Ephesians 2:14-18 • When the Walls Come Tumbling Down
Listen to the audio version of this message with the player below.
Sermon Notes
sermon note files here (add download buttons or image blocks as necessary)
Transcript
(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
The Scriptures speak of different mountains that God must move.
The title of the sermon is "When Walls Come Tumbling Down," and that, of course, is a reference for most of us to a song about Joshua in the Old Testament at Jericho, defeating an enemy as God brought walls tumbling down.
And in the New Testament for the Apostle Paul, he refers to the New Testament Joshua.
That's Jesus, by the way. Jesus is just the New Testament term for Joshua.
Jesus is responsible for other walls coming down. Last week, we saw how the dividing wall of hostility between humanity and God, and between humanity and other humans, how those walls have been tumbling down by the work of Jesus Christ.
But then the question is, what now?
In the Old Testament, when the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, there was still a land to occupy by force.
In the New Testament, when the walls of hostility between us and God, and between us and others, come down, there are hearts to occupy by the Spirit.
And the Apostle Paul will tell us how as we look at Ephesians chapter 2, Ephesians chapter 2, verses 17 through 19. Let me ask that you would stand as we would read this portion of God's Word and consider what is the consequence of the walls tumbling down of hostility once between God and us, and now between us and one another. Verse 17, speaking of Jesus says, "And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints
and members of the household of God."
Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, thank you for doing so much already in this service to demonstrate to us what it means when walls come tumbling down, when there is love for those who need it, when there is love for those who are different from many who are here, when there is a great willingness of the people of God to expand the embrace of the gospel to a family larger than we can imagine, and to do the work in our hearts so that we are willing for that precise thing to occur.
We're going to ask now that you keep doing that work by your word and Spirit, training our hearts to magnify the goodness and the glory and the family of Christ.
Help us to see what that means, that we might be the means by which you embrace many. This we ask in Jesus' name, amen.
Please be seated.
Even if it's not your generation, many of you will know the words.
Imagine there's no heaven.
It's easy if you try.
No hell below us, above us, only sky. Imagine there are no countries. It isn't hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion to.
The words of John Lennon, putting to melody the perspective of many in our culture, that so much of the violence and the hurt and the pain in our world is caused by people of religion. The problem at the root of so much violence and war and suffering is religion.
And of course you don't just have to turn to songs to find that.
The so-called four horsemen of the new atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, have made plain their understanding that the great problems in the world that we are facing are religious in origin. And since 9-11, there have been lots of people who have rallied to their side to say, "They must be right." After all, look at all the problems in the world that are caused by religion. And you could point to radical Islam and radical Hinduism and radical Christianity in Northern Ireland.
And I must say that what these intellectuals say seems to make a lot of sense. Isn't religion the cause of so much of the problems?
If we just end religion, we would end the war and have peace.
Now, despite kind of the intellectual horsepower behind that argument, I would have to tell you it's not the common perception that an end of religion is actually what's going to bring peace among us. The more common perspective is that the blend of religions is what's going to bring peace. If people just recognize it's all the same God, if they would just stop, you know, kind of fighting among each other about whose God has priority and recognize it's just basically all the same God, that viewpoint articulated in what is now the notorious seventh grade social studies book known as "Across the Centuries," a widely used textbook distributed by Houghton Mifflin that simply says this, "The God that Muhammad believed in, Allah,
is the same God of other monotheistic religions like Judaism and Christianity."
I mean, the view common in our culture expressed not just by educators and academics, but by artists and often our political leaders is that we just have to put aside the differences. It's all the same God, not recognizing, of course, if you ever say that, that all the distinctions of the religions that people have held by the millions for centuries aren't really important, that that supposed tolerance is actually one of the most intolerant things you can say, as though people's distinctives and what they believe in just as irrelevant. They just don't know better than us smart, intelligent people.
But even if you struggle over the arguments, what is the answer of a Christian to either those who say that real peace will come either by the end of religion or by the blend of religions?
The Apostle Paul is actually answering that question in this portion of Scripture in which he is saying that real peace comes not by the end of religion, not by the blend of religion,
but by the blood of Christ, that the peace required in all of our hearts between us and God and between us and one another in this world is actually a consequence of what Christ will do when He reigns in us.
After all, if you look at verse 17, it says what Christ's purpose was. He came, verse 17 says, and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.
Christ came to preach peace to those who were far off. We already know from the chapter that that's from the Gentiles, the people who were other nations than the covenant people, and He came to preach peace to those who were near, to the covenant people, to the chosen, the elect, the Jews.
Paul is saying Christ came for them all, Jew and Gentile. Now what that is saying is first establishing that there's no difference in their need. And what we're being made to see is, as hard as it is to face, the beast in us all and the peace for us all.
If Christ had to come for those who were far and those who were near, then they both have the need of Christ. There is something in those who are religious by nature, religious in background, and those who are not yet identified with Christianity or Christ, they both have the same need. There is something deep in us that the apostle has already said in this chapter is the case, and that is we are by nature children of wrath, that we are separated from God by that which takes us another direction than what God has described in His Word. And that's true of absolutely everyone apart from the work of Christ and its recognition of that beast within that actually is the beginning of peace for all.
The beast within was described some years ago in the book Vanishing Grace by Philip Yancey in which he talked about the experience of a soldier who at the end of World War II was involved in the liberation of Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp.
And that soldier describes his experience of being taken to a boxcar and finding bodies stacked neatly like pieces of wood, some alive and some dead, and under orders then to take them and put them in proper places that were designated.
But as he and some others were taking the bodies out of the boxcar, which he described as indescribably light.
One of the soldiers was told by the captain, "I want you to escort these 12 SS troops who were responsible for this camp to an interrogation center."
And that soldier who was urged to take the 12 troops of the SS over to the interrogation center agreed to do it, but soon after he left the boxcar, the soldiers who were still unloading the bodies heard machine gun fire.
And just a few seconds later, Chuck coming back by with a grin on his face saying, "They all tried to run away."
What was described next was the harder thing to say.
The soldier who was still unloading bodies said, "I had a nauseating fear that then gripped me.
The fear was that my captain might call on me next to escort the next body of SS guards to the interrogation center. I had a dread fear that what Chuck had done, I would now do. The beast that was in those guards was now apparent in me."
And he said it was the recognition of the beast within his own heart that led that day to his resolve to become a pastor, because he said, "Until that day, I had never seen absolute evil, not just in others, but in me.
And when I saw that absolute evil in me as well as in others, I knew I had to be a part of something that would fight that evil."
Which meant he needed the Lord Jesus and to be the champion of his cause in the world. He needed to be the champion of peace against that evil that he even saw within himself. Now why did I say seeing the beast within is actually essential to the peace that we would have with one another as well as with our Lord?
Because it's the recognition that there but for the grace of God go I that unites us with people who sometimes seem very different from us, that we are willing to work with people, to love people, to embrace people, who might seem to be very foreign to us in their understanding of the gospel, their lifestyle, their walk away from God.
Because we recognize that prejudice and pride and haughtiness have no place in those who say whatever beast is in you, I recognize was in me too, apart from the work of Christ. I do not stand apart, I do not stand above, there but for the grace of God go I, I'm just like you.
It's that ability to somehow see with the eyes of the gospel who I am as well as who others are that gives me the ability to begin to relate to people eye to eye and not looking down the nose. But beyond that remember Christ came to preach peace, which means he's preaching to me despite the beast in my heart. And if I recognize that, that this Christ has come to proclaim peace to my heart despite the fact that there's a beast within me, then I begin to love him. And if I love him for his peace toward me, then I will love those that he loves. Something begins to change in us when we recognize I'm not better than other people but have simply been loved by a Savior through no goodness in myself.
That now I want others to know that goodness. It changes us in ways that are hard to express.
I think of Kathy and me living on the seminary campus that Johann mentioned earlier for 25 years or so. And in that Christian bubble where we lived on a Christian campus among Christian students studying for the ministry and I taught them, I mean day after day I'm relating primarily only to Christians, highly committed Christians.
And then in my last years at the seminary being chancellor and having the opportunity to move to where my children were in the inner city of St. Louis.
And to live to people next door who had been imprisoned, who were different ethnicities from us, to shop among those who were of different sexual orientation.
And I don't exactly know how to express to you what happened to Kathy and me, how we talked at times, how we felt like we could breathe again. Like there was the opportunity for the gospel to be expressed from us, how we actually took joy in having the opportunity to say, "I can now express the gospel in new and fresh ways to actually rejoice in the opportunities that God was providing." Not to rejoice in the sin around us, but to rejoice that we could now truly really love lost people, not just feel it was our duty to take the gospel to them. But if we profoundly and really believe that we were no different than they, that Christ had come to rescue us and he could rescue them too, that in ways we could not quite express we begin to feel that God was giving us opportunity to love people for the sake of the gospel. And we felt as I said again, like we could breathe again, the true reality of the gospel beyond the confines of our Christian bubble.
Isn't that God's calling for us? I mean, does he really expect us to express his peace to those who are far off according to the words of the gospel?
We begin to see it as Paul not only describes that Christ came to preach peace to those near and far, but he says in verse 18, "For through him we both have access through the Spirit to the Father."
We both have access, those far and those near, both have access in the Spirit to the Father.
We won't understand what that verse is all about until we first understand what access means and then who's supposed to get it.
The word access in the scriptures here is actually word for permission to enter a throne room.
We both, those far and near, have access to the Father. And so already the apostle has said in verse 6 of this chapter what that means, that we
already are seated with Christ in heavenly places, that we have access because of our union with Christ, faith in Him, to heaven itself. And as God has already seated Christ in a position of affection and favor and privilege, so those who are united to Christ have access to the throne room of God. That's why we can pray boldly. God help because I have access to the Father.
But there's more going on.
As the language unfolds, the apostle is reminding us we have access because the walls of hostility have been broken down. If you hear last week, you may remember, we talked a little bit about, we didn't, I did. I talked a little bit about what those walls of hostility were about, do you remember?
There were the outer courts in the ancient temple for the Gentiles.
And there were the inner courts where the Jews could go. A sign between the outer court and the inner court. What was the sign saying? You cross here and you, you die.
There was this wall of hostility and that has been broken down. And now when the apostle says we have access in the spirit to the Father, it's more than just palace language. We're beginning to understand temple languages here as well. But it's through Christ in the spirit that we have access to the Father. Do you hear the Trinitarian reference?
In Christ, in the spirit, to the Father.
There's only one place that the temple would fully exhibit that Trinitarian presence of God. The outer court or the inner court, where was it? In the Holy of Holies.
If we both, Jew and Gentile, would actually have access to the Holy of Holies, which of course happened when Christ died and the barrier was broken down between God and man and in that miraculous event, the veil between the inner court and the Holy of Holies was rent from top to bottom and the fire on the altar went out and suddenly what happened was we had access to the Holy of Holies, so much so that in Romans 5 the apostle says we now have access to the grace in which we now stand. Even in the Old Testament when the great high priest went into the Holy of Holies, he crawled in.
Can't get before the glory and the holiness of God even standing on my own feet. But now through Christ who has taken away the hostility between us and God, we now enter into the holiness of God in the grace in which we now stand.
It's the place of privilege, it's the place of honor. And the amazing thing the apostle is saying here in verse 18 is, and we both have access.
Gentile and Jew, different nations, different languages, different peoples, different, we all have access by the work of Christ to the beauty and the glory of God. For the Jews that was practically incomprehensible that a Gentile could be with a Jew in the presence of God.
But God is here declaring it is my purpose to deal with the both of you, Jew and Gentile. How does that make you feel? I got just a sense of it. When I was a child, five boys in my family growing up, and soccer was not yet the popular sport that it is now, which means for us as a family, it was all baseball. All summer long, into the fall, even early spring, it was all baseball. Now with five boys, of course, you're often going to your brother's games, which means what? You are bored to tears, right?
And so always, you know, as you're going to so many games through the summer, you're finding means of distraction. I can remember a particular summer night when I was a friend with a friend and we were watching one of my brother's games, but in distraction, we began to find that that dirt that is on ball fields across the south, right, had just been pulverized by so many games that it was the finest, softest powder.
And some of you know what you can do against the night sky when the stadium lights are shining you take a Dixie cup and you fill it up with the dirt, right, right? And you crimp it at the top, but leave one little hole.
And then you take that Dixie cup and you throw it across this. It looks like a rocket going across the sky with the dirt falling out of it. And we were probably doing that for 15 or 20 minutes until I saw my friend just get so excited. He threw it in direction and see if he was throwing it. I said, Oh, no, you know, because not only is he thrown a different direction, the wind had changed, which meant as the dirt was falling out of the cup, it was being blown onto the stands where my father sat.
And as he wiped the dirt off of him, he looked at us. I could see wrath and he pointed my direction and he did one of these.
So I, you know, kind of gathered up all the courage in me. I started walking toward my father, but my father shook his head. No.
He pointed to my friend too. He said, I am going to deal with the two of you together.
We got to the stands and my father said, I want you to stop that. Now here's some money for a cup. Go get one.
We were amazed. Now this is an imperfect example because there's no justice being applied. I know that. Okay. Except for all the wrath that my father is now experiencing, the crowd now looking at him with absolute frown and rage that we're not in trouble.
But what's happening to my friend and to me, we are high fiving and hugging one another and then this is great. We have been shown mercy together.
One of the church fathers of the ancient church says, when the apostle Paul says, "Those both far and near are being given access to the father.
It is like an object of clay and an object of rust being put together and coming out as an object of gold."
It's dirt out of the ground and corroded rust. The dirt as in the pagan religions, the rust as in the rusty Jews no longer corroded, corrupted by their own faith rather than by the faith of God himself.
And God putting them together and saying, "As I deal with you together, you're gold."
When that happens, what should happen in us is just an absolute rejoicing. This is a heavenly action. This is the beauty of the gospel. God is taking those who are apart, those who are in hostility, those who are first in hostility with him and often have differences. And God is putting them together in his church so that they learn not only his love but through their love with one another, his love of the gospel for others also. There is dirt and rust being put together right here so that gold will come out of us, which is the gold of the gospel. And when you begin to perceive the wonder and the goodness of that, you begin to rejoice whenever you see it happen.
Some years ago, I was invited to a mission conference as a speaker, and it was a church, much as ours, that had the video screens, and we were shown a video of a ministry that that church was being asked to support.
This was a Presbyterian church in the south, but the video was showing a Korean pastor
who'd been commissioned in Romania to minister to people in Hungary.
Now just to put that in the season's terms, okay, this was an Anglo church supporting an Asian pastor who'd been commissioned in the land of Dracula to minister to the people of Attila the Hun.
This is better than Halloween horror. This is heavenly glory.
God's people look at that and they say, "This is all languages and peoples and nations being brought together for the purposes of the gospel." And when we see it happen, we say, "That's gold. That's the gospel." We rejoice to see it. We yearn to see it. We love to be part of what God is doing. When we as the Conference of Calling of this church talked about unlimited grace being
our joining as a church, early we trust in the song of Revelation 5. It was saying, "What can we do? What will God enable us to do so that we can say worthy is the lamb who is slain to receive glory and honor and praise because with your blood you purchase people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation."
Wouldn't it be great if we could sing that? And yet we are singing it so much of what we're doing as we see parents who adopt, who say, "All barriers down, all hearts open," as we are trying to reach neighborhoods around us and we say, "All barriers down, all hearts open," as we see the aunts, even as they come into our culture, saying, "We want to go to those places where there are new families in our particular community, where there are people moving in from different demographics, different places." And we see yams who are saying, "I want to be a part of that." And we see a church is saying, "I want to hire a pastor who will do that." And what we are doing as a church is we're saying, "That's gold." When we are able to take so many different people and say, "Show them the gospel," by having the peace that we have received now multiply from us. But it is hard.
It is really hard to take all those background differences and all those ethnic differences and all those community differences and say, "For the sake of the gospel, we want all barriers down and all hearts open."
So the apostle here with wonderful gentleness tells us what will actually bring the peace that is the gold of the gospel. I don't want you to miss the last words of verse 18.
Paul says there, "Through Christ we both have access in the Spirit to the Father."
We both, Jew and Gentile, have access to the Father.
And the verse explaining more of what that means that we'll look at more next week, verse 19 says, "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God."
You are family now.
You have the same Father. You're in the same household. Different backgrounds, different languages, different tribes, different ethnicities.
You're family now.
And when that happens and the reality of it has begun to work on us, this is something greater than obligation.
It's the heart that begins to yearn for an expanded family and to treasure all those who are in it. Right here in this place, just a couple of weeks ago, we put to rest one of the dear saints of this community, and that's Lois McRaven.
And one of the things I loved learning about her and her family is what a bad grandmother she was in terms of how she addressed each of her grandchildren. Those of you who are at the funeral know what I'm talking about. One of her grandchildren would come in the door of the house and she would say, "Oh, it's so good to have you here. You're my favorite."
And that sounded terrible until the next grandchild walked in the door and she would say, "Oh, it's so good to have you here. You're my favorite."
She always called each of her grandchildren her favorite so that at family reunions, all 13 grandchildren would wear a t-shirt that said, "Mimi's favorite."
They all recognize that by her love, they were equally favorites.
And what God is doing when He says, "I've decided to deal with both of you, Jew and Gentile, with an understanding that you have one father and you're part of one family,"
is God is saying by His great grace that we are equal in honor before Him, each one a favorite. What does that do to us? If I begin to recognize those near and those far are a favorite of God, well, first of all, it ignites in us a mission impulse, right? I so rejoice to be a part of a church that has such a great history and giving of missions, such a great zeal to take the gospel forward. It's saying that part of Christ's heart is our heart. We want the gospel to go out and it's not just a mission impulse. There's such a great mercy impulse here. As I see people who are wanting to take the gospel forward to widows and to orphans and to prisoners and poor and more and more it's happening, not just as a former generation, but a new generation is saying, "We recognize this is our calling," to make the gospel plain by saying, "There's more family than what's sitting here and there's more family that ought to be here than what's sitting here." And the way that we express that is by showing people they're His favorite, just as we are.
Because we're part of the family of God, not by our doing, but by His grace.
What I'm ultimately saying to you is when we talk about this expression of the gospel by which we take it outward, if all we do is we say that's just our obligation, that's just our duty, that's just what this church is saying right now, I will tell you it will not work.
What ultimately happens and the reason I think the Apostle Paul speaks in terms of family is because for each one of us there is a hole in our hearts until our family is whole.
There's some deep yearning in us, there's something in us that once our arms full, our embrace wide until the family that we desire to have is present.
I can't exactly explain it, but I remember Kathy saying to me when we had three children as they were getting older saying, "My arms feel like we need one more."
It wasn't exactly my impulse, but it was hers.
It was the right impulse.
It was something that's saying family has a heart more than it has an explanation. It has love more than it has duty. And when we are saying God has given us one Father and made us one family, then maybe for the first time we begin to love lost people, not just feel an obligation to reach them.
Think of it this way, you know all the debates that are happening right now with the new atheism are being mastered by people who know a lot more history than I do. One of them is Karen Armstrong whose book Fields of Blood tries to answer the four horsemen of the new atheism.
And she responds with remarkable candor. She says, "Yes, it's true.
When religion goes bad, you get the Crusades and Northern Ireland and the Sudan and radical Islam. It's all true."
But she says you have to weigh that against what happens when godlessness runs its course.
What happens when godlessness runs its course? Then you get Stalin and Lenin and Mao and Pol Pot and Hitler.
Of course, the academics will debate which is worse, the cruelty and suffering caused supposedly by religion or the cruelty and suffering caused by godlessness. I must tell you each side is going to raise its facts and I'm doubting that we will solve the debate logically.
Where we will answer those who say, "Is your religion just a cause of hostility or a cause of peace?" is by what's happening in us.
Are we a people for whom all barriers are down and all hearts are open?
Because when that happens, peace begins to radiate from us, which is our ultimate answer.
Are we different? Are our arms wide? Is our family expanding? Do we just love it? Just love it when lost people come into our ranks?
When we are changed, that's the evidence of the gospel of peace that Christ came to proclaim.
I couldn't help but think of it a few weeks ago at the funeral of my father. Now my father was raised in the rural south where regional and racial prejudices were deeply ingrained.
So deeply ingrained that at the end of World War II when he was assigned to the Japanese occupation force and was in one of those experimental integrated regiments, he would say it was really hard on him. So hard that despite being with men in that integrated regiment with which whom he faced danger and hostility, he said that when he came back to the states and got off the troop transport and had to shake hands with people of a race different than his others, he said as much as he did not want to do it, it actually revolted him to touch the hand of a man of a different color than himself. He didn't want that to be the case, but he said it was just in him.
We knew enough of that background of my father that when my sister and her husband adopted a child who was African American, all of us wondered how would my father react to that?
Our questions were answered one Christmas when all the family gathered with this new baby in our family and all of the children have a picture of my father asleep on the sofa with the child on his chest, also asleep.
There was peace.
As my father, despite the difficulty, was seeking to live out the gospel he knew to be true.
But I must tell you that wasn't the best part of the story, the best part that I didn't even know about until my father's funeral where there was that time where there's the open microphone and people can say what they want about the goodness of the person who's now gone.
Children spoke, grandchildren spoke in my father's behalf, but what we did not anticipate was the three African Americans who spoke at my father's funeral.
The first, a neighbor of my parents who had moved in at that time when transitioning of neighborhoods from one race to another caused a lot of hatred, a lot of difficulty, what will happen to property prices, what will happen to the neighborhood? And this older woman got up and said, "Mr. and Mrs. Chapel were the first one to come to my door and welcome me to the neighborhood."
Never yet.
There was a man who lived across the street who at some point lost his job and when paychecks became small and few he said, "My father was the first one to lend him money so that he could survive during that time. And if you knew my father's attitude toward money, you would know what a wall had come tumbling down for that to happen."
But the best yet was the man that I grew up across the street calling Coach who was in our particular neighborhood, the famous high school coach who had won so many championships but late in his career had stopped being a high school coach and became a school administrator taking over one of the magnet schools for troubled inner-city young people.
And that man stood up at my father's funeral and said at one point he had come to my father and said, "I have a plan for helping young troubled youth in my school get on a better road." And he said, "Your father looked at that plan and said, "It will not work because you are not dealing with the children of the, with the parents of these young people and until you deal with families, this will not work."
And so Coach said that he and my father had worked on a plan for families in the inner city of Memphis that has become a model plan for the public schools of the city of Memphis.
And I say, "I praise God for my father, but I praise God even more for my father's father
who has taught us the wonder and the goodness and the glory of being a God of peace who breaks down the walls of hostility between us and himself and then breaks down the walls of hostility between us and others so that we actually rejoice when God puts us in opportunities to take the gospel to lost people, that we actually love lost people, not just feel a duty to reach them, to actually long for the day that dirt and rust come together to make gold. And when that happens, we say, "Thanks be to God. He has made me a part of his family and he has extended my arms to reach a greater family and he's made me a part of a church that wants to do the same. I praise God for you and I pray God will make us a church where dirt and rust come together
and we become a family of gold for the sake of the gospel that Christ is working in this place." Let's pray together. Father, thank you for sending us the Lord of peace, the one who teaches us the goodness and the glory of being a saved people and therefore we so delight to be a part of his instrument in the salvation of others as well. Help us to be such a people, to glory and rejoice in the work that you are doing among us. I praise you and thank you for a church that deeply desires to be a place where dirt and rust come together and gold is made, even the gold of the gospel as the family of Christ is expanded. Not with swords loud clashing, not with roll of beating drums, but with deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes and it's coming to this place. Thank you for working among us. Keep working through us we pray in Jesus name. Amen.