Sermon Transcript
Hey everybody, I’m super excited that you could join us for a brand new message series. We’re calling this new message series God’s Family, and the idea behind this message series, here’s how I would put it, that regardless of a person’s ethnic background or their race or their age or their gender or their social status or their marital status or their physical abilities or cognitive abilities, their political affiliations. When a person makes an individual profession of faith in Jesus as Savior, God enables that person by his grace to be placed into a relationship with him. Praise God for that. That’s incredible.
But on top of that, God also enables that individual who places a profession of faith in Jesus alone as Savior and connects that person to a larger diverse community, a new community of faith, a family of faith that is combined of all all other individuals who throughout history have also made individual professions of faith in Jesus alone as Savior. That’s an incredible thought. What it tells us is that the church is more than a building. The church is not a denomination. The church is the people, the people of God.
And it’s the people of God gathered around not a religious idea or a political idea, but around a person, Jesus himself. And God is the creator of this new community, this family. God is the head of it. And the goal of this family should be to glorify the Father in all that we say and do by passionately seeking to love God with all of our heart and soul and strength and mind, and to also love others within the family and to see the relationship with God that we enjoy played out in our relationship with one another. Of all the metaphors for the church that we find in the New Testament, the church is a field, it’s a flock, It’s a vine.
It’s the body of Christ. It’s the bride of Christ. Those are all great. I love— my favorite metaphor is the church as the family of God. The church is a family.
Like, that resonates with me because throughout my life I’ve had so many wonderful moments of experiencing the church as being a place of welcome and grace. And by the church, I’m not talking about the building. Again, I’m talking about the people of God who have invested in me and loved me time and time again and have been more gracious than I could ever deserve. And I’m so grateful for so many of those experiences as I’ve been— lived in different places and been a part of local communities of faith and recognizing, boy, this feels like family. It’s been like a second home to me.
And Shannon has also had very similar positive experiences as well as she was growing up and then after we’ve gotten married with the church being like family to her and our kids. Could each talk about the church feeling like family to them and as a place that they want to be. They love it. They love being around other Christ followers. And I had the privilege just the other day, just yesterday, of connecting with someone that many of you know, Cheryl Chandler.
I had the privilege of visiting with Cheryl. Cheryl’s a longtime member of Bridges Community Church for more than 40 years. And many of you know that Cheryl this weekend is moving away to North Carolina to go be with her family. And I’m just really torn up about that, and our family ministries team is really torn up about that because we love Cheryl. She’s been like family to us and to like so many of you.
But what I got to do yesterday in going to go visit with her for about an hour, socially distanced— I was in the garage and she was in the kitchen, we were talking through a doorway and just sort of reminiscing about her memories of the church and feeling like family to her. And she has so many positive experiences, and I’m grateful for that. And Cheryl, we’re gonna miss you. But here’s the cool thing: when a person moves away who’s part of the family of God, they’re still part of the family of God. That’s the really cool thing.
So this idea of the church as a family means a lot to me, and it sounds great in theory, but it doesn’t always feel like family to a lot of folks. I know I’ve had numerous occasions where I’ve talked to people who have tried to become a part of a church And they haven’t always felt it to be the most welcoming of places. Maybe they’ve— you know, I’ve been told stories about people who’ve gone through difficulties in their marriage and they shared about that with somebody within the church and then they find out that now everybody in the church knows about that and their trust has been betrayed. Or maybe they’ve— I’ve been told stories about individuals who’ve entrusted themselves to leadership within the church and those leaders let them down in one way or another. Or maybe just people who you are willing to be vulnerable with about something and you find it to be people turning their back on you and condemning you.
And, you know, I could listen to a story like that, and maybe you could listen to a story like that and say, you know what, people aren’t trying hard enough, because if they tried really hard, then the church would feel like a family to them. I think it’s more complicated than that, because what happens is my selfishness and my pride— and by the way, I’ve got a lot of it, and I’m assuming if you have a pulse that you too have some selfishness and pride, maybe Just like a little, maybe not as— surely not as much as me, right? But our selfishness and our pride sprinkled together with other people’s selfishness and pride, because we don’t lose that whenever we profess faith in Jesus alone as our Savior and we become part of the family of God. This, you know, the church is family. We don’t lose those things.
What ends up happening is we end up looking at the church like consumers and saying, well, this is how I think things ought to be run. I think the worship should be like this. I think the programming should be like this. I think the family pastor’s sermon should be shorter, which my family would agree with you on that. But we start looking at, you know, just the church as a consumer and saying, what’s in it for me?
Why don’t more people act like I think that they should act? Why don’t more people think like I think? Why don’t more people vote like I think that they should vote? All of those things combined together create rifts. Create division, create conflict.
And by the way, conflict doesn’t have to destroy a family. It doesn’t have to destroy the church as a family. We can have disagreement. We should be able, because we’re a family, to have disagreement. The goal should not be uniformity and agreement across the board.
The goal should be unity in spite of our diversity. But the point is, is that we should be able to work through those things because Those things, through our selfishness and pride, crop up and they create barriers. Barriers that make it difficult for people outside the family of faith to connect with the family of faith. And that’s not what God’s vision for the church is. What is God’s vision for the church?
That’s what we’re trying to get with this series. How can we best be family to one another? How can we live in such a way that we are family to one another and so that we are also so welcoming to others outside of the body of Christ that they too would want to be a part of this family and there are no barriers There’s no hoops to jump through, that we are as welcoming to others as God has been welcoming to us. That is God’s vision for the church, and we want to learn from a New Testament church, the church of Ephesus. And so we’re going to be looking in the next 3 weeks at Ephesians chapter 2 and looking at this Ephesian church, which is a really good model for, you know, this experiment of diversity coming together into one family and how to try to make that work, because the Ephesian church was a mixed congregation.
Of Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. Ephesus was a primarily Gentile city, but there were Jews within the church as well. And you have Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, and I don’t know if you know anything about Jews and Gentiles in the first century, but that was a pretty deep-seated rivalry that had been going on for, oh, I don’t know, centuries. And what Jews and Gentiles were going to have to do is to try to get along with one another and to work together as a family. And so the Apostle Paul is writing them a letter to help them to do that.
But I think it’s difficult for us, quite frankly. I’m sharing this before we get into the text. I think it’s difficult for us in the 21st century to think about the antipathy and the degree of alienation that was experienced between Jews and Gentiles. To the Jew, the word Gentile itself was synonymous with pagan. Jews viewed Gentiles as being dirty, filthy, dogs that they didn’t want to have anything to do with, that Gentiles were beneath them because the Jews had the rite of circumcision and they had the rites of worship and the connection with God, the covenant relationship with God.
And they looked down upon non-Jews as feeling like that they were superior to them. And Gentiles conversely looked at Jews as being weird, weird in the way that they acted, weird in the way that they lived, weird in the way that they ate. And how distinct they were. And they— the Greeks viewed non-Greeks as being barbarians. So now all of a sudden this group of people is thrown together and they’re supposed to, as one body, as one family, get along with each other.
I think we can learn something from them, don’t you? So we’re going to take a look at that and we’re going to start in verses 11 and 12 and 13. And this is what Paul says, therefore, Ephesian church, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision, which is done in the body by human hands— 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. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. One of the keys to understanding, I think, this passage better understanding is that first word there in verse 11, therefore.
Therefore connects verses 11 through 13 to the larger chapter, chapter 2, verses 1 through 10, the larger context there that we can benefit from looking back at. So what is Paul doing when he’s saying therefore? He’s reminding them of who Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians used to be before they became part of this family of faith. And he goes on into verses 1 through 3. He says, as for you— again, he’s speaking to Jewish and Gentile— you were dead in your transgressions and sins.
Prior to coming to faith, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live. Again, he’s speaking in the past tense. When you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also, so this is everybody, lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.
What is he saying here in the first 3 verses of chapter 2 that then connect into the therefore in verse 11? He’s reminding them to look back and to say, therefore, you know, you want to get along with one another. Because of who you once were. Look back and see how far you’ve come. And well, what were you at one time?
You were physically alive but spiritually dead, is how he puts it there in verses 1 through 3. You were dead in your sins and in your transgressions and trespasses. I know that’s hard for us to think about, a person being physically alive, especially a person who looks like to be physically fit and mentally alert, that, that a person like that could be spiritually dead. But any person, Jew or Gentile, who is not a Christ follower, who has not professed faith in Jesus alone as their Savior, is outside of the body of Christ and has not been reconciled to God because they are spiritually dead. And the only way that they can be made alive again is through professing faith in Jesus as their Savior.
And he says, Church of Ephesus, this was you. This used to be you. You remember, you were spiritually dead. You didn’t have any hope. You were separate from Christ.
You were outside of the body of Christ, unreconciled to God, without hope. He’s saying, this is who you were. Therefore, he says, remember who you once were. That’s the second word that I think can help unlock this passage for us, is that word remember. He says it there in verse 11 and verse 12.
Remember He is saying who you once were. Remember who you once were. And in verse 11 there, he talks about, you know, you were uncircumcised. He puts it in quote because it wasn’t just— the idea of being uncircumcised was not just a physical act. It was the concept of being less acceptable to God in the Jews’ eyes.
They said you are less acceptable to God because you are uncircumcised. And so uncircumcised was a derogatory term that they used to look down and to hold others down who were different from them. And he’s saying, you were that way at one time. But what’s important for us to think about is what Romans 2 talks about. It’s not the circumcision of the flesh that’s done by human hands.
What God is really most interested in is the circumcision of the heart. And to remember that, to remember God is interested in the circumcision of the heart. And what I mean by that is, in the same way that physical circumcision was used as a sign, as a symbol of Israel’s separation unto God in the Old Testament, that a circumcision of the heart is something that only God can perform in his own perfect way to enable a person to be made right with him. And the way that a person was set apart through physical circumcision, we can be set apart in our hearts for God, that our heart would say— that in our hearts we would belong to God and say, God, I totally belong to you. I’ve died to myself and you have given me a new heart.
I belong to you. And so who you once were, you were separate. You were on the outside looking in. But he’s saying you have been brought near. So remember who you once were because it enables you to appreciate how far you’ve come.
He goes on in verse 12 to give us some more descriptions of who you once were. And this is again not just descriptive of a Jew or a Gentile in the first century. This is descriptive of anybody who is not a Christ follower. Who you once were. You were once separate from Christ, he says.
You were once excluded from citizenship in Israel. You were once foreigners to God’s covenants. I think he’s talking there about the Old Testament covenants that God made with Abraham, and with Abraham’s son Isaac and Isaac’s son Jacob, and that God later made with David and to all of Israel, that the basic gist of those covenants, those promises, was God would be in relation with them and that God would one day send a deliverer, a savior, a Messiah. That was the basic gist of those covenants. And he’s— Paul is saying here, Jews and Gentiles here in the Ephesian church and anyone who is a Christ follower, remember, at one time you were all foreigners to God’s covenants, outside of his family.
You were without hope. And you were without God. And we said last week in our message that in the New Testament, that concept of hope is not just wishful thinking. It’s a conviction, a settled fact based on who God is. And the reason why you don’t have hope is because you don’t have God.
And so I think that we need to understand that this is everybody’s condition apart from salvation. This is who you once were. And as members of God’s family, remember who you once were. This is descriptive of everybody. And the summary of all of this is you were outsiders.
You were far from God. You were alienated. You were enemies. John Stott puts it like this: You were Christless. You were stateless.
You were friendless. You were hopeless. You were godless. Your position was one of desperation and despair. Without hope, without God.
But some of the best words in all of the New Testament are found in verse 13. But now— isn’t that great? Remember who you once were. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away, you who once were separated, you who once were uncircumcised in your heart and enemies of God and not part of God’s family, you have been brought near. By the blood of Christ, you have been brought near.
And what he’s saying here is, as members of God’s family, I want you to remember who you were at one time, but also want you to remember who you are now. And the reason, Ephesian church and body of Christ, that you are not getting along as family is because you’ve forgotten these things. So you need to remember them, who you once were and who you are now. And what Jesus has provided, according to verse 13, is access. He’s brought us near.
I love that. He’s given us access through Jesus’ death, access to a relationship with God, and access to a place in this forever family. He’s saying here, you’re not just elevated to the status of a Jew now, you Gentiles, as if the Jews are superior to the Gentiles. He’s saying no, Jew and Gentile alike have been elevated into this new paradigm, this new community, this new family of faith. You have been brought And I love that because verse 13 tells us how an individual— the only way that a person can be brought near to God is through Jesus.
The blood of Christ, it says there. That’s the only way that a person can be brought near. Anybody who’s not a part of the family of God can only become a part of the family of God by the blood of Christ. A person who’s not been reconciled to God can only be reconciled to God by the blood of Christ. There’s no more distance.
You’re no longer in the nosebleed seats when it comes to God. You’re not looking at him from afar with wishful thinking.
Through the blood of Christ, he makes it possible for anyone to come to faith and to become a Christ follower. The gospel, if you think about it, is really the great leveler of people. It says that anyone can be saved. That’s the good news. Anyone can be saved.
Anyone can call upon the name of the Lord. And be saved. Anyone can turn to him and become part of the family of God. And the gospel of Jesus Christ is that God doesn’t judge people differently, you know, men different than women, and Democrat different than Republican, and black different than white, and young different than old. And all of us are level because of who we once were and because of who we are now.
That’s how we are as a family, and anyone can be saved. This to me is really, really good news. And then these 3 verses I’ve been thinking about, just how can we think through the implications of this? What are the implications of how do we live this out as a family? What is God’s desire for us?
One implication I think is, to me, a very obvious place is, as God has been to you, so you are to be to others. As God has welcomed you, you are to welcome others. You are to be able to love them in the way that God has loved you. I think that that is a first implication really for all of us, that we can all do better because we’re all in process here. We can all do better at loving others as God has loved us.
That to me is the first and most obvious implication. There’s a second implication here because One of the matters, if you didn’t notice it here in the Ephesian churches, their rivalry was a religious one, but it was also a racial one. And I think that that connects to where we are right now, where one of the major barriers in our country, but also one of the major barriers that continues to exist in the church, and it has been historically, is a racial barrier. I know that, again, whenever I talk about race and have over the last few months with different individuals or groups, I’ve been told by various Christ followers who are part of the family of God saying bringing up race is divisive. That’s what’s divisive.
I continue to contend that what is divisive is ignoring race and ignoring that there are people of color who are hurting in the body of Christ and in our communities. And that God cares about each and every one of these individuals. And so bringing up something that is hurting other people is not divisive. Ignoring it would be divisive. There are people who say, don’t bring these issues into the church, just focus on the gospel.
But what I can tell you is, is that if there are indeed people who are hurting right now, people of color in our communities who are hurting, I want to do a better job personally as God is trying to make me, I think, more racially aware of what I can do to better listen and to come alongside those individuals. Rather than creating unnecessary obstacles and say, you need to change to fit more of how I think you ought to be.
I think I can do a better job of listening. I think that we can all do a better job of listening and empathizing. I came across a great quote by Pastor Brian Laurits, who was a pastor recently here in the Bay Area. He’s now a pastor in North Carolina. Hey, Cheryl Chandler, you should look up Summit Church in North Carolina where Pastor Brian Laurits is one of the teaching pastors there.
Brian shared this in his book Insider Outsider, which I just think is a phenomenal book. If you can ever get your hands on Insider Outsider, he says, we will never experience true Christian unity when one ethnicity demands of another that we keep silent about our pain and travails. The way forward is not an appeal to the facts as a first resort. He’s not saying facts aren’t important. He’s just saying that that shouldn’t be our first resort every time, but an attempt to get inside each other’s skin as best as we can, to feel what they feel, and to seek to understand it.
The chasm that exists between ethnicities can only be traversed if we move past facts and begin to get into feelings. When racial incidents happen, we must first learn to listen to and to feel with one another.
I think we can all as family do a better job of listening first rather than starting with facts, even if, again, facts are fine. But start with listening. Start with being family and welcoming to one another and empathetic and putting yourself in another person’s shoes. That’s something that we can all do as the family. Now again, I want to be clear on something, okay?
As a church, and so that you know from us as church leaders, violence is wrong. The violence that is happening right now is absolutely wrong. Looting and stealing and destruction of property are absolutely wrong.
And we don’t condone those actions as Christ followers, and we’re praying for peace in our land. But just calling those things out and saying that those things are wrong without actually, as a Christ follower, as the family of God, doing something to help make things right isn’t as helpful. So I personally, I’m trying to do my part, and I would ask you all as the family of God to say, can’t we do our part to help make things right. That’s really what justice is. If you look at the Bible, this idea of justice is making other people’s problems and concerns your problems and concerns.
That’s actually the biblical idea of justice that we can look at in Micah 6 and in other places throughout Scripture. Doing our part as far as it depends upon us to live at peace with others and to be family and welcoming to others. I think that this is a gospel issue, that this is not just a social issue. Dahati Lewis, who’s a pastor in Atlanta at Blueprint Church, a wonderful church there, says this: We need more than token gestures and formal statements right now with what’s going on racially speaking in our country and also in the church. And we must realize that racism is more than a social issue.
This is a following Jesus issue. It is a love your neighbor as yourself issue. So where do we start? When it comes to this particular implication. And again, I don’t think that it’s stretching Ephesians 2 too far to say that this was an issue in the Ephesian church.
And so we can learn from their experience too, as a family from one another. I think it has to start with us individually as family members taking accountability for our own pride and stubbornness, for our own silence. For our own blindness and doing our part where racism exists, where injustice exists, to call it out, to not just say that something is wrong but not do anything about making it right, but to actually say, God, what can we do as the family of God to love our brothers and sisters in Christ who are being hurt right now? How can we best be a family? One another.
It’s not enough to say, I’m not racist. It’s not enough to say, I didn’t own slaves. It’s not enough to say, that’s not my problem. As family, this is our problem collectively, and it’s something that we should collectively care about. And if this is not a priority for you individually— this is what God is teaching me— if this is not a priority for you, you are out of step with the gospel.
You’re out of step with the gospel. And I’m out of step with the gospel. May it never be as the family of God. There’s a third implication here from Ephesians 2 that I think we can think about, and it is this: it’s the concept of who you once were is not how you should now be. Paul is reminding us who you once were and who you are now to remind us that transformation and conversion is at the heart of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, that God didn’t just save us so that we could one day go and be with him for eternity in heaven.
But he rescued us so that we could be reconciled to him, but he could also do a work of transformation within our hearts. And what you and I once were is not how we should now be. We should learn from the past, but we should walk in the newness of life that God has made possible for us. Friends, I’m going to pray, and I just would invite you to pray with me as God has just really spoken to us, I think, through his word today. God, I want to thank you for this text that speaks to me individually.
I, Lord, I in no way want to be out of step with the gospel, whether it’s in loving others within the body of Christ or people outside the body of Christ, whether it’s looking at what is happening in our world, violence and race and destruction. Lord, we hate that those things are happening, But we also hate the things that are leading and the causes of those things, Lord. We want to see, Lord, those things come to an end. But we also, Lord, want to do what is right. We want to act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with you, as Micah 6 tells us.
God, forgive me of my trespasses. Forgive me, Lord, I pray, for forgetting who I once was. Forgive me, Lord, for looking down on others. I have no right to look down on others because of who I once was. We were all there.
But Lord, you have made me a new creature, and I thank you for that, for putting me in your family. I pray that you would add to your family, Lord, that this message series would be such encouragement to people that, Lord, the church would grow as a result. The body of Christ would flourish and bear fruit for your glory. Lord, we pray all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
