It's kind of an honor to get introduced like four times. And it's the first time I've ever been in a retreat where I've gotten introduced like four times. So I'll try to live up to each introduction as best as I can. And you can just be gracious. The when I was growing up and so I'm gonna date myself a little bit, but that's okay There was a movie with Dan Aykroyd in it called spies like us and it's a comedy from the 80s it's it's very 80s if you watch it and And in it they they are put through this training regimen where they're in this machine that spins them around. And in the opening illustration in just a minute after I read Ephesians, we're gonna talk about that. But if you ever have seen spies like us, that's what comes to my mind when I think about this. Okay, all right, that's an aside, that's a freebie. We're gonna continue this pathway, so just to recap for you so that you kind of understand how this is building. We talked last night from Acts 10 about Peter and Cornelius coming together with the idea that God's road of redemption was expanding. So what was ethnic Israel, which was also religious Israel, which was the people of God, that was experiencing life in kind of two lanes, that with Pentecost and the pouring out of God's spirit, those lanes opened up to include not only ethnic Jews, but Gentiles. which was a catch-all phrase to mean everyone else. People who ethnic Jews would have thought about as the other and the outsider now are baptized into the people of God because of the pouring out of God's Spirit. That is what enables you and I to have an open invitation to experience God's grace. And in Galatians, we see that once Peter kind of gets a hold of this as they continue to carry out that mission as part of the New Testament church, it doesn't mean that it's without challenges. Challenges that involve misunderstandings, miscommunications, and even failures to appreciate just what the full implications of that good news or unchanging news of the gospel is, right? And so we see that conflict with Paul and Peter. in Ephesians here in a second when we read. Ephesians is a bit of a general letter. So oftentimes people think about Paul's letters like they are pastoral letters. Someone who is both a theologian but also had contact with the community who writes to address the problems in that community. Ephesians out of all of Paul's letters is maybe the most like a general letter that would have been circulated pretty widely. And so it is framing up and structuring just hey What does the Christian life look like and here when I read chapter 2 and I'm gonna read the whole chapter I just want you to note something that's really important in Paul's letters and will be helpful for how we think about this stuff Paul will often structure his thought and letters along two lines, the indicative followed by the imperative. And that may be a fancy way to say that, and so I'm gonna unpack exactly what that means. For Paul, this reality of who we now are in Jesus, the indicative, something that points to kind of our standing and who we are, that always shapes how we must now live. So what we do with our lives and our time and our money, with how we treat other people, how we use our speech, how we think about sex and sexual ethics, all of those things are shaped by who we are for Paul when he thinks about the Christian life. So there's always in his letters often an indicative that then is followed by an imperative. And so when we read chapter 2, that structure is there in some pretty clear ways. And so I want you, as I read chapter 2, I want you to kind of follow along with how this fits together. The therefore is the turn where he's moving from the indicative to say, hey, this is how this now works out for you here and now, okay? So if you have Bibles, open them to Paul's letter to Ephesians. It's right after Galatians. If you were in Galatians earlier, just flip like three pages, and I'm gonna read Ephesians chapter 2. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved and raised up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. 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 the same 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. For he himself is our peace, he who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law and commandments and ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place by God or for God by the Spirit. This is the word of the Lord. Let me pray for us. God, I ask that as we continue to walk together through your word and not only what that means for us, this gospel of grace, what it means for us that you, God, have intervened, have stepped into, have raised us up by grace that we may live. but that now, moreover, you have called us, having broken down that wall of hostility to love not only you with all of who we are, but to love our neighbor as ourself. God, I ask that you will give us wisdom to do that, that the indicative of your salvation will shape the imperatives of our lives. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. So it would be pretty bad if you were flying a plane and you pass out, right? That would be bad. I'm not a pilot, but I've flown in a number of planes over time. And I want the pilot, as much as I can help it, to be awake. and alert and paying attention to all that's happening, you know, it involves a bit of trust. And so there are these videos that the Air Force has leaked out or that someone has leaked out, maybe it wasn't the Air Force officially, of like what it looks like to train pilots in these simulators to experience G-Force. Like what happens when you're in a plane and you don't want the pilot to pass out, right? None of us wants pilots to pass out. But like, that's one thing to say when we're all in a comfy room and there's a fire that's crackling and we have coffee and we're like, pilot should stay awake. It's another when you're actually in a cockpit and you're like trying to pull some turn and all of the forces of gravity because of how fast you're going and the angle at which you are flying begin to press in on you. It's not just a matter of will or did I get enough sleep last night? It's that Physiologically, it's hard for your heart to get blood to your brain, which means it's hard for you to stay awake. So what do you do? You basically begin to train pilots to follow a series of instructions that just becomes innate to experiencing G-force. So you begin to give them instructions on how to breathe, how to bear down, how to flex their muscles in ways that help to keep the blood going to their brain, and so that they can stay alert and continue to accomplish their mission. So most of us will never have to worry about what those instructions are to stay awake under the g-forces of a plane. I don't have to ever worry about that. You know, if you have, great. But most of us, no idea. As a church, though, and as Christians in the 21st century, one way to think about discipleship and mission is the experience of G-forces that press in on us spiritually. And that if we just go into it with no training or no thought, and we're like, oh, I'll just wing it when it comes along, that we will be utterly unprepared to stay alert and awake. And so one way to think about discipleship and what a Christian church does when we gather together to pray and to sing and to hear from God's word is the activity to prepare our spiritual lives to hold up under the reality of coming through a pandemic where people are incredibly isolated and now lack for community because it's been fragmented out, right? Or to manage the reality of anxiety and depression that people face, and to know how are we supposed to come alongside them when they face these pressures of seemingly insurmountable problems. And what am I supposed to ever do with that? For people who feel like the obstacles in life are stacked so high that they never get there, and that's the pressure that they carry around. When they get out of bed in the morning, they know what they're facing. It's the same for people who live with the reality of chronic pain or illness. don't need to be told what cross they may carry as Christians or what pressures they're going to be facing in the world because they have to wake up and live with it every single day. And so while we don't face the G-forces that pilots face, as Christians we face an incredible number of both cultural and health and economic forces in the place where God has put us, that we can begin to train ourselves to navigate through that reality. And that's what Paul is doing for the church in a place that's not altogether dissimilar. Because as he's writing to the Ephesians, and as he has seen the gospel go out, much like the mission that we saw from Peter, so news of Jesus being the chosen one, the faithful Israelite who's fulfilled the covenant promises in him, our yes and amen to all of God's covenant promises, so too Paul has gone out. And news has spread to people who don't know those covenant promises, who are unfamiliar with what that's like to live under the law. And they're all coming together to form this community, united in Christ. And so Paul's writing to them to help them understand how to think about that and how to live when inevitably the forces of cross-cultural community, people who are coming from different ethnicities and places in life, people who have experienced the world in very different ways, all of a sudden are participating in the same community and living life next to one another, having to make corporate decisions. Well, what should shape that? Should they just take the approach of saying, Well, just take it as it comes, and I hope it goes well Paul would say no Who we are in Christ has to shape how we live together with one another and that's what Ephesians 2 is going after and that's what we'll take up in two points so raised to life and rallied to Christ raised to life and rallied to Christ so so So When Paul gives an evaluation of humanity apart from God, it's bleak. It's not just like, they're in a bad spot. It's not just like, I don't know that this was the best decision. It is unequivocally that they are spiritually dead. And so Paul is trying to do business with the reality of the nature of sin. That is, when humanity chose, God gave them a vocation and a call. He gave them a structure to do it. He was in fellowship with them. and when they chose to say, yeah, that's good, God, we got it from here, thank you, and we're gonna go our own way, that that decision to depart from God's instruction, what we would call sin, had effects not only for Adam and Eve, but for all of humanity, who they represented in the garden. And so that when they made that decision and had these cascading cosmic effects, that that impacts your life from the moment that you're born and you have added to it with how you have chosen to live. And so Paul is saying spiritually, apart from a God intervention, you're not only in bad shape, you're not only not like, you're in a little bit of trouble, you are spiritually dead. And so what makes grace amazing to Paul is that that's the state of humanity. And yet God, but God, as he says here in Ephesians 2, reaches in by the power of his spirit and makes us alive. If you have ever turned to Jesus in faith, you should not pat yourself on the back and say, that is the best decision I've ever made. That isn't the best or most accurate theological description. So while that may be humanly from your perspective true, I don't want to set that fully aside. I'll just say Paul here is mapping out theologically what really happened is God. God stepped in, God intervened, God by the power of his spirit made you alive. And that we should think, then, of faith, even though we have an active part in it as human beings and as people with agency. When we think about faith, it can never be thought of as separated from God's grace, as an act of mercy, as God engaging us, not because he had to, but because he loved us. That is what makes Christianity good news, and that's what shapes our view about who God is. He has raised us to life. and we have been united together to him. So Paul, throughout all his thought, often talks about Christians as being in Christ. He'll use that often. And it's a pretty quick description in English, like in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. And I think that we can miss just how significant it is to how Paul thinks about what it means for you sisters and you brothers to be a Christian. From Paul's perspective, I think what's going on in all of his letters is that when he thinks about God intervening and raising us to life and us turning in faith, he thinks about us eternally being united together to Jesus. where all that Jesus has accomplished in his righteousness in effect becomes ours because we're united together, we're in Christ. And the sin that we were on the hook for and owed consequences because of, that transfers to Christ in his death. because we're united together with Christ. And so union with Christ is a fantastic way to think about the Christian life and all that it means. We are now in Christ, and Paul uses this over and over and over again, including here in Ephesians 2. We have been raised to life, we are now in Christ, and because we're in Christ, because we're united to him, this now shapes how we live everyday life. So that if you go and you read any of the other commands from Paul to submit to one another, or to flee sexual immorality, or to use your words in wise and God-honoring ways, all of those commands are always to be thought of in light of the fact and reality that we've been united to Christ. It's not that we do those things in order to become approved by God. No, we've been united to Christ already. It's that now that we've been united to Christ, we're called to live life We're called to actually see that play out in our everyday lives. And where Paul starts with that race to life is what it looks like for Jew and Gentile to be rallied together. So last night when I talked a bit about one of the key ethical New Testament issues, in Ephesians Paul talks about married life. In Ephesians Paul talks about sexual immorality. In Ephesians Paul talks about what it looks like to use our words in wise ways. In Ephesians it talks about How to live in ways that are God-honoring and avoid the ways that we used to live. How to pursue virtue and avoid vice. But where Paul, in a sense, seemingly starts as he begins to head this direction, both in Ephesians 2 and in Ephesians 4, is what it looks like to live together with people who aren't just like us. That's the starting point. Jew and Gentile. And so when he hits the therefore in verse 11 and he begins to unpack, he's rallying the people together to Christ, right? He is saying that you have received more than just individual good news for you. The more than is important so that I'm not misheard. The gospel is good news for you as an individual. It is a personal invitation for you to turn and believe. True. But it is more than that. It is an invitation to be a part of the family of God. So that when you are united to Christ, it's not just you who are united to Christ, but in a sense, and the other metaphor that Paul uses quite a bit, that's also in our Westminster Standards, is that we're adopted into the family of God. Right? So that we're not only justified, we are, we're not only sanctified, we are, but that we're also adopted. That means we got sisters and brothers who are new and different from us, but they're now part of our family and they're just as much in Christ as we are. and that when we live and think about that, it shapes how we go about our daily lives. And so Paul begins to do business with this in verse 11, following down through verse 22. He uses this language vividly to describe what's going on. In verse 14, for he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. And he goes on to explain a bit what that means, but effectively I think what he's saying here is that in Christ's death, in the dealing with sin and bringing us to himself that we could be united together to him in faith, that some of the barriers through the redemptive story of old are being transformed in new ways. The curtain in the temple has been torn, as the gospel writers tell us. Here, the wall of hostility that may an old have divided, Jew from Gentile, has now been demolished. Jesus, in his death, has picked up a cross-cultural hammer, sledgehammer, and taken it to the wall of division that has typically separated people, and knocked it down, so that in Christ, we are all united. And that's what he begins to unpack so that he frames up how now do we live so that when the news comes to us in verse 18, through him we have access in one spirit to the Father, so then, You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. Paul writes in beautiful ways and with vivid language. And sometimes as we take it in and as we read, particularly if you're familiar, you can go so fast through that. You don't slow down and see what he's doing there. aliens and sojourners was the Old Testament way to refer to everybody who was on the outside. So on that two-lane road of redemption in the Old Testament, where the overlap between ethnic Israel and religious Israel was, you know, virtually identical, there was an occasional outsider who would come in, but it was two lanes. In the New Testament, now that God's road of redemption is being opened up and outsiders are being brought in, people who back then would have been thought of as sojourners or aliens, others, outsiders, not with us, are now sisters and brothers, are now fellow heirs, are now citizens together, are now united to Jesus and we're one family. And Paul's saying we have to begin to do business with that reality so that we're properly thinking not only what Christ's death and resurrection has meant for you individually, which again is true and I affirm it 100%, but what it means for us as a wholesale community when we think about other Christians and we think about the world in which we live. We are rallied to Christ. And that shapes our witness and mission. It's as if, and I think this works, you can unpack it where in verses one through 10, it's doing business with the vertical realities of sin and us being dead and separated from God and how God has stepped in and dealt with that vertical reality and made things right. We've been reconciled to God by his grace through Jesus Christ and through faith in him, right? And then in 11 through 22, it's as if he begins to say the overflow impact of that vertical reconciliation is that there's a horizontal reconciliation that has to begin to take place and that we have to take seriously. And he pushes us to say, oh, wow, OK, how I think about this, it's not just a merely individual thing, which I'm going to just note is hard in America, which, as nations in the world go, is highly individualistic. So we tend, just the way, the default mode in America is to think of things along me and myself and I. How does this impact me? What would I prefer? What are my options? And that's just the world that we live in. And so Paul is pushing to say, hey, maybe especially for us, we need to think about the corporate impacts of that vertical reconciliation. We need to think about how this impacts not just me, although it does, but how it impacts how I treat others. And that can bring it home for us as a community of faith in the metro DC area or as a church in Laurel. So you begin to say, okay, what does this look like? Here are some possible applications of what this looks like played out. How does the vertical reconciliation that we've now received through this gospel message, how does it impact how we connect in our community? Well, one way may be that we don't think of other Christian, faithful Christian churches who are outside of our particular theological denomination as others, as sojourners or aliens in the kingdom of God. Yeah, we're in because we're Reformed and Presbyterian, and we can show you all of our bona fides for that, but they're on the journey. They're fine, but there are others. They're like aliens or sojourners. There can be a danger to that because Presbyterians typically take theology so seriously. We tend to be sharp on this stuff. It's part of our gift to the broader kingdom. We think about this stuff well for hundreds and hundreds of years. We've written lots on all sorts of things, and so we have to be careful to say, okay, well, what about the immigrant church in our community who's filling a need and meeting a connection in ways that we may not be capable of? Do we view them? Has the wall of hostility been broken down? So while we don't share some things with them, Are they professing faith in Jesus? Have they been united to Jesus and are they caring for others? And do we view them as co-labors? Do we view them as sisters and brothers? Do we view them as part of the household? Or are they like, oh, they're over there? The same in America with the black church. When we think about black church tradition and black church context as a predominantly white church that the PCA is, we have to be careful to not judge on merely some distinct theological lines but not appreciate some of the fuller picture of history and how and why things are the way that they are. And so I think one way, at least for me, and I would hope for you what that looks like, is you begin to see other Christians in your area, not first and foremost for what are the small doctrines that differentiate us, which I think is to erect a new wall of hostility, but rather ask yourself, how are they bringing the good news of Jesus to bear for people who are not only in need of a little bit of gospel repair, and not only people who are like hurting just a little bit, but for people who are spiritually dead in our community and have no idea. How does God use them? How can we partner with them? What does it look like for us to connect together? Now, do you get there right away? No. Does a community get there right away? No. Okay, so how do you start to move that direction? Well, I think first you can pray. I would encourage you as a church, individually and corporately, to pray for the churches in your area. Churches who you don't view as competitors, but as fellow laborers, as fellow household members, as sisters and brothers. Pray for them. Pray for them on the regular. Pray for them individually. I think read and learn. Try to get together. Look for avenues for ministry partnership. And by doing that, what ends up happening is, instead of erecting new walls of hostility, you begin to navigate new worlds of mission. You may see a strength that you have or a need that you can meet as a community. And that door was opened up not because of your genius or what you were able to do, but because you just listened and learned from your neighbors who were sisters and brothers. And they were like, hey, there's this thing going on. Do y'all want to get in on this? And you're like, hey, yeah, actually, when we think through this and we toss this to the aconite, the aconite was like, yeah, that's fantastic. Let's go do that. And you'd be surprised where this takes you missionally in the ways in which you begin to connect with community in new ways that you wouldn't have naturally come up with on your own. So pray, listen, partner, read. Read from traditions outside your own. I think that those patterns help you not only as a community to not erect new walls of hostility between fellow heirs, it also prepares you in our missional moment to engage with people who are spiritually dead. In a diverse area, I think that it is wise to bring the good news of God to bear in ways that are understandable to the people around us. But if there are walls of hostility that separate you culturally, not from other Christians, but just from neighbors, then that can be hard to do. And so I think there's further application of this beyond how you think about what it looks like to reach out to the people around us. An example is, when you meet someone new, do you look for the things that divide you, how they're different from you, first or early in conversation or getting to know you? Or do you try to find as much common ground as you can? Do you listen to them? Can you learn from people who aren't Christians? I think these are ways that help prepare you to take the gospel as a community to the people around you. One other note just pastorally that I'll make is what is the threshold for doubt and questions in a community? So I grew up where when things were unclear, the church leadership or my parents would take a really hard line and be like, this is how it is. And it took all sense of uncertainty out of it. There was no gray in my life It was black and it was white right. It's like okay. It's this or it's that and that's how it goes so on all sorts of issues and I think that has the false illusion of safety I will be safe if we can define every issue, and there's no questions here I But what I have found increasingly, if you're talking to anyone younger than 40, or you're talking to someone who's not a Christian, has not darkened the door of a church, if you up front stop, inhibit, or block their freedom to ask questions, I don't know how you actually have a meaningful conversation about faith with them. I don't know how it will work. I mean, if you know, I'd love to learn from you at the break. I don't think that is a way forward. I think you have to create room for people to say, I don't know if I buy that. And for you to be okay with that, I don't mean for you to say that's okay, or that's going to work for you and this works for me. I'm not saying that. But what I'm saying is if there's no room at all, I just don't know how the conversation about faith ever progresses. I think one of the things that we can do secure in our union with Christ is create room for that, for people who are different. So because God has raised us to life, and because, as Paul says, we're rallied to Christ, that begins to map out this road for how we can form lives that are lived in light of God's miraculous work for us. and I think can begin to be the foundation of what it really looks like for us to reach out to the people around us. Not because we want to grow a church, not because we want to be more diverse, not that there's anything wrong with either of those things, but the primary impetus is there are people who are our neighbors, who God has placed us in close proximity to, who are spiritually dead, and we know the one who intervenes in those situations, and we can call them to faith. That's what it means to be a church that's looking out for those around them. All right, let me pray. We'll go to questions. Our Father, thank you for this time this morning. I pray that while we may be passionate about these things, and while they may even get intense, that we think and listen and speak with charity, kindness, And with an intensity that isn't driven primarily by anger, but rather by love for one another. I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.