A Church Reconciled to God

Is anyone secretly glad that they’re not American? …I was too. I used to snigger quietly when I heard the strident nasal accent singing over the top of the sweet British ones, pat myself on the back for not being American .. I guess if you’ve been brought up thinking all Americans are stupid, then chances are when you grow up you will still think they are! But it’s a wrong pattern of thinking, an ungodly one, a stronghold that needs to be torn down and replaced with a more godly one. Have you ever heard your own thoughts in your head like a loudspeaker? Well, in 1996 I became aware of myself telling anti-American jokes, and snootily thinking I was better than them - I could hear what I was saying very clearly and suddenly was aware of it and a bit uncomfortable with it. Then Tony and I met a chap called Jimmy Rice who as SO confident in his faith, and know his Jesus so well - it was very attractive, and I wanted his level of faith and confidence in God. Well, when he invited us to stay with him, we leapt at the chance. Guess where he lived? Yes, America! I laughed inside and thought that is God’s sense of humour. Well, we went, and our lives changed. We spent three weeks looking at who we are in Christ, and it was as if we’d walked into another treasure room of faith. Our confidence changed from being in how hard we were trying, to being confident in what Jesus did on the cross for us. We could stand up as children of God, in His authority. So, obeying God in tearing down that stronghold gave us a great gift. The gift of knowing our identity in Christ, and starting down the path of huge spiritual growth as a consequence.

1. Reminder of identity in Christ

In Christ, at a spiritual level, there are no barriers between men: we are one in Christ, because of His work on the cross. We are going to look a little at why this is, and how we can live out that spiritual reality in the whole of our lives, not just in a song we sing on a Sunday morning.
Paul starts off this passage with the word ‘therefore’. What is it there for? To look back over the promises of the first chapter and see the rest of his letter with these promises at the front of your mind, as the filter with which to understand his teaching. In fact, if you look at his letters, you will find that they all start in a similar way - they remind us of our position before God, and who we are in Christ - this is our common ground, where we connect at a very deep level with each other, and it is the starting place for our unity. Paul knows that starting with the spiritual realities is very important.

This wasn’t just confined to Paul either; Peter writing in his letters does the very same, and he validates it in 1 Peter 2: 12-15 So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them… I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live… and I will make every effort to see. that you will always be able to remember these things.
John Stott says “We should be constantly reminding ourselves of who we are… until we reply Yes! I am a child of God.” To know who we are in Christ is the first building block for the building of the temple we’ll talk about later.

It says in John 1:12 To all who received him (Jesus), to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, to share Jesus’ position as son of God with him. If we choose to believe that Jesus died and rose again and to submit to Him as Lord of our lives then this is a fact. God sees us as he sees Jesus, not because of what we do, but because of what Jesus did on the cross. Jesus, the perfect man who had no sin, died on the cross in our place and took the death of separation from God for us, so that in Him, we become the righteousness of God. This work was completed 2000 years ago so there is nothing that we can do to add to it or foul it up. We can rest confident that we can have relationship with God because of what Jesus did, because we believe in Jesus, not based on our performance.

So, how does Paul start this book? Our identity is so important that we spent three weeks looking at the first chapter this month, but let’s remind ourselves of some of these promises:
we are saints if we are faithful in Christ Jesus (v1)
we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms (v3)
God chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless in his sight (v4)
God predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus (v5)
God has pleasure in this (v5)
God has freely given us His love in Jesus (v6)
In Christ our record is wiped clean, we are redeemed, and have a clear conscience (v7)
In Christ 100% of our sins are forgiven (v7)
In Christ we can know God’s will (v9)
In Christ we were chosen (v11)
In Christ we are included (v13)
In Christ we were given the Holy Spirit when we first believed (v14)
The Holy Spirit guarantees our position as children of God (v14)
We are God’s possession (v14)
The Holy Spirit’s power in us is like the power that rose Jesus from the dead (v20)
Believers are Christ’s body and an expression of His life (v23)
We are alive in Christ (2v5)
We are saved if we believe in Christ (2v6)
We are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms (2v6) no longer bound to earth
We are saved by our faith not through what we do (2v8-9)
We are God’s workmanship (2v10), and his work is perfect!

(v11-13)Paul reminds the Gentiles three times in this passage that in Christ, they are no longer aliens but have full rights of sonship in God’s family. It was obviously something he wanted to go in! Have you ever felt that you are an alien at Oak Tree, not part of it, not chosen? Visitors excepted, though we don’t want you to feel an alien either, but deeply welcome and at home! It’s time to repent! God’s Word here says we are all accepted and chosen - this is fact, this is reality. Are you going to believe God’s Word, or your feelings? A hard truth, but a liberating one. We have a responsibility to include each other as Christ has included us, and I want to encourage ourselves - we are on that path! Remember there is no condemnation for those in Christ - you too are an important brick in the building of God’s temple, and if you have listened to lies telling you otherwise, come for prayer after the service and
we would love to pray with you.

2. Christ put to death barriers between men on the cross

Ephesians is a book exhorting a Christian people to keep Christ as their goal. The crux of this passage is verse 14 - For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law and its commandments and regulations. It is Jesus where we find the answers, not within ourselves.

The Jews and Gentiles of Paul’s time had huge problems with each other. The Jews saw themselves as favoured in God’s family, and followed Moses’ law (this was the dividing wall of hostility) to keep themselves in favour with God. They saw the Gentiles, the uncircumcised, as hopeless, never with a chance of relationship with God, and certainly never with a chance of joining the Israeli family. Nicknames for Gentiles included dogs, which the Syro-Phoenician woman used in a clever way with Jesus. So obviously, when Gentiles became believers, there were major cultural strongholds, ungodly patterns of thinking, that needed to be overcome in order for Jews and Gentiles to live our their spiritual unity together in their daily lives.
Their culture told them not to associate together. What did God say?
1 Cor 12:13 for we were all baptised by one spirit into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink
Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female,
for you are all one in Christ Jesus
Col 3:11 Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Sycthian, slave or free but Christ is all and is in all.
In Christ we lose our ethnic and cultural identity - we gain a place in Christ’s body,
a new race of men.

But is this easy to apply? Well, no… Remember, Peter had to have a supernatural vision repeated three times to get his attention that God was about to challenge this stronghold of not associating with ‘those dreadful Gentiles’, and three men sent to go and get him at the same time and take him to a Gentile’s house, Cornelius, under the order of ‘a holy angel’. God was making it clear beyond a doubt that Peter was to follow God, not his culture. Well, what happened? Peter obeyed, risking social death from his society by going to an unclean man’s house. Acts 10:28 ‘But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean’. And God filled those Gentiles with the holy spirit. It will be uncomfortable to challenge our habits and prejudices and to make them line up with God’s word, but it is good! Like getting fit, at first it is all stitches and wobbling flab but with perseverance the endorphins get released and you are suddenly running, and you know there is a spiritual freedom that hasn’t been there before. It’s a wonderful thing. In a very small way, I no longer shudder when I here that nasal twang of an American accent, in fact the opposite.

That’s fine about them, but what about us? What barriers do we have at Oak Tree between us? We don’t have Jews and Gentiles, but what barriers do we have? I had great help this week form my Branch Group as we looked at this passage ( a good hint for sermon prep, preachers!) and we had a great conversation looking at our barriers and how to go about tearing them down and increasing our unity. Today I have asked most of you what you think are barriers between us. Here are the top list:

class
“the poor”
kids
lack of time
money
single
unresolved conflicts
individualism
lack of knowledge about each other
negativity

I want to encourage us again, there is much that we are doing to break down these barriers… Sunday picnics, the weekend away spending time together, prayer for singles, reaching out of our Comfort Zones to change our habits. I am not going to suggest more ways of breaking down barriers here. We will pray at the end of this time and ask God to show us the way forwards.

3. We are the new temple

The temple was the religious heart of the community, as well as its political social, musical and cultural heart. It was where heaven and earth met. God was thought to live in the temple. As Christians, he now lives in us - we are Christ’s body as it says in chapter one. We are all members of God’s household, equally important before God, with Jesus the cornerstone of the new temple of the people of God, determining the whole lie of the building. We are being built together as a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit, and we need all of us to do that. If one of us is missing, then there is a gap, a weakness in the building. This passage in Ephesians 2 is the fulfilment of Ezekiel’s amazing visionary temple from hundreds of years before, described in Ezekiel 34-37 - in these chapters Ezekiel saw the return and restoration of Israel from its captivity and exile - Jesus coming with a new covenant dealing with Satan and sin and death, creating a new people indwelt by the Spirit, living in the Lord’s land, with external recovery materially, internal renewal with new life, the everlasting convenant of peace and with north and south Israel politically reunited. Sounds familiar?

Mark told us last week about a lady in a wheelchair who used herself as picture of the church today, paralysed. My sister Chris is also in a wheelchair as the result of someone else’s carelessness, the body not functioning, and not likely ever to again.
We too are pushed as a body to not function by lack of understanding, and by temptation and deception by Satan, whose aim is to paralyse us in the same way that Chris is permanently paralysed in her chair. 1 Peter 5:8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. He is not a lion, just imitates one. Lions roar to scare their prey so much they are paralysed and therefore easy to catch and eat. In Christ we have power and authority over the devil. Satan is not within us - Jesus is within us. But Satan tries to push on us from the outside and make us think we have to obey him, or that the thoughts he puts in our heads are ours.

This passage looks at unity of the church community. We too look at the growing unity of our community. We said on the weekend away that we are often dysfunctional, but that we are also very important and caring too. Our goal is unity - this is a process, and as such must be worked on continually. It is not an event, that either has or hasn’t happened. It is the decision we make each second to love each other, or to look out for our own interests. We need to open our eyes to what our own blind spot and prejudices are, and then work on them. And unlike Chris’ paralysis, ours can be smashed down with God’s help, but He can’t do it alone - He needs our co-operation. We are doing so much already towards unity. This is great stuff. This is not the Comfort Zone - to work on things and relationships you find difficult takes energy - but even the tax collectors love their own. Find someone you don’t know, or find difficult or hard to get to know, and ask God to open the eyes of your heart and give you wisdom and revelation as to why you find this child of God so distant or difficult, and ask Him to show you the way forwards.
Looking ahead to the delights of chapter 4 - we need to put off the old and put on the new. In being born again we had a spiritual heart transplant, and in a heart transplant operation they don’t bang in another heart next to the old defunct one - there isn’t room for a start, and the old one would squash the new one and soon make it manky and dysfunctional. No, the old one is taken out, obsolete, thrown away and the new one is grafted in with it’s own blood supply so it gets new life! When you first believe in Jesus, your old self dies on the cross with him, and you are born again. The old heart is chucked out and has no power any more, and a new heart is put within you and a new blood supply comes in - the Holy Spirit, as it says in chapter one, with the power that rose Jesus from the dead. You have a new life, not just the bios, the biological life of body and mind, but the zoe life, the spiritual life in union with God that is eternal and unbreakable. Wow! ?back to America… well, this stuff didn’t really hit home until I went to that trip to the States. I had been a Christian for 8 years then, but I hadn’t really understood that I was free in Christ, that I had a new spiritual identity. In my case then, breaking down the anti-American stronghold gave me a great gift - understanding my identity in Christ, and that has changed my whole life around. I think those of you that have known me that long will agree. It has taken years to live out what I now understand, and it is a journey that I am still on.
God has given us a ministry of reconciliation and unity, but Satan’s strategy is always divide and conquer. However, Christ is our peace. We hold onto Him, not our traditions.
Remember the spiritual realities; we don’t have to live bound by physical stuff on earth. Our real self is hidden with Christ in God, a spiritual self, connected forever to the power and authority that rose Jesus from the dead. We are highly significant, secure and accepted. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. God wants us unified. We are successfully increasing our unity together, don’t be discouraged by the fact that is it a process so in one sense is never-ending. We must remember our true spiritual identity, to tell ourselves it until our hearts cry out the truth and we know it is true for us. We are all one family before Christ. We must put off the old (prejudices, lack of understanding), and put on the new - unity in Christ, accepting, forgiving, challenging and loving each other as Christ accepts, forgives, challenges and loves us.

Then our building where God lives, the temple of the New Covenant, Christ’s body will be stronger and more effective, and we will have a lot more fun together!

We are going to end by praying a prayer asking God to shine His light upon our hearts and reveal any areas of prejudice.

Dear Heavenly Father,
I know that you love all people equally, and that You do not show favouritism. You accept people for every nation who fear you and do what is right. You do not judge them based on skin colour, race, money, ethnicity, gender, where they go to church, where they are married or single, whether they have children or not, or any other worldly matter. I confess that I have too often prejudged others or regarded myself as superior. I have not always been a minister of reconciliation but have been a proud agent of division through my attitudes, words and deeds. I repent of all hateful bigotry and proud prejudice, and I ask You, Lord, now to reveal to my mind all the specific ways in which this form of pride has corrupted my heart and my mind. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

There will be a short time of quiet now to reflect and listen to God, then we will pray the following prayer together:

Identified Oak Tree barriers:
class
kids
“the poor”
lack of time
money
single
unresolved conflicts
individualism
lack of knowledge about each other
other __________

I confess and renounce the sin of prejudice against ______________(name the group). I thank You for Your forgiveness Lord, and ask now that You would change my heart and make me a loving agent of reconciliation with _________ (name the group). In Jesus’ name. Amen.