Let me read for us Ephesians chapter 2. I may have said Colossians earlier. Ephesians is where we're at, chapter 2, verses 11 through 13. 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, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." I want you to heed Paul's command this morning and remember. I want you to think in your mind and try to imagine what your life would be like right now on this day if you had not become a Christian. Now, I know for some of you who are raised in the faith, you don't really remember a time you didn't believe the gospel. That might be hard, if not impossible for you. But for those of you who, like myself, or like the testimonies we heard in the waters of baptism today, came to faith later on, then it should be easier for you. I want you to contemplate in your mind where you would be now to this day had you not become a Christian. I have been a believer now for 26 years. And I think, what would my life be like today if 26 years ago when I heard the gospel preached, I did not believe it? And it's not actually a difficult exercise for me, because I know my friends back then that we liked the same things. We were playing in the same soccer team. We were worshiping the god of Baal. We pronounced it ball, but it was the same god. And I know what their lives are like now. And to see how the Lord has blessed me by rescuing me from a world where I was living for the next game, chasing the next assignment, where my happiness really hinged on which way the ball bounced, outcomes that were beyond my control. I had no desire for marriage back then. Marriage would have been an obstacle to what my real goal was. And now I look at a family with three beautiful daughters that I love and that love me and a wife that loves me. She loves me the best because she loves the Lord more than me. And that causes our relationship to flourish. And I mean, this would be such a different story had I not been saved. I mean, I caution myself with this exercise that you don't want to actually act out the Jesus's parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. You don't want to actually say, oh, look at those sinners over there, Lord. I'm so thankful I'm not like those guys. Nevertheless, I do think it's helpful to just marvel for a few minutes about what your life would be now had you not come to faith. And if you are raised in a Christian family and you don't remember a time you didn't know the Lord, well, perhaps you can think through a time in your life where there was a fork in the road, where your friends went one way and you, because of your devotion to Christ, went another, where there was an opportunity for you to sin or to make a serious life-altering choice that you didn't do because you knew it wouldn't be honoring the Lord. Instead, you did honor the Lord. It is worth jogging your mind and asking yourself, what would your life be like now? Had you made that other decision then? This is what Paul wants you to do. He's making Ephesians very personal here. In chapter 1 and the first half of chapter 2, it was very cosmic. It was very much the Lord in heaven before time, the Father, Son, and Spirit predestined you for salvation. plan for all things at all times. And they made you for that plan. They put you in it. And they sent Jesus to die for your sins and the Holy Spirit to save you and seal you. And now the Lord is seated in heaven now. Well, standing in heaven now in Ephesians 1 verse 22, with all things in the world under his feet reigning over all. At the start of chapter 2, you were dead in your sins and trespasses, but God made you alive through faith in Christ. I mean, you're experiencing your role in this cosmic plan of God right now. And so Paul kind of pulls the car over for a second and says, let's just pause here. And I want you to remember how hopeless you used to be. Now that you've zoomed out and you've seen the big picture of the immeasurable grace God has planned for you, the incomprehensible detail in which he has planned out your life to bless you and to bring you into a relationship with Christ, just pause for a second and marvel that your experience of that blessing right now has not always been the case in your life. You used to be far away. You used to be outside of God's promises, outside of his covenant of salvation. You used to be a stranger to him, an alien from the people of God, an exile from God's kingdom, and a resident of this world's kingdom. Your passport used to say Earth, not heaven. So remember. As you think of the riches and the blessings and the joy of salvation, remember what your life used to be like. Now he, through these three verses of calling us to remember, which he repeats both in the start of verse 11 and verse 12, in both of these verses here, the whole Analogy here is rooted in a Jew-Gentile distinction. And I'm going to spend the whole morning talking about this Jew-Gentile distinction, how the Jews looked down upon the Gentiles. The Jews saw the Gentiles as unclean. The Jewish world was divided between clean and unclean. Everything in the Jewish world is either clean or unclean. You can either touch that or you can't. You can eat that or you can't. You can wear that or you can't. You can work on this day or you can't. You can rest on this day or it's not that day. I mean, everything in the world is divided that way. And in the Jewish mindset, everything in the Gentile world is unclean. And Gentile, the word Gentile just, I don't want to take anything for granted here. The word Gentile just means anybody who's not Jewish. That's in the Jewish mind. There is the Jews, the descendants of Abraham, and everybody who's not from them is a Gentile. And they're all unclean. And everything they touch is unclean. And the houses they live in are unclean. And the roads they walk on are unclean. The food they eat is, they're all unclean. There was very much a separation. And the repetition in this passage about that separation is that of circumcision. And Paul says in verse 11, remember at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, So he's not talking about salvation here. He's talking about very literally in the flesh, in their human body, they have been called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision. Now circumcision was a sign of the covenant that was made with Abraham that Abraham's descendants would be blessed. And they would be blessed ultimately through Abraham's descendant singular, the one seed of the promise. You have to appreciate how the word seed is used in the book of Genesis to prophesy the coming of the Savior. Adam and Eve sin. Sin enters the world. Adam and Eve are separated from God. Because of that sin, they hide from Him. They are eventually cast out of the garden. And in the being cast out of the garden, they are giving a promise that the seed of Eve would be the Savior. Now, that's not the way any human has ever been born. Every human is born from the seed of the man, not the seed of the woman. This is a prophecy of the virgin birth. And it's just left there in Genesis 3. And you move on with the rest of the Bible. And in Genesis 12, God calls Abraham and tells Abraham that his seed, same word, his seed will be the Savior. And this word in Hebrew can be taken into English as either singular or plural, seed singular. Offspring is how we render it in the plural form, all of his descendants. And so the promise to Abraham is that he will have multiple descendants. His descendants will multiply and they will cover the earth. And that they will be blessed by the singular seed, the singular Savior that will come through him. And to mark this promise, that the promise in a very literal sense is being passed down through the offspring, passed down through the seed, God institutes the sign of circumcision. And that's instituted in Genesis 17. God has already made the Abrahamic covenant with Abraham. He's already told him, the nations of the world will be blessed through the Savior, which will come through your line, Abraham. Nations that bless the Savior will be blessed by you, and nations that curse the Savior and your offspring will be cursed by me. The only road for blessing is through faith in this Messiah that will come through Abraham. And those who are opposed to Israel's Messiah find themselves opposed to Israel God and will be cut off. Nevertheless, when God makes a promise to Abraham, there's no Savior yet. It's a future promise. The Savior will come through one of Abraham's offspring. And God drives this point home. No more trying to adopt Lot and make Lot the Savior. No more sleeping with Hagar and making their Ishmael the Savior. None of that. You will really pass on your seed. And one of your descendants really will be the Savior. And this is Genesis 17. where God says, this is my covenant. I know it's small, so I'll read it. This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you. Remember, this is several chapters after God already instituted the Abrahamic covenant. He's got a new thing now. This is a sign to demonstrate the covenant he's already made between me and you and your seed, your offspring after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised. Because remember, the promise is passed down through the seed. So circumcision, which was not practiced in the ancient Near East society, this is going to be an Israelite distinction. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations. And Abraham has no descendants at this point. But he will. He will get descendants. Isaac will be born. The promise will go to him. Isaac will have children. His children will have children. They will compromise an entire. They will compose an entire nation eventually. And all of them will be circumcised, verse 12 says. All of them. The middle of verse 12, whether born in your house or bought with your money. In other words, if you acquire a slave, from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house, he was bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin will be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant." So this is not an elective surgery here. This is not something where the doctor says, hey, go either way. Study, show either way. What do you think? No. You will be circumcised. And notice the play on words here. There's a lot of play on words that we'll find back in Ephesians 2. But notice the one right here in Genesis 17. If you reject circumcision, you will be cut off. You will be put out. There is no room for you in God's covenant people. Now, I feel compelled to note here that there's a tendency in American evangelicalism to take promises given to Israel and try to apply to America. And that always goes bad. That always goes bad. Don't do that. And this would be one of those places here. The promise given to Israel for circumcision is assigned to the ages is not applied to Americans. It does not apply to the new covenant. There's no mandate for believers. to circumcise their sons today. But this was the sign of the old covenant for sure, so clearly that God says, if you don't do it, if your descendants don't do it, you will be cut off. This takes you back to Ephesians chapter 2, where Paul is picking up on this language. And he's speaking of how the Jews spoke of circumcision in their own life. And he's going to use that to launch off into the gospel. Let me give you a brief outline here. First, the sign's isolation. The sign of circumcision, it had the effect of isolating the Jews from the Gentiles. That's how it was designed. And he uses this in a very derogatory way here in verse 11 of Ephesians 2. At one time, you Gentiles in the flesh. You were called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision. In other words, the Jews called the Gentiles the uncircumcision. It was a derogatory term. It's rendered in the ESV the uncircumcision. That's not what the word is. There is no word for uncircumcision. What the word is, it's the word for foreskin. And that's what the Jews called the Gentiles to mock them. They called them foreskins. It was a derogatory, really a slur. But that's how they referred to Gentiles. It was meant to say, you guys are unclean. This is a world where public bathing takes place. There's no secrets here. And the Jews, who were a minority in the Roman Empire, by the way, they did not compromise the majority of people. They were very much the minority. But they took pride in their circumcision and told the Gentiles that you guys are ugly. You are unclean. You're diseased. You are repulsive. And they mocked them for it. And it wasn't meant just physically you're ugly, although they certainly meant that. They meant more than that, that you morally are corrupt. You and everything about you are unclean. And they use it as a derogatory slur throughout the centuries. You jump from Abraham all the way to Jesus in the life of Paul. And you see in the language here that the Jews are still mocking the Gentiles for it. The Jews boasted in their circumcision and ridiculed the Gentiles for being uncircumcised. Paul used to boast in it. Philippians chapter 3 verse 4, Paul says, I myself have reason to put confidence in my flesh. I boast in my flesh, Paul says. In other words, he's boasting in his own body. If anyone else thinks they have reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more because I was circumcised on the eighth day, he says. Philippians 3, verse 5. Of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, I am a Hebrew of Hebrews and a Pharisee on top of that. So Paul is boasting about his circumcision. In Galatians 5, verse 11, Paul says he used to travel around preaching circumcision. Escalations 5.11, and just that encapsulates works righteous religion right there, right? You have something that is unique to you and you go and you preach to other people. If you want hope to be reconciled to God, you got to do what I do. You got to be more like me. The Jews could not do anything more than they were doing to show their disdain for Gentiles. Between mocking them, they refused to eat with them. They refused to fellowship with them. They refused to have them in their homes. There's no record of Jesus ever entering a Gentile home. He was on his way one time, remember, when the centurion's servant was lame. This is in Matthew chapter 8, through an injury it appears. And the centurion is asking Jesus to come and heal the Jewish servant the centurion has. And Jesus is willing to do it. But the centurion says, how? You can't come to my house to heal him. How are you going to do this? And Jesus, remember, heals him from a distance and says, I don't need to see him. My words can go through your walls. I mean, that is the divide between Jews and Gentiles. The Jews wouldn't live in the Gentile worlds. The largest city in Galilee back then in the life of Christ was Tiberias. It was the Roman capital of that whole province where Jesus did his ministry. No record of Jesus or his disciples ever going there, barely mentioned in the New Testament. They had nothing to do with that place. That's where the Gentiles were. Now you jump up to Ephesus, which is in Asia Minor. Mostly Gentiles, but there are some Jews in the diaspora that are there. And they were separated from each other. They mocked each other. And so Paul is telling these Ephesian believers, they're believers in Christ, do you remember how isolated you used to be? The Jews mocked you because you were unclean. You didn't have that mark on your body. The Jews considered the Gentiles outcasts, invaders, occupiers, uncouth, and unkempt. And Paul says, you were. That's Paul's point. And Paul's not telling this to go, weren't they bad to make fun of you, those Jews? I'm sure they're sorry now. That's not the point of this. Paul's saying, remember how much of an outcast you were. Then he goes on to give them five little sub points here, which I'm going to give to you with somewhat haste here, because I see the time. But Paul rattles through five specific ways that circumcision isolated them. First, because of their lack of circumcision, they were separated from Christ. This is verse 12. At that time, you were separated from Christ. The promise of the Savior was being passed down through the Jews. That's why the mark of circumcision, by the way, to show the promises passed down biologically. And of course, in the Old Testament, Abraham didn't know how to reconcile these promises that the Savior would be from the seed of the woman. And yet through his seed, he has no idea how to reconcile that. You don't reconcile it in the Bible until you get to Matthew chapter 1. And you see that Jesus in his father's side does descend from Abraham. And yet the virgin birth fulfills the promise in Genesis 3. Nevertheless, the Gentiles are separated from that promise. They do not have the ability to participate in the passing down of the Messiah. The Messiah will not come from them. The great drama of the Old Testament is not theirs, in other words. It's not theirs. The Old Testament is about, from start to finish, the search for the Savior. From Genesis and the fall into sin, all the way to Malachi and the prophecy that Elijah will come and make straight paths to restore the Savior. The whole Old Testament is about the search for the Savior. That is not a book for Gentiles. It's not for them. They're cut off from it. Let me put it to you this way. Do you ever read a book about the history of the Finnish kings? I mean, you might find that interesting if your family hailed from Scandinavia or something. Do you care about the first Latvian king? Probably not. Are you from Latvia? Do you teach your kids the glorious history of the Portuguese royal family? Probably not, unless you're from Portugal. You don't really care. I'm thinking of this because I'm preaching through Esther right now. In Esther chapter 10, there's this little line. If you want to know the rest about Mordecai, read the books of the chronicles of the kings of the Medes and the Persians. It's all described there. Well, guess what? That book isn't around. Nobody has that book. Who cares about that? That was the book the king was reading earlier in Esther when he couldn't go to sleep at night. He had that book read to him of his glorious deeds. That book is out of print. Nobody knows about it. Nobody's even looking for it. It is gone. Nobody cares. Because there's nobody left from the Medes and Persian Empire. Nobody cares what those kings did. There might be some PhD student who's searching for it right now, some archaeologist who's working on a grant from his mom or something looking for it. But other than that person, nobody cares. This is the way the Gentiles approach the Old Testament. It wasn't a book for them, about them, or to them. They're isolated. It's a book about the Savior, but it wasn't their book. Secondly, they're alienated from Christ. Secondly, they're alienated from Israel. It's the next part of verse 12. Separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. That phrase Commonwealth is speaking of the nation state of Israel, which at this time is just a territory that's occupied by Rome. They don't have their own nation here, like Ephesus in Asia Minor. The people who were born in Ephesus were not citizens of Rome. They were subject of Rome, like the Jews. But those in Ephesus weren't citizens of Israel. They had no access to being a Roman citizen, much less an Israelite citizen. They're separated from that, which means they're separated from everything about Israel. There's no temple to Yahweh in Ephesus. They have a temple to their own goddess, Diana. But not to Yahweh. The feasts of the Jews are not for them to participate in. That's for Israel. The feast of the tabernacles, that's in Israel. The celebration Passover is in Israel. The worship of the true God is in Israel. And they don't have access to that phrase. Commonwealth theorists use elsewhere to describe citizenship. In Acts 28, there's a Roman centurion who finds out that Paul is a citizen, asks how much he paid for the citizenship. And Acts 22, verse 28, Paul says, I didn't pay anything for it. I was born with citizenship. And the centurion can't believe it. I mean, he would pay anything. He had to pay a lot to become a citizen, and Paul just got it. Now, how much more would you pay to be a citizen of Israel? Well, if you don't believe in Yahweh, zero. You don't want to be a citizen of that place. They're a bunch of rebels. But if you believed the way to heaven was through Yahweh, the God of Israel, you would give anything to be a citizen of that place. You want access to the temple. You want access to their God. Naaman is converted, baptizes in the Jordan River, and then goes back to Syria. Jonah preaches the gospel to sailors. And by preaches, I mean, you know what I mean. Jonah got fed to a fish, but the sailors got soundly saved. They don't go to Israel to worship at the temple. They keep going to Tarshish. They fish their cargo out and do whatever sailors do. It's almost a sad ending to that. They don't have access to God. And even if they went there, guess what? They couldn't worship there unless they were circumcised. Exodus 12, verse 43, the rules for the Passover. This is the statute. This is what Moses is. Moses hasn't even been given. It's just now starting to institute the law. And this is part of it. The statute of the Passover. No foreigner shall eat it. Exodus 12, 43. Every slave that is bought for money may eat of it after you have circumcised him. Verse 48, if a stranger shall sojourn with you and wants to keep the Passover to Yahweh, let all his males be circumcised. In other words, you got a visitor in town for Passover and he wants to celebrate Passover with you. Well, he's got to be circumcised and every male who's with him has to be. The guys driving the camels, the guys carrying the bags, his servants, his slaves, his sons, his nephews, whoever is with him has to be circumcised or he may not eat it. Only then may he come near and keep it. He will be as a native of the land, but no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. Do you remember what Passover celebrated? How God spared the death of the firstborn. So do you catch what is being said here? That God is going to kill the firstborn of all the Egyptians and you're going to celebrate how you delivered the Jews from it, but only the circumcised people can do it. If you're not circumcised, you have no hope for your life or your children's life. That's the point of this. You're as good as dead in the eyes of God unless you've been circumcised. This is why Joshua leads the Israelites into the promised land. God parts the Jordan River. The people in Jericho are freaking out. They're pulling their hair out because they know the story that earlier God parted the Red Sea and drowned the Egyptian army. Then they fall off the radar, air traffic control, no sign of the Israelites for 40 years. Then boom, they part the Jordan River and show up at the door of Jericho. People in Jericho are losing their minds. But before Jericho falls, God tells Joshua, pull the car over. Stop right here on the side of the road. Nobody has been circumcised in the last 40 years. All the people born in the wilderness were not circumcised. Circumcise every male in your army, every male that was born in the wilderness the last 40 years. Do that now. That takes the whole army out of commission for a week. Those in Jericho are wondering what in the world is going on. That is not what they thought the next chapter of that drama would be. That's Joshua 5 if you want to read about that. That's because without that, they can't even occupy the first village in Israel without circumcision. Imagine how hopeless it is for a Gentile then. They have no stake in God's land. Thirdly, they're strangers to the covenants. Verse 12 again, they're strangers to the covenants, covenants plural of promise. All of God's covenants to them, to the Jews, they're outside of. The Abrahamic covenant, not for them. The Mosaic covenant, not for them. The promises of the Mosaic covenant in Deuteronomy, teach your kids these things and when they grow older, they won't depart from it. Not for them. The Passover deliverance, not for them. The expectation of the Savior to come to the world, not for them. The Davidic covenant, that the King of Israel would be the Savior of the world, that's not their King. That's not their covenant. That's not their promise. All of these blessings are for the Jews, not for them. They are outside looking in. I remember when I was in fifth grade. There are four fifth grade classes at my school. They all go to this three day trip where we stay in cabins up in the mountains. I don't even remember what the point of it was. It was a public school, but everybody piles in buses and goes to this three day trip. And you stayed in cabins based upon your teacher. The different cabins had different rules based upon which class you were in. And one of the cabins got to stay up late watching a movie. And two of the cabins all went out and played soccer outside and then played manhunt in the dark in the middle of night up in Estes Park, Colorado. And not my cabin. We were in bed at a certain time. Lights are out. And we're just all these fifth grade boys just sitting there in bed. And through the wall, we hear how much fun everybody else is having. Why aren't I in that class? How'd I get stuck in this class? Look at them out the window. This is a silly way to kind of get to start to paint the picture what the Gentiles face looking at the Jews. They had the promises of the covenants the Jews did. They had the prophets. The prophets went to the Jews. The Davidic covenant was for the Jews. Are there blessings there? You better believe it, but not for you. Of course, Israel was supposed to be a priest to the nations. They were supposed to draw the nations to Israel. Deuteronomy 4, nations were supposed to come and see what was happening in Israel and then put their faith in Yahweh. Israel never lived that kind of life. They were hopeless, which leads you to the fourth thing that separated them. They had no hope. They had no Savior. They had no Israel. They had no covenants. And they had no hope, verse 12 says, having no hope. You're desperate for salvation. Your conscience convicts you of your sin. You know there's a true God in the world, but you don't know how to meet him. Meanwhile, you're growing up in a religion that is filled with idols. Idols everywhere. Temples everywhere to all these gods. Works righteousness everywhere. And you know they don't actually take away your sin. You know this. This is the story of Luther. This is the story of testimonies we've heard. This is the story of Gentiles all around. Not every Gentile. Many Gentiles suppress the truth in unrighteousness. However, there are some Gentiles that get convicted by their sin, and they want to know what can happen to take their sins away. They don't have an answer to that question. There's no hope for them. And how could they get the answer that there is no hope? And this is why there are those that try to change what the Bible teaches about this. I mean, what happens to those who die who have never heard the gospel? It's a very American thing to say, oh, well, they get saved, of course. God judges based upon how well they live their life, and then God will restore them. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says, for those apart from Christ, there is, the word here is, no hope. There is no hope. The way to heaven is narrow. The way to hell is wide. There are few that find the road to heaven. There are lots that find the road to hell. That's the default setting. Do not dilute the exclusivity of the gospel for the sake of swallowing the answer to this question more easily. The Bible teaches that those outside of Christ have no hope. There is no hope of salvation without the knowledge of Christ. There's no knowledge of Christ without the preaching of the gospel. And those Gentiles have no hope in this world. They're lost without a map, without a phone, a map on the phone, without a phone to call somebody for help. They don't even know the address they're looking for. They're lost. They don't stand a chance. They have no hope. It's supposed to be desperate. And Paul's telling them, remember how that was you. Not just no hope, but finally, no God. That's the fifth way this sign separates them. They have no God, no hope, and without God in the world. The Greek here is just one word, a, which negates it, theos. They are atheists, is the English word from this. It's transliterated, atheists. This is the word atheist in the Bible right here. The Gentiles were atheists. Now, they weren't actually what we mean as Americans by atheists. They believed in God and lots of gods. They had all kinds of different gods to believe in. They had temples everywhere. They had so many gods. But those gods were made with human hands. They were not the ones who made the heavens and the earth. Those gods couldn't save anybody. They were made by people. They couldn't save people. And so for all practical purposes, they have no God. They're atheists. The atheists, now it says they have no God in this world. And that's because everybody knows the truth about God. It's revealed in their conscience. The heavens declared the glory of God. Every human being knows that God made the earth. I mean, we're standing on it. It came from somewhere. You have a conscience that convicts you of sins. The people have no excuse. Nevertheless, if you are outside of Israel, you have no hope of knowing the true God. And so even though your conscience might provoke you, you live as if there is no God in this world. Anything that constrains you is common grace given to the world. Your conscience constrains you. Laws constrain you. Works righteousness constrains you. But for all practical purposes, you live as if there is no God because you don't know the true God. That's how hopeless they were because of their lack of circumcision. And the Jews drove this point home to them at every opportunity. What a desperate situation to be in, to want to know the truth about God and to have nowhere to turn, nowhere to turn. Well, that's the Gentiles side of this coin. Let's not let the Jews off the hook here. The sign's isolation was for the Gentiles. The sign's impotence was for the Jews. And yes, I chose that word intentionally. The sign's impotence for the Jews. That sign is powerless. It has no power to actually save the Jews. Go back up to verse 11. You were called the uncircumcision by what is, and notice the derogatory way Paul refers to circumcision now, by what is called the circumcision. They're mocking you, he says, the Gentiles, but God is mocking them. They're boasting in their circumcision. Well, what good is that? Paul throws out here that it was made in the flesh by hands. Now you might. Not appreciate the irony of what Paul is doing here, but it is very ironic for the Jews. The phrase made by hands is a common idiom in both the Old and the New Testament to mean worthless. It's an idiom for something is being worthless. If it's made by hands, it is worth nothing. God doesn't dwell in a temple made by human hands. God is not served by human hands. God, idols are made by human hands. Yahweh is not made by human hands. Things that have value are not made by human hands. Things that are insignificant are made by human hands. It's a common idiom. And so Paul is telling the Jews, your circumcision is literally and figuratively made by human hands. It doesn't do anything for you. You boast in it. You brag about it. Meanwhile, all it really does is condemns you. Because this is the truth from Romans 9. Not all of Israel is Israel. Not everybody who descends from Abraham has Abraham's faith. Not everyone is circumcised in the flesh is a true believer in Yahweh. And the Lord rebukes him for this several places. One is Jeremiah 9, verse 25. Behold, God says, the days are coming, declares Yahweh, when I will punish all those who are circumcised merely in the flesh. You think you're separate from the Gentiles because you were circumcised, God tells the Jews? You're going to get a second degree of wrath. It's going to be more extreme because you should know better. They weren't looking for the Savior. They weren't waiting for the Savior. They weren't putting their faith. They were circumcised in the flesh and not putting their faith in the Savior. Makes no sense. And that's the way the Jewish nation was in the Old Testament. It was a nation of circumcised people that rejected Christ. Imagine that, the whole point of the sign. And he's there preaching, and they don't believe him. I mean, what good is circumcision if you don't recognize the Savior when he comes? This is Paul's point in Romans chapter 9, verses 1 through 4. The Jews had the patriarchs were from the Jews. Theirs is the promises according to the flesh, he says in Romans 9. Theirs were the covenants. They had the patriarchs, the covenants, the promises of the Bible, but then they reject Christ. What's the point of any of it? Oh, they'll be judged. Deuteronomy 30. This is not a surprise to them. God prophesied this at the very beginning of their existence right after he gives the law to Moses. Deuteronomy 30, verse 6, the Yahweh your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live. This is what is necessary for a Jew to be saved, not circumcision in the flesh, circumcision of the heart. where the dead skin of the heart is peeled back, the rock hard nature of the heart is busted through, and the dead heart is taken out and in its place is given a heart of life, a heart of faith. That is why the scripture speaks of conversion as being circumcised in the heart. A human being cannot perform a heart circumcision with hands. It cannot happen. Only God can do this. The physical image of circumcision was meant to drive the Jews to faith in the Savior. But that image itself in the flesh saves nobody. It can't cleanse the heart. Only God changing the heart. And that's the promise of the new covenant. That's the promise of the new covenant. And that's why one of the reasons we don't do infant baptism, we baptize believers, because the sign is not something that is performed on you when you're a baby. In the new covenant, the sign is something that is a demonstration that God has already baptized your heart. He has circumcised your heart. He has changed you by faith. That's the new covenant promise. which I'm getting ahead of myself. Thirdly, the signs incorporation. We see the signs isolation, the signs impotence. Thirdly, the signs incorporation. Verse 13, but now in Christ. In Christ Jesus, you who are once far off, remember that phrase far off? The other nations were far off. Egypt was far off. Nineveh was far off. Ethiopia is far off. It's not about distance. It's about not being circumcised. That's what far off means in the Old Testament. It doesn't mean Ethiopia is not more far off than Egypt is. It's not about mileage in the Old Testament. It's about circumcision or not circumcision. You're far off if you're not circumcised. You don't have access to God. But those who are far off, Paul says, have now been brought near. They've been brought near to Christ. They've been brought near to faith. They're now, verse 19, if you jog your eyes down, Ephesians 2, verse 19, they're no longer strangers and aliens. They're fellow citizens with the saints. All those things we just read in verse 12, it's not true anymore. When you place your faith in Christ, it's not true anymore. When you place your faith in Christ, you're now part of God's family. You couldn't be brought any closer. Even the Jews couldn't go into the Holy of Holies. There was the court of the Gentiles, the court of the women, the court for the Jewish men. and the Holy of Holies. There's a high priest together once a year. But in faith in Christ, all that is torn down. And you, Jew, Gentile, male, female, slave, free, all have access to God. Because through faith, you're part of his family. You've been brought near. And you were not brought near by something done in the flesh. I'm not even talking about circumcision. I'm talking about any work of the flesh, your own effort, your own work ethic, your own morality, your own intent giving. It's Reformation Day weekend. Remember, Luther walked up St. Peter's stairs confessing his sin on every stair, and he ran out of stairs before he ran out of sin. That shows the futility of trying to work your way to heaven. Fortunately, you're brought near to God not by walking upstairs, not by giving money, Not by working harder, you're brought near to God by the blood of Christ. And that's what verse 13 says. Again, it is a dramatic turn of phrase that I hope you notice. It's not the blood of circumcision that brings you near. It's the blood of Christ. There's a graphic scene in the Old Testament, Exodus chapter 4. where God is calling Moses to go back and be the deliverer for the Israelites. And Moses is going back to confront the Pharaoh. And he's on his way. He's married. He has a son. And on his way, the Lord intercepts him. The Lord sent him. And the Lord intercepts him and tries to put Moses to death. This is Exodus chapter 4. Zipporah stands up and takes a rock and circumcises their son, who apparently hadn't been circumcised yet. This is Exodus 4 verse 24. The Lord sought to put Moses to death. Zipporah took a flint, cut off her son's foreskin, and touched Moses' feet with it and said, surely you are a husband of blood to me. That's an astonishing scene. Zipporah is wiping the blood from their son on Moses' feet and saying, this is what you've done to us. That's what the blood of circumcision does. It doesn't make you clean. It dirties you. It defiles you. Paul's very well aware of that story when he gives you this turn here in verse 13. You've been brought near, not by the blood of Moses, not by the blood of circumcision. You've been brought near by the blood of Christ. Colossians 2 says it this way. You were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh. What does that even mean? How do you put off your own body? Boy, that's the knife. It goes into you. Your sinful deeds are pulled back. This is the circumcision. Notice what it says, made without hands. It's the circumcision of Christ. He can do this to you. What does this look like? You're buried with him in baptism. You're raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. When the Lord changes your heart, the old man is dead. The new person lives, raised in newness of life. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. Isaiah 57, verse 19, a true prophet preaches peace, peace to those who are far, peace, peace to those who are near, says Yahweh, and I will heal them. The takeaway from all this, through our own work and our own effort, there is no way to be reconciled to God. Jew or Gentile, every person is an alien to God, strangers to his promise, unable to be reconciled to God. But then God comes in. By dying for us on the cross, it's his own blood. Not ours, His blood that saves us, His blood that bears the punishment for sin. There's nothing for us to do. He has done it all. And it's through that act. that we can be saved. When he rises from the grave, he shows that the way to heaven does not come through being circumcised. The way to heaven does not come through work or national identity or ethnic identity. It doesn't come from being born in the right nation or in the right family. It comes from being adopted into God's family, brought near in Christ Jesus. It says again in verse 13, in Christ Jesus, you are brought near through faith. I have been praying this week and I've been praying this morning. that if you were here this morning and you've never trusted in Christ for salvation, this morning you would first see how hopeless you are without him. At first you would see there is no way for you to have access to God or belief in Christ because of your sin. Your sin separates you from him. And he will judge you for it. And there's nothing you can do to fix it. And then being there and recognizing the hopeless condition you're in outside of God's covenant, outside of God's promise, outside of the gospel, being there, you would place your faith in Christ, faith that his death and resurrection atones for your sin and promises new life, that he pays the penalty of God's wrath for you. And you believe that. And by your act of believing that, you were drawn near. And you're united to Christ. And you become his child. Not his child through birth, his child through faith. Not marked by circumcision, but marked by a new heart. I pray that that would be everyone's story here this morning. Lord, we are thankful that you preach peace to those who are far and peace to those who are near. But that no one can come to you. without the new birth. And so I pray that your spirit would draw people to you this morning. That you would give us hearts to believe, ears to hear. I pray for anyone here this morning who's never given you their life. I pray this morning they would trust you, believe in your gospel, and they would be born again. I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson. Thanks for joining us today. If you're in the Washington, D.C. area, I would love to meet you personally at Emanuel Bible Church. Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church. If you want information about the Master's Seminary and their Washington, D.C. location, go to tms.edu. I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness. May the Lord bless you.