Please stand for the reading of God's Word. In honor of His Word, this morning we'll be looking at Paul's letter to the Ephesians, chapter 2, verses 11-13. Ephesians 2, 11-13. This is God's very living Word. Therefore remember that at one time, you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, You, who once were far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ. So ends this reading from God's holy, infallible, and inerrant Word. Please be seated. Let me pray for us as we come before the Word of God. Lord, again, we thank you for your Word. We thank you for those that you inspired to write it. We thank You for Your Spirit who has preserved it. We thank You for the Spirit who teaches us and helps us to understand Your Word and to live it out in our lives. Lord, help us in that way this morning, we ask. Open up Your Word to us, that we may believe it and that we may live it, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. We just finished a section or a paragraph running from verses 1 to 10 where Paul outlines the glorious salvation that we have in Jesus Christ. We're told that once we were dead in our trespasses and sins, but now God has made us alive in Jesus Christ. We're reminded that we once followed the prince of the power of the air, that we lived according to the passions of our flesh, that now God has created us anew in Christ Jesus for good works, good works that he prepared beforehand for us to walk in, to live in. We were told that we were once sons of disobedience, that we were children of wrath, But now, in the rich mercy of God, who loved us with a great love, we have been saved by the immeasurable riches of grace, a gift given to us through faith. And we're told, of course, that none of this is our own doing. It's all a gift from God. And now we move into a section from verses 11 to 22, another longer paragraph, where the theme and reality of new relationships weaves throughout the verses. We'll see in the coming weeks, God willing, how we are reconciled to God. In fact, that we are reconciled to God. Also that Jews and Gentiles are reconciled to one another. That all of us have peace now with God and peace with each other. So the people of God are a new household, a new nation, a holy temple for the Lord God. Paul in this section, particularly this morning, but even the weeks that follow, is telling us how God, at least in part, is accomplishing the purpose that Paul talked about back in chapter 1 verses 9 and 10, that purpose to unite all things in Christ. Reconciliation, peace with God, peace with one another. Reconciliation is a very key biblical concept. It's not easy. We shouldn't pretend that it is. It can be a long, hard road. to reconcile among friends, among family members, brothers and sister, or between a husband and a wife? And if that is hard, how much harder is it to achieve reconciliation for those otherwise not at peace, perhaps even enemies or opponents? rival nations, rival groups of various kinds, grudges, animosities carried from generation to generation to generation. And we're living in a world now, I believe, where reconciliation isn't really even an ideal. at least not by many. Instead, grudges and offenses are highlighted, made prominent, brought out into the open, and become causes for societal strife of every kind. Now those offenses can be very real, and when they are, we should acknowledge them. But so often it seems they are imagined, almost created, as if to stir up strife. And the world around us offers no way to fix these things. The primary solution being presented, it seems, at our time is for the oppressed, for the offended, to rise up against the offenders. Demand justice. Demand some sort of punishment or consequences for those identified as offenders. And yet the problem is, We don't even seem to know what justice is anymore. If the world doesn't know how to find reconciliation and peace, God provides us a way in His Word. These things are biblical. Brothers are not to remain in strife and conflict. Apologies are to be given and accepted. Sins are to be confessed. Grace to be shown. because we have been shown grace and mercy, rich grace, abundant mercy. Love, as we saw a few weeks ago, compels us not to keep a record of wrongs, not that we forget them, but that we no longer hold them against those who have offended us. Paul here turns to these ideas of reconciliation and peace, and as he does so, the first thing he does is to call our attention, again, not to remember offenses and problems that we have because of others, but he calls upon us to remember who we were. Remember who you were. Remember who you were without God, without Jesus Christ. He does this because remembering who we were helps us to see again and again and again how great a change God has wrought in us. It's a real change. We are a new creation, our whole person different. There's a tangible before and after, made real not by human effort, but by God. And it's not just a change in our person, but it changes our relationships. In particular, as we'll see here in our text this morning, once we were far from God, but now we draw near. We are different people, we have a different relationship. And those are the two ideas I want to explore here in these three verses this morning. That personal change that God works in us before and after coming to faith in Jesus, and that relational change, where we are now in relationship to God and in Him in relationship to each other. So let's look at the before and after. Now, as we get into these verses, there's that key word that starts it out, Therefore, therefore remember. Remember, because of this great work of God for us, to save us, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. Remember who you were. There's a second remember in our English Bibles in verse 12, it's not there in the Greek, so this isn't one of those emphasis things, it's just a way to keep the thought flowing. But when Paul says remember here, it's a command, it's not a suggestion. Remember who you were. Remember who you were. But then look at who he's talking to specifically. He's specifically talking to the Gentiles in the Ephesian churches. It applies, of course, to everyone who is saved, whether Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free, but he turns his attention here to the Gentiles because he wants to make a particular point as the apostle of the Gentiles, something that we'll see a little bit more fully as we get into chapter 3. This apostle to the Gentiles tells us, remember who you were without Christ. Remember who you were without God's salvation. You were Gentiles. You were uncircumcised. From a Jewish perspective, you were dogs. There's a famous old Jewish prayer, probably dates back close to 2,000 years, maybe longer, morning prayer said by devout Jews in the morning, every morning, and part of it is thanking God that He did not make them a Gentile. Thanking God that I am not a Gentile. I'm not uncircumcised, but for the men circumcised, this identifying mark of being one of God's own chosen people. It's a big deal to be God's chosen people. So in verse 12 Paul tells us that there were five deficiencies that we were afflicted with because of our Gentile status. Five deficiencies. We were separated from Christ. We were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. We were strangers to the covenants of promise. We had no hope. We were without God. Five deficiencies. And of course he is comparing Gentiles to the Jews who have all five of those things. The nation of Israel. Let's look at these five in turn. The first deficiency, that we were separated from Christ, separated from the Messiah. Now some commentators look at this and say, well that's just talking about conversion, before conversion, after conversion. But being without Christ prior to conversion applies to Jews as well. And here Paul is making a point specifically about Gentiles. So it has to have a broader, different meaning. So let's think about this. The Messiah was promised to who? To Israel, to the people of Abraham. And a key theme throughout the whole of the Old Testament, throughout redemptive history, is the preservation not just of the nation of Israel, but especially the line of David, from whom would come the promised Messiah. Think about how God preserved the people of Israel in Egypt. Think about how God preserved the people of Israel through the times of the judges. Think of how God preserved the line that would lead to the Messiah as the men died and Ruth and her mother-in-law came back from Moab. And God worked in that situation providentially to provide a kinsman-redeemer in Boaz, the ancestors, he and Ruth, of David. Think of the story of Joash, his grandmother, a daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, had usurped the throne of Judah, the southern kingdom, where David's sons ruled, killed all of her grandchildren, all of her grandsons, except one, little boy, Joash, who was saved by the priests, hidden in the temple, and revealed later to be king. Moting of Esther, in exile, came in plotting to kill every single Jew. And Esther, for such a time as that, was raised up to save her people. This is what the Israelites possessed, the promise, the hope of a Messiah, and example after example after example of God preserving that hope throughout the generations, throughout the centuries. Gentiles had no access to that, no part in it. He's not there promised, Messiah. A deficiency if you're a Gentile. The second, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. Gentiles had no part in the nation of Israel. At best they were aliens and sojourners. Even Ruth, the Moabite woman, had to become an Israelite, had to convert to be part of the nation of Israel. And as she did, she took part in the promises of God to and through Israel. The laws of the nation of Israel worked providentially to her benefit. Food from gleaning in the fields, a husband provided, again, through the law of Moses, the provision that God had set up specifically for His people to follow. We Gentiles are not part of this special people with its special laws and its special relationship with God as His own chosen people. Paul mentions a third deficiency. You were strangers to the covenants of promise. Who were the covenants given to? Again, God's people, the people of Israel. And it's not an accident here that Paul describes them as covenants of promise. This goes back to the foundational promise given to Abraham that through him all the nations of the world would be blessed. The promise to Israel that they would someday see a prophet greater than Moses. The promise to David that he would have a son to sit on his throne forever and that he would be a true faithful shepherd of God's people Israel. And the promise we read later in the prophets that there would be a new covenant, a better covenant than that even of Moses. And as we've talked about recently, Hebrews reminds us that these Old Testament saints looked in faith to those promises being fulfilled, never saw them fulfilled, but looked in faith to their fulfillment. But Gentiles were not parties to the covenants. They had no reason to have faith in the promises being fulfilled. They were outside, not in a covenant relationship with God. Of course that leads directly to the fourth deficiency, Gentiles were without hope. Kind of seems obvious at this point. Old Testament saints again had faith in promises of God, things not seen but things certainly hoped for. It was not a blind hope, it was not mere wishful thinking. It was a real hope because they had a God who makes promises and keeps His promises. but without citizenship in Israel. Without participation in the covenants Gentiles had no access to these promises and therefore had no access or reason to have true hope. Gentiles without hope. And so in the end Gentiles are without God Himself, the fifth problem, the fifth deficiency. And there's an implicit link I think here from the beginning of verse 12 to the end Christ begins the list, God ends the list. We must have Christ, we must have God. You can't have one without the other. Think if you did. God without Christ is not the God of Israel, the God of the covenants, the God of the Old Testament promises. That God becomes some other kind of God, some other kind of religion. Of course we see those in false types of religions that claim to worship the God or the Bible, but they reject Christ. It's not the same God. And yet Christ without God is what? He's just another wise teacher, a rabbi, one of many prophets. Without Christ, without God, we are without everything. But with Christ, with God, we have everything. Now the Jews by the time of the New Testament, certainly of Paul, Paul would have known this personally. The Jews had made a fatal mistake. Like modern people who are obsessed with outer looks, outer appearances, the Jews were obsessed with outer things as well. Rituals, washings, circumcision. That's part of why I think Paul is putting it the way he does in verse 11. Gentiles called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision. That's who we are, it's a big deal to us. Something made in the flesh by mere human hands. You see, the Jews should have known, Paul should have known before his conversion, that circumcision that matters is to have a circumcised heart, not circumcision performed by any human hand. Paul's language in verse 11 then draws attention to the need to be circumcised in the heart. Jeremiah writes about it in chapter 1 verse 4 of his prophecy. Paul writes of it in Romans chapter 4 verses 9 to 12. circumcision of the heart, true circumcision that comes by grace through faith. So all these deficiencies are corrected by grace through faith in Christ, no longer separated from Christ, now part of the people of God, now participants in the covenants of promise, having hope, having God. We're different people. We're a new creation. And if that were all it was, that would be quite something. But Paul goes on in this short verse 13 and gives us a profound and wonderful truth. Not only are we recipients of these benefits, But he begins in verse 13, but now. But now. This echoes the but God of chapter 2 verse 4. But now in Christ Jesus, he says, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. You who are once far off, with no covenant, no Messiah, no citizenship, without Christ, without God, outside the camp, unclean, defiled, you have been brought near by God in Jesus Christ. And Jewish listeners hearing Paul talk to the Gentiles here would have almost certainly understood that language of being brought near. because it was used by the Jews to describe Gentiles who were proselytes into Judaism. They are being brought near. Those once outside the camp are brought near to the tabernacle, to the temple, to where God is. Paul now applies this truth to Gentile believers in Jesus Christ who haven't even been circumcised. The true way to be brought near to God, he is saying, is in Christ, by the blood of Jesus. Now the Old Testament Mosaic Covenant taught at least two very important things. The first is that we cannot become right with God. We cannot come near to God. We saw this in our Tuesday night study recently, Psalm 15 in particular. Who could dwell on God's holy hill? Who could sojourn in his tent? It's impossible. The description is beyond our ability. We cannot come to God by our own efforts because sinful men cannot keep God's law perfectly and that is the standard. We need someone to do it for us. And that someone is the promised Messiah. And this truth is true for both Jew and Gentile. Moses' law drives us to this conclusion. The other thing we learned from the Old Testament law is that sin requires a blood payment. It requires an atoning, sacrificial, substitutionary death. Blood, it seems, in the way the Old Testament describes it, the blood of a sacrifice has a cleansing type of effect. But the deficiency there is that the blood of animals is not adequate to cleanse the sin of men. It must be men's blood. And it must be a perfect sacrifice, and so it must be a perfect man. And that perfect sacrificial lamb is the Messiah, is Christ, is Jesus Himself. Again, this is something true whether you are a Jew or a Gentile. We'll see how Paul uses this to lead into what he says in the coming verses here in the next couple of weeks. But for now we know this beautiful truth that Christ's blood cleanses our sins. His blood pays the price for our sins. Because of Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and ascension to God's right hand, now we may come near. Now by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, following Jesus who leads us there, we can go behind the curtain into the presence of God. This is what Hebrews is talking about in chapter 6 verses 19-20, Christ going as a forerunner, leading the way behind the curtain into the presence of God. Proverbs 15.29 tells us that God is far from the unrighteous. But to all who believe in Jesus, the words of Isaiah 57.19 are true. Those last chapters of Isaiah are about the glorious promises that God is going to fulfill. And he says in Isaiah 57.19, Peace, peace to the far and to the near, says the Lord, and I will heal him. Who saves us? God saves us. It's a free gift. It's a gift of salvation. It's a gift of peace. It's a gift of being brought near to God Himself, where only the high priest could go once a year, where only the Aaronic priest could go into certain parts of the temple, drawing at least somewhat near to God. We, by the blood of Jesus, may go freely. This is what Paul says God has done for Gentiles. Of course, for Jews as well. God has brought about the New Covenant. That New Covenant is in Christ. That New Covenant is made sure by Jesus' once for all sacrifice, dying for our sins. His perfect obedience credited to our account by grace through faith. Again, part of what Paul is talking about in Romans 4 and in the book of Galatians. This new covenant is not accessed by rituals, by ceremonies, by outward works done by human hands. It's a covenant that comes to us by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Now, says Paul, we are united to God. We are united to Christ. Now we are the people of God. Now we are heirs and recipients of the promises of the covenants of grace. Now we have hope. Now we have God. Now we have been brought near by the blood of Jesus Christ. Remember, says Paul. Remember commands Paul. Remember who you were, but celebrate who you are in and through Jesus Christ and His shed blood for His people. God gives us peace. We see it implied at least in these verses today that we have peace with God. We'll see more of this, God willing, in the coming weeks. You can look ahead to verses 14, 16, 17, 19. But we're also going to see that God gives us peace with other people. Peace and reconciliation. Are you tired of the fighting? Are you tired of the striving? Tired of the endless acrimony, the endless divisions that are out there? Tired of the oppression if you're one of the oppressed? Tired of the accusations if you're one of the accused? Tired and weary that there seems to be no solution to these things, no end to them? Because the world around us does not have a solution. If you are tired and weary, Jesus calls you to come to Him and be reconciled to God and have peace with God. To come and receive the gift of God and rest, rest in what Jesus has done for you. Rest and find peace with God and peace and reconciliation with all of God's people. and pursue peace and reconciliation in Christ with those around us. Because my friends, that is the only way that peace is going to come. Let me pray for us. Lord our God, we Gentiles, I think just about every one of us here this morning is a Gentile, at least ethnically. Lord, you have done a great work. We who are far have been brought near. We are not who we used to be. And by your grace, by the power of your word and spirit, as you work sanctification in us, Lord, we will not be the people we are today. For you mold us and form us into the image of Christ our Savior. We thank you for that. Lord, would you continue to do that mighty work in us. And while there is conflict, and conflict abounds, Lord, would you work peace, peace in our hearts, peace in our minds, and, oh Lord, would you work peace around us, especially with those around us. When conflict arises, grant us, oh Lord, that we might find strength and endurance, because these things are hard, and we are weak, but in you we are strong. And so we are thankful for Jesus when we ask these things in His name. Amen.