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Today we are concluding this series called Bridge Builders.
This is our fourth week talking about forgiveness and unity.
We talked about needing blueprints and tools to complete the bridge.
Last week we talked about there are times that we need to rebuild, start all over, mistakes are made.
And today we want to conclude this series by looking at ways that we can break barriers.
We live in a world today where barriers are everywhere.
There are walls that get created every single day.
Walls divide us from people.
They keep people from being a part of our life.
There are walls of politics, social status, wealth, race, gender, the economy.
As Christians, we have to find ways to break down the walls that separate us from people that need Jesus.
How do we learn to come together and unite over Jesus?
During World War II, Hitler commanded all religious groups to unite so that he could control them.
Among the Brethren assemblies, half complied and half refused.
Those who went along with the order had a much easier time.
Those who did not, faced harsh persecution.
In almost every family of those who resisted, someone died in a concentration camp.
When the war was over, feelings of bitterness ran deep between the groups and there was much tension.
Finally they decided that the situation had to be healed.
Leaders from each group met at light of Christ’s commands.
Then they came together.
Francis Schaeffer, who told of the incident, asked a friend who was there.
“What did you do then?”
“We were just one,” he replied.
As they confessed their hostility and bitterness to God and yielded to His control, the Holy Spirit created a spirit of unity among them.
Love filled their hearts and dissolved their hatred.
When love prevails, especially in times of strong disagreements, it presents to the world an indisputable mark of a true follower of Jesus Christ.
When we come together, break down barriers, show love and reconcile with each other we become united.
Unity, harmony, peace.
These are all trademarks of the Kingdom of God.
Go with me to one of Paul’s letters to one of the churches that he started.
It is the letter to the church at Ephesus.
The book of Ephesians.
I want you to go to chapter 2. I will begin reading at verse 11.
In our text Paul is addressing the Gentiles.
Pious Jews considered all Gentiles to be outsiders because they were uncircumcised.
The Jews erred in being proud of their circumcision and believing that circumcision was sufficient to make them godly.
In their minds the body change was enough.
They didn’t need a change in their heart.
Compared to the Jews, there were many disadvantages that the Gentiles had against them.
During this time, they were living apart from Christ.
They had no expectation of a Messiah to save them.
They were excluded from God’s people, Israel.
The Gentiles did not know the promises God had made to Israel.
They were without God and they were without hope.
There was no hope for the Gentiles to fine the one true God or to obtain anything beyond physical life in this world.
But it doesn’t end there.
God himself intervenes.
If you were to look up the word reconcile in the Greek you would find the word ‘Katallasso’ which is an intensified word that describes an exchange.
It was originally used to describe two people exchanging money, the New Testament picks it up in its description of people exchanging an old way of life for new.
Think about two people who exchange their different positions for the same position.
Trading in an old life for a new life.
As we are breaking barriers and building bridges, we must look to Christ as our example when we begin the process of reconciling.
You have the blueprints, you have the plans, and you have the tools.
Now, you must understand that in Christ we have the gift of reconciliation.
We are called to be ministers of reconciliation.
We are called to be facilitators of divine exchange.
We are to help people move from their old life to a new life in Christ.
We are to help move the broken to help them become whole again.
Help people to no longer be offended and hurt to now being forgiven and set free.
Jesus helps us to do this.
He gave us the example for us to be ministers of reconciliation.
Some of you have probably heard of Corrie Ten Boom.
In one of the most powerful stories of reconciliation I’ve ever heard, she meets her concentration camp prison guard after a talk she gives on forgiveness.
The guard asks her forgiveness, and as Ten Boom reaches out her hand to accept, this is what she describes;
“And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me.
And as I did, an incredible thing took place.
The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands.
And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
“I forgive you, brother!”
I cried.
“With all my heart!”
A concentration camp survivor being reconciled to her nazi guard, that is an incredible exchange.
It is only in and through the power of Christ can something like this happen.
God’s work of reconciliation is not only between singular persons, although that is probably most often how it happens.
It’s also between groups of people that are at odds, such as the Jews and Gentiles were in the days of Paul.
Reconciliation is powerful.
That power is rooted in Christ.
Jews and Gentiles didn’t see eye to eye with each other, but Jesus death on the cross brought them together.
Look at the rest of our text beginning at verse 13.
I love how Paul changes the narrative in this text.
He use two little words.
Those words are found in verse 13.
Those words are “but now.”
Those two little words reveal God’s intervention from heaven to earth and the entire story of redemption.
Then there are two more words, far and near.
These words describe the position of Gentiles and Jews in relation to God.
To take those who were far away and bring them near to him could only happen because of the blood of Christ.
Salvation could come only through Jesus’ death on the cross.
Jesus went to the cross and reconciled us to the Father.
He has built a divine bridge where there once was only a vast chasm.
The cross became the bridge that we need to walk over to God.
Jesus defeated the great divide that stands between us and God that sin created.
There is a true story of a man named Billy Neal Moore, who would find both Jesus in prison and ultimately find his victim’s parents to be his greatest advocate.
When Billy Neal Moore was in jail, awaiting trial in which he would be sentenced to death, a minister shared with him the good news that Jesus loved him and wanted to forgive his sins.
Moore learned that no one is beyond redemption.
From prison, he wrote to his victim’s family and asked for their forgiveness.
Astoundingly, they immediately wrote back to say that they also were Christians and that they forgave him.
Then the family decided to petition the Georgia parole board to commute Moore’s death sentence.
In 1991, Moore was paroled from prison, transformed by the grace of God and his victim’s family members.
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