Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our
lead pastor Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message
would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you
to the life changing love of Jesus.
May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.
Before we jump. In I was thinking this way, our
confession really is a reflection of kind of what
Johnny talked about last week. Last week Johnny was like talk
like like the the zombie apocalypse, right?
Like like you were dead. You were made alive in Christ
because it is love for us. Each week when we come together,
our confession, Are you ready? Our confession is that we're
badly broken. Yes, you are.
Grace and peace to you. See, that's the thing.
We say brokenness. And what Johnny revealed last
night that Paul was talking to these Ephesian Christians about
was that brokenness goes all the way to the bottom, all the way
to the very end. It's not just brokenness.
Like I'm sad sometime. It's not brokenness like, you
know, I, I, I say a cuss word when the Astros are just
terrible, you know, like those are all valid signs of
brokenness. But those are very much on the
surface. And a brokenness runs all the
way to the end. Last week, though, we saw this
construction, right? We were dead in our trespasses
and you remember, but God being rich in mercy made us alive with
him. That's really the summary of the
whole Jewish people's story. The whole idea was they were far
away from God, but God called them to a person, Abraham, and
he found him and he said, Abraham, I'm going to make you a
people and I'm going to bless you and the whole world is going
to be blessed to you. And that began a relationship.
Relationship between God and people and relationships are
interesting things, right? Like there has to be
communication, there has to be understanding and clarity, and
there are these promises between God and his people that defined
that relationship, that broken and loved relationship, this
relationship where God said you. Jewish people, you don't get it
right? You have to learn.
I'm a holy God, he said. And you're not.
And so we have to learn and figure out how to make it work
together. And those relationships, those
defining kind of promises, are called covenants.
And so the word covenant, we can sometimes think about the word
covenant and it's like a list of all the things that you have to.
Do. But that's not really the heart
behind a covenant. The heart of A.
Covenant is to define a relationship.
How can 2 beings who aren't the same come together?
How can they work together? And so these covenants define
the relationship between God and his people, the Hebrews, the
Jewish people. It started with God made a
covenant with Abram and he said Abram, I'm going to bless you.
And he said I'm going to make. You a people, a nation, Abram,
the family that comes from you is going to be a.
Nation and he. That it was a covenant.
And later when his people, Abraham had son Isaac and Jacob
and his twelve sons, and they went into Egypt where they
became a nation, and then God led his people out of slavery by
his own hand, and he created another covenant with his
people. This covenant was called the
law. The Law was a covenant.
See, we thought the law. We think if we're not careful,
we just think that the law is a list of things that we need to
do because God is kind of like cranky a little bit and doesn't
want us to have fun. But the heart of the law was you
are a people who are not holy. You fight and you and you, you
fear and you and you, you hurt each other and you hurt
yourself, he said. And I, God says God is holy.
And so the purpose of the law is to show how an A broken people
and a perfectly holy God can live together and coexist in the
same space. It's not to limit us.
The purpose of the law. The covenant.
Of the law is to bring us into the presence of God and that
took shape in the temple with the sacrifices and the
priesthood. Finally God made a covenant with
David and he said I will make your household, your family,
your lineage will be a royal family.
There will forever be a descendant of David on the
throne. And they thought this was again,
because the Jewish people have been thinking in terms of, of,
of national kind of, they thought a literal throne in
literal Jerusalem, there would be a literal David on that
throne. That's why they were so
frustrated and angry with the Romans because the Romans,
Caesar was sitting where there was supposed to be a descendant
of David. So these covenants that God made
with his people, this desire to define his relationship with
them was intended. What did he tell David?
Abram? It will be a blessing to who?
The Jewish people. Or the whole world, he said.
I will bless you and you will then be a.
Blessing. But by the time we come to the
1st century, by the time we come to Jesus, these covenants had
become They've been used to exclude.
People from the presence of God. These covenants that were
created to cover and fill the whole earth.
With the knowledge of God and his people have been used to.
Exclude him and this is actually shown in the temple when we
first started in week 1 when Johnny started he showed us a
picture of the temple. And so I want to bring that back
again, labeled a little bit because when you look at the
structure, the very structured, incidentally enough,
interestingly enough, when we get when we do our Lent series
next year, in the weeks leading up to we're going to do the
whole series on the temple and what the temple shows us, what
the temple means for us, how it lead to sin.
But you can begin by looking the tall part in the center is
called the temple building. Inside the temple was where the
brazen altar was, where sacrifice was made for the
forgiveness of sins. It was where the showbread was.
It was where the lamps were. And the priests would the people
would come to the doors of the temple and they would bring
their sacrifice and the priests and only the priests were
allowed to take the sacrifice into the altar and make
atonement inside the temple building.
Was the Holy of Holies where? One day a year, one person the
high. Priest was allowed.
To enter in and make atonement for the people, the temple.
Proper was where the physical presence of God dwelt, and this
is so important. The reason we have a temple is
because God desires to be with his people.
We go all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
God traded Adam and Eve in the garden that says that God walked
with them. The temple shows us the God
wants to be with his people, right?
So right around that temple building, you can see behind
that first wall would have been called the the the court of the
Israelites. And not just any Israelites,
male Israelites, Jewish men were allowed beyond that.
They could get right up to the door of the temple building, but
then no further than that outside the court of the
Israelites. What is the court of women?
Not just any women. Jewish women.
They were allowed to get a little.
Bit closer to the temple, a little bit closer to the
presence of God, but not quite all the way in.
And then outside the Court of Women, it would have been, this
would have been called the Court of the Gentiles.
And so it's not that Gentiles. Weren't allowed in the temple.
It's just that they weren't. Allowed that close to the temple
and there was a structure you can see it called the
balustrade. And it was this sense, this
series of stones set outside and it was intended to be a literal
physical barrier to the gentile people that said do not come
inside. They've actually found one of
the stones that created this balustrade.
And on this balustrade there was an inscription on it.
You can see it written all right and here's how that translates
on the balustrade. No foreigner may enter within
the balustrade around the sanctuary and the enclosure.
Now listen, here's the good part.
Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his ensuing
death. Some of you are like we need a
wall like that. Well.
Hang on to that because we're going to see by the end.
What that looks like. But the idea is there are all of
these obstacles and barriers that kept the Jew, the the the
Gentile people away from the temple.
And notice it wasn't good gentiles and bad tiles.
This was a categorical exemption.
It doesn't matter whether you were a tall gentile or a
handsome gentile or a rich gentile or a gentile who looked
like a Jewish person. If you were gentile, you were
out. We call this, Yeah, a category
exclusion. Another way to express this is
systemic. There was a systemic approach
to. Keeping these people.
Out of the way of God. We're familiar with this.
We have a history of this in our in our country, right?
If you walked around before the 40s and the 50s, you might see
signs that look like this. It doesn't say if you were a
person of color and you were wealthy or rich or connected.
It just says if your skin is a certain color, you are not
allowed here. You have to stay out.
No questions, no comments, just exemption.
We call this systemic. It doesn't.
It doesn't even bring into fact whether this is a good person or
not. We still see some of this today
and it looks like this. Augusta National golf it not.
Just Augusta National. But notice what it says,
Members. Only another way you could say
it. It's like if you're not a member
here, don't even think about coming inside these walls.
Now listen now. So, so this is, this is a
revelation. This shines a light for us right
here. What it doesn't mean is that
every person who's a member of Augusta National hates every
person who's not a member. It doesn't mean that once they
walk outside of those gates that they have to fight each other.
They're not. But it clearly says there's a
difference between you and me. It doesn't mean that that you're
bad and I don't like you. It just means this place isn't
for you. And if it's a holy twitty Golf
Club, really, like, who cares that much about that?
But listen. If it's a temple where the
presence of the living God dwells, that matters.
The implicit sign is Gentiles don't have access.
And I want to pause and I want to stop because I think
culturally we've lost a little bit of that sense that at the
beginning we were outsiders. We've kind of Co.
Opted this story and today we're going to understand why we get
to Co opt that story. But it's important to really sit
with the idea that it hasn't always been that way.
See, the Jews and the Gentiles were both dead in their
transgressions. They both had sin that needed to
dealt be dealt with. But the distinction between Jew
and Gentile wasn't sin or not sin.
The distinction between Jew and Gentile was inclusion in the
story of God. The Jews were dead, that they
were God's people, Gentiles. That's most of us Gentiles, dead
in our trespasses, but not even available to have access to the
presence of God. That's why last week was such
good news. That's why last week was so
important. Jesus has made us alive with
Christ. He has unified us.
We saw that Jew and Gentile come together.
He's unified us in him. So we look at the picture of the
temple in the balustrade, in the in the separation and the walls,
and the question is, if we've been made alive in Christ, how
do we get from here to there? How do we get from separate
Gentiles out of there in light of the covenants, in light of
the promise to Abraham, in light of the promise to Moses, in
light of the promise to David? How do we get away from and
beyond and around the separation?
When our death is promised, That's what.
Paul picks up in Ephesians chapter 2 now Stephen rayburn
read out of. Message or new living or one of
those kind of easier to read I'm going to read out of the new
American standard and like Johnny said last week it's a
little bit clunkier it's a little bit harder to read which
really gives us an opportunity to drill down and focus in on
what he's saying right so we pick up in Ephesians chapter 2.
Let's read verse 11 right. Remember we're his workmanship
were created to do good news, therefore.
Because of that, because we're a new creation, we're because
we're created to do good works, right?
Remember that, that previously you and remember when we read
Ephesians, who is you? Is it you, right?
Is it, is it Joe and Fred and Susie, right.
You is who all y'all, all y'all. He's talking to the Gentiles
right now. And what is he, what he says at
that time? Remember that all y'all the
Gentiles in the flesh, he was talking about circumcision.
All of y'all who haven't been circumcised, all of you who are
excluded from the covenants, who don't practice that, every
single one of you by the so-called circumcision which is
performed in the flesh by human hands.
Remember that all y'all were at that time separate from Christ,
excluded from the people of Israel, strangers to the
covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the
world. So what Paul was saying is all
of y'all, we're on the outside and notice what he does right?
When he talks about all of y'all who were the circumcision and he
talks about those who were the, you were the uncircumcision and
you were by those who were the the circumcision, right?
What he's talking about is these things begin to become identity
markers for us, don't they? We begin to identify ourselves
as the ones who get to go behind the wall, the ones who get.
I know a couple people who actually went.
To. What's the place called?
Augusta National, right? For the Masters?
And they brought me booty swag, right?
Like I got a sweet hat and I go then.
So it's so it looks like I've been behind the wall, but have I
been behind the wall? No, I'm a little bitter about
it, but I'll get over it, right, Because these things become
defining characteristics and Paul unpacks that and what he
goes into, like Paul makes a big deal out of this about of their
distinction and he identifies 5 things that the Gentiles didn't
have that made them different, right?
Like what does he say? This is verse 12.
Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ.
Jesus is the covenant person. Jesus is the one, right?
Like when God made a promise to Abraham, said I'm going to bless
the whole world through you from the beginning.
Israel didn't do that. Israel stopped being a blessing
to the whole world. They didn't fulfill the plan and
the purpose of their covenants, but Jesus came and did.
But what he said to the Gentiles is Jesus wasn't for you.
That's not your guy. Jesus was a Jewish person by the
wayside. Note this shouldn't have to be
said in the 21st century. Your anti-Semitism, your belief
that the Jews are doing right, it doesn't fit here.
It doesn't work here. Our Savior is exhaustively and
thoroughly, all the way down to the bottom, a Jewish man.
So it doesn't, it doesn't work. Let's let's not do that.
Not us. We don't do that right, but
other people. It's OK to just look at it and
just go. Hey, when you see it right here,
just go well. That's not true.
That's not true, right? He says.
You were Gentiles were without Christ.
You didn't have access to the covenants because you didn't
have a person, he says. You were separate from Christ.
You were excluded from the people of Israel.
You are not part of a family. You didn't have a covenant group
that you were a part of. You were strangers to the
covenants of the promise of a, of a land, of redemption, of
return, of, he says. You didn't have any of that.
There were no covenants made with the Greek, with the Greeks.
God went to the Jewish people. And made himself known strangers
of the covenants, having no hope.
See, apart from Jesus, apart from the people of Israel, apart
from God's presence, there was no hope.
And this last one is without God in the world.
That Greek word is actually it's atheos.
Christians were called atheists because they didn't partake in
the religious system of who they thought.
You don't. Have a God.
So what Paul is talking about is at this point, prior the Greeks,
the Gentiles, us, we were systematically excluded from
everything that God has for his people.
We were outside. And again, this is really
important for us to pause and take in.
This is a real thing. This is a real thing.
And it's important for us to remember this existentially,
like when we leave this room, because there's a very real
temptation in our signs, not just in our signs.
To create boundaries and walls that keep people out.
And as we begin to keep people out, we begin to identify them
as people who are outside, people who don't belong here.
And we begin to identify people by where they belong in relation
to us. We begin to erect walls.
We can begin to put up boundaries and borders.
So again, the problem wasn't that the Jewish people hated the
Gentiles, it was just that they acknowledge God doesn't work in
you the same way that he works in us.
This isn't Paul telling the Gentiles, hey, you guys are the
black sheep of the family, right?
You're familiar with that, with that thing, right?
Like the black sheep means you do some terrible things.
He wasn't telling the Gentiles, hey, you guys have some bad
behaviors, but if you would just get it together, then you would
be inside. He's not saying like you're a
black sheep in the sheep in. He's saying you're like a llama
in the sheep in a different thing entirely.
Like you eat different food, you got different stuff.
Everything about you is different.
You don't belong here. When was the last time you
paused and stopped? And when you looked at this
story and you meditated on the reality that this wasn't for
you? At 1st you were an outsider.
You. Were a stranger to the promises.
That's not my words, that's Paul's word.
It's actually in the scripture, he said.
There once was a system to exclude you from the presence of
God. And Paul is hammering this.
Paul just goes at it, right? And he's a little bit to the
people where they're like, all right, Paul, we get it, right?
Like let up, like, like, like, move on.
His point here isn't to shame them.
His point isn't to shame you. But listen, I feel like if we
don't know how bad the bad news is, we can't really appreciate
the good news. And I just feel like a lot of
times when I look around and I see kind of the way sometimes
that we act and the kind of the sometimes the way that we
behave, I think we've forgotten that we were at once foreigners
and strangers to the promise and excluded from Israel and left
out in the cold and therefore brought in by grace.
And I think when we forget that. We get 9 miles down a bad road
and we get lost and we get. Stuck So what does he say right
so you were way outside verse 13 but now in.
Christ. You who were previously.
Far away have been brought near. This is similar to verse 4 right
verse 4 last night you were dead in your sins in verse 4.
But God being rich in mercy, he he made us alive with Christ the
same thing we were far away, but God has brought us near.
Now here's the thing that we don't automatically get, but
that if Paul's first hears and emphasis would have got because
he spent years with them teaching like that, those ideas,
those that language about brought near.
That's priestly terms. Those are terms about the
temple. Paul's talking about the temple.
One time you were on the backside of the balustrade, but
now Jesus, but God, same thing, rich in mercy has brought you
inside the wall. You get to be near now to where
He is. Listen, I can show you that
verse in Numbers. That's in the Old Testament
Numbers chapter 3, verse 10, talking about Aaron.
He says you shall appoint Aaron. Aaron was the high priest.
God says you shall appoint a high priest and his sons that
they may keep their priesthood. But the layman who what say it
out loud, what who comes near shall what put to death a layman
who's not a priest, He doesn't get to come close to God.
But what Paul says is you outsiders now because of Christ,
you have been brought near. And listen, this was always
God's desire. This was always what God wanted.
Look, Isaiah chapter 57 verse 19 talking about creating the
praise of the lips as a prophecy.
Listen, this is God speaking through the prophet peace, Peace
to him who is what? Far away and.
To him who is near. Peace to those who are outside
the wall, across the balustrade, those peace to those who are on
the other side of the river. Peace to those who are far away.
He says, listen, we saw it in Jesus.
When Jesus in math in Mark Chapter 11 died and he was on
the cross. What does it say happened?
It says the veil in the holy of Holies was torn.
The division, the separation between the outside and the
presence of God was removed forever.
And it wasn't just a matter of curtains and Home Hardware.
It was a matter of the presence of God filling the world just
like He always. I wanted it to.
Paul says that's what Jesus does.
So I want to show that picture of the temple again when we talk
about you have been brought near.
He's not saying that you have a new.
Idea. A new doctrine to tweeze with.
Oh yes, let's let's bring this before Zeus and see what Zeus
has to say. He's talking about a literal
physical reality. You are brought near outside of
the balustrade. The veil has been torn.
You have brought been brought in, not.
Just to the outer inner courts, not just to the court of the
Israelites, all the way to the Holy of Holies where the
presence of God has dwelt. You are actually brought in to
the presence of God. Are you hearing me?
We take this for granted. We have been given access.
To a place that was once off limits, we had been given access
to a healing that was once far away from us.
And what we're told over and over again is that it is Jesus
who does that. Jesus doesn't just make peace,
He is peace. And you remember the thing that
we've been saying from the beginning, One of these big
phrases is in him. In him he's menu Christ broke
down the barriers. Christ, God and his mercy made
us alive. Those who are in him are walking
up. But listen, just the same way
that we weren't made new, we weren't given life because of
our circumstances. This piece isn't circumstantial,
and some of you all need. To hear that today.
The peace that we're seeking, the peace in Jesus, it's not
circumstantial. The Gentiles weren't included in
the people of God because they did enough.
They weren't included in the people of God because they kept
the. Law.
They were included in the people of God because Jesus came for
them, and in the same way that they were made new in him, they
were made God's people in him. Peace was made through him.
He explains it this way verse 14 for he himself.
Talking about Jesus is our peace.
And I was like, like every word here is so important.
Please don't hurry past this, right?
He himself is our peace. How did he do that?
I should find it right? He himself is our peace He made.
Both groups into one. He made both groups into one and
he broke. Down the barrier of the dividing
wall. What does that make you think
of? The balustrade, right?
The walls on the temple that kept the Gentiles from the
Jewish women, the Jewish women from the Gentiles from the
Jewish men, and the Jewish men from the priests and the priests
on the presence of God. He said he's torn down the
walls. They don't exist there anymore.
By abolishing in his flesh the hostility, which is the law
composed of commandments expressed in ordinances.
That's a mouthful we're going to unpack.
So that in himself he might make the two one new person, in this
way establishing peace. Jesus literally broke down the
wall that kept us apart. Look, if you turn back like one
page the book of Galatians chapter 3 starting in verse 27,
Paul writes this to another group of Gentiles.
For you all who were baptized, remember what baptized means.
What does baptize mean? Say it, I hear it immersed.
Totally immersed, right? Like no part is of me is dry.
Under the water, right For those of you who have been.
Immersed in Christ Jesus, have clothed yourself with Christ.
Now listen, there is neither Jew nor Greek, Jew and Gentile.
That's everybody in the whole world.
And he says that distinction doesn't exist anymore.
There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor
female. You are all one in Christ, one.
It doesn't. This doesn't mean conservatives
and liberals getting at a table together and not blowing each
other up. It means those distinctions
cease to exist unless you keep bringing them up, unless you
keep insisting on them. They're not real.
They don't exist. Men and female, right?
Well, women can't women got to do it's like nonsense oh, slave
and free. What's the distinction that you
want to impose on the Kingdom? That's your.
Idea. That's not Father's idea.
And he talked about, right, like this distinction, this hostility
was rooted in the law and the ordinances, right and all that.
This is so important. Are you listening real quick?
What Paul's not saying? Is that the law was bad.
He's not saying that the law is bad.
What he's saying is the law sin. Remember, Johnny talked about
the powers, the spiritual forces, these powers that are at
work and the age to come, but also in the present age, right
there at work. Now these powers sin, use the
law to build distinctions, right?
What parts of the law? Circumcision.
It's real easy to tell, right? You are.
You're not easy to go. I'm either us or I'm them.
Talk about the dietary restrictions.
You either eat ham or you don't. And if you are circumcised and
don't eat ham, it becomes real easy to tell real quick, doesn't
it? Oh, you're one of them.
Oh, you're one of those. The Festivals.
Passover Tabernacle. All of these, these feasts that
were taught to show God's movement with within his people
and for his people. It became real easy for the
Gentiles and for the Jewish people.
The Jewish people started to believe, well, you don't do
these things, you're not circumcised, you're them, you're
outside. You don't belong in the temple.
You don't get access to where I go and listen.
So over time it becomes the most easy thing in the world to
believe closer to God equals further away.
From the Gentiles. The closer I get to God, the
further I get away from the Gentiles.
And so we start to evaluate our experience in terms of our
boundaries, in terms of our borders.
We see it. Spiritually all the time, right?
Like we just say I'm a spiritually mature Christian
because I have memorized 500 verses of scripture because I go
to church all the time, called boundary marker spirituality.
And what I want to say is, reading the scripture is great,
going to church is great. But I know lots of people who
read the scripture every day and they use it to justify hate.
You're not mature. You hate Jesus loves.
You hate using the. Scripture to reinforce your
worldview. Doesn't make you like Jesus.
It baptizes something that Jesus came to do away with, right?
He. Came to bring peace.
And again, what he didn't do is say, hey, here's a roughly Jew
and Gentile mob, he said. Those are my people.
It's not saying I hate Cowboy fans, but I'll have lunch with
one. And the reason I'll have lunch
with 1 is so that I can hope to convince them that the Cowboys
are terrible and Jerry Jones is ruining the NFL and all that.
And if I can just get in a table with them, then I would know I
would convince them. But I'm a little nervous because
if I go, if I go have lunch with the Dallas Cowboys fan, am I
justifying their Dallas Cowboys existence?
What if I go have lunch with them and somebody sees them and
they wonder whether I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan?
And what if I go to them and I have lunch with them as Dallas
Cowboys fans and I'm telling them and they get mad at me and
I just walk up and go, Lord save me from these.
Heathens bless you. Listen, Jesus didn't come so
that black people could drink at white drinking fountains.
Jesus came to create a world where there are no signs, ours
and theirs. He.
Said he made US1. And the reason we read the
Galatians passage is because it's not just about Jews and
Gentiles. It is the most fundamental
distinctions we can think of. Male and female.
What does that mean? We're all just some amorphous
BLOB of, you know, neutered gender?
Absolutely not. He created you like you are.
What it means is whatever you are, male, female, foreigner,
native. Whatever, whoever you are.
That doesn't make it easier for you to get to Jesus.
That doesn't make you more like him fundamentally, at your core.
The work of Jesus doesn't destroy our enemies.
It destroys hostility. The problem is we me, we have
made far too much peace with hostility.
The problem is we love to baptize hostility as religious
something or other. We're separating, dividing,
killing, hurting, responding, retaliating in the name of
Jesus. So what I want to say is listen,
and I mean this I'm what I want to communicate to you is love
right now. I love you.
I see I see the world that you're in.
I see the things that we see all over the place on the news and I
and I want to say is I understand that in every heart
there's some bias. We just live in a world where
there's bias and I understand, and if it's not carefully
tended, it can lead us to hate other people or other groups of
people. And what I want to say is I
don't need you to hide that from yourself.
I don't need you to to just what I need you to do is not not, you
know, try to pretend that that's not a case on it.
What I need us to do is not baptize it in the name of Jesus
and tell us that we hate other people because Jesus wants us
to. It's a very different thing.
I can say I have trouble with this person, right, Cowboys
fans? Come on.
Hey, you're hurting me. So All right, look at how.
See, look, the dividing line has been down, right?
It's OK to say, hey, man, I really struggle to like Cowboy
fans because they've settled for mediocrity and all that stuff.
What I can't do is, did that come out?
Was that real? What I can't say is that Jesus
feels the same way about Cowboys fans that I do.
And what I need to do is hold up in my heart that says I latch
onto distinctions that aren't real in the Kingdom.
And the closer that I try to get to him, the more and more those
distinctions should become uncomfortable to me until
eventually they become untenable.
Jesus doesn't destroy our enemies.
He destroys hostility. He destroys all the things that
make us hate or distrust or not like other people.
This is called the doctrine of reconciliation.
We see it all over the place. It's all throughout Scripture,
right? But he says explicitly here in
verse 16, he, he did this right? He, he did away with the
hostility that he might reconcile them both in one body.
Who's the body? Jesus in him.
What's the church? The what?
Of Christ, The body of Christ. He brought us all together, Jews
and Gentiles, male and female, black and white, slave and free,
Cowboys and Texans and 49ers. Maybe I don't know, right?
But he brought all of us together so that we might be
reconciled to Him, having put to death the hostility.
Listen, you cannot claim that the law of God has irreversibly
set you against somebody that God loves.
We've misinterpreted and mishandled the law.
The cross doesn't mean that Jewish people will suddenly
become Gentile people. It doesn't mean that Gentile
people will suddenly become Jewish people.
What it means is everything that just made us distinct and
separate. He killed that he.
Killed the reason for the Jewish people to want the Gentiles out.
So here's the bad news for us. In a deeply and thoroughly
divided and often hostile nation and culture, our separation from
others reflects A separation from God.
You've seen the shirt, right? And it's whatever God loves.
All the people that you hate hate that shirt because listen,
I'm broken. I'm sinful.
I'm trying to figure out how to live in the world, right?
I'm trying to figure out how to make it better for my kid.
And I see dumb people doing dumb things.
I'm like God, you're people like help us right, like we're like
we're doing all and and me and I think that's the distinction.
As soon as I forget that I was invited into this thing that it
wasn't my party when I started, it becomes real easy.
It's self righteousness becomes real easy to for me to believe
that I I belonged here. If we cling to the things that
cause us to resist reconciliation, if I cling to
the things that make me go, but God, have you seen them?
God, do you know, like we cling to those things and we, we're
resisting those things, we're resisting him.
When we fail to make peace with our enemies, we're resisting the
Prince of Peace, the king, to restore a Kingdom in which there
will no longer be slave or free or Jew or Greek or male or
female or all of those things. So what does that sound like in
our ears? What does that mean to us?
That kind of reconciliation? Verse 17 And he Jesus came and.
Preached peace to who? Y'all all y'all, he came and
preached peace to all y'all who were far away and peace to those
who were near A lot of times in our mindset right?
Like we can place ourself in the in the people who are near,
right, Because we've been included in this for a long
time. We now have the Scripture, we
have the New Testament, we have the teaching.
I've been in churches since I would before I was a person.
I've been in church, right? And so it's easy for me to think
like, no, I've been brought nearby Christ and it's the
people who are outside that are doing all the problems.
But the thing he says is now the people who are near needed peace
too. The Jewish people.
Didn't have it all right. They didn't get it all right
either. They were broken.
They were in the sense having the temple didn't make it OK for
them. They all needed peace.
They all needed recovery and restoration, just like we do in
verse 18. For through Him we both have
access in one spirit to the Father.
Peace, this piece that we're talking about, this covenantal
peace, not just with you and you and you and you, right, but this
relationship, this promised relationship between God and his
people. Peace is the embodied message of
Jesus announced to us, this message, this no longer slaver.
Free. Distinction.
The dividing wall brought down the end of the balustrade, the
crumbling of temple. What did Jesus say?
He says I'll destroy this temple and I'll build it up.
Next week we're going to talk about the temple again, and
about new. Right.
But Jesus. Said, listen, this temple, it's
going away. All of those things, the way
they used to get in those things are are are going away.
What Jesus said is the things that you think make you
different and better than someone else don't exist
anymore. There is only Jesus and those
who are in him and those who are outside.
And you know what we call the word lost people, right?
Do you know what a great way to refer to people who aren't
following Jesus, who don't know Jesus yet?
A great way to refer to. Them is the ones that Jesus
misses the most. Thank you.
The ones that Jesus. I look at those.
People and go. Lord, right, it's a tax
collector and a Pharisee. Lord, thank God you didn't make
me a cowboy fan. Hallelujah, I've been delivered.
Cowboy fans over there, go and have mercy on me because I've,
you know, I know it. I get it.
There's a lot. Of that going on I know.
The temple makes peace through sacrifice.
That was the point of the temple.
Bring your sacrifices to the altar and have them sacrifice
and then the forgiveness of your sin.
Jesus came and said I'm the sacrifice.
It's not the blood of goats and Rams, it's the blood of covenant
maker, the King who is all things and he makes access for
all of us. So before we move into next
week's vision of what new the new humanity looks like, I want
us to stop there, OK? And I want us to talk about I
want us to put handles on this. This is counter cultural.
This is hard. OK, So what are some things that
we can do this week? First, remember.
I mean, spend a lot of time this week thinking about the fact
that you were excluded. This wasn't for you.
The whole. 1st 2/3 of the book, The Old Testament were about
another people in which you weren't included.
And we can pause and stop and remember, but listen.
We don't think about our outsidedness to make us ashamed
or to make us fearful. We.
Meditate on it to remind us to be grateful.
Our remembrance should inspire in US gratitude.
And so we practice gratitude. The second thing that we can do
is receive. Receive the grace of
acceptedness. This Jesus didn't save you for a
religious performance. Jesus didn't include you in a
new cultural identity. He included you in a new kind of
humanity. We're all the distinctions and
we're all the hostility between you and me.
Go to die. It sounds like I have a little
work to do, right, Russell? A little cowboy football work.
He invited us into a new kind of humanity, a new way of life.
And finally reach, remember, and then receive and then reach.
What I mean is go across the wall.
I'm not just saying invite someone into your space.
I'm saying you go to their space.
Have a meal and just listen to them and just understand them.
This is not I'm going to go have.
I'm going to go grace those liberals with my redemptive
presence, and I'm going to give them the gift of.
Convincing them that they're wrong.
This is an invitation to put to death the attitudes in you that
cause you to see people in terms other than Jesus.
The idea is to put to death the hostility that makes us respond
in hate and separation and division from other people.
See, we're gathered here in this room on this day as a
congregation of Jesus Church, and our express purpose is to
demonstrate in real time and space the peace that Jesus has
made lasting and practical for us.
This is our demonstration. This is our testimony.
So when we build walls of hostility between people, when
we maintain those walls and we work on them, we are destroying
the reconciled humanity that Jesus died to give his life for.
When we insist that some are outside and some are inside,
we're destroying what Jesus came to do when we tolerate our own
prejudices. Or when we.
Refuse to be curious about whether we have any prejudices.
We are rebuilding walls that Jesus tore down, and we are
resisting the peace that Jesus has come to secure for us.
But here's the good news. Try as we might, the walls are
down and there are those who are entering.
Try as we might, the peace has been made and our invitation
isn't to believe in something. Our invitation is to embody
something, to live like this peace, truth.
So let me pray for you for just a minute because I want to
acknowledge that this is difficult.
I want to acknowledge that this is hard.
I want to acknowledge that this is countercultural, that there's
nothing in our world that tells us that this is the way.
By the way, that's why Jesus said it's a narrow path.
And listen, some of you are wrestling right now, and I want
you to know Jesus isn't mad that you're wrestling.
Jesus isn't mad when he reveals something.
You know why he reveals? Because he wants to love you in
that sure. He wants to lead us to a
promised land beyond all those things.
So Jesus, I just pray that you would give us peace.
I pray that you would give us peace Now in this moment, in
this place, badly broken as we are.
I pray that you would show us your love.
And Lord, help us to be wall Breakers.
And that's a different metaphor, right?
We meet wall builders and all this.
But Lord, help us to break down hostility.
Help us to actively go into the world for the purpose of
reconciliation. May we never believe that there
are people or groups of people that are categorically excluded
in the promise of God, in the covenant of Jesus, the new
covenant, his blood which makes peace.
Father God, forgive me. I tolerate too much of this in
my heart. I get angry, I get exercised,
get frustrated, I get sad and I want to scapegoat someone.
Jesus, I just pray that you would.
Every time that that happens, I pray that there would be like
bells in my head that go off. That's not the Kingdom that you
have invited me into. That's not ultimate reality.
So I pray, Father, that you would give me an apocalypse or
revelation of the new humanity that you have created.
And I pray that you would help me to walk and lighten in terms
of that. Jesus, we need your peace today.
We need your grace. We love you and we thank you,
and we ask all of these things in your name for your glory.
Amen. Thank you for joining us today.
River City Church is all about experiencing and expressing
God's love in our lives and community, and we hope that
you've been able to experience that today.
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May the Lord bless and keep you in all grace and peace.