That's what I was gonna say. I'm just telling you. Thank you very much. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Morning. All right. Let's begin. Do you remember where you were,
what you were when the Lord saved you, when the Lord brought you
out of darkness? I don't mean the specific time,
but do you remember what you were, what the Lord saved you
out of, how he saved you from yourself, and the bondage that
you were in. Well, Paul, he opens our text
this morning in that way, saying to the Gentile brethren, remember. Remember what you were. Remember
where you were when the Lord called you. All right? And so
we're going to be in Ephesians 2, verses 11 to the end of the
chapter, verse 22. And I've titled this, The Body
of Salvation. The Body of Salvation. So Paul,
having magnified the exceeding riches of the grace of our God,
having put that on display for us to see the kindness, the grace,
the mercy of our God in salvation, he now says, remember, in verse
11, Wherefore, remember that ye being in time past Gentiles
in the flesh." The Ephesians are still Gentiles according
to nature, but he's saying you're no longer Gentiles according
to the flesh or according to practice. You don't live as the
Gentiles live or as you used to live as a Gentile in the flesh. you who are called uncircumcision
by that which is called the circumcision in the flesh made by hand. Most of you know, but just for
those who may not, that the circumcision was a sign given to the Jews
which distinguished their people from all other peoples in the
earth. It was a cutting of the flesh
where the Lord had commanded them to make them appear different
from other men. But Paul is saying, remember,
you Gentiles who are uncircumcised in the flesh, remember. Remember
where you were, what you were, how you were running in sin,
living according to the course of this world, how that you were
under the power, rather the bondage of that spirit of the prince
of the power of the air that rules over the children of disobedience. And the reason why Paul does
this is because upon reflection, when we realize just how far
short we fall of the glory of God, how that we were in darkness
and knew nothing of how to approach God, He in mercy came to us. When we didn't deserve it, He
in mercy and in grace brought us out of the pit of darkness
into the glorious light of His Son, Jesus Christ. remembering
in this way, not rejoicing in our past sins, not remembering
things that are filthy and vile and things for which we now feel
shame, not glorying in those things, but remembering, my God
has saved me out of that filth. And it magnifies the grace of
God before our eyes, and it brings us all down to one and the same
level. Because we all see and remember,
I'm a sinner too. I'm a sinner. I might have an
offense against a brother or sister, I might feel something
from them that hurts, but I'm a sinner, I'm weak, I'm defiled
in the flesh, and I need the grace of God. And it brings us
down to that same level, reminding us that we're all sinners. We all need the grace of our
God in Christ. Now, when our Lord said to Israel,
the following, he says, look unto the rock whence ye are hewn,
and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. That's back in
Isaiah 51, 1. Now we know that we are now hewn
from the rock, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. But what he was
saying there that would come to their mind is Abraham and
Sarah. They were hewn from the rock
of Abraham, and Sarah. But we Gentiles, according to
the flesh, we didn't even have that. We have nothing to boast
in, nothing to glory in. They were given the covenant
of circumcision. They were given prophets, and
the word, and the law, and they had all these things given to
them as Jews, whereby they might see in the pictures, and the
types, and the shadows, the glory of Christ who should come. But
we didn't have that. We were uncircumcision. We were
called the uncircumcision by them who are the circumcision. But of course we're all guilty
of sin and Paul brings that out regarding the Jews who are called
the circumcision because he says it's in the flesh made with hands. So none of us, we're all guilty
of sin, we all come short of God's glory. Now, to help their
memory, in verse 12, Paul begins to jog it a bit with what we
are in the flesh. He begins to point these things
out, to stir us up and show us. Just in case you're not thinking
of it, he says in verse 12 that we were aliens, or sorry, that
at that time ye were without Christ. We didn't receive those
promises given to Moses. We didn't have the ceremonial
law. We didn't have those things which
were a help to the true children of God to see the salvation of
God in the coming Messiah. And then he adds that we were
aliens from the commonwealth of Israel. The Jews, they were
forbidden to live in peace among the Gentiles. They didn't have
that fellowship. They didn't mix and intermingle
with the Gentiles. They didn't allow their sons
to marry the daughters of the Gentiles and they didn't allow
their daughters to marry the sons of the Gentiles. They kept
that separate. They didn't allow the Gentiles
to partake in their feasts unless they forsook all and became circumcised
themselves and even then there was a separation between them. I remember as a young child I
was wanting to play with some of the kids on the block and
I lived in a largely Jewish neighborhood and I had no idea the time of
year that it was or what holidays they observed but I went to the
door my friend's house and when they showed up they said it's
we can't come out it's Passover now and you have to leave. you'd have to leave. And so I
wasn't allowed. And they told me later that when
they heard it, they thought it was at that time when they were
reading of Elijah coming and there was a knock at the door,
but I obviously was not Elijah and was sent away. And so the
point is that there is no fellowship. There's no relation there between
Jew and Gentile in that regard. He says that we're strangers
from the covenants of promise. We didn't have those, those blessings. We didn't know what God had promised
to his people. We were completely shut up and
in dark to those things so that we had no hope and were without
God in the world. The Jews see the Gentiles as
atheists, that those who don't live in the country of Israel,
under the practices and the auspices of the religion God gave to the
Jews, they are without God. Without God. They have no God. And what that says to us is that
there's not many gods for different peoples. God doesn't manifest
himself in a different way to different people. There's one
salvation, there's one body of salvation, and that's where Paul,
by the Spirit, is driving us to see. He's bringing us to see
that it's not about seeking God our own way, and God's dealing
with us differently than how he deals with his other people.
There's one way of salvation, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
All right, now, you know, actually, when you strip us down, when
you think about it, we look on the outward, right? We look on
the flesh. We look at men and women. We
see blacks and whites and other races. And we see culture differences
and differences in language, differences in values. But we're
all a soul enrobed in this exterior tent, which is fading away fast. And so we have one hope of salvation,
the Lord, because we're all just souls in these tents that we
get caught up looking at, but we all need the salvation of
God. We're just souls. All right,
now Ephesians 2.13 says, but now in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes
were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. So having
this backdrop of what we are by nature, we see our need of
salvation. We see that we need the grace
of God because we cannot save ourselves. We cannot work our
ways unto the Father. And so when we're seeing right,
we're seeing that it must be by grace. It must be by grace,
and our God tells us how it is by grace, that it's through His
Son. It's through the salvation, the
provision He's given to His people in His Son, Jesus Christ. So
that for the Gentiles, just as it is for the Jews, the way that
we come into the presence of God is by that grace shown to
us in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's through His blood. We pass into the presence of
God. We come through that veil through
the body of Christ, through his shed blood, washing us and cleansing
us from all sin and all spot and all that defiles and keeps
us separated from God. It's all washed away by the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for sinners to reconcile,
to gather together the people that were scattered, that were
scattered and separated and dispersed before God and had no part in
Him. Now, the scriptures speak of
this as a purchasing, a redemption, right? It's His blood is the
purchase price which brings us out of that darkness and captivity
into the fellowship with Holy God. He did that, apart from
our works, even when we were enemies of the true and living
God. And so it's in that blood of
our Lord Jesus Christ that we approach, safely approach unto
Holy God. Otherwise, we can't approach
unto him. Otherwise, we come in as a stinking offense before
him. So it's only through the blood.
Turn over to Hebrews chapter 10. Go to Hebrews chapter 10,
and let's pick up in verse 19. Hebrews 10 19 says, having therefore
brethren boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. We don't live under a king, right,
in our land, we don't submit to a king, but those who have
a king know that you don't just approach in his courts, you don't
just come into his courts flarently and acting like you have some
authority or some right to be there. You come only when you're
invited and allowed to come. And if he, you know, back in
Esther's day, if he didn't extend the scepter and allow you to
touch the scepter, you would be hauled off and likely killed
or at least imprisoned for a time. But we have boldness to come
before our God because of the blood of Christ. which perfumes
us, which covers us, which makes us acceptable unto the Father. We're told that it's by a new
and living way, which Christ consecrated for us through the
veil, that is, that veil through His flesh, which is broken for
you. which is made open for you to
pass through by his spirit, by his glory and power to pass through
that body which he gave for your sanctification, for your justification
and redemption to approach unto God. You know, prior to the knowledge
that God gives to us of his son, The reason we speak of these
things is because He's making known to us what He's accomplished,
what we were in ourselves, unable to approach unto Him. But before
that knowledge of the grace of our God in Christ, we labored,
we toiled in religion. Some in just utter deadness and
lived to the uttermost of sin, but many of us were religious.
Many of us wanted to know the true and living God, but we were
failing all over the place. We were struggling and striving
and toiling in that religion and did not know how to please
God. Sometimes we'd feel a little
hope only to have the next day come and feel depressed and down
and distraught about what we were and what we had done or
what we thought we were before God. But our God has given us
an understanding of the completeness of the salvation by our Lord
Jesus Christ so that we are accepted of Him. We come before Him perfect
and holy and just even as He is just. We understand now we
are sinners sinners saved by mercy and grace in Christ, washed
in the blood of the Lamb, whereby now we're accepted. When the Lord asked his disciples,
who do you say that I am? And Peter said, thou art the
Christ, the son of the living God. And Christ said to him,
Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not
revealed that to you, but my Father which is in heaven." And
it just shows us the simplicity of Christ. It shows us the simplicity
of our salvation. And to those who hear the simplicity
of it and rejoice, you're blessed. That's grace and mercy. And those
who hear the simplicity of it and say, that's not true. that's
not enough. Or they despise it. That's a
fearful thing. That's a terrifying thing because
God makes his people to rejoice in the simplicity of the salvation
of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then in Hebrews 10, verse
21, he says that we have a high priest over the house of God. That means that the service,
which the high priest did for the people, all right, in the
Old Testament, first for his own sins and then for the sins
of the people, our Lord's service, which is entirely for the people,
it has prevailed. He has availed for us and reconciled
us to the Father. And so he says, let us draw near
with a true heart in full assurance of faith, trusting the Lord that
he is sufficient, not trusting your works, not trusting what
you have or have not done. trusting the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Come to him in full assurance
of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, thinking
that our works are our righteousness, and our bodies washed with pure
water by his word. And you that hear the voice of
the Son of God, and you that hear his voice speaking, That's
a blessing, because he's the one who speaks into the heart
of his people, delivering them from the bondage of dead-letter
religion. All right, now, back in Ephesians
2.14, in our text there, he says, for
Christ is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken
down the middle wall of partition between us. And what Paul is
driving at here is that Christ is the peacemaker. he's the peacemaker,
right? He said, blessed are the peacemakers
for they shall be called the children of God. And there's
none who was more of a peacemaker than the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And so the Jews and the Gentiles,
as we saw earlier back in verse 12, we were separated. We were
separated and everything about our existence was contrary one
to another. You know, some of you may know
this, may have a sibling in your family where you just, you fight
against them. You just don't see eye to eye. And I remember back in New Jersey,
there was a family of seven children and the two right in the middle,
two brothers, man, they went at it sometimes. I mean, vicious
fights. And one was big and one was small,
but they, went against each other as though they were the same
size, and they just never seemed to get along while they lived
under the same house. And Jacob and Esau were similar
in that regard, all right? We're told about Jacob, or Esau,
that he was a cunning hunter, a man of the field, and Jacob
was a plain man, a dweller, and dwelt in tents. You know, and
Daddy loved Esau, and Mommy loves Jacob, and that's just a recipe
for fighting and for arguments and for differences in that regard. And the point is, is that we
Jews and Gentiles, that's how it is with us. We just don't
see eye to eye by nature. Everything the Jews did was just
an offense to the Gentiles. And everything the Gentiles did
is an offense to the Jew, right, in the practice of their religion.
And so there's just no harmony there. There's no peace. But
that's exactly what Christ did, was to establish peace between
Jew and Gentile. We got to call them one another
names. The circumcision called us the uncircumcision, and we
called them the circumcision and despised their cutting in
the flesh. But our Lord made peace between
them both. He removed those differences,
bringing us all down to being saved the same way. through the
blood of Christ. They don't have a special line
that they can pick up and call God and be heard before anyone
else. We all come through the blood
of Jesus Christ. He alone is our salvation, and
that's made clear. So those that would separate
and are seeking to go back to the ceremonial law of the Jews,
don't do it. That's just a religion of division. That's a religion of strife and
separation because our Lord removed those things. Remember what we
saw in John last week where John pointed out that the Passover,
which we all know pretty well about the Passover, but he said
the Passover, a feast of the Jews. Meaning that we Christians,
Jew and Gentile, we don't observe those things. We don't observe
the Passover, it's a feast of the Jews. He had to point that
out because they weren't practicing it. And yet people today are
going back there, putting up the walls again between Jew and
Gentile. Don't do it. We're all saved
the same way through the blood of Christ. And so because we
are saved the same way, through the same Lord, the same Savior,
he sends this gospel of peace out. He broadcasts it out to
the people that his people, his scattered people would be gathered
back together again under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so this gospel, as we hear
it, is declaring us all to be sinners, all in need of his grace,
which can only be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. All right,
now our Lord, he honored the law. He satisfied perfectly the
justice of God for his people, and therefore not only made peace
between Jew and Gentile, but peace between us all and holy
God. All right, he makes peace between
us so that the enmity in our hearts by nature is removed. And we now receive that fellowship
and that peace and the justification of God, receiving that understanding,
having it communicated to us through faith, the faith which
he's given to us by his life. So our Lord, he's called the
everlasting father. He's called the prince of peace. And he's lifted that barrier
that stood between us, that law which was contrary to us, which
we cannot keep, right? He removed that. It's by him
that we have that new and living way. The old way was to strive
under the law, to strive to please God, to find out what it was
that he wanted from us and to provide it to him, but we never
could do it. But Christ has made that new
and living way through His blood. Now we're told back in Ephesians
2.15 that Christ has abolished in His flesh the enmity, even
the law of commandments contained in ordinances for to make in
Himself of two one new man, so making peace. That's that new
and living way. We're not saved by dead letter
works. Faith is not the start and then
we go on to doing works in religion to try and make ourselves more
holy and more acceptable to God. The works shall follow by the
Spirit of God in you, leading you and guiding you and teaching
you what you have need of hearing. He instructs all his people.
It's said that they shall all be taught. God we're all gonna
hear from the Lord himself where each one of his children hear
his voice not an audible voice But you have instruction by the
Lord Speaking to you now the things that you have need of
hearing what he's speaking to you All right, the Lord does
that by a new and living way whereby were consecrated By him
that's from Hebrews 1020 as we saw earlier right now by Christ
There is a circumcision. There's a circumcision of every
one of us, not just for males, but for men and women here, because
it's a circumcision of the heart. He cuts out that root of bitterness
from us. He gives us life by his spirit. He brings us into his body, the
church, and makes us one in fellowship with one another and with holy
God. All right, so it's a circumcision
of the heart where only the spirit can reach. He says in Romans
2, 28 and 29, that he is not a Jew which is one outwardly,
neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh,
but he is a Jew which is one inwardly. And circumcision is
that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter, not in
the works, but in the spirit whose praise is not of men, but
of God, so that the Spirit testifies to each of you that are his,
he testifies to you that you are his, and that he's given
you this faith and hope and separated you from the world, but brought
you unto himself in that grace and mercy. And so our Lord came
and he accomplished what neither Jew nor Gentile in all their
religions and all their works could not accomplish, He did
it and reconciled us to the Father, so that we're received through
that blood. Now look at verse 16 in our text, Ephesians 2,
16, and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by
the cross, having slain the enmity thereby. So he took that natural
hatred that's in us against God and against others, and he slew
it by the death of himself. He put it to death. The enmity
is slain by your Lord. And that's good news to the ear
of faith. You that have the ear of faith,
that's good news because it declares to us that my sin is put away. Christ has done this for me,
as I remember what I was in the flesh, what I did, and what I
cared little for. how that Christ has delivered
me out of that death, out of that condemnation and bondage,
and brought me into the light of Christ, to hear His voice,
to seek Him, to know Him, to have that fellowship with Him
and with His people, hearing and being fed that gospel. that gospel of peace through
his blood. All right, and we see that our God who's true and
just, he's provided wonderfully for us above all that we could
ask or think and continues to wash over our consciences, wash
over our minds, the peace that he brings to us through his son,
apart from our works, what he's accomplished. All right, now
let's see verses 17 and 18. He came and preached peace to
you which were far off and to them that were nigh." Gentile
and Jew. For through him we both have
access by one spirit unto the Father. In other words, all enter
under the blood of Christ. There's not separate ways. Christ
bore witness to this and the Holy Spirit bears witness that
it's through Christ alone. And to those who hear and believe,
He gives us assurance of this. Verse 19, saying, Now therefore
ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens
with the saints and of the household of God. It's man's religion that separates,
man's religion that divides over fleshly things. And that's what
we see even in dispensationalism today where it's about dividing
and separating and making it all about the Jews. No, Jew and
Gentile need salvation and the only way they're saved is by
the Lord Jesus Christ. The just lives by faith. the faith that God has given
them. That's how we walk. That's how we live, by faith. We're not turning back to the
law. We're not turning back to trying to do works to earn a
salvation or to reconcile ourselves to God. Reconcile ourselves to
God. It's all accomplished in Christ. And he leads us and teaches us
and keeps us and guides us. All right, now, the children
of faith, they are the sons of Abraham. It says in Ephesians
2.20, and we'll read it to the end. We are built upon the foundation
of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the
chief cornerstone. We're speaking according to the
witness given to the Apostle Paul, which wrote these letters
and that we have. We're declaring that same witness
given to us by the Apostles and the Prophets, in whom all the
building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in
the Lord. It's a spiritual temple. and
whom ye also are builded together for inhabitation of God through
the Spirit." In other words, this life we now have, this understanding
we've been given, and the knowledge that we have of the successful
salvation of our Savior, it's through the regeneration that
has been given to us. It's by life in the Spirit, whereby
we are born again to know Him, to have fellowship with Him,
and to be reconciled to our God. The physical accounts for nothing.
It's not man or woman. It's not slave or free. It's not Jew or Gentile. None
of those things matter before God. We're all in need of His
grace, and that's all provided freely and abundantly to you,
His people, in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the body of salvation
that we've been brought into. So I pray the Lord bless that
word to your hearts. giving you to hear it by the
ear of faith and receive it and rejoice in the Lord Jesus Christ,
amen. Okay, let's pray. Our gracious
Lord, we thank you, Father, for your mercy, your wonderful salvation
in the Lord Jesus Christ, doing abundantly above all that we
can ask or think. Lord, you've provided everything
in your son. Help us to hear his voice. to
hear his word, and to be washed in the water of the word, and
especially to be washed in the blood of our savior, Jesus Christ,
which gives us access unto the father, to stand before our God,
accepted, and to have you pleased with us in him. Lord, help us
to rejoice in the simplicity of this salvation. It's in Christ's
name that we pray and give thanks, amen. Alright, we'll come back
in 15 minutes.