We're going to be in the book of Ephesians in the second chapter this hour Our topic this morning is reconciliation Reconciliation title of the message is reconciled and I have three questions What does it mean to be reconciled? How was it accomplished and who has been reconciled? That's the three questions I have.

Ephesians chapter two, verse 14 says, for he is our peace who hath made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished in his flesh the enmity even the law of commandments contained in the ordinances, for to make it himself of twain one new man, so making peace. And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby, and came and preached peace to you, which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one spirit unto the Father.

I've titled this message Reconciled. What does it mean to be reconciled is the first question. The definition of reconciled is bringing two parties back into peace and harmony or to settle debt that was owed. To settle debt that was owed. You and I accrue a lot of debt over our lives because of the sin that we are. We're constantly, if we're not in Christ, we're constantly accruing debt, constantly accruing more and more. But the Lord has reconciled his people. He has settled the debt owed.

Look at verse, you're in chapter two. Look in verse one and three, one through three. And you, hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in times past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our conversation in times past, the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

I'm going to elaborate on that and tell you exactly what we just read again. He says that we were dead in trespasses and in sin. We walked according to the course of the world and according to Satan. We were the children of disobedience. We fulfilled the lust of the flesh. By nature, we were the children of wrath. That's not too good of a resume, is it? Not good at all. Matter of fact, that's a resume for disaster. The Lord demands perfection. The Lord demands holiness. But by nature, that's what he just said, by nature we're the children of wrath. So we're not in a position to be able to fix any of that.

But what must be understood that's so important is how depraved we really are. How ungodly. we really are by nature. That's something that we can't see ourselves as something that has to be revealed. God has to give the gift of repentance and faith or a man or woman will never see themselves as bad as they are. In all false religion, men judge themselves based upon others. In the gospel, we judge ourselves based upon what thus saith the Lord.

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When the Lord gives repentance, what we have to do in coming to Christ is a complete denial of everything that we are, everything that we hold to as good. We come to Him, we bring our good deeds, and we bring our bad deeds, and we throw them at His feet, begging for His righteousness. We count them all but done, that we may have Him. That's something that you can't do by nature. That's something that God has to do. And this is what he did when he reconciled us back to the fathers. He enabled us to have his righteousness. That was what he did. He gave us his righteousness. He made us the righteousness of God in him.

Most won't come to Christ because they're not willing to let God be right. Or they're not willing for God to be right, I should say. He's already right. They say they take one look at him and they say, we don't want that man reigning over us. They don't wanna be wrong. Coming to Christ is a complete denial of self. It's any and all worth of self is denied. But unless we're caused to see we're nothing but sinful lepers, we'll never need the great physician. That's the point. If I don't see that I'm a leper, I won't need a physician. You don't go to the doctor whenever you're well. Well, I guess you can go for a well visit, but you understand what I'm saying? You go to the doctor when you're sick. And men and women don't know how sick that we are by nature. We're sicker than sick, where you have a terminal illness. We're going to die. And the wages of sin is death. I love that he don't stop there. He said, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Why? Because he reconciled us. He brought two parties. back into harmony and back into peace with each other. We've literally been made one with God, with Christ and God, with Christ and God. And it's precious. So precious, if we can enter into that, that we're no longer our own. The scripture says we're bought with a price. He bought his people. I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, but we were so far removed from the grace and nature of God as the sinful creatures of dust that we are, then unless God does something, that'll be our terrible end. Death will be our terrible end for eternity. We were so far away, we don't have any characteristics of his nature in the flesh. Think about that. We have no his nature is holy. His nature is true. His nature is just. His nature is good. We're bad. We're unholy. We're sinful. We're shameful. Not him. He's perfect. We were Pharisees, we were leopards, we were polluted, we were dead dog sinners perishing by our own unbelief, by our own sin that we choose to do. How embarrassing is that? We choose to sin in the flesh. That's why Paul said, oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? So what is our hope? We have our inability to believe, that's not our hope. We have our inability to choose, that's not our hope. What's our hope? Look at verse 14, 16. For he is our peace, who hath bade both one, that's that unity I talked about, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished, this is past tense, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace, and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby." There's our hope that the Lord did something. The Lord did something. Reconciliation was accomplished by the perfect life, the perfect death. the perfect resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. We were reconciled back to God. He settled the debt that we owe, the mountain of sin that we have accrued, the mountain of sin that we are. He took it unto himself on the cross. He knelt at his cross and put it away by the sacrifice of himself. He put it away by the shedding of his blood. His soul was made offering for sin for his people. thereby reconciling his people back to God. Made us one, that's what he just said, complete oneness. He made Twain one new man, so making peace. If we could have the joy of being able to enter into this, if you're the Lord, you have peace with God. Now that's something that we know and we hear, but to understand it on a deeper level, it would be impossible unless the Lord gives us the grace to do so. The Lord had to make that peace himself. He says, I know my thoughts of you. My thoughts are not of evil. My thoughts are good. The Lord has good thoughts of his people. My thoughts are peace of you. meaning that there's no enmity left. He's not hostile towards us. He's not full of wrath and full of judgment towards us. Christ took our judgment on the cross and therefore satisfied judgment and satisfied wrath. So when he sees us, he sees the blood of Christ. He sees his son and he's well pleased with us. We have peace just as you have children and you have peace with your children. And peace is so underrated, I'm gonna tell you that right now. No matter where you go and what you're doing, I love peace. And in the world that we live in, there's not a lot of it. Everybody's chaotic and it's boisterous all the time. But to have peace with the creator of this universe, how do you describe that? What a thought that Christ Jesus made peace so there's no longer wrath, there's no longer judgment, there's nothing but love that remains, there's nothing but harmony, there's nothing but, Rest. You don't have to be afraid of facing God when you lay your head on your pillow at night because you've been reconciled back to God. You've been made one with him all because he took your debt and put it away. That's what he did for his people. To lay my head on the pillow at night and think of the Lord and not be afraid because of my sin. That is an indescribable gift. all by grace that the Lord does. I don't have to be afraid because he promised it is finished. Everything he said, he did. He accomplished it. He's reconciled his people back to God. When did he do that? Did he do that when we started cleaning up our lives? We started doing better. Stopped going here. Stopped going there. Stopped doing this. Stopped doing that. No. When we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. We were yet sinners. I want to look at this allegory found in Mark chapter 14, and I'm only going to read three verses, but I could probably just quoted it to you, but I want you to see it. I've never seen this before. I don't know if I'll actually end up preaching a message off of it just specifically, but today it goes right along with this. So it felt like it was a good opportunity to bring it up. It's amazing how you can read passages and a hundred times and not, not see him. And all of a sudden there he is never seen that before. Anybody else relate to that? There he is. You know, I didn't, He was hiding himself. I couldn't see him. And then he's let me see him. So this is it right here. Mark chapter 14, verse one through three. After two days was the feast of the Passover and of unleavened bread. And the chief priests and the scribes saw how they might take him, Jesus Christ, by craft and put him to death. But they said, no, not on the feast day, lest they be an uproar of the people. Now look, now get this. In being in Bethany, in the house of Simeon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having alabaster box of ointment and spacknard, very precious, and she break the box and poured it on his head. Now, I thought about reading that entire portion after that about this woman with the alabaster box, but what she did, she anointed the Lord's head, and one of the disciples, and we know it was probably Judas, complained and said, we could have sold this for 300 penny worth, and fade to the poor. He said, the poor will always have you, but this woman, what she's done, this will be for a testimony every time that the gospel's preached and this is brought up. So he had preached the gospel to Simeon, who was a leper. I've never seen that before, but he was also eating at Simeon's table. So here we are, here's the picture. Here we are, a leper. We don't know that we're lepers until God reveals that we're a leper. But our Lord comes to where we are. He takes up a boat in our house. He takes up a boat in our house. And we see him causing us to feast upon his bread and upon his blood as our only hope of salvation, as our only righteousness. This is the picture. And he did it not whenever he was better, but he was a leper. He was a leper. He came to the leper's house. I love the fact that our Lord, anything that touched him couldn't defile him. But anything he touched was made whole. Isn't that interesting? Everything we touch, on the other hand, we defile. That's why we can't put our hands in salvation or mess it up. We can't make anything whole. But everything he touched, he made whole. So he decided he didn't have to touch, he could just speak the word. But Simeon, we know, was cleansed. And Simeon was made to believe. Now here's an interesting part about Simeon. This account is found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and there's very few of the Lord's works that are in all four of the Gospels. There's several, but they're not commonly done that way. Matthew, Mark, and Luke typically have most of them together, but John typically don't have the same one. Well, they do, but they call them different names. Now get this. The state of this leper was he's a Pharisee. In the book of Luke, he's set up to be a Pharisee. He doesn't even say his name. He said he went to a Pharisee's house that was a leper. So we know it's the same one in the alabaster box happened. So he's a Pharisee. He's a leper. In another one he's called a sinner. He's called a sinner. So this is a threefold depravity. It's the same depravity that you and I have. We're Pharisees by nature, meaning we have a self-righteousness about us, being willing to offer ourselves up to God when it's We should be terribly afraid to do that, but that's what we do about nature. We examine other people and we think that we're better than them and God will accept us. That's being a Pharisee. Just having a form of godliness, but not having the power thereof. Then we're lepers by nature. A leper is an unclean person. They have a disease that they can't get rid of. There's no cure. And it's a picture of our sin. All throughout scripture, it's a picture of sin. And the issue, and it's very interesting, if the leper would go to the temple and he had leprosy all over his body, from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet is covered, then he was considered clean. I don't understand that, but it's a perfect picture. Whenever the Lord makes you a sinner, it's from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. And that's when the Lord declares you as clean, because you need his righteousness. You no longer have any. There's nothing good about me anymore. Well, that's Simeon, and the Lord made him whole, and the Lord changed his heart. He no longer was a Pharisee, and he did it while he was a leper. That's what the Lord does for us. He comes to our house, this inner man. He comes, says, live, and here we are feasting on what he's provided as our only hope for salvation. We're exactly like Simeon, did you know that? We have the same exact resume. Spiritually speaking, we have the same resume. We can relate to Simeon. Some of us that were in false religion, but to know that you're a sinner now, you can honestly say, I really understand what it means to be unclean. I really understand that. The Lord's made me aware of my uncleanliness, and I can't fix it. And if he doesn't do something, I'm going to remain a sinner. But here's the good news. Here's the good news. This is a faithful saying. and worthy of all acceptation, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, to save lepers, to save his people from their sin. That's why he said, call his name Jesus, Matthew chapter one, for he shall save his people from their sin. This is what our Lord did whenever he reconciled us back to God. It's more than just now we're united with God. We've made the very righteousness of God in Christ. We have peace with God. We have all the benefits of being the sons and daughters of the Lord. We're heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. This is what he did when he reconciled us. Now go back to Ephesians with me, Ephesians chapter two. So that's how he reconciled us. I didn't say that, but that's what I just got done Um, speaking of how he did it. Now, lastly, who did he reconcile? Well, I think I've already said that a bunch, but we'll go ahead and read it again. Anyways. Ephesians chapter two, verse 14 says, for he is our peace. Well, if it's our, he's speaking to somebody. Well, who's he speaking to? Well, look at verse four, according as he had chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, who's the us. Paul, look at verse one, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God to the sanctuary of Ephesus and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. That's who we're talking about now. And he is our peace who hath made both one. and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace, and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby, and came and preached peace to you which were far off and to them that were nigh, for through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.

Who did he die, who did he reconcile? Who did he reconcile? Well, many say that he died for everyone. To that, I would say that everybody's been reconciled. I mean, that's the only logical explanation. Many say that he died for everyone, and if that's the case, everybody's sins put away. There's no person on the face of the earth that has any sin. But that can't be so. But that can't be so. Because that means, why would there be anybody in hell? We know that we have scripture that tells us plainly people are in hell, so he didn't die for everybody. He didn't die for everybody. Why did he say it's finished? That means, was he lying? I mean, think about the serious, accusations that that statement makes. You're accusing God of lying when you say Jesus died for everybody. He said, it is finished. The work was finished. Everything he intended to accomplish was accomplished. It was accomplished on the cross of Calvary. He said, call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sin. Romans nine, we looked at that last week, so we won't turn, but I'll quote it. Before the two children were born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God, according to election might stand not of works, but of him that calleth it was said, the elder shall serve the younger because it's written, Jacob have I loved Esau have I hated. Jacob have I loved Esau have I hated. Now I say this often, I understand why the Lord would hate Esau, because we're Esau by nature. It's just amazing his love and his grace and his mercy that he would choose. I stand in awe that he would choose to do to save Jacob and to save any of us. What a glorious truth and comfort to know that it's all of grace and it's not of works. That's the answer. Why would he do that? Because he's God and he chose to by his love and grace alone. Jeremiah 1.5 tells us, before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. And before thou came as forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee. Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you. Before you came out of the womb, I sanctified you, made you holy. Think about that. Do you do that for everybody? No. Does it for his people? Does it for his people? Before time ever began, Christ was reconciling his people back to God. He's the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. He reconciled his people. He chose to take his people's place. He died our death, carrying our guilt. Chose to be our substitute surety, sacrificing himself on the cross, enduring the wrath of God. And when God saw the travail of his soul, he was satisfied. And every person that he was dying for was redeemed. But he lowered his head and said, it is finished. Every person he was dying for was made the righteousness of God in him. After shedding his blood, he said, it's finished. Reconcile these people forever. He hath reconciled. us. The emphasis here is important because a lot of times people miss the emphasis. But if you notice when we read this again, this is all about what he has done and all about what he has given us freely by his grace. There's no clause that says you have to do this and then this will become effectual. This is what he has done. I want to read it again in that light. For he is our peace who has made one and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us, and it's still him doing it, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace, and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby. Then He came and preached peace to you which were far off unto them which were nigh. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father." This is everything He's done in reconciling His people back to God. We have peace with God. We can rest in Christ in His finished work knowing that we have peace with God. There's no more work to do. The Lord's not looking to you and I to do something to make what He did effectual. The Lord's not looking to you and I on the life that we live In order to determine anything, the Lord is looking to Jesus Christ alone. And as long as he's looking to Jesus Christ for each and every one of us, we have nothing to fear, not even death. He took the sting of death away. He took that partition wall. We talked about that a little bit last week. When you rent the veil and temple from top to bottom, we can now come boldly to the throne of grace that we might obtain mercy and find grace to help in the time of need. That was our sin. Scripture says in the Old Testament, it's your sin that separated you from your God. Our sin doesn't separate us from our God anymore. Think about that. Your sin can't separate you from God anymore. Why? Because he cast them, as far as the East is from the West, he cast them in the sea of forgetfulness, never to remember again. He said, and your sins and your iniquities, I'll remember no more. That's what he said. I'll no longer remember them. The enmity, our hostile nature towards God, he took that away from us. no longer hostility. He's not hostile towards us. He hath, past tense, reconciled us, his people, back to God, all by himself, and he gets all the glory. Let's pray. Father, thank you for reconciliation. Bless us for understanding, for your glory, in Christ's name, amen. Let's take a break.