Please open your Bibles to the book of Ephesians in the second chapter. Our study today is verses 14 to 16. You'll find this in your pew Bible on page 1242. Listen now to God's holy, inerrant, and life-giving word, Ephesians 2, 14 to 16. For he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in 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. May God be praised through the reading and the hearing of his holy word. May he write its truth upon our hearts. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the importance of the instruction of this passage. We pray for the grace, not only to understand it and believe it, but that we might begin to live up to it, that you might have the glory and praise you deserve, that we might enjoy the blessings that are our heritage through the blood of Christ. We pray in his name, amen. Genesis chapter 11 records one of the great culminating moments in human history. Adam and Eve had fallen into sin back in Genesis 3 and the result was the violence that is depicted in those following chapters of the book of Genesis. And then in chapter 11, we find that mankind is united, joined in rebellion against God in a labor to usurp his glory. Genesis 11 begins, now the whole earth had one language and the same words. They said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens and let us make a name for ourselves. Genesis 11, one and four. Now this was of course all part of Satan's subtle plan. It was an imitation of his own failed attempt to overthrow God's reign. Here you see the way that Satan wants to reproduce himself in the followers in unbelief and rebellion. And God, Genesis 11, has its ironic and humorous portions. They built this great tower, such labor. Oh, it's so great. And God stoops, it says, to even get a view of the puny little things so far below. And he judges them. And his judgment took the form of confusing their language. Genesis 11, 9, from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth. And that's how the human race became scattered across the globe and divided into cultures, peoples, languages, nations at war. And so it is with the human race from the Tower of Babylon, the Tower of Babel, until the coming of Jesus Christ. And what does Jesus come into the world to do but to undo not only sin but all of its effects? One of the great overarching statements that we should all have in our minds that the Apostle John makes about what was the purpose for the first coming of Jesus Christ, what was his agenda and aim, 1 John 3.8 says, the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. to destroy the works of the devil. And so if Genesis 11 is the culmination of the effects of sin, and if that is manifested in disunity and hostility, a scattering in confusion, well, we would expect all of that to be reversed through the person and work of Jesus Christ. And that is the very thing that we find. You go forward from the Gospels into the book of Acts. And on the day of Pentecost, just weeks after Christ's resurrection, really just days after his ascension into heaven, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church. And in that Pentecost gathering, it was not incidental that in the providence of God were men who represented the scattered nations of the world and their languages that were created in judgment at Babel, now all brought together by the Spirit of God. Peter began preaching and the tongues of flame fell upon the people in that gathering. And we read, they were amazed and astonished, saying, how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language? And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean? Acts 2, verses 7 to 12. Well, what did it mean? It meant the coming of peace. in Jesus Christ to the scattered tribes of men. Now Paul's readers in the book of Ephesians are Gentiles living in Asia Minor. They had been, look back at verse 12, they had been separated from Christ. They were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. They were strangers to the covenants of promise without hope and without God in the world. And we go forward to verse 13, now in Christ they have been brought near to God by the blood of Christ. They are reconciled to God by the cross. But there's something more that Christianity does not end there with forgiveness and justification and reconciliation to God. There is more for the people of God to know and experience. namely that the never-ending war brought on by sin has been put to an end, it has been defeated. We are at peace with God, yes, but now we are to have peace among men. Ephesians 2.16 states that Christ reconciled us to God in such a way that he brought us together in one body, he says, through the cross, thus killing the hostility. Now here Paul proclaims the good news of peace. We'll see it worked out in three ways. First, peace as it is made possible by the blood of Christ. And then secondly, peace as it's realized through the resurrection of Christ. And thirdly, peace as it is actually experienced in the new humanity that is the church, the body of Christ. Those are our three points this morning. Peace made possible through Christ's blood, peace experienced, made real through the resurrection of Christ, and then experience in the new humanity of the body of Christ. Now we know that Christ died to reconcile sinners to God through faith. And Paul emphasized that in chapter two, verse 13. You who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. What a statement that is. What good news that is. But as his teaching continues, he points out that Christ's death also makes possible peace within the human race by removing the dividing wall of hostility. That's the reason he gives in verse 14. He speaks of the fundamental division. The human race is divided into two categories. Here it's between Jews and Gentiles. But of course, that situation in Paul's days, Jews versus Gentiles, is an outworking of Genesis 3.15, God's curse upon the serpent after the fall. God cursed Satan saying, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. There are the offspring of the women. Those are the people of God through faith in Jesus Christ. And then there's the people of the serpent. That's the unbelieving peoples of the world. And there is hostility between them. And this separation that God affected right at the beginning, right at the fall, was a provision of mercy and protection for his people. You see, without this enmity, well then godly families would just be absorbed into the sinful world and its rebellion against God. their preservation and through them the preservation of the holy seed over those long centuries who would become the Savior. It required that there be hostility between the people of God and the world. You say, why is it that the world and the people of God don't get along? The first reason is that God has done so as a curse upon the enemy. that the people of God would not easily be assimilated into unbelief and rebellion. Now in the time when Paul's writing the New Testament, that division is between Jews and Gentiles. A division that was mandated by the Old Testament legal code. Now Paul refers in verse 14 to the dividing wall of hostility. And he says it was created in verse 15 by the law of commandments and ordinances. Now in a previous study we noted that Paul was envisioning the courts of the temple and the way that the courts of the Israelites were divided from the court of the Gentiles by a dividing wall. The Gentiles could not come in with the people of God into the presence of God. And there were warnings that threatened death to any Gentile who crossed. And Paul sees that wall as a symbol for the whole system of rules in the Old Testament that were designed to keep the Jews separate from Gentiles. They could not sit down to a meal with Gentiles. They could not even eat the same foods. They dressed differently. They were not allowed to intermarry for sure, but they really even couldn't have actual functioning friendships. Now you know how the Gentiles took that. They thought the Jews were aloof and strange and arrogant, and the Jews came to regard the Gentiles as unclean and inferior. If you listen to the prayers of the Jewish rabbis in the first century towards the Gentiles, it's very severe and contemptuous language. Well, Paul says that Jesus abolished all that, and he broke down the wall in his flesh. Now he's referring, of course, to Jesus atoning death on the cross. Prior to Jesus coming, the system of Old Testament laws was the means by which the people of Israel entered into relationship with God. It was their religious practice. And as a result, only they had access to God. No one else could come near. Now Paul, particularly in Galatians chapter three where he deals with this issue, verses 23 to 29, he makes the point that this was always intended to be a temporary measure. Again, with the purpose of preserving the integrity of the covenant people until the Messiah should come. But Jesus' coming abolished the administration of the Mosaic covenant and it offered access to everyone to God through the death of Christ. Listen to how Paul explains this in Galatians 3, 24 and 28. He says, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus, we are all sons of God through faith. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Well, Christianity was intended to be a worldwide religion. And the covenant people of God, that one people going all the way back to Adam and Eve and through the Old Testament, you know, that's our history. We are a part of that people. But in the Old Testament, Paul says that was pedagogy. That was youths being trained and being kept under restrictions. But that was not the intent. The intent was maturity. And that was when Christ came. And now the pedagogy is over. Now this was an issue in the early church. The reason Paul wrote that in Galatians is that the Judaizers, a sect of the church, was teaching that once you believed in Jesus you had to culturally become Jewish and you had to separate yourself culturally in the manner of your dress, the way you wore your hair, the food that you ate, all of those sorts of things. And the apostles were firm in realizing that was not the intention of the Lord. Now that the Messiah had come, His salvation was to be for all the world. Every culture, every language was to be reached with the gospel. Now anyone could become a child of God just as they were, whether Jew nor Greek. They both came the same way through a living faith in Jesus Christ, turning from the false gods to the true God through his Son, the Lord Jesus. Now in the ministry of Jesus, in his own personal practice, you'll see anticipations of this, and it was very annoying to the Jews when he did so. One of my favorite examples is John chapter 4, where Jesus is traveling through Samaria, and he sits at the well, Jacob's well, and there's a Samaritan woman there. And she is amazed that a Jewish man would actually sit next to a Gentile woman in this way. And Jesus actually talked to her. And he even allowed her to perform a service. Woman, give me to drink. And he drank from a cup that a Gentile Samaritan woman had given to him. And then Jesus proclaimed the gospel. I love the two questions he asks of John 4 11. The two questions the world needs to know. If you knew who was speaking and what he offers, then you would ask him and he would give you eternal life. What a way to witness the gospel. If only you knew who Jesus is. Our culture doesn't know who Jesus is. And they have no idea of the gift of grace, salvation by grace, and all that it means if we will ask, he will give it to her. And that led to a conversation. And she asked him, what's this business of you talking to a Samaritan woman? And she starts asking questions about that religious divide. And Jesus says, listen, the hour is coming. In fact, it is now here. When true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. Yes, and he says, actually, you Samaritans are wrong when it comes to the Old Testament, but let's set that aside. Because now you don't go to a certain place, you don't go through certain rituals, you worship the Father through faith in his Son, in spirit and in truth, and he receives you, Jew and Gentile alike. And she went back to her village, she believed, he disclosed his glory to her. And she believed, she went back and she witnessed to her people in Sychar. They came to Jesus with the great statement, this is the Savior of the world. Now what John means says world, kurios, he means not just Jews but Gentiles as well. All kinds of people may be saved through Jesus Christ. Now, when Paul says that Jesus abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, he is not talking about the moral law. He is not saying that the Ten Commandments have been abrogated. The Ten Commandments express the timeless moral character of God. The moral reality that is because of the kind of God that he is never changes, and Jesus taught that. He said in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5.17, do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. And likewise, God's people today are to know and obey the moral law of God. That's why we read them in our worship service, and we're confessing our sins. It's not just that we think that we've sinned. No, we have broken the commandments, and we need to understand a little bit of what they mean. And we work that out, and then it's a guide for our life. People say, what should I be doing? Well, let's start with living according to the Ten Commandments. People say, I don't believe in law, I believe in love. The law is a description of what love looks like, and so the Ten Commandments are not set aside. But it's the temporary regulations, it's the ritual demands of the old covenant, those regulations designed to seal off the people of God from the world, separating Jews and Gentiles, those are set aside. You have Acts 10 when the food regulations are set aside. I think it's one of the great moments in redemptive history when sausage is granted to the people of God and bacon and ham. And Peter, you know, actually it's such a big event that five times it's recorded in the book of Acts. Paul's conversion is told five times. Peter being shown by God that those restrictions were set aside and it caused the controversy, but the immediate result was the conversion of Gentiles. It's a very significant event, and we live in that area. Now, this should affect the ethos with which Christians address the world. You know, many Christians, one of the problems we have is that many Christians think that holiness consists only of, or at least primarily of, checking out of the culture. To be holy is to not do secular things. And people think they're holy if they have no non-Christian friends, if they only imbibe of explicitly Christian entertainment, however bad it may be. It may be good, but it may be bad. But only Christian movies, only Christian songs, nothing other than that. And they have nothing to do with their neighbors. They treat their co-workers as if they are unclean. But you see, Christ's death has freed God's people from what Paul regards as a juvenile pedagogy. That's the way they had to live before the Spirit was poured out. Imagine not having the fullness of the Holy Spirit the way that we do. No wonder they had to have those rules. It was bad enough they were serving idols as much as they could, even with the Mosaic Law. But now with the Spirit and in the age of Christ, we are not to think of holiness merely by separating ourselves from every cultural connection with the world. We now are to go out into the world. We are not to be of it, but we are to be in it. We are to be salt, Jesus says, that preserves it from death. Now don't lose your saltiness. We are to be a light that is shining in the darkness. That's what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount. And one of our greatest example is Jesus again. Go back to John 4 with the woman on the well. He treats the Samaritan woman as a person of dignity and worth and it blew her away. Even Samaritans didn't treat her that way. And here's a Jewish rabbi. who looks upon her as a bearer of God's image and treats her with kindness and dignity. He even asks her to do a service for him and he receives it. That was the very kind of person she had been taught to hate. And yet she was actually drawn to him by his grace and his truth. Now you see, this is the model that we are to follow today. I hope you realize that we Christians in America, as well as in Europe and in the once Christian West, we find ourselves in a difficult situation today. Because there are a lot of ways in which we do have to be separate. There are a lot of ways in which we cannot just participate in what the world's doing because of its commitment to sin. Just this terrible sexuality and sensuality and just the whole licentiousness, the spirit of drunkenness. I was converted at age 30. I was an army officer, and I was in graduate school at the time, and so I had a two-year hiatus from my natural community, and I was in the incubator of the church, and I grew as a Christian. I went back as a new person, and it was a little shocking to realize I could not be one of the guys anymore because of their social practices. And they would invite me, and I'd have to go, you know, guys, I don't do that. They'd kind of look at me. And then you'll find, you go to the college campus, there's a way in which the Christian can't completely fit in. Why? Because we belong to Christ and we cannot partake of immorality. And it's the sex, it's the drugs and the alcohol. It's a whole outlook, isn't it, of crassness, the way people speak and act. And so there is a dividing wall just in terms of morality. And it creates a problem for us because what we want to do is connect with them for Christ's sake. It's particularly interesting with regard to the culture war. We're seeing this in a new way with respect to the homosexual marriage issue. It's very interesting. We face a very cunning enemy and, oh, what a couple of years he's had. You know, the whole gay marriage thing does not affect that many people, but it has stigmatized the whole church in the eyes of society because we are not tolerant. It shows a divide in our outlook, and it's true. And so now it used to be that when I was first converted, the Christian guy, you didn't hang out with him, you didn't really want to be around because you couldn't tell your dirty jerks, but you admired him. Now the Christian's contemptible. I had a friend who ministers in New York City was telling me that a member of his church a few years ago when Tim Tebow played for the New York Jets, he showed up at an office party wearing a Jets 15 jersey and the people reviled him. for wearing the uniform of a very nice young man who acts in a godly way. But to the world now, he's an evil person. He's intolerant. He's a hater. What an achievement. This is what we have. So what do we do with all these dividing walls? Some of them are from our side. If you say, look, we're supposed to be in the world so a little sin won't hurt us, what a mistake you're making. Let's just imbibe of the culture indiscriminately. What a disaster that is. But on the other hand, the world wants to push us out. Well, again, Jesus sets the example. You know, how do we approach it? We approach it one person at a time. It's through our personal relationships with non-Christian family members, with co-workers, through neighbors, through the other families on the baseball team, assuming we're not in a Christian league, etc. And just the personal kindness, treating them with a dignity they may not find anywhere else. You go to college. And yeah, you can't fit in, but they will notice, you know, that guy's actually a nice guy. He has integrity. She conducts herself in an admirable way. She's not really a hater. And we just show person by person the grace and truth of Jesus Christ, which they cannot encounter anywhere else in the world. But the dividing wall is down objectively. Christ has thrown forth the gospel to the world. The people of God are scattered throughout the world. Here we are, the gospel being preached in South Carolina. It's a long way from Jerusalem. He has spread his gospel in the world. He has made peace possible by his death. We are in the world then as ambassadors of peace. ambassadors of reconciliation. That's how we think of ourselves. Yes, we witness the judgment and wrath of God, but we take up the calling of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5.20. He said, we are ambassadors for Christ. God is making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Well, Christ's death makes peace possible, not only between God and man, but also among men. And for that same cause, Jesus not only died, but he also rose from the grave with new and resurrection life. And his resurrection actually creates peace between men. His death makes peace possible, but it is realized through the power of his resurrection. You know, we must always hold together the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ. And here we see peace through the spiritual resurrection we all participate in through faith in Christ. Look at verse 4 of Ephesians 2. Paul said, by the Holy Spirit we are made alive together with Christ. And now, Paul, as he moves forward to the corporate dimensions of salvation, speaking of the power of the resurrection, he says in verse 15, he has created in himself one new man in the place of two, so making peace. We are new individuals and we are a new humanity, a new people in the resurrection of Christ. That's what Paul is teaching here. When we became disciples of Jesus, we became part of a new human race created by the resurrection of Jesus. We are the people of his resurrection life. We have the power of the Holy Spirit. We are made a family together in God. Now, Jesus does not make peace merely by persuading two different types of people to get along for a while. Ephesians 2 does not say, listen, you Gentile Christians, be nice to the Jewish Christians. You're never really going to be one, but you know, you believe the same religion, be nice to one another. You Jews, stop treating them with contempt. So let's be nice as Christians in the church. That's not his argument. He says you are not Jews and Gentiles any longer. You are something new. You are Christians. You are in Christ. You are the new humanity that he began when the open tomb broke over and he came forth in resurrection life. Do not think of yourself any longer as a Jew or as a Gentile. You are a new kind of person. You are a Christian. Now how important it is that we imbibe of this. How important it is that we no longer think of ourselves so much as white or black, rich or poor, southern or northern. We are Christians in the church. Now all those categories exist, we have to deal with them, I know, but they are to be subordinated to a higher unity in Christ. I mentioned that when I was converted, I was a combat officer. I was an armored cavalry officer. And we would go into social groupings when I was in combat units. And you'd go out in society. There'd be the white guys. There'd be the black guys. There'd be the Hispanic guys. And there would be the soldiers. And we had a stronger bond through our military ethic and through our shared experience and suffering and our unicohesion. We were more comfortable being with fellow soldiers of different races than with people who were not soldiers of our own race. Now that's true in the military, which has a strong culture. How much more should it be true among Christians who have not only culture, but the actual spirit of God actually indwelling us and making us one? Our higher identity we share in Christ. We are one new man. Christianity is not a band-aid on the old human race with all its conflict and hatred and division. It is the new humanity in the resurrection of Jesus. The humanity that passed through death in his cross and through the open tomb has entered into eternal life. Now again, what is it that makes us members of this new humanity? And the answer is the new birth. The regenerating work and the subsequent indwelling of the Holy Spirit. You say, oh, is it really possible? Oh, it is. It's a supernatural possibility because of the living presence of God the Spirit in our lives. Listen to Paul in 2 Corinthians 5.17. If anyone is in Christ, new creation. Their category has been changed. Their identity has been changed. Behold, the old is gone, the new has come. Christ has died and risen again, look at verse 16, that he might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And so Jesus brings sinners to God in such a way that he simultaneously brings us to one another. Isn't that a wonderful provision? Because we have more than legal needs. I need to be forgiven, but I need to belong. I need a home, I need a family, I need love. All of these things come in the way that Jesus saves us. A new life, a new identity, and we share it with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Now this is the most radical way of making peace. The closest analogy we can have is the one the Bible uses. It's that of the natural family. We say that blood is thicker than water. One of the tragedies is that families are breaking apart. I hardly know any Christians that don't have some division or painful situation in their families, but what families ought to be at least. We may not get along all the time. We may not always agree, but we love each other. We're committed to one another. That's what families are supposed to be. And what they're supposed to be is realized through the bond of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is thicker than blood or water. So our spiritual families should at least be as close-knit as our natural family. That's a good aspiration for us. God bless our natural families, but our spiritual family in the church should be as close-knit. We should get the same support and love and belonging in the church that we find in our natural families. That takes time, that takes work, but that is our calling. Jesus said, whoever does the will of my Father in heaven, he is my brother, my sister, and my mother. That's my family, those who were joined to my Father. And Jesus makes us one by giving us the same Spirit. He brings us into God's family. He makes us brothers and sisters forever. I always enjoy little girls sending notes to each other, BFF, best friend forever, and how often it doesn't work out that way. Middle school or high school, college, marriage, it all separates it. My friends, we're BFFs. This is best friends forever. The bond of the unity of the Christ is one that will not end ever. We may not feel like we're best friends, but we are close friends forever and ever. This is the bond we experience in the one new man in Jesus Christ. Now this teaching informs us then what the church is. It is the new humanity in Jesus Christ that will live forever and partake in Christ's glory throughout all ages. And this is why reflecting on Paul's message here in Ephesians will remind us of the significance, the great significance of the Christian church. There is nothing like it. There is nothing else more important institutionally, organizationally. There is nothing more worthy of our commitment, our sacrifice, and our contribution. Listen, God bless you for your secular work. We need to work hard in our jobs and our secular callings. If you're an engineer, build a good bridge and make it look good too. But the day's coming when that bridge is gonna fall and the skyscraper will fall and the financial empire and the human resource plan will be set aside. But what we are doing together with the whole church today in the church with the preaching of the gospel, witnessing, greeting visitors, calling people on the phone, praying for one another, giving money to provide for the gospel and for the needs of the church, that work will last forever. and the glory of it given to God will last forever and ever. There is nothing in this world like the church. We are not a social club. We are not a self-help society. We are the new creation brought about by the spirit of God through the resurrection of Christ. It is the holy society of heaven living on this present evil earth. Now do you see why it's so important that you should love the church? Do you see why it's so important that we should play our part in the church, that we ourselves should pursue holiness, use our gifts in the church? The church is the bride of Christ. It is the new humanity of the resurrection. The Bible says angels right now are gazing upon us and wonder. Do you see why it's so important to be a part of the church, not just hopping around? It takes a while to find a church. I'm glad I don't have to do that. You do. But we're to covenant with a local body of believers in actual bonds. We're to join together and have duties one to another and have tangible expressions covenantally in the church. How important that is. And only the church can know the peace of God because it is in the church that Christ is making peace through faith in him. Verse 16 says that God sent Jesus to reconcile sinners to himself in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. Now one thing that says it is the only way into the church is the cross. Baptism does not make you a real Christian. Assigning a card does not make you a Christian. Being born in a right family, being covenant children does not make you eternally members of the church. There's only one way in. Jesus said, I am the door. It's the cross is how we enter into the church, but it works the other way around. By going to the cross means that you must enter the church. The cross, the sheep pen of which Jesus is the door is the church. And to be a Christian then requires entry into the new humanity where Christ reigns in peace. Salvation involves our individual reconciliation to God, but then our reconciliation to others in the church of Christ. Now one of the great signs of assurance of salvation is the experience of this oneness and this unity and peace among fellow Christians. I wonder if you've ever been in a circumstance where you ran across somebody that was not at all the kind of person that you would really be interested in or that person in you. There's a natural cultural division, but for some reason or another you find out that person's a Christian. Maybe you're in a cab. and there's a Christian music playing, or you see some symbol, and that starts a conversation, and you start talking the Bible, and the work of God, and suddenly you feel a real brotherhood with this person who you would have no division, no unity with. What does it say to you? It says you're a Christian. It's a great source. In 1 John, John gives three signs of a true and living faith. One is doctrinal, one is moral, the other is love. And it's not something we generated. I didn't say, well, I'm gonna really befriend this cab driver or this stranger or this person, but I just do. Why? Because of the unity we have in the church, a spiritual union bathed in love, and the experience of it testifies to your salvation. Now let me say that Paul's description of the church in this passage has very profound implications for our approach to ministry. We are told today that people like to be with other people just like themselves. Well that's not a news flash. That's what the church marketing experts tell us. And if you really want to grow your church numerically, I can show you the books. What you do is you find a certain kind of person. For some reason, it tends to be an upwardly mobile, affluent white person, but not always. But you find a certain person, and you find out their demographics and their cultural preferences, and guess what you give them when they come to church? Everything they like. If they like the casual and informal, you're casual and informal. Off goes the robe. In goes the Hawaiian shirt. If they like the contemporary, you're contemporary. polka, maybe some Nebraska place, then you give them polka, whatever it is, and you create a cultural setting that they already like and guess what happens? They come to it and then more come to be with them. It's called the homogeneous unit principle. It has dominated church planting and church growth for the last 30 years. And it works and we have mega churches built around cultural preferences that are reinforced and experiences and you feel right at home and it's easy for you and you like it and what's the problem? The problem is it's exactly counter to what Jesus says and Paul says the church is to be all about. Yes, you will get numbers. It's been proven that way. But numbers are not everything. There's a quality to it. What we've done to the Church of Jesus Christ is we've turned it into a multiplex movie theater. We're all under the same roof, but we're not together. We're having different experiences. We're looking outward. Many congregations do it within their own congregation. You have the liturgical service, always at some terrible hour, six in the morning. Those people can get up early. And then you'll have the mildly contemporary service at nine, a decent hour. And then the rock and roll service at 11 o'clock. We are dividing up, why? So that the numbers will add up to a greater whole. What do we lose? We lose the church. We lose the one new man in Jesus Christ. I am not saying you have to do hymns. There's a reason we do the music we do, though, because it's distinctively Christian music. It is the music of the people of God carried forward through generations, and some of it's been written recently, and some of what's being written now will find its way into our hymnals. It's a distinctively Christian experience. You go, no, no, no, it's old folks music. No, old folks music is Sinatra. Well, now it's 70s rock and roll, I think. It's the Beatles. That's old folks music now. And so you check your Sinatra, you check your polka, you check your bluegrass and your country western and we'll set aside personal preference and we'll pick up the book that is the experience of the English speaking, to be sure. We have a language culture, but the Christian experience. You know, I go to Africa and my universal experience there, I know there are other experiences, but we sing hymns. Because those churches are the result of missions from Scottish churches in Kenya. It's the Presbyterian Church or in other places. You go to Peru and it's in a different language. It's scripture songs mainly in the churches we go to. But we can participate. We are culturally present because the dominant culture is that of the church. that of Christ. What should be happening is as we grow and go along, our worldly culture should become less and less important to us. And the things that are biblical should be the things that cause our heart to leap. There's a real sermon. That's what we're looking for in a church, not a certain consumer style. Oh, they have a congregational prayer. What a strange thing for the people of God to pray to the Lord in the service. Oh, they're doing that. You know, our church was founded in 1892, and I love the fact that if charter members were to come back, they would very much recognize the worship service. and participate in it. And if you took people from the Protestant Reformation and from England in their time, or Luther's Reformation, and you brought them here, there might be language issues, but they would get it, and we would get it there, because there is a distinctively Christian culture. There is biblical Christian worship, and these things should unite us, and we should leave behind the other things. We should increasingly represent a broad demographic. We want a church where there is both young and old, where there are both singles and married, there are both hip and square, there are rich and poor together, every tribe and race. You say, well race is a problem. Well it is in our culture. We live in a racially stratified culture, but let's keep at it. Let's play our part. Let's seek unity with fellow Christians of all races, tribes, tongues, economic groups, and let's pray that as we go forward into the next generation that more and more, yes, even racially in the South, the Word of God will unite us together, both in congregations and between congregations. We are the new humanity in Christ. People who otherwise would be opposed are won through the Spirit of Christ. Now, yes, a particular church has its own cultural feel. It's always going to be that way. I find that the more and more I go around, I can just enjoy their culture. If I go to an African-American church, I did a funeral for one of our members who's an African-American five or six years ago. It was a different kind of funeral than we have, and I enjoyed it. It was different. They can be themselves. We can be ourselves. We're going to have a cultural feel. But let us primarily have a biblical feel. The things that unite us. The new in Christ, not the old of the world. Well let me conclude with three observations that flow from this text. The first is this. Remember the kind of peace that's being described here. It is primarily an inward peace. It works inward-outward. It's not about outward circumstances. It's not merely about arrangements we make so that we won't hurt each other. It's an actual inward harmony and fellowship and love that is working in us, not merely the secession of arguing. And so I ask you, are you experiencing that peace? As you grow as a Christian, are you finding that peace through the Holy Spirit working in you? We can't always manufacture it. The other side is sometimes at war. It's a real challenge for us with the culture. There is probably persecution coming. That shouldn't alarm us. We respond with peace and with love. I will tell you the witness of our fellow Christians in central Nigeria and in the Middle East is wonderful and beautiful as the peace and love by and large. The Anglican Church in Nigeria and the love they show over and over for the Muslims who are bombing their churches is a testament to the glory of God. We are to have peace for others. They may not have it for us. Paul says, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. But we ought to have it between husband and wife, shouldn't we? We ought to have it between Christian parents and Christian children. Not just that we don't fight, but that we have love for one another and there's mutual sympathy and understanding in a unified spirit. There ought to be friendships within the church with real support and love. We are able to do this. We are to experience this peace. It happens as we walk with God and as we humbly subordinate ourselves to the teaching of God's Word. If we all live in accordance to the teaching of the Word of God for one another, that will help us greatly to live together. And when there's an animation of inward love and unity, it will be full. Paul says this in Colossians 3, 15 and 16, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful that the word of Christ dwell in you richly. You know, one reason why I think we do not achieve as much peace as we ought to, on the one hand, we don't realize the priority of it and the importance of it. The second one, we have too low an expectation. God will answer our prayers. Look, if you're a husband and wife and you're really estranged, get together before the Lord and ask Him, you're a Christian man, you're a Christian woman, say, Lord, change my heart towards my wife and He'll do it. change my heart towards my husband, and then start obeying the Bible, start practicing in a spirit of faith, and God will send the Holy Spirit. Why should there not be peace? Now, there needs to be repentance. You don't just brush things aside. Repentance, forgiveness. Honey, I'm sorry. You've been telling me this. I've been doing it. Would you forgive me? I'm going to try better. I forgive you. Let's pray together. Let's engage in a new start in the Word of God, and we will move forward in peace. Do you realize that's possible? families that are broken up, relationships, we are able to have peace. Jesus said, peace I leave you, my peace I give to you. And so we are to seek peace to be sure, but we are to ask God to bless us with the renewing work of the Holy Spirit that turns us to God and turns our hearts to one another. The last promise of the Old Testament in Malachi, When the Messiah comes, he will turn the hearts of fathers to their sons and the hearts of sons to their fathers. He will give us the ability to live in peace. Let us seek it. Let us pray for it. We can have more of it. Now secondly, this passage ought to shape our idea of what the church is. The church is an institution, but it's more than that. It is not just a building. It is the new human race, the eternal family of God's people, and its work will endure long after, I've already said this, long after every other achievement has fallen. It is the church in which God is displaying his glory. And so he calls us to commit ourselves, all of us together, to the work of His church, to the up-building of the church, to the spread of the gospel. There are few things more important than that you should use your gifts in the church, that you should contribute your time and your money and your prayers and your tears and your love, that we should be fully engaged for the blessing and growth of the church, the new humanity in Jesus Christ. and realizing that Jesus bought the church with his own blood in order to make peace, we should all be loath that any of us should do anything to disturb the peace of the local church. Now there are rare times when some massive change has to happen out of biblical principle, but our elders can tell you that we are committed to peace in the church. We are not a radicalized session doing the latest fad and disturbing the church. Look, if we have to lead, we have to lead. If we have to make decisions, we have to, but we desire peace and so should you. You take vows as members to study the purity and peace of the church. And so if we set aside our preferences, what is that? if I should lose the vote on the color of the carpet or the time the Sunday school service starts or which place in Peru we go, this or that, there ought to be an overarching sense of duty. I am to humble myself before God and I am to seek the purity and the peace and the blessing of the church. God forbid that any of us in our relationships, in our response to things that happens, even when we sin against one another, we have a way of dealing with sin. Let's do it that way. God forbid that we should disturb the peace of the church of Christ purchased with his precious blood. And then lastly, this teaching gives us a whole new perspective on the glory of Christ's saving work. You know, we tend to think of salvation individualistically. But here we're shown there is a vast and grand panorama. Christ has overthrown the work of the devil in the world. He has created a new people for himself that transcends the old conflicts, that overthrows the old allegiances and hostilities. Christ has not merely made repairs on the old, broken-down humanity. He has made something glorious and new in its place using the raw materials of the fallen creation. He has cleansed us from sin. He has breathed into us the new life of His resurrection through the Spirit. thus making peace. Do you know that's where history is ending for the people of God? We are not going to experience it fully. The church is never going to have the unity we should. I'm sorry, we're just too sinful. Families are never going to be quiet. We should have peace. We should be one, but there's always sin. We fail in many ways, but we do realize that this is our destiny. And we should go back and read some of the great prophecies of the Old Testament and have our aspirations raised up and to realize that when Christ returns, it's all going to be true. Isaiah said, the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat and the calf and lion and the fatted calf together. They shall neither hurt nor destroy and all my holy mountain for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Oh, come Lord Jesus, we pray. That is our future. But it's also our reality in Christ. It's our future in Christ, but it is presently accessible to us. How? Through faith, by the grace of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit who unites us. This resurrection can be our present experience. It should be an increasing measure. And as that's true, as we each yield ourselves to Jesus Christ, serving him but loving others in his name, well, what a blessing we will experience. How that will change the Christian home and the Christian church and the broader Christian community. And even more importantly, God will be glorified for his grace. That's the great need. that the grace of God should be seen and displayed and that he would have the glory that he deserves. Let's pray. Father, this is our prayer then, that we would understand, that we would know, that we would begin more and more to live up to our calling. We thank you for the resource of the Holy Spirit. We thank you for the achievement of Christ renewing us individually and bonding us together in the church. Father, help us here to experience it more and more, but let us live knowing that this is our destiny. Let us serve this cause in the world. Cause us to be by your grace, for your glory, truly a light shining in the darkness. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.