Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Thank you for being here with us today. Grateful that we get a chance to worship together today and that you put some heart and mind and thought into the Amazon and. Or one of the other trips that we have going on this year.
[00:00:13] That song, all my life you've been faithful. It's a powerful song, isn't it? It's just a. It's. It's a reminder of God working in us. And, man, when I think about what God has done in my life and in this church, I'm just. I'm grateful.
[00:00:31] I don't. I know I'm going to embarrass you. Steve and Bev, back in the back. Would you. Would you guys just raise your hands for a minute? You don't have to stand up. But Steve and Bev, Steve was our missions pastor here from 94 to 2012.
[00:00:48] So that is almost 20 years, 18 years of leading our missions area. And not just leading our missions area, but everything that we have happening today is founded upon what Steve brought to this place. What a beautiful person he is and what a beautiful person Bev is and how grateful we are for your people and for your life. I am. I'm just in tears for that.
[00:01:14] I'll tell you a funny story about Steve, though.
[00:01:17] Anybody else have one? We could just line up and talk about him if you know him.
[00:01:22] When I was being courted, I guess, for this job, Steve called my secretary at my old church. He didn't really call my secretary. He called me. But my secretary answered, and he asked her the question. He said, will you please leave Doug a message? If you're still interested with the job at Grace Community, would you have him call me back? Told my secretary that I don't know if you know that. You don't usually do that kind of thing. Like, I didn't tell anybody, and I had to lie through my teeth for at least a few days to her as I talked about it. But I'm grateful for you guys and your life and thank you for your ministry here.
[00:02:02] The foundation that you've set is beautiful. Thank you.
[00:02:06] So much of who we are.
[00:02:07] And the flavor of who we are is found in Steve and Bev. Grateful we're heading into election time. I think you know that if you've been watching tv, right? It's a tough time for our country in some ways. It's also a great opportunity for us as a people. And I'd like to begin our sermon this morning by praying together for that. Shall we? Join me as we pray.
[00:02:36] God, we know that the Issues and the candidates that are before us and across the country are vast and varied and also serious as believers. God, we understand and realize that we have an important responsibility, but that we also trust you deeply to lead us and care for us.
[00:02:59] And this morning we want to pray for that many of the 32 million Christians who surveys say are unlikely to vote will actually turn out and vote across our country.
[00:03:11] Lord, we know that ultimately our country is not our home, nor is it our future, but yet you've called us to be salt and light, championing justice and mercy and good God. Will you help us do that? As a church and a people?
[00:03:32] We pray that this election would go in favor of protecting life in the womb, life in our families and life in our society as a whole.
[00:03:42] We pray candidates will fight for lives in poverty, for lives that are enduring persecution and opposition and oppression.
[00:03:53] We pray that we would vote in favor of laws and leaders who move us towards a biblical view and not just a self serving personal agenda.
[00:04:04] We know this is not a small task and are a small ask. Lord, we ask that we would keep the Bible as our guide.
[00:04:16] That we would. We understand that choosing sinfulness and coloring it in cultural relevance leads us to ruin and leads our country to ruin.
[00:04:27] So we ask God that yout would intervene, that yout would lead us to stand and to vote for truth with love, reasonableness and wisdom in all of it. God, we trust you and we want to live for you as the body of Christ.
[00:04:44] In your name we pray. Amen. Well, if you don't have your Bibles open, come back to Ephesians chapter two. We're going to be starting in verse 11. As Scott read just a minute ago, over the last week, all of our campus pastors were preaching from this passage. We're always doing that. And as we were doing that, one of the things that they each were saying was that Last week, Ephesians 2:1, 10 really talked about three things. It talked about the fact that we were dead, the fact that we're alive, and the fact that we were made towards good works. And Paul begins verse 11. The reason I bring that up is because Paul begins verse 11 with this statement, therefore remember.
[00:05:22] Therefore remember.
[00:05:25] Remembering is important, isn't it? To recall something, to bring it back to memory, to not forget.
[00:05:34] You know the importance of it. You sense the importance of it when you show up at the airport and forget where you parked and realize that getting home is going to take a lot longer than you originally realized, right?
[00:05:46] You know that when that, that. That remembering is Important. When you're at your computer trying to pay your bills and you can't remember your password, you know that remembering is important. When you forget your anniversary and you know, well, you know, right?
[00:06:04] I mean, remembering is important. And Paul calls us to this task to remember this idea, remember this truth that we were once dead, we were then made alive, and that we were for good works he gives us. As he moves into the next section. Then, three things to remember about the fact that we were once dead and now alive. And they're very similar to the ones he told us about in last week's text. But we're going to open them up in a new way. We've got to remember three things. First of all, if we want to walk with Christ and we want to follow him for his good and his glory as disciple makers, we've got to remember what being dead looks like. Number one. Number two, we've got to. Look, we got to remember what Christ did to make us alive. And number three, we got to remember that we aren't dead. That we are in fact alive, and that we ought to live like we're alive. Okay, so the first. Let's unpack this. What does it look like to be dead?
[00:07:09] Okay, that's what we were talking about last week. Brandon starts off in Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 1, and he says this past from this passage that, that we were dead. In our trespasses and our sins, we were dead. Each of us not able to have life because that's what dead is. To be dead is to be without life.
[00:07:32] It's wild. Over the last two weeks, you know, our staff team, the people I spend the most time with, I really feel like in some ways we're like a fraternity or a sorority. We are so deeply connected, we're literally a family.
[00:07:47] And over the last three weeks, we've had two guys lose their dads, John and Kirk, and Brittany lose her mother in law.
[00:07:55] And that's just a hard thing. We all know the permanency of physical death, but what is physical death, actually?
[00:08:04] Well, the udda, You've all heard of that, right?
[00:08:09] The udda. I didn't know about this, but there is something called the Uniform Determination of Death Act.
[00:08:17] Somewhere, someplace, somebody decided, this is what death looks like. This is what it looks like to be dead. And I get it. I mean, this is dead. Okay, here's what it looks like to be dead according to the Uniform Determination of Death act. And that is that if a person or an individual has sustained either an irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or an irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, they are dead. I mean, that's not a joke. That's really the truth. I mean, if. If your circulatory system and your respiratory system is not working any longer, you're dead. If your brain isn't sending the messages to the body anymore and your brain stem isn't able to help that happen, then you are dead physically. Right? And we understand what that looks like. All of us have sat at a funeral home and. And grieve the loss of somebody and knowing that they are physically dead. But there's also a spiritual deadness that comes along with being human because we're born into sin.
[00:09:24] Here's what John Piper says spiritual deadness looks like, or spiritual deadness is. He says that to be spiritually dead is to be spiritually unresponsive, insensitive and resistant to God. Insensitive and resistant to God, the Gospel, the beauty of Christ and his lordship.
[00:09:47] And I would add that to be spiritually dead means there's no spiritual breath or spiritual spark in you. That's what it means to be spiritually dead, to have nothing alive in you, like that squirrel squashed on the road in front of your house.
[00:10:04] No way to get up, no way to survive. We are literally spiritual roadkill.
[00:10:11] And that's what I'd like for us to just consider for the next few minutes that squirrels die.
[00:10:18] Wait, that's not what I want to consider. No, sorry. Thank you for laughing at that. I've tried to use that joke all morning, and you're the first one to even snickered. Thank you.
[00:10:28] Yeah, I appreciate it. It's really good.
[00:10:31] But we're in this situation where we're spiritually dead.
[00:10:35] And even the guys. Last week, I listened to a couple of the sermons, and every one of the guys who preached made this comment. We have to remember that we are dead, dead, dead.
[00:10:45] You do know, like we were saying last week or a few weeks ago when I was preaching, dead is like a.
[00:10:51] There's only one aspect of being dead. Right? You're not. You're not. If you're almost dead, you're not dead. Right?
[00:10:59] If you're. If you're very dead, you are not any more dead than dead. Right? If you are extremely dead, you are literally just dead.
[00:11:09] That's what death is. Death is a finalized condition. It's a part of life. It's because of our sin. And yet, even though it's a finalized condition, Jesus Christ comes in.
[00:11:24] Jesus Christ comes in. But we're going to talk about that part in a minute because we're still talking about what dead is. We understand that we are spiritually dead, that we're separated from God. And that's really what Paul goes on to say in verse 12. He makes these statements. He says that the spiritually dead person is separated from Jesus Christ.
[00:11:46] Vicki and I have spent the last couple of weeks mostly apart. She was gone this past week, and I was gone the week before. And I don't really function. Not that I totally fall apart, but I would rather be in a personal, close, intimate relationship with my wife instead of being far off. And yet, you know, because of the technology that we have, I can talk to her, I can text her, I can FaceTime her just about anytime that I want, or that she'll take my call, which is most often just so you know. But, you know, in the process of realizing what I was preaching on, I recognized that while Vicki and I are physically separated over these last couple weeks, quite often I still have a relationship with her. I want to remind you that when you are separated from Christ, there is no form of relationship that you have with Christ.
[00:12:44] You are separated from Him. That means cut off, disconnected, disassociated with Christ, cut off from his life, from his grace, from his favor.
[00:12:54] It's excruciating, this divide that we have.
[00:12:58] Secondly, as. As people who are dead, we are alienated from God's family. That's what it says in the next part of verse 12.
[00:13:09] Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. That really, in those days it was Jew and Gentile, and the Jews were of the. They were called the nation of Israel, the commonwealth of Israel. They were the people, the family of God. And the Gentiles.
[00:13:27] Just like all of us who were separated from God were cut off from the family of God. We were cut off from the benefit of God. We were left out.
[00:13:38] I don't know if you've been to one or if you remember going to one, but this alienation reminds me of walking into a junior high dance and feeling like, my people are not here.
[00:13:53] What am I going to do? And maybe you've been in that situation. You've walked into a situation like a junior high dance, and you felt one of two things. Either your people aren't here, or the people that you thought were your people aren't giving you any time of day whatsoever. So they're really not your people. And you begin to feel what? Like, alienated? Like not associated with. Like, not part of. You're not a member of the family. You're not. In that moment, these people are left out.
[00:14:23] And in the first century, the Jews were at a complete disadvantage in some. The Jews, I'm sorry, the Gentiles, those who were not Jews, the uncircumcised people, as the way Paul puts it. They were at a disadvantage because they didn't. They didn't have the benefit of knowing the history. They didn't have the benefit of knowing that God had delivered the nation of Israel from the hand of Pharaoh. They didn't know that he'd separated the Red Sea. They didn't know that he'd given them the law and the prophets. He didn't know that. They didn't know that God had done these miraculous things of providing manna. They didn't know anything about what God was like.
[00:15:04] And all of a sudden they're hearing this message about the Gospel because they were alienated. They were far from the family of God and everything that was that.
[00:15:16] Not only that, they were also. Verse 12 says, Strangers to the covenant.
[00:15:22] What does that mean?
[00:15:23] Well, again, not only did they not know the history, but they didn't know that God was trying to connect with people.
[00:15:29] That's what God was doing throughout all of history. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden and there was separation from God and the broken relationship, God began this process of redeeming, restoring, bringing back into relationship people.
[00:15:44] And the Gentiles at the time didn't understand that these covenants that God made, just think promises that God made one to a man named Abraham about how he was going to make Abraham into a great nation and give him a land and give that nation a land. And through that people and that land, God was going to bring forth the Messiah that would bless the whole earth. Man, if you weren't a Jew, you didn't know that.
[00:16:11] You didn't know that Moses was given the Mosaic covenant, the law.
[00:16:16] Think about this for a minute. The law is not just the rules and the regulations.
[00:16:21] That's part of it. I mean, he gave us the Ten Commandments and all the law. So why.
[00:16:26] So that we knew that we were sinners. So that we knew that when we broke the law. And it's beautiful if you think about it for a minute, that this thing God did, this law God gave didn't just stop with the commandments. It also included the sacrifices so that people could temporarily get renewed and restored to the place that they could Worship God. We what an act of grace.
[00:16:50] And it was a picture of what would come in Jesus. Death and resurrection in his sacrifice. It was powerful. It was so beautiful.
[00:17:00] But Gentiles, they were separated from that. We were separated from that. We couldn't participate in the covenants, we couldn't participate in the family of God. We couldn't draw near into a relationship with Jesus. We couldn't facetime with him, we couldn't text him, we couldn't call him. We couldn't have an intimate relationship with Jesus because we were dead.
[00:17:25] But God, right, Because while we were carrying this guilt and this shame and this pain of separation because of our sin, God made us alive.
[00:17:39] I mean, God made us able to come into a place where we could have our sins forgiven.
[00:17:47] It's the gospel. The death and resurrection of Jesus which takes our sin, removes it, forgives it and restores us. It's the gospel.
[00:17:58] And what we're saying in this moment isn't just to rehearse what we preached last week. It's to remember that we have to preach the gospel, as Tim Keller says to ourselves and every day.
[00:18:12] Now what does that mean? To preach the Gospel to ourselves every day? That doesn't mean you need to make a decision to trust Christ again and again and again and again as if because you sinned or because it didn't take or because you walked away or whatever, you need to renew yourself to Christ. No, the death and resurrection of Christ covers everything. We were once dead and by faith he made us alive and we are always alive.
[00:18:39] To preach the gospel to ourselves just reminds us of what God has done in us to remind us of what we're supposed to be forgiven. Sinners living alive.
[00:18:51] That's the hugest part of this whole sermon today. We have to live as if we are truly alive.
[00:18:59] So we're in this situation, in this process, to to be reminded that God has made us alive. Look what verse 13 says. He's brought us near.
[00:19:10] Near through the blood of Jesus Christ. He's reconnected us and he's restored us. Look at verse 14.
[00:19:17] He says he's brought us peace between us and God and us and others. He's broken down the wall of hostilities. You know what?
[00:19:26] Commentators think that what Paul was referring to there was a wall that was built between the Jewish Israelite section of the Temple, the most holy part of the Temple, and the Gentile part of the Temple.
[00:19:43] The Gentiles could come into the outer court of the Temple, but they couldn't go into the inner Court of the Temple.
[00:19:50] And what Paul is saying here is that God broke down through Jesus Christ's death and resurrection, any form of a wall that would keep people, all people, from being able to worship God freely. He tore down the wall of hostility that stood between the Jews and the Gentiles.
[00:20:07] He tore down the wall of wrath that stood between us and God. He made peace not only with us, but made it possible for us to have peace not only with Jews, but with other Gentiles who were like us. Which is huge for the church.
[00:20:27] You know, we ought to be the place where peace reigns.
[00:20:30] We ought to live in peace with God and feel that peace and revel in that peace and worship because of that peace.
[00:20:38] But we also ought to be the place where peace is the form of our relationship or the backdrop of our relationship. We ought to love one another and the church ought to see the world ought to see the body of Christ loving one another, because we have peace with one another, because we both share in Christ together.
[00:20:57] Look at verse 15.
[00:20:59] Not just that we have these things that are about being brought near in peace, but also verse 15 says that we've been ushered, that Jesus Christ has ushered in grace and a new kingdom by his death and resurrection. Verse 15 says by abolishing the law of Commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two. So making peace, he's going to abolish the law.
[00:21:29] That doesn't mean that the law, the law, the commandments and the sacrifice. That doesn't mean that they're dead or that they're irrelevant, or that they don't have any meaning or any worth.
[00:21:43] But what that word actually means to render something idle.
[00:21:48] So it sits on the sidelines now. It doesn't mean that it never was important and that we shouldn't actually live with some of that in our mind by implication. But the idea is that as Hebrews tells us that when Jesus came and died on the cross, he made a once for all sacrifice. We no longer have to go to the temple, we no longer have to offer sacrifices daily for the sins that we've committed, because Jesus death has paid that once for all. And that was the sacrificial system was a holding point, a spot holder for what was to come.
[00:22:25] Jesus, he abolished it in the sense that he completed becomes not irrelevant, but inactive.
[00:22:35] It still teaches us of our sinfulness, but it doesn't deal with our sinfulness because Jesus has already done that.
[00:22:44] It's a powerful moment in the history of the world and in our lives spiritually.
[00:22:50] And we have to recognize by preaching this to ourselves daily that we are forgiven, that we are alive.
[00:23:03] You know, tax season, I don't know. I talk to accountants who do a lot of tax work, and I feel like tax season starts April 16 and ends April 15.
[00:23:16] It's not like you just have a season. If you're an accountant who does a lot of taxes, you recognize that. And if you as a taxpayer have even a minorly complex tax situation, you should probably be talking to somebody about tax codes, because they change all the time, right?
[00:23:38] They're constantly adding something or removing something or bringing something back or changing the way that you can take an allowance or things that you can actually have allowances for. It's a constant movement and change in the tax code or tax law.
[00:23:55] Let me just remind you of something.
[00:23:57] That's not what we're talking about here. With the abolishment of the Old Testament law, it's not like God's trying to figure out what to do with us.
[00:24:08] Jesus Christ, as I said so many times, but I just want you to know Jesus Christ has made sure and complete by his death and resurrection that the Old Testament system is no longer in use.
[00:24:28] And that's been something Jesus was talking about his whole time on earth. Remember when he was talking to the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman at the well, and she asked a question. She was trying to divert his attention from the things he was asking her, but she asked this question. She says, I don't know, Jesus. I don't understand this whole worship thing in God. I mean, my ancestors say that we worship on this mountain here in Samaria, but your ancestors say that we worship on the hill in Jerusalem.
[00:24:54] Which one is it? And Jesus makes this amazingly clear statement.
[00:24:58] He says, you know what?
[00:25:02] It's no longer about where you worship at a building.
[00:25:06] It's about worshiping in spirit. And in truth, Jesus was bringing forth the idea that it wasn't going to the temple. In fact, you are the temple. And that through Jesus Christ, you have come to this place where the temple is actually your body and God lives inside of it. He broke down that wall of hostility and he stepped into your life.
[00:25:34] And that's the third thing. You have to remember that you are not dead, you're alive. If you've trusted Jesus as your savior, you are no longer dead. You are alive.
[00:25:49] And you must start living like you're Alive.
[00:25:55] In verse 22, here's what it looks like to live as if you're alive in Him. You also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. God is indwelling in each of us and he by his power is building us up, transforming you, sanctifying you into his image, and using us then as the Body, individually and together to build the kingdom in our own lives and in the hearts of law, and in the hearts of law and hearts and lives of people in our community and around the world, in our neighborhoods, in the people we work with, in the people we recreate with and the people we study with, where we live, where we work, where we play, we're all about being disciples who make disciples. That's what verse 22 says in him. We're being built together into this dwelling place of the God by the Spirit. We're building the kingdom. We're not doing it, but we're being used by God to build the kingdom. And look what that looks like. I mean, in verse 18 we're told that we both, both Jews and Gentiles, everybody who comes to Christ has access in one spirit to the Father. Nobody's greater than anybody else. We all have access to the Father.
[00:27:24] The Father through the Holy Spirit is indwelling us. He's gifting us. We've all got value and worth. You're not better if you're a Jew than you are if you're a Gentile. You're not better if you're a man than you are if you're woman. You're not better if you're rich than you are if you're poor. You're not better if you're educated than if you are if you're uneducated. Everybody in the same way is interacting with God and on the same course and on the same mission. God is trying to transform their lives, our lives, so that we can help other people's lives get transformed for the glory of God, to proclaim his great worth, to live together in love as the community of believers and to be on the mission of the Gospel. That's what this is about. And how are we supposed to do that? We're supposed to follow the leaders, the heads, leadership. Look at verse 20, it says build on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.
[00:28:22] If you've been reading along in the Bible recap this year we're in the middle of the Gospels and kind of jumping around in the Gospels and over the last week or so we've been hearing we spent a lot of time talking about Peter's confession To Jesus, where he proclaims, you are the Christ.
[00:28:38] And Jesus says to Peter, at one point, he says, peter, or he says, simon, your name is now Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. Right now, he's not saying that he's going to build his church on Peter. He's saying he's going to build his church on Peter's confession of who Jesus is, which is who Jesus is. And so when he says this statement that he's going to build it on the prophets and the apostles, he's going to build it on what they proclaim, that Jesus is the Christ.
[00:29:13] Not only is he the Christ, he's also the cornerstone of this building.
[00:29:19] Don't get confused.
[00:29:21] A cornerstone. I was. Matthew was sitting in front the last hour. Matthew does a lot of construction, some brickwork at times and all kinds of different things. But I made the statement. I said, you know, the cornerstone isn't really the foundation, right?
[00:29:37] The foundation is what goes in the ground and provides the stability. The cornerstone is actually the reference point by which all other stones are set.
[00:29:50] So you've got the foundation, which is the claims about Christ, and then you've got the reality of Jesus Christ as the disciple making head of the church. And every part of our lives ought to be set in reference to his life.
[00:30:08] That's what the cornerstone is.
[00:30:10] Everything about your life should be in reference to what Jesus Christ is. And says, we got to keep our eyes on Jesus.
[00:30:22] I know some of you know I like to ride my bike. And I still, even as an old man, older man, very young older man, I like to ride my bike a lot. And I will periodically take my hands off the handlebars because I sometimes I feel like I was when I was 10, riding my bike through the neighborhoods, right? And you just felt like you were so cool riding your bike without your hands. And.
[00:30:50] And you know what is really important when you ride your bike without your. Really, let's just say riding your bike at all, you know what's really important?
[00:30:57] You gotta look down the path to where you're going. So if I, for instance, was trying to ride down this aisle to the back door, I would absolutely need to stay focused on that back wall. Because if I started looking at all the people that are lined up in these two rows right here, I would soon run into one of them. Because you know what you do?
[00:31:20] You go where you look. When you're on a bike, you go where you look.
[00:31:27] And that's what this passage is about. In terms of cornerstone, I want to Go towards Christ and my life points, my life choices ought to be made in reference to where Jesus is and who Jesus is. I'm following him. What does my life look like? Well, my life I gotta remember is that I was once dead. I am now alive. And I should start living like I'm alive. With my eyes locked in on the Savior. With my eyes locked in on where he wants me to go and how he wants me to go there, how he wants me to love, how he wants me to live in him, how he wants me to trust him, how he wants me to depend on him, how he wants me to serve him, how he wants me to love others.
[00:32:18] My life and my eyes should be locked completely on my Savior.
[00:32:23] He is the cornerstone. And everything about my life should be lived in reference to him or by the reference of Him.
[00:32:35] So as we live, once dead, now made alive in Christ, we got to remember we're no longer dead.
[00:32:48] And we should live like we're alive.
[00:32:51] Jesus, thank you for that. Thank you for the power that you gave us in Christ, in forgiveness. I thank you for the power that we have through your Holy Spirit. I thank you for the way that you have stepped into our lives, that we're dead and you made us alive, not just so that we live forever, but so that we are transformed by your power. For your glory and your kingdom, help us to live in that. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Let's stand in worship together.
