Brought Near (Part 2)

0:28 I'll read again from Ephesians 2, verses 11 to 18. We'll continue with the teaching we've been doing in it. Ephesians 2, verse 11 goes, Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcised, that done in the body by the hands of men, remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the hostility, the dividing wall, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.

1:34 His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those of you who were near, for through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

1:59 This is God's Word. Now, I'll tell you, see, I like the evening service because I like taking a passage and going through it bit by bit, and you'll notice every sermon is sort of an overlap. Sermons don't link up like this. The sermons link up like this. I'll pick up what I was talking about last time and elaborate on it a little bit and work it in a little bit and then move on to the next link. And then when I'm done the next week, I'll come back to that link and then move on. So there's a certain amount of redundancy. And I'll tell you why. I'm stupid.

2:32 And I'm not kidding. I'm getting this the same time I hope you are. and sometimes by only week by week do I get things. There's a great need for redundancy and repetition. My wife said that growing as a Christian is a lot like doing the laundry in the basement of our apartment building, a whole lot. What did she mean by that? I'm glad you asked. She says when you go down into the dryers in particular, not the washers but the dryers, you have to put in a series of quarters and she always puts a series of quarters in and they're all in, and nothing happens. And what she has to do is she realizes usually she's put in a certain number of quarters, but never more than half of them ever really drop in. So what you do is when, because you've put all those quarters in there, there's no action. There's no energy. There's nothing happening. So what you have to do is you have to bang on the side. You have to bang, and you bang a little bit two, three times, and you hear a ka-chunk, but nothing still happens.

3:30 So we know that there's a couple more up there, and you bang a little bit more, and you bang a little bit more until they all come on down and suddenly there's this thunk and everything starts up. She says that's exactly how she grows as a Christian. She says, what happens is I've got all the knowledge. I know what the Bible says. I've got the power. I've got the resources. I became a Christian. I received the Word of God. I received the Spirit of God. But, you know, I have to keep somebody, or me, I have to keep banging on the side of myself saying, get down there, because the coins, the pennies just don't seem to drop. And you have to go over and over things until you start to say, aha, that's what it means. I've seen that for years. And you know, whenever you come out of a time of devotion, a time of prayer, a time of study, a time of worship, and you say, I never saw that before, the Holy Spirit has come alongside of you and go, and suddenly down a couple more quarters have fallen, and there's some action.

4:27 Now, what we're looking at several times is this passage that tells us that Jesus, one of the great things that he has done is he's gotten people to live together who couldn't live together any other way. That's what the church is. The church is to be a place in which a new humanity is created. Paul says the people who were once hostile to each other have been brought together. We're a new humanity. And in Christ, a bond is created between Christians so strong that it transcends the differences of family, of culture, of race, of career, of class, and it creates a unity of a kind that the world vainly strives for and can't be reproduced any other place. Now, we spent a good deal of time talking about it, and I'm not going back to that, but now we're looking to see how this passage tells us that unity is brought about, how those bonds actually occur. And there are two ways the text tells us that those of us who are very different culturally, racially, educationally, ideologically, politically, extremely different, why we're able to find that when Christians come together, we have a bond that transcends those differences and that knits us together and creates, you might say, recreates family relationships and racial relationships and gender relationships and social relationships and economic relationships inside the church, inside the people of God, which are relationships of such solidarity that you can't find them anywhere else. That's what's supposed to happen, and that's what can happen. But how it happens, the text tells us it's the blood of Christ that puts us in the same position, and secondly, we're told it's the spirit of Christ that gives us the same experience. See, the blood of Christ, in verse 13, it says, now in Christ you who were once far away have been brought near through the blood. In verse 17, he came and preached peace to you who are far away and peace to you who are near. The blood of Christ takes people who are far from God and people

6:33 who are nearer to God and puts them in the same spot, puts them in the same place, gives them the same position. And secondly, the Spirit, which we're not going to get to at all tonight, is in verse 18. It says, for through him we both have one access to the Father, but by one Spirit. What unites Christians over their racial and gender and cultural and ideological barriers is the legal, the new legal position we have together through the blood of Christ and the new experience that we have of the presence of God through the spirit of Christ. Now, that's what we're looking at for several weeks, actually. And what we started on last week and what I want to talk about this week is not the common experience we have, but rather the common position that we have. You who are far away and you who are near were both estranged from God and brought together through the blood of Christ. Now, let's talk about this for a minute. These are the things that we can look at tonight, and only these things. First of all, Jesus, I mean, Paul has this curious way of saying some of you were nearer to God and some of you were farther from God. See, he says to the Gentiles, you, and we talked a little bit about this last week, remember that at one time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, foreigners of the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world. Now, Paul makes a very interesting distinction that's very important to understand. He says that some people, and he's one of them, had the Word of God and believed in the God of the Bible and were law-abiding. Those are people who were nearer. And then he says, to you Gentiles, you are far away. Now, what does he mean by that when he says you Gentiles are far away? Is he saying that you Gentiles, you pagans, you who did not believe in the God of the Bible and didn't have the covenants and didn't have the revelation of God to Moses and Abraham and so on, when he says you're far away, does he mean you were barbarians, you're uncivilized, you see, you're more wicked than we are? No,

8:42 He doesn't say that. He says, you had less hope. And we talked a bit about that, but I don't want you to lose the sense of what that means. And I'll drive that just for a second here before we move on, because we drove it last week, but plenty of you weren't here. And plenty of you, like me, only learn these things over a period of time when the Spirit comes and sort of bumps and bumps and clunks and clunks you until suddenly the pennies start to drop. It's the way I am, it's the way my wife is, and I think that's the way you are too. What it means to be without hope is simply this. The pagans, the Gentiles, were very civilized people, very good people. The Greeks, the Romans, and the Chinese were the Gentiles. Why do I mention those three? Because they had built tremendous civilizations without the God of the Bible. They didn't understand the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is a God to whom all of history flows. The God of the Bible teaches that history is linear.

9:41 and other faiths. You see, the other faiths, Paul's looking at the Greeks, and he's looking at the Romans. And even though he doesn't understand about the Chinese, he's thinking about the Western religions and the Eastern religions. And all of them believed that basically life was cyclical, that essentially everything went around and around and around, and there was no place where all of history flowed. The God of the Bible, the Bible says that all of history flows right into the lap of God, right into the arms of God. And someday, God will judge everything. No one will get away with anything, and all evil will be put down.

10:17 But no other, the Gentiles, though they were good people, though they were great people, though they had greater civilizations in many ways than Paul and his people, nevertheless, they were without hope. Now, you know, I noticed Corinna told me that, Corinna just mentioned that I was always talking about movies that she'd seen, so I'm going to have to get a movie in here. And actually, the last movie I've seen, I don't know how I'm going to work it in is Groundhog Day. I'll tell you one thing, though. That movie fits in absolutely perfectly. You know what Groundhog Day is about? If I was going to make a movie version of the Book of Ecclesiastes, I could not do a better job than that movie, except for the ending. Well, what's the plot of the movie? You know how the movie goes? The plot of the movie is some guy lives through Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, the day in which the groundhog comes out and sees his shadow, doesn't see his shadow, and they have this small town festival.

11:16 And this poor man, every time he goes to bed at night, he wakes up at 6 a.m. on the same day, and he has to live the day over. He remembers how many times he's been through the day, but everybody else thinks it's the same day. So basically, he's trapped. Every night he goes to bed, no matter what happens, no matter what he does, whether he jumps off a cliff, whether he asks somebody to marry him, whether he shoots somebody, whether he robs a bank, or whether he saves somebody from dying. The next morning he wakes up and the days start all over and it's all wiped out. So one night he's laying there and he's sitting there in the bar drinking and he says to another guy, what happens if you're fated to live the same day over and over and over again and nothing you do makes any difference at all? The other drunk guy says, that about sums it up. That's not funny. It's not. Because you see, what you've got there is a perfect metaphor. The dramatic device, the oddness, it's a cross between Twilight Zone and the Christmas Carol, you know, Rod Serling meets Scrooge, basically. It's a strange device, but it's a perfect metaphor for exactly what the writer of Ecclesiastes says. What does the writer of Ecclesiastes say?

12:31 He says everything is cyclical. Everything is vanity. Everything goes around and around. No matter what you do, it makes no difference because in the end, everything is gone. All Paul is saying is that all the great poets, all the people who do not have the God of the Bible, the deeper and more wise and more artistic and more sensitive and more brilliant you are, the more you know that there's no hope.

12:57 You don't have to have the God of the Bible to be great. You don't have to have the God of the Bible to be good. But you have to have the Bible to have any hope at all. Any hope at all. See, you know, Shakespeare put it this way in The Tempest, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve. And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with sleep. In other words, what is he saying? If it's true that eventually everything that happens, the earth and our life and everything passes away, it all dissolves, this insubstantial pageant fades and leaves not a rack behind. What Bill Murray in Groundhog Day found was by being trapped in one day, he suddenly realized what life was like. Basically, that's where we all are. In the end, nothing makes any difference. If I save somebody, if I kill somebody. In the end, what difference does it make? And that's the reason why this globe will dissolve, this insubstantial pageant fade, and leave not a rack behind. And what we are is we're just a dream.

14:08 There is no hope. We said last week that Aldous Huxley was very honest. He said, I decided the universe was meaningless. I decided there was no God. I decided there was no hope. That way, I was able to do whatever I wanted sexually and politically. And what he knew is what I just want to make sure you see it. Paul is not saying that without God, without an understanding of the God of the Bible, with an understanding of only the cyclical nature of things, with no sense of God's judgment, without God, you can be great and you can be good, but you can't have any hope.

14:44 And you see, I have found, to be honest with you, when I read Ecclesiastes, when I watch Groundhog Day, when I read Alice Huxley, when I read The Tempest by Shakespeare, I see great ideas. I see insight. You know what they're all saying? They're all saying that the way most New Yorkers live is inconsistent. The way most New Yorkers live is they come and they say, all right, I want to be included. I want to have sex when I want to have sex. I want to be in. I want to have fun. I don't know what I believe about God. I don't know if there is a God. It doesn't really matter because I can still enjoy myself. I can still live a hopeful, meaningful life. And Huxley says, and Groundhog Day says, and Ecclesiastes says, and Paul says, and Shakespeare says, and all the people who really understand, all the deep people who understand, is if you don't have a God of the Bible, you can't live a life like that. You have to… Bertrand Russell knew it. Huxley knew it. You've got to own up to the meaninglessness of your life. You've got to Own up to the fact that the reason you're doing good deeds is strictly and simply and completely because it just happens to make you feel good.

15:50 You've got no basis to do them. You've got no reason to do them. You haven't even got a way to define what's good. In the end, it makes no difference.

17:31 Now, what Paul is saying is that some people are near to God and some people are far from God. The people who are near to God, nearer, are raised in the law of God. They understand the Bible. They've heard these things, and so they grow up with a certain amount of hope and a certain amount of restraint and a certain amount of self-control and so on. Some of you are like that. You know who you are. You were nominal Christians. You were raised up, and you never stopped believing. But there was no real vital link with Christ before you were a Christian. And some of you were far away, which means you abandoned the idea of Christianity, you abandoned the truths of Christianity, you abandoned the idea of a personal God on a judgment day, you just chucked it. You said it's intellectually untenable, it's personally not satisfying, and you chucked it, so you were far away. What Paul's saying here is being far away means you're without hope. Being closer means you do have hope. But both those who are far and those who are near are estranged from God.

18:41 Look, it says in verse 17, he came and preached peace to you who are far away and peace to you who are near. Why? Because both of you were hostile. The whole passage is about the fact that you're hostile to each other. We're hostile to each other because we're hostile to God. What Paul is saying, what the Bible says, not just here but elsewhere, is some of you are nearer. You were religious. You were moral. You were decent. You're the near people. And some of you were far. You had chucked Christianity. You were living as pagans. The fact of the matter is you're both hostile to God. You're both estranged from God. You have just learned to express your hostility to God in different ways. You notice Paul doesn't say the blood of Christ brought those who were far away near, but the people who were already near didn't need anything. It doesn't say that.

19:37 It said, God slew both of your hostility. It says, Christ came and preached peace to you who are close and to you who are far away. You both needed peace with God. I find two different kinds of folks that come and say, I found Christ here. When I listen to them, some of you say, I always thought I was a Christian. And then I began to realize I really wasn't at peace with God. Others of you say, I knew I wasn't a Christian. I had abandoned Christianity completely. What Paul is saying, and what the world doesn't understand, is that becoming a Christian is not simply a matter of becoming more moral. See, those of you who are near need to get peace with God. Those of you who are far away need to get peace with God. One of the things that's so awful about those of you who are nearer, when you realize that you are at war with God and that you were hostile to God and you needed to actually become a Christian, and you let anybody else know, they all looked at you and they said, what? What do you mean become a Christian? Goody two-shoes, you need to become a Christian? What's wrong with you? See, for some of us when we become Christians, on the outside, not a whole lot happens. To the outside observer, you don't seem that much different. To some of the rest of us, there's immediate and dramatic changes when we become Christians. We have to move out of the places we're living. We have to flush a lot of things down the toilet.

20:58 it. And anybody from the outside immediately sees a huge change in the way in which you do everything. The teaching of the scripture is those were far and those were near. Those were far away morally. Those were far away theologically. Those were far away ideologically. Those were far away philosophically. And those were near morally. Those were near theologically are both estranged from God and hostile to God. It says in Romans 8, it says, the natural mind is enmity with God. The natural mind is enmity with God. It does not submit to the law of God. It cannot. The natural mind. I think I've read this once before. Flannery O'Connor had a wonderful insight into how a person can express your hostility in a moral way. In one of her characters, as she says, there was a deep, black, wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.

22:01 there's a lot of people who are pretty moral, a lot of people who are pretty religious, but you're using your morality as a way to avoid Jesus. Other people go out and you're a mafiosa hitman and you wipe people out. You're also trying to avoid Jesus. You're both doing it. One of you looks very near. One of you looks very far. You are near and you are far. You're both estranged. You're both hostile. What does Flannery O'Connor mean when she says there was a black, wordless conviction that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin? There's a lot of people who avoid Jesus by being good. If you're good, if you're better than anybody else, if you're more conscientious, if you're more kind, if you're more loving, if you're more moral, if you're more law abiding, you can go right to God and you don't need Jesus. You can just say, God, I've done a pretty good job. I've done this and I've done that. You owe me. See, there's many ways to avoid Jesus.

23:03 Underneath, I remember, oh, about a year ago, we spent a whole evening on this once, and we don't have to do it now. But when the Bible says the natural mind is enmity against God, when you see here the idea that Jesus had to do something about our hostility toward God in order to bring us together. We know something that the psychiatrists tell us, the psychologists tell us this. Almost none of us are able to admit when we're really angry with somebody. We don't want to admit how angry we are with our family. We don't want to admit how angry we are with this person or that person. Why? It's too traumatic. We repress traumatic material. We don't want to admit just how angry we are. We're too embarrassed. We're too humiliated. We can't do it. And the only way you can admit your repressed anger is through an intervention by friends or by a counselor. Well, the Bible says, if you will not admit your hatred and anger toward your family, how much more traumatic and how much more do you repress the traumatic material of how much you hate God? The Bible says, everybody, the moral and the immoral, until you receive Christ as Savior, the good and the bad, the far and the near, the Puritan and the pagan, you all hate God. You're just expressing your hatred in different ways. You just won't admit it. And you see, if you know tonight how much you resent the claims of Christ over your life, Christ's claims are unbelievable. We've seen some of them over the years, you know, here, where he says, you have to hate your mother and father for my sake or you cannot be my disciple.

24:43 What does that mean? You have to love me and be so loyal to me that your love and loyalty for me has got to be so great that it makes your love and loyalty to your father and mother look like hatred. Remember when the guy comes and says, I would like to bury my father? No, I'm moving out tonight, he says. Let the dead bury their dead. I have to come first. If you will not admit, if you will not admit this, only the Holy Spirit can help you. If tonight you do admit how much you resent the crown claims of Christ over your life, how much you resent his claims to be your master, if you do tonight know how much you resent that, that's a sign that the Holy Spirit's at work in you. Why? Because you are incapable of admitting that. We repress traumatic material, and only with an intervention by the Holy Spirit can you know that. If there's anybody here tonight say, look, I'm not very religious, but I don't hate God, you need the intervention of the Holy Spirit. You don't admit that you're hostile, and that is one of the ways in which your hostility binds you. Any psychologist will tell you that. If you can't admit how much you hate your parents, your parents, the hatred of your parents will completely distort and control you because you won't admit it. We're all hostile. We're all estranged, whether near or far, whether good or bad, whether moral or immoral. Every one of us is estranged.

26:09 See, until you understand that, you've missed the heart of Christianity. And finally, what then, how does the cross bring us all together? How does it bring those who are far and those who are near into the same position? The answer is this. One of the most striking verses in the Bible, if you think about it, is right here in verse 16. And in this one body, he reconciled both of them to God. He reconciled, but all human, you know, all the Christians are reconciled to God. They were enemies of God, and now they're reconciled. How? Through the cross by which he slew their hostility. The cross slew the hostility. You know, what did the cross really slay? What did the cross really destroy? The only thing the cross destroyed was what? Jesus. And that must mean that God made Jesus into our enmity and our hatred and our sin.

27:09 If you want to get the hang of it, you have to imagine a slightly far-fetched, but at least it gives you the concept of it. You have to imagine, let's just say you're only worth a few thousand dollars. That's your net worth. And you owe the taxman hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he's about to get you. And just imagine a friend, a wealthier friend who comes and she says to you, look, to pay this bill will take virtually every cent, but I will do it. And what if the taxman says, I don't care where it comes from. If that's the way you want it, That's where you're going to have it, lady. And he comes and he takes everything out of the bank. And then he goes and he takes hold of her house. And then he rips the paintings off the wall and he pulls the jewelry off of her neck. What's happened to her? She's become your sin. She's being treated as that, don't you see? And the creditor now aims all of his anger and all of the liability is put on her. On the cross, he destroyed, God destroyed the hostility between us and him by making Jesus the hostility. It means that Jesus became liable. It means he was ripped up. It means his house was taken. You see, that just gives you a dim understanding of it.

28:24 Does the thought of that melt you? Does the thought of that begin to melt you down? Does the thought of that make you say, I see what you've done for me? Don't you see? You're being drawn near. If the thought of that does not melt you, it's because you won't admit your hostility to God. Do you see how this works? If you don't admit the hostility, the thought of what he did will not melt you down and get rid of the hostility. You've got to go and say, Lord, if this is really where I'm at, then, oh, Holy Spirit, show me. Because until you see the depth of your sin, you will never understand the value of what He did for you. But when you do, and as you do, and as you look at it, as you let it work on you, it pulls you in. It really does. And, you know, one last thought. One of the beauties of this, if it's true that when God turned Jesus into our sin and He slew Him there on the cross and destroyed our sin and our liability and our hostility, You know, he couldn't have, he didn't make Jesus actually sin, remember? Jesus didn't start snarling on the cross and turn into a real sinful person. He was committing himself to God, and he was forgiving people to the end. He became legally sin. And that's why when you read 2 Corinthians 5, you realize the power of it. It says, God made him sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. To the degree that Jesus Christ became your sin, to that degree, we become his righteousness. Oh, I don't understand all of it, but what it must mean is as Christ became completely liable for everything you've ever done, it must mean that the moment you believe in Christ as Savior, you become completely liable for everything he's done.

30:10 He deserves all the punishment that you deserve, and you get all the reward and all the blessing and all the accolades and all the applause and all the glory and all the honor and all the respect that he deserves. That's what the gospel claims. Don't you see the only rational reason for rejecting the gospel of Christ is it's too good to be true? Look at what it promises.

30:42 Do you understand and do you admit your hostility? If you do, that's a sign that the intervention of the Holy Spirit's already working. And if you do, do you see what he did? When it says he slew the hostility on the cross, it means he turned Jesus into our hostility, into our sin and our enemy, and he slew him. Think. Think. Do you sense a drawing you near? Do you want to be near a God like this? Don't you see? You realize in spite of the way in which you've treated him, in spite of how you've looked at him, in spite of how you've ignored him, in spite of how you've broken your promises to him in spite of how you've used him, that he would do this for you.

31:20 My description and your emotional response to it tells you whether or not you're repressing traumatic material or whether the Spirit of God is working in your life. Don't you see the essence of Christianity is your position? The real question, whether you're a Christian or not, is not how good you are, how moral you are, how much do you pray, how often do you go to church? the real question is, have you been brought near? Have you been brought into a legal standing where you were accepted? Have you felt your heart now drawn out to him? Have you been brought near by the blood of Christ? You know it, if you have or not. Let everyone examine. Let all of us examine ourselves. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that you've given us such a wonderful definition of being a Christian, to be brought near, to be brought near by the blood of Christ. Help us to see, Lord, that it's not our background or our record, it's not our pedigree, but it's whether or not we've been brought near through your blood.

32:25 We thank you that you made Jesus Christ's sin, our sin on the cross, and you slew him there. We know the pain that caused you. We thank you that you were willing to do that so that you could be with us and we could be with you. Father, give the Holy Spirit to every individual in this room, every individual listening to my voice, and enable the Holy Spirit, everybody here, to take this truth and apply it to their own hearts. It'll take great wisdom to know how we should respond, but only your Spirit can show us that. Oh Lord, give us, teach us how to gird our loins with the truth that accords with godliness. Enable us to do that. We ask it in Jesus' name and for his sake.