who were near.

The aar off those are the Gentiles. The near these are the Jews. And both groups are given equal access to the Savior. Through him for through him we both have access to one spirit to the father. Now, it would be really easy for us to just pass right through this.

Some of you may have noticed something about this verse. There are three individuals being spoken of here. Maybe you've heard of it. We typically call them the Trinity. In him, that is Jesus.

We have access to the Father through the Spirit. We both Jew and Gentile have unhindered access to the totality of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Not because of commands, not because of the ordinances, not because we've done anything but confess and believe the Lord Jesus in him raised, which unlocks our relationship with the Holy Spirit, who then unlocks direct access that we have to God the Father. Family, this is a true marvel. I don't know if you've thought about that.

The God of the universe wants relationship with you and me. That's unreal. There's not a person in this room I can imagine is interested in going out and making relationship with an ant. And yet the distance between you and that ant is nowhere the distance between us and our God. And yet he was willing to give his life to have relationship.

I I can't imagine there's a person in this world that watching a little ant crossing the street about to get run over is going to run, shove that ant out out of the way and take on the full brunt of that car to save the ant. You're like, "God, that's absurd, pastor." Exactly. That's the point. God giving his life for us is absurd. And yet, that's exactly what he did.

It's amazing. and that we can then live in peace as a result. All of this is available to every single man, woman, and child on this planet, regardless of our background. And so,

Chapter 12: Unity Was Always the Plan

what do we do with this? Well, as we close this morning, let's look back at where we've just gone. We've seen that Jesus himself is our peace. Not a partial peace, not a mostly peace. He is our peace.

He took the wall that divided Jews and Gentiles. He abolished it with his flesh. He abolished the wall that separated us from God. He made us into a new group of people. Rather than Jews and Gentiles, we can be Christians.

He reconciled all who believe in Jesus in one body through the cross. And now, both near and far alike, we can come to the father by the spirit. And we need to remember that this was never an afterthought. I cannot overemphasize to you. This was not God pivoting.

Unity between humanity was never an afterthought. It was always God's intention to bring us in alignment as his children through faith in him. From Abraham forward, Gentiles were always in view. Family unity was always the plan. Again, it was never an afterthought.

So, what do we do? What can we do? Well, first, we need to live in peace with one another. And I'm going to be honest, the church has been a terrible example of living in peace. One of the big things that I deal with on a weekly basis is contention between believers.

And again, I'm trying not to look, but that is a consistent and constant theme. Not just now, but 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, as long as I've been a believer, I've seen contention in the church. And that should not be. Our God desires that we find unity. And we find unity through Christ, right?

We find unity through Christ. Now, I'm not ignorant. I understand there's going to be times where there needs to be points of separation, and Jesus addresses that. But this is the goal. This is the goal.

Again, if we go to Galatians 6 verse 1, the goal is reconciliation. If there is a point where you have a measure of disunityity and you're separated, we need to then reconcile and be brought back to unity and peace. So, tear down walls that you keep building. This is another thing. Some of the most racist people I've ever met are people who claim the name of Christ.

That should not be that should not be whatsoever. Some of the people who are the most angry have been believers. Some of the people that have been the most spiteful, the more most hateful have been people who hold on to grudges who call themselves believers. And if that happens to be you, you need to come and lay that down at the foot of the cross. Come to the father.

This is another thing we need to recognize that we can literally come directly in. We have access to the father. We can come to him and we can talk with him because what Christ has done on the cross because we have access to the Holy Spirit. We can come to the father, the son, and the holy spirit and talk through anything and everything that we're struggling with. Amen.

Everything. There's nothing that we need to hold back. You're like, "Well, I don't need to bother God with that." No, bother God with that. He's big enough to handle it all. And all God's people said, "Amen." Let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Father God, thank you again for this morning and the privilege we it is to to just share in your word. To share in your word and to to learn these truths that you're the same yesterday, today, and forever. That the plan has always been unity in you. And I pray that this body here would indeed be unified in you. and that we would go from this place and that we would do the things that you've called us to do to be the people that you've called us to be to see more come as disciples and that we would help them to understand the freedom and the peace that we have in you and that you would teach us to continue to live in this unity. And Lord, if there's anything in this room that is keeping people apart from one another, I pray that they would come to you first and that you would lead them and guide them through the power of your Holy Spirit to bring that reconciliation of relationship.

Lord, we just we marvel at what it is you've done and continue to do. And we praise you in Jesus name. Amen.