Ephesians (Part 05) Belonging

8/9/2019 Ephesians (Part 05) Belonging

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Belonging

Ephesians 2

Years ago, I had the privilege of living for several years in the American south,

and during that time I had occasion to travel to Atlanta a couple of times forappointments at the Canadian consulate in that city. On my first trip I discovered

that traffic was terrible and finding a parking space downtown near the consulate

was actually worse. But I also noticed when I was down there that there was a

subway; and on the way home, I noticed that the subway had an end of the line

station on the outskirts of the city right near the highway; so the next time, I told

some of my friends that I was not going to drive downtown, but rather was going

to park at the train station and take the subway.

They were horrified and warned me in the strongest possible terms that I didnt

want to do that; that I would, in fact be taking my life into my own hands. Ofcourse, I can be a little stubborn from time to time, so I didnt listen. The next

time down I parked at the extremity of the city and took the train, just as I had

planned. And I realized very quickly what my friends had been talking about, not

that I felt I was ever in danger or had done something foolish, but a short time

after I got on, I realized that I was possibly the only person of no color on the

train. And it turned out to be a delightful ride. The people were friendly, and

reacted to me with a kind of youre not from around here, are you? sort of

helpfulness.

Of course, I could understand my friends too. They had grown up down there,

and had been carefully taught to fear the stranger; especially if the stranger

happened to have skin of a different color. And I realized that had the situation

been reversedhad I been the only black man on a train full of white people

and had it been just a few years earlierthe 1960s instead of the 1980sthe

story would have been completely different.

At least, that was the experience of journalist John Howard Griffin, native of

Texas, who endured chemical and ultraviolet treatments over a period of months

to darken his skin so that he could pass for a black man, travel the deep south andthen document what it was like in his book, Black Like Me. He discovered very

quickly that when your skin is a different color people look at you differently. In

fact, he called it the hate stare; that look that people would get when he

walked into a restaurant or attempted to use a washroom. And then there was

that other kind of contempt. There were those who didnt see him at all.


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And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms

in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the

incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this not from

yourselves, it is the gift of God9

not by works, so that no one can boast.10

Forwe are Gods workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God

prepared in advance for us to do.

But to understand what Paul is saying there, we have to understand who we were

before Christ and who we would be now without Christ.

Well, as we have seen in previous weeks, we were dead in trespasses and sins,

living out the evil desires of our hearts, following the prince of the power of the

air, the spirit who is now at work in the children of disobedience; by nature, we

were objects of wrath, under the sentence of death and the curse of Almighty

God. Thats the first part of what John Calvin calls an exposition and anillustration of the truths proclaimed in this passage. The second is found in the

latter half of the chapter, beginning in verse 10 where we are exhorted,

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

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

the body by the hands of men)12 remember that at that time you were

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

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

And if youve ever wondered what we mean when we speak of being dead intrespasses and sin, thats it. I mean, with our materialistic mindset these days,

we think of physical death as being absolutely the worst thing that could happen

to a person and we try to interpret the Scriptures in that way. But did you ever

wonder about that story at the beginning of the Bible where God made a

covenant with Adam and Eve, telling them that in the day that they ate of the

tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would surely die, and then Adam, at

least, is described as living for about 900 years.

The thing is, while the physical death did enter the world at the time of the fall,

along with the curse and everything else that has afflicted this sad little planet forthousands of years now, physical death wasnt really Gods primary concern. The

death that they died right there in Eden, according to the promise of God

himself, wasnt physical. It was covenantal. They were cut off from God. The

relationships that they had enjoyed with him and with each other were broken.

They who had been friends became strangers. They who had been partners by


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covenant with the Almighty became aliens. They who had been filled with hope

because of the breath of God that was in them were cut off and excluded, kicked

out of the garden. And dont listen to the serpent who would say to us down to

this very day, See. I was right. They didnt reallydie. Dont imagine that at the

end of that day when God put them out and set an angel to keep the way of thetree of life, barring them forever, they walked away thinking that they had

dodged the bullet. They didnt. On day that the covenant was broken, they were

dead men walking, and they knew it.

Now in the course of time, God would make other covenants with other people.

He would single out Noah, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He would promise to

redeem them, and to be their God; and he would call them to be his people and

he would give them the task of being a light to the nations that lived in darkness.

Thats the flow of history in the Old Covenant. But by the time of Jesus, that

covenant too had been broken, and the people of the covenant had turnedinward, hiding the light under a basket to use Jesus words, while darkness

covered the earth. And the nationsthats you and methey had no place in

that system. They were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in

Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and

without God in the world.

You see, the Bible doesnt see physical death as the ultimate evil, and it doesnt

define spiritual death in merely practical terms, as if to say, now that we are

spiritually dead we are simply not able to do or to choose what is good. Those

things are true, of course. But the in the Bible, death is defined in terms of the

covenant; and youre only truly dead when you are cut off from the life and the

presence and the glory of God. Which we were. For the gentiles under the old

covenant, there was no sacrifice; there was no sacrament; there was no salvation.

And then grace broke through. Verse 13:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near

through the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two

one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by abolishing in

his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was tocreate in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in this

one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to

death their hostility.

Again, if you have your own Bible, underline and highlight those little words, but

now. They are two of the most precious words in all of Scripture. You were


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dead, but now you are alive. You were separate from Christ, excluded from

citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without

hope and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who once

were far away have been brought near.

For the author of the hymn that we are going to sin in just a few moments, thiswas his life experience. John Newton was a runaway, a blasphemer and a slave

trader. He lived his life about as far away as possible from the light and the life of

God. In a series of letters he later wrote, "Like an unwary sailor who quits his

port just before a rising storm, I renounced the hopes and comforts of the gospel

at the very time when every other comfort was about to fail me. While aboard

the ship Greyhound, Newton gained notoriety for being one of the most profane

men the captain had ever met. In a culture where sailors commonly used oaths

and swore, Newton was admonished several times for not only using the worst

words the captain had ever heard, but creating new ones to exceed the limits ofverbal debauchery. Then In March 1748, while his ship was in the North Atlantic,

a violent storm came upon the ship that was so rough it swept overboard a crew

member who had been standing where Newton was moments before. After

hours of the crew emptying water from the ship and expecting to be capsized, he

offered a desperate suggestion to the captain, who ordered it so. Newton turned

and said, "If this will not do, then Lord have mercy upon us!"

His conversion was not immediate, but in the course of time, as he pondered the

mercy that God had demonstrated to the ship during that storm, he came to

trust in Christ, and as he did, the wonder of Gods love found expression in words

that would one day become one of the best known hymns in Christianity.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but nowIm found; was blind, but nowI see.

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birthremember

that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in

Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without

God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have

been brought near through the blood of ChristConsequently, you are no longerforeigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with Gods people and members of

Gods household

In the Reformed churches, we say it all the time. What is your only comfort in life

and in death? That I am not my own, but belong body and soul in life and in

death to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ


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We were excluded; we were cut off; we were without hope and without God in

the world; but now, we belong. We are part of the family. We are living stones in

the house of our God.

My prayer this morning is that we might understand what that truly means,

because we are, as I said earlier, more often than not, on the other side. We are,more often than not, part of the group that tends to exclude others and drive

them away, even if its only by our silence. Sadly, the church, the house of God

which was meant to be this wondrous place where the grace of God unites

people, breaking down the barriers between us and making us one in Jesus, has

often been a place where people are judged and condemned and excluded

because of our perceived inadequacies. Like the Pharisees of another time,

when we are called to be a light to the nations, we seem content to keep that

light under a basket, and to push away the stranger, and the broken, and the

sinful. But to us, the old apostle would say, Remember, you too were onceseparate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the

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

13 But nowin Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near

through the blood of ChristConsequently, you are no longer foreigners and

aliens, but fellow citizens with Gods people and members of Gods household

An now, because we belong, we extend the call of the gospel to those who have

not yet found a home by Gods amazing grace.

Nowin Christ Jesus you who are far away may be brought near through the bloodof Christ.

For this is the church. This is our calling. This is our invitation, in the words of

another song-writer, Robin Mark,

Let the exile come, let the stranger come

Let the weary come find rest

all you homeless sons

All you widowed ones,

all you poor and dispossessed

For a table waits in Your Father's house

There the meek can come and eat

Theres a place of rest at Your Father's breast

Where His mercy is complete.

So come. Believe. Belong.


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May we pray.

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Ephesians (Part 05) Belonging