Ephesians 2:11-22
So this is the fourth message of 13, and I’ve gotten great feedback from you guys. Glad that you’re enjoying this. I’m speaking to people, and some of us are growing intellectually in our understanding of the things of the faith, and others are growing in heart and life change, and it’s always wonderful to hear. So we are in the middle of that. We are in week four. The theme of the book of Ephesians, the letter to the Ephesian church, I’ve stated and I’ll restate is that the gospel of Jesus, that is knowing the love of God and receiving who we are in God, will radically transform every part of our life. And we’ve spent the first few weeks covering foundation and history. I’m not going to talk again about that for the sake of time. But we spent the first several weeks just with the book opened. And Paul did a beautiful job telling us what the foundation of our faith is, what has been done for us by Christ. That we, in short, were sinners without God on our own, living a life according to our own governing.
And God stepped in and offered through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and the resurrection of Jesus, He offered us new life. He offered us redemption. He offered that we could become new people in Him. That is the Christian story. That is the Christian message. And we then, as we receive that love, walk into the promises of God and so many beautiful things. And then we looked at a prayer that He prayed to that end, that that would happen to the church. And we talked about how we could be that kind of church, but we could also not be that kind of church. We talked about how it’s very possible to be a Christian or a church that doesn’t even know God.
And the sad thing is that is often the case. It might even be the case in this room right now. If it’s not, I pray that the power of God comes and breaks through that religion and that falseness and that fakeness and draws us to people that are to be loved by God. You know, yesterday I got home, or it was Friday. It was a day. I think it was Friday. Have you ever had a clogged toilet that’s really bad? And I had a little bit of a… It was a kind of stressful day because my mom needed me.
I take care of my mom and a good bit. And she had a cat that we had to euthanize. So it was a long process. Catching the cat was like watching a new Avengers movie. It was just a big deal. And the process of that and going and having the cat looked at and then just the decision to put the cat down and a mercy killing very much. And then going home in the heat and digging in the Georgia clay and burying the cat. And this is all going somewhere, I promise. I then went home, and I think it was the same day, but pretty tired. And I walked in the front door, and my cat always finds me when I get home.
Like 90% of the time, he runs from wherever he is, and he needs me to pick him up and hold him. So I walk in, and I’m like immediately put to work. And then another member of my family appeared and said, Dad, we need this.
And was that the next day? Yeah, I’m just tired, so it all runs together. Because, yeah, I guess I was still living with the cat thing. But I walked in, and it was great because I can fix things. And that’s not at all a bad thing when you’re needed to do something, but I want to relate that to my relationship with God and your relationship with God. Because you were not created to just come to God only when something’s broken or wrong or needed. And a lot of times, even in churches, we operate that way. We operate as people that we go to God when we’re falling apart. The moment we find out God’s around, we’re like, oh God, I need this and that. And that is so, it falls so short of your, like your intended, the offering that God offers to each of us, that we were created to know him.
And so I would really encourage you, I believe that’s why Paul starts this letter with such a beautiful invitation for us to just find and discover God. Not that we would do anything for God, but that we would simply be loved by God.
And I really think, I mean, that may be the most important thing that is said all day this morning, is that you and I were made to be loved by God. We weren’t made to do things for God, and we weren’t made to know about God, and we weren’t made for God to do things for us. And those things all happen, okay? But we were created to say, Lord, you are my shepherd. I shall not want. I trust in your love, like Kayla prayed this morning. I believe in your faithfulness. And that is the core and the basis.
And guys, that’s the beginning of your faith, and it’s also the end of your faith. At the end of it, it’s just that, that he knows you and loves you and that we receive him and are forgiven. All the other stuff is secondary. It really is. So we have this beautiful prayer that Paul prays to that end that we would be people that know God. And then last week, we looked at the conflict of the past me and the future me and the person I was versus the person God is making me into to become. And we talked about fighting through that and becoming that person. And we’re going to continue that today because the first verse of today’s passage, the very first word, he says, therefore. So you always wonder what is the therefore, therefore. And it’s really neat that after this passage that we looked at last week of him saying, we were this, our life was messed up, and it’s still messed up, but we’re working on our salvation through fear and trembling.
And now God has moved us, and we’re becoming these new people. Our lives are transforming. And so he starts today’s section with therefore. So because you’re changing, because this is happening in you, because you’re becoming this new person through the power of God in you power of the gospel. And the rest of the letter, he really begins just very, very practical application to our lives. Like, this is how your life, how my life is going to change. And so today’s passage is all about that. And he starts with this theme of breaking down walls and bringing us into unity. So let’s pray and we’re going to read this passage and see what it might say to us. Father, we invite you to father us and draw us near as we sang this morning.
I pray that the power of the gospel would be present in this room as we read your word. We invite the power of the gospel to come upon us and change and transform us, to soften our hearts,
to steady knees that are weak, and those of us this morning that feel like we’re failing and falling apart, Lord, we come to you. We know you can heal and fix, and we also know that in your love, there’s security and safety, and we don’t have to prove ourself in the world or become anything else. It’s just that you love us, and your forgiveness is available. I pray that your power would come to break walls in our hearts this morning as we read this passage and try to understand what this meant for the Ephesian church at the time and what it means for us in 2026. So, Spirit of God, we ask you to teach us and open our eyes and may this be relevant and may it transform us today. We welcome that to happen in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
All right, we’re going to read 2, Ephesians 2, 11 through 22. Ephesians 2, 11 through 22.
And here we go. It starts like this. Therefore, remember, again, therefore, since you are a new person in Christ, since the gospel has changed you, since you are no longer the old person you were, but now you’re a new person, therefore, it’s time for our lives to change. He says this,
By abolishing in his flesh the enmity, which is the law of commandments, contained in ordinances, that in himself he might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. And he came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to you who were near. For through him we both have our access in one spirit to the Father. So then, you’re no longer strangers and aliens, but you’re fellow citizens with the saints and are of God’s household, having been built up upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitted together and growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. Amen.
So, short passage today, and to summarize that, he says, because of the work of Christ in us, there was a division, and he’s talking specifically about Jew and Gentile, and I’ll explain what all that means if you don’t understand and relate it to today. And he says God has evaporated, he’s destroyed, he’s broken down that wall that was between you, these different groups of people, and he’s made you one, and he’s building you into one because of the gospel working in you. So let’s apply this to today. You might have read that and thought, I’ve had a few people say, Jeff, I’m reading Ephesians and I don’t get anything out of it. Like, what does circumcision have to do with me? I’m a female, you know? Like, I mean, these are things that, like, it’s like, where’s, what does this mean? And I’m happy to say that there’s so much in here for today that applies to us, and I’m hoping to help us understand it. The first thought I want to share is that there is, as we think of applying this today, is that there is a wall.
There is a wall. Now, verse 11, it talks about, he says, remember that you, the Gentiles of the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision. And let me try to explain what that means. And when I’m all of this, I recognize as I was thinking, it might be very easy for our thoughts to go toward immigration. And I wanted to say this has very little to do with that. And if you think it does, then you all, all of us, including myself, we all have a wall. It’s called our front door that’s probably locked when we sleep at night. Okay? So we’re talking about an issue far beyond that. We’re talking about who you and I choose to love. And I’m not saying immigration isn’t an important issue.
It absolutely is. But before I decide to make choices about, you know, that sort of legal stuff and political stuff, although I wouldn’t even say it’s a political issue. I think it’s an ethical issue. But before I even go there, I have to confront my heart. I have to confront, is there a wall in my heart to other people? Am I choosing who I love and don’t love? That’s where it starts, and then we work out from there in our actions. And we look at this passage, and the first thing we realize is that there is a wall up, and it’s keeping one person from another person.
Now, Paul is speaking to the Ephesian church. They were primarily non-Jews. And if you don’t understand the language of Jew and Gentile, I’ll give you a primer. Jews were ethnically Jewish people or people that had become Jews through their faith. Everyone else was a Gentile. The church was started with 12 Jewish men, but very quickly, and even in Jesus’ ministry, the Gentiles, the non-ethnically Jewish or religiously Jewish people, were very quickly welcomed in. We’re going to look at a few examples of that. So when he’s talking about the circumcision, what happened in the Old Testament, you had this ceremony that happened to boys when I think they were eight years old, and they were circumcised where a part of their flesh was removed.
And it was a devotion. It was where the parents would devote that child to the Lord. And it was something that all Jews did. And it’s worked its way into modern medicine, and it’s very much part of the culture today. So it was something that was supposed to be symbolic. This is very important. It was supposed to be symbolic. And what had happened, if you look at verse 11, your Bible might have it capitalized, the capital C, circumcision, and then the capital N, uncircumcision, uncircumcision, rather, capital U. And what had happened in this day, the context of what we’re reading, is it was almost like political parties.
It was like these people are the circumcision, and these people are the uncircumcised. And he even says it, he’s being sarcastic in verse 11, he says the so-called. He’s like, you’ve created this title for yourself that elevates you above all the non-Jews. And you call yourself the so-called circumcised. You see the sarcasm in the passage? And it’s like you’re the so-called circumcised. And you’ve created this barrier and you’ve made two parties. And you’ve created this wall between you and these other people. And it’s very sad because they took a rich custom and they turned it into something that was very much religious and very much based on pride.
And, you know, you see the wall up. If you think about Jesus’ ministry, I mean, maybe just think right now. Can you remember times when Jesus interacted with non-Jews and welcomed them? Anybody?
The woman at the well. Great. She was a Samaritan woman. That’s a great example. In fact, the disciples even said, why are you talking to her? She’s a woman, and she’s not a Jew. What are you doing? Did you have one?
Yeah, the Gerasene demoniac. That’s another one. Like, don’t go near him. He’s crazy. He’s cutting himself. He’s going to cut you. He breaks the chains when they put on him, and he’s unclean, and he’s not a Jew. And there’s a ton of other examples. The Good Samaritan, Jesus uses that example. It’s like the one that decided to help was the one that you would never expect or help yourself.
The centurion’s servant was a non-Jew. the centurion himself. In fact, he was the enemy because he was a Roman official. And Jesus has said, I’ll heal him. And they’re probably like, what are you healing Gentiles for? Like, I thought you came for the Jews. The Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7, then of course, Mark chapter 2, where Jesus is dining with the tax gatherers and sinners. And in all these contexts, people constantly, they’re looking at him and thinking, why are you spending time with those people? I thought you came to just be only with us, the circumcised, the Jews, God’s chosen people. And so there was very much a wall up. And so, you know, that’s just to give us some context of what was happening historically. Now, right now, and this, again, I don’t want to talk about this.
This is like a whole other thing. But there is a massive amount of hatred and persecution toward Jewish people. There’s a massive amount of persecution toward women, toward men, toward different age groups. There’s all these different groups. So it still exists very much with the Jewish people. but it’s probably something that most of us in this room, being non-Jewish, can’t relate to. Maybe you see the news and it breaks your heart, or maybe it doesn’t break your heart, but it’s a very charged issue. But again, that’s less the issue. The issue is, what about my heart?
Do I have walls? Because whether or not you make distinction between those who are circumcised or not, those who are Jewish or not. The ethic of this passage goes beyond that, and we have to ask ourselves, and I want you to think about your life now. I want you to think about what you look at on the news. I want you to think about the person that lives next to you, the person that works next to you, maybe a family member, whoever it might be, and ask the question, are there walls in my life? Because even in this room, like it’s very possible right now that in this room there’s a person over there that won’t talk to a person over there or vice versa because there’s a wallop. It’s very possible that that’s happened. You remember that old Bruce Hornsby song? Hey, little boy, you can’t go where the others go because you don’t look like they do. I said, hey, old man, how can you stand to think that way? Did you really think about it before you made the rules?
And he said, son, it’s just the way it is. And that’s speaking about racism in the 50s and 60s, but it applies very much to today, to whatever situation we might be in. I’ll give you a few examples maybe. It could be a Jew, non-Jew thing.
It could be theology. It could be that person believes different than I believe, so I’m building a wall. And when we build a wall, what we’re basically saying, we’re deciding who’s in and out of our lives. We’re saying, here’s a wall, and that person can come in, but you can’t come in because we have this difference between us. Theology is one. Age is one. And I’ll just tell you right now, there’s young people in this church that are too scared and will never talk to the older people in this church. And I’m not saying, like, you’re sinning. But, like, wouldn’t it be cool if a 15-year-old just went up to a 70-year-old? It’s like, tell me about your gray hair, you know?
Or vice versa. Like, if a 70-year-old who’s like, I don’t know how to use a phone very well, like, could walk up to a 13-year-old and be like, hey, without risk of you thinking I’m too old and I’m fossilized and I’m, you know, like, and I’m speaking about myself here because I deal with this all the time. And, like, hey, tell me about your T-shirt. Like, tell me about this. Tell me about third grade. Tell me about high school. Tell me about being a teenager in 2026. What’s the cool movie? We just naturally don’t associate with people because of some of these things. And we build walls and we may not even know it.
Some of it’s style. There’s people in this room that you might be more attracted and feel safer around them because they’re kind of dressed the way you are. And then other people that aren’t, maybe they’re like more proper or less proper. And you may just naturally just kind of never talk to them. I mean, think about it right now. Let’s just mix it up. Like there’s people in this room that you’ve known for a year or five years that you don’t even know their name. You’ve never talked to them, and I could say the same thing about myself.
And there’s all these little walls that we have. Another one is education. A big one is political stance.
And you can tell if you have walls very easily. I would suggest that it’s not that you dislike certain people, but it’s that you and I naturally gravitate to certain people, to the exclusion of others. That might tell us that we’ve got a wall up.
Think about it in your own life.
And I would say that the world is scared. Augusta, Georgia is terrified right now. Everybody is scared. And these empty chairs, we want to provide a place to belong for people. Whoever they are, whatever they came from, whatever their political stance, education, age, story, all of it, We want to provide a place that there are no walls, that they can belong. Which brings me to the next verse, verse 12. It says, remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope without God in the world.
And here’s the sting of this message. We built the wall. Now, if we look at this exegetically, we actually see there’s two applications of this. One is that the wall was built. There is a sense of a wall because the gospel was not fully revealed yet to the Gentiles. They didn’t quite understand. Although I would argue with the study of the Old Testament, it’s very clear that the gospel was for all the Gentiles, for all people. But beyond that, contextually, Paul is talking to the Ephesian church, and he’s saying, you used to be excluded.
You couldn’t get in. Like in the temple, for example, there were sections where different people were allowed, and some people weren’t allowed in other sections. They created these man-made traditions. and we are responsible for making love conditional. We are the ones. We have to own that and say, I am part of this problem.
You know, it’s one thing to say, yeah, there’s a wall between me and my neighbor because of age, politics, religion, education. But it’s another thing to realize that maybe I’m part of it. Maybe I’ve put some of those bricks in there. And what Paul is saying here, he’s telling us that we are responsible for this, that we have to own that. And again, I won’t go into this. I’d love to, but for the sake of time. But if we look back, I’ll just read a couple verses to you. One beautiful one is Galatians 3, verse 8.
It’s very clear that since the very beginning, the gospel was for all people, not just the Jewish people. Galatians 3.8, it says, the scripture for seeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith. Oh, that bothers me. What? You mean the Republicans get in too? You mean the Democrats get in too? You mean all those people I don’t like get in too? You mean like all the rich people I don’t like or all the poor people, all the people I can’t relate to or my boss, they all get in?
And from the beginning, he says, the gospel was open to all manner of people. For seeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preach the gospel before to Abraham saying, quoting Genesis, all the nations will be blessed in you, skipping down to verse 14, in order that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, that all would be saved.
So that it’s very present, and that’s a beautiful study we’re not gonna do right now, but the gospel from the very beginning, from the book of Genesis, the promise to Abraham that all would be blessed through his seed, which was Jesus, was indeed for all. And I think that’s why Jesus walked in. And to him, it was just normal to treat a Samaritan like a human being. Remember, when he did this, people looked and they were shocked.
Like, what are you doing? Why are you treating that person as, like, worthy of love? He didn’t have any of these walls because he was the fulfillment of the promise of Abraham all the way back in the beginning in Genesis. So in him, these things didn’t exist. It just didn’t exist that there would be a wall. you know, the beggar pushing through the crowd and them saying, why is she touching him? And he’s like, she’s a human and she gets the love of God. And people just didn’t understand. But to him, those walls never existed. And he even called them out over and over when he said to people things like, you neglect the word of God for the sake of your tradition. So we have to ask ourselves, what traditions am I following that are keeping walls between me and other people?
And they’re everywhere. I mean, if you look historically, around the time of December 7, 1941, does anybody remember what happened then?
The bombing of Pearl Harbor.
And most Asian people in America, then their fear level heightened because of what happened, of the amount of people that got hurt and killed. And it’s horrible when you go back and read the history of what happened in the nation. I remember on September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers fell, and there was panic in this nation. Do you remember if you were alive enough? It was horrible. It was terrifying. I remember going to a BB station the next day to pump what I thought was probably my last tank of gas. And I remember this Middle Eastern man, and you could just see the fear on his face. and he was pumping a couple things down for me and he was just doing this.
People don’t go to the gas station and pump gas and do this, but he was. And I could just feel the tension in the air. If you are a Middle Eastern American citizen or someone visiting, all of a sudden you’re the bad guy because of what happened that day. I remember in 2020, the effects of the murder of George Floyd that affected, and whether or not you think it was deserved or not is not what we’re discussing today.
It caused walls to shoot up. It caused riots to break out. Both ways, blacks against whites and whites against black people. It was intense how much the walls went up and down. And on and on, there’s so many different groups of walls that we have built. I hear this often in this culture in Georgia. I don’t know if it’s something about Augusta, but I hear terms like those Mexicans.
They don’t say those white people. I mean, maybe they do, but like those Latino, Hispanic, Mexican human beings should not be termed as, oh yeah, it was those Mexicans. Here’s another one I hear a lot. those liberals or those blank conservatives, they’re humans, guys. Whether or not we agree or disagree, if we start choosing, here’s the crazy thing. We just read last week, Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, for by grace you have been saved. It is not from yourself. It is the gift of God that any man should boast. I say, oh, I’ve been loved by Jesus, and look what he did for me. It was all free. I couldn’t do anything for it. He just let me in. And then we put all these walls up and like, you can’t get in. You’re not good enough. How hypocritical of us to take the gift that we’ve been giving and then refuse it and build a wall to someone else who is different from us. I have one. I got a little bit of bone to pick. I recently read a movie review and one of the people making a movie said, oh, this movie’s not for white Christian men. Too male, too pale, too stale.
I’m a man, I’m white, and I’m old. And it’s like the society, and you could, you know, and we’re laughing, and some of you, like, when you’re in my shoes one day, maybe you’ll understand, it’s everywhere. It’s like, why is it that I suddenly can’t watch your movie because I’m a white Christian man. Like, and, you know, and I’m like, I don’t really care. I wouldn’t see the movie anyway. But it’s just, it shows me the way that walls are up. And, you know, I remember when I was in college, I had an assignment where I had to visit other churches and do a report on church traditions that were different than mine. Sometimes just a regular church that was a Christian church, and sometimes we would intentionally visit cults, Christian cults. And I remember this one I went to, and it really broke my heart. It still affects me to this day.
They were doing the liturgy of the service, and then a time in the service came when they said, okay, if you’re one of us, you can come and do this thing, but if you’re not, you need to remain seated. And I was the only person in a large room that sat there. And I felt so excluded. Like, we supposedly follow the same God, yet I am now being made to sit.
And we do that to each other, don’t we? Well, let’s look at the rest of the passage here as we come to a close, because there’s great news. And the next section shows us that Jesus busts down the wall. He busts down the wall through the power of his blood and sacrifice. forgiveness and reconciliation are offered. And I would suggest to you, I’m not even suggesting, it’s in the Scripture, so this is the truth. The way we love our brother or don’t is the greatest indication of the depth and truth of our Christian faith, period. That’s the litmus test.
He even says, if you don’t forgive your brother, God won’t forgive you. He also says that if you don’t love your brother, you don’t love God. So the way that we love our brother who is different from us is the greatest test of the true quality of our Christian faith.
And Jesus knocks down this wall. It says here in verse 14, He himself is our peace. He made both groups into one and broke down the barrier, the dividing wall between them.
And guys, it’s a verb. Break is a verb. B-R-E-A-K, not B-R-A-K-E. B-R-E-A-K, it is an action verb. It means something has to happen. And it starts when we look in ourselves.
When I came to Christ, I very quickly thought I was the most blessed person in the world, and I fell in love with God, and I couldn’t believe and still don’t believe that He would love me. I mean, I believe. I’m trying to grasp it. Like, who can grasp the love of God? You know, it’s one of those things we believe, but we also are always like, wow. And very quickly, great evil pride came into my heart. And one of the big sins that I had to deal with early on, and still do, was I found myself being a rug rat, you know, a bastard child as it was, no church background, didn’t know anything. And I came to the faith, and then I began getting exposed to the church, and I just thought, what are all these people doing? Like, you love God, He loves you, and form your face. And that was my attitude, because I found something that just, in some cases, felt so stale and so stagnant and so devoid of life. And it really produced in me an evil, evil pride. And I began to judge. And I began to think as a young Christian, well, all these people are lukewarm. No one’s going to, you know, it’s just, it was awful. And I actually was on a date with my wife, who’s now my wife. And I remember I was talking about something. This is when we just met each other. We were 19, 20 years old. And she said something to me like, Jeff, you’re judging God’s church. It’s kind of like if you’re a man and you’re somewhere and you love your wife and someone starts talking about your wife, what would you do? Like bad? What would you do? Don’t you talk about my wife, right? Don’t talk about my wife. And the same sense of rebuke came to me from the Lord is I criticize the church. Don’t talk about my wife. That’s my bride. Who do you think you are?
And so we can create these walls, and the Lord, and I repented, and I’m still repenting and working through all my different judgments. Guys, I’ve got judgments against men. I’ve got judgments against women. I’ve got judgments against certain demographics of people, how much they earn, how old they are, what they look like. If they like golf or football, like I really struggle, I’m serious. I really do. Politically, I’ve got judgments. I’ve got, they’re all in there. And I constantly, I look at people, the kind of car they drive, and I make a judgment. Are you the same way? Maybe you are. Maybe you don’t know that you are. But I’m still working through this issue of God break down the walls in me. And I’ve noticed a couple groups of people, populations,
I wrote here, with the homeless and disabled population, I’ve noticed I’m always welcomed with great joy and exuberance. For some reason, it’s harder for me to be that welcoming to them. Maybe it’s because the poor are blessed with humility and don’t have the same walls that we do. I don’t know. I’ve been working with the homeless. I’ve been forced myself to jump into the homeless population about 33 years ago, and I still regularly am there. And I was just at the mission last Sunday night. And have you ever been around a really poor homeless person? One thing you find, most people in an indigent place where they have nothing will not judge you because they’re just so thankful to have a loaf of bread and a cup of chili. It’s the truth. Come to our dry goods pantry.
You will meet a group. There’s a few outliers, but most of those folks are the most grateful. They are so grateful to get a roll of toilet paper and some shampoo and body lotion, guys. They’re way more grateful than I am for toilet paper. And it stuns me still after doing this for 30 plus years, how grateful and how accepting that group is. And I think Jesus said, blessed are the poor. Another population is the same way as the disabled community. If you get around someone that has any kind of significant disability, you realize there’s not all the walls and weirdness.
I might have them. Maybe it’s hard for me. But it’s not hard for them to just say, hey, come into my life. I remember in college I got a job teaching karate to a group of children that had a variety of disabilities. One of the big ones was CP, cerebral palsy. And can you teach karate to a child that is palsied and can’t lift their leg more than two inches? You can. I learned you can. I did this for a good long time.
And it was a beautiful experience. I’d walk into the class, and there were like eight kids. They were just little kids, and they all got a gi, you know, the white uniform you wear in karate.
And guys, I would walk in. I remember these kids. I remember the first time because I was new at this. You know, I just didn’t grow up with people that couldn’t see or hear or, like, walk or, like, were just drooling all the time. I didn’t grow up in that environment. It’s not like sin. It wasn’t wrong. It’s just I didn’t know. And I had a wall up. And I remember the first time I walked into the little room at the PT clinic, the physical therapy clinic that we were teaching at, I walked in.
I’m thinking, what am I going to do? I’m going to teach these kids. I’ll teach them how to like kick or punch or something. And I walk in and they saw me and I was like Superman. I remember this one little boy named Kurt especially. They ran and each week I’d show up as if they got to moon. They thought I was a superstar. And I’d walk in and these kids would just run at me. No walls. Just drooling all over me. Like complete impropriety. And it was so beautiful. And it confronted me. Like what? Maybe kind of like the woman at the well when she’s like, why are you talking to me? And he’s like, because I love you. You may have walls, but I don’t.
And it was a beautiful experience for me to be among that and the homeless population also. And I’ve realized that I just, I want to spend the rest of my life trying to create an environment like that for people. You know, starting with my life in this church, a place where walls don’t exist because of the power of the gospel. I want to share with you here as we wind down, just this prayer. If you’re taking notes, it’s Job 33. I just felt like sharing this this morning. This is a prayer I’ve been praying. I was mopping once. I was a custodian at my college, and I was listening to a message by my favorite preacher, I think of all time. He’s Indian, and his name is Zach Poonen, Z-A-C-P-O-O-N-E-N. And his sermons have probably moved me more than anyone else’s. And I was mopping, sweeping in the cafeteria, and he was preaching on this. And this is 30 plus years ago. And he preached on this, and it gave me a prayer I’ve been praying ever since then.
It’s Job 33, 6 and 7. It’s when Elihu comes and rebukes Job. But before he rebukes him, he says this to Job as a preface. He says, Behold, I belong to God like you. I too have been formed from the clay. Behold, no fear of me should terrify you, nor should my pressure weigh heavily on you. And from that passage, what I learned is that when you and I approach people,
we can either push them down or we can elevate them. And you may have to say something really hard, but what a prayer it is to be a person that puts on people rising instead of falling. Have you ever been around someone that’s just, and they don’t even have to say anything. They can walk in the room, you know, with their, like, resting, you know, mad face or whatever, and I do it too. Or, like, we’re grumpy or we always talk about ourselves. Like, have you ever been around that person? It’s me a lot of the time. We just always are critical. Like, we never have anything nice to say.
And we walk in and we just, we just dampen the room. We get in a talk with somebody and it’s just down. Or we can be someone that says, I’m not going to put that pressure on you. I’m just like you. I’m cut from the clay, and I want to elevate you. I want to elevate. And Jesus did that with the people that he met. Which brings us to the end. Unity happens when the walls are gone. The last part of this passage talks about how then we’re no longer strangers.
We’re no longer aliens. We create a place where unity happens, and God’s love is welcome.
And, you know, we just don’t want anyone to ever feel like a stranger.
And the next four chapters of this book, and here’s the secret. Like, here’s the, I can summarize the next four chapters as we work out how the gospel has changed us. It can all be summarized in one word. So here’s the cheat code for the next sermons. This is the word elevate.
The rest of this book is about elevating other people. Everything Paul says, he says, you, the church, God has elevated you. He’s lifted you up out of the pit. And now you are sent back into the world as that transforms you and softens your heart. And you repent of your sin and judgment. You then become a person that everyone you meet, you elevate them. You bring them up. He talks about slaves and masters. He talks about husbands and wives. He talks about fathers and mothers and their kids.
And all these different contexts about we are here to elevate and bring other people up.
And I want to just show you guys something that I don’t think I’ve gotten this out in a while. But maybe just to kind of demonstrate unity. And right now, some of you guys are thinking, man, I’m really mad about that comment about the Mexican population. Or you might think, like, you know, I’ll never be able to mix with that group theologically. They’re a bunch of snobs. And, you know, or maybe you’re thinking about a person that is very different in some way, and you just think there’s just never going to be any common ground.
And I just want to say, if that’s in your heart, you’re part of the problem.
You know, Martin Luther King is famous for saying, like, we don’t beat love with hate. We beat love with love. And I’m not saying that, like, the Christian church doesn’t have standards. We do. Okay? You lock your door at night. Okay? There are walls for a reason sometimes. But in my heart and in your heart, we start with a place of saying, God has so loved and forgiven me, and now I want to be a person that it doesn’t matter where someone is on any spectrum, I am going to not have a wall up.
I’m going to ask Jesus, break down that wall, not in my brother’s heart, but in my heart first. Let me be the one to establish the common ground. And some of you guys remember Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? Do you remember the creepy claymation version from the 70s, 80s? Does anybody remember that? Has anyone seen that? Do you remember the Island of Misfit Toys?
Yeah. So I bought one of these years ago because I love that story. And here it is.
You’ve got Hermie and the misfit doll. You’ve got the train with square wheels. Who’s the train with square wheels in the room, right? You’ve got a jack-in-the-box that’s stuck open. You’ve got Rudolph, of course. And you’ve got the polka-dotted elephant and the spotted elephant. And you’ve got all these misfit toys that ended up at the North Pole because they had nowhere else to go. And here’s the thing, guys. The church is the place where people end up who have nowhere else to go. We are a place, if the Spirit of God is working here, where the walls are broken down, and because of the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus our Savior. All is forgivable. All is redeemable, and I will judge my brother not on the things that are different, but based on the forgiveness of God to him, and my arms will be open. I’m not saying we don’t have boundaries. I’m not saying go back to your abuser. I’m not saying any of those things, but I’m saying we create an environment in the church because of the love of God where all are welcome, and that’s how unity happens in this room. It’s how we become a place of unity with the Spirit working in us. Amen?
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