Ephesians 2:11-22: From Hostility To Hope

Introduction

In 2018, Dallas police officer Amber Guyger shot and killed Botham Jean. After a long shift, the police officer was texting her partner as she walked down the hallway to her apartment. As she entered the apartment, she realized the door was not locked. As she entered the apartment, Botham Jean was sitting on the couch, eating cereal, and watching a football game. Within seconds, Amber Guyger shot two rounds at Botham. One missing and the other striking Botham in the heart. After fatally wounding Botham, Amber realized she was in the wrong apartment. She had got off on the wrong floor and entered apartment 1478, not her apartment 1378.

She was later charged with manslaughter. After the investigation, the officer was tried for murder. She was later convicted of the murder of 26 year old Botham Jean. At the sentencing hearing, Botham’s brother, Brandt gave an impact statement. On the verge of tears, he told his brother’s murderer, “I forgive you.” He then asked the judge to embrace Amber Guyger with a hug.

This world is a broken place. We should should expect our civil magistrates, police officers, judges, and everyone in between to seek justice, establish mercy, and walk humbly with God. But we will never have perfect justice on this side of heaven. Until then, like Brandt, we can seek to replace hostility with hope!

Sermon in a sentence: Remind yourself that you no longer have hostility, but hope!

Clinton Arnold

Ephesians Main Idea

This passage contrasts the former godlessness of the Gentiles and their exclusion from the people of God with their new experience of closeness to God and inclusion in his people. This change has taken place on the basis of Jesus’ death on the cross, which resulted in the abrogation of the Mosaic covenant and the creation of a new people of God. This new humanity enjoys a relationship of peace with God and peace with one another, especially between Jews and Gentiles.

Human Hostility (vs. 11, 12, 14-16, 19)

Paul tells the Gentile readers to remember the former ethnic and racial hostility they faced!

We think about racial and cultural divisions all the time now! But that has always been the case in human history.

The Greeks called everyone other group the Barbarians because thats how they sounded when they tried to speak Greek.

The Jews called everyone else Gentiles or the “uncircumcised.”

“Slave” can possibly be from an early form of Slavic

We should remember what our lives were like before Christ! - See Brokenness by Voddie Baucham

We should remember it because there should be no more hostility in the family of God! (v. 11)

Ephesians Explanation of the Text

In a somewhat shocking turn, Paul denigrates the practice of circumcision by labeling it a practice “done by hand” (χειροποίητος). This was a term well-known among Jews familiar with the Greek OT, where it was used in conjunction with the making of idols. They were figures “made by hand” (χειροποίητος; see Lev 26:1, 30; Isa 2:18; 10:11; 19:1; Dan 5:4, 23; see also Jdt 8:18; Wis 14:8). In an unparalleled way, Paul applies the term to the Jewish practice of circumcision in a way that implies the utter worthlessness of this practice now that the era of Christ has begun.

Heavenly Hostility

As Gentiles, they did not grow up in the covenant community of God with His law, statues, blessings, and prerogatives.

By God’s grace, some of us grew up in that reality. However, many of you know what Paul is describing here.

God himself was their enemy. And God was our enemy outside of Christ! We had no hope!

John 3:18 ESV

18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

Psalm 139:21–22 ESV

21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? 22 I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies.

Romans 1:18–25 ESV

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

No hope in the afterlife. No hope in this cruel world.

Heavenly Hope

Paul reminded the Ephesians that the only reason they can overcome these problems is because Heaven came to earth!

Jesus Christ came to earth and by his death and resurrection, bought a new people for himself.

He made peace between sinful humanity and righteous God.

He made peace between sinful humans by making them saints.

We have access to the Father by the same Spirit, The Holy Spirit!

We are partakers of the one faith, one hope, one Lord, one baptism. (Ephesians 4:4)

As saints of God, we are the church. The very temple of God! Let us not return to the hostility that Christ eradicated.

Conclusion

As a boy in California in the 1920s and early 1930s, Louie was an incorrigible delinquent. Then he discovered that he had an extraordinary talent for running. He became a world-famous track phenomenon, competing in the 1936 Berlin Olympics when he was still a teenager.

World War II began, and Louie set aside athletics and joined the Army Air Corps. He was stationed in Hawaii as a bombardier, fighting harrowing air battles against the Japanese.

On May 27, 1943, Louie and his crew took off to search for a missing bomber. Far out over the Pacific, engine failure sent their plane plunging into the ocean. Trapped by wires in the wreckage, Louie passed out.

When he came to, the wires were gone. He swam to the surface and climbed onto a raft, joining two other survivors. They’d sent no distress call, and no one knew where they were.

For weeks the men floated, followed by sharks, surviving on rainwater and the few fish and birds they could catch. On the twenty-seventh day, a plane appeared. Louie fired flares, and the plane turned toward them. Unfortunately, it was a Japanese plane that began to fire upon them.

In captivity across a series of prison camps, Zamperini and Phillips were separated and subjected to torture, both physical and psychological. They were beaten and starved, and Zamperini was singled out and abused repeatedly by a camp sergeant called the Bird, who would tear into fits of psychotic violence. Yet Zamperini, as a former Olympic athlete, was seen as a propaganda tool by the Japanese, a scenario that likely saved him from execution.

The captivity lasted for more than two years, during which time Zamperini was officially pronounced dead by the U.S. military. Zamperini was released only after the war ended in 1945, and he returned to the United States.

Scarred by his ordeal, upon his return home, Zamperini suffered from alcoholism, and he and his wife, Cynthia, came close to divorce. (They stayed married, though, for 54 years, until her death in 2001.) What brought Zamperini back from the brink was hearing a Billy Graham sermon in Los Angeles in 1949, a sermon that inspired Zamperini and began the healing process.

He went on to found a camp for troubled youth called Victory Boys Camp and forgave his Japanese tormenters. Some received Zamperini’s forgiveness in person in 1950, when he visited a Tokyo prison where they were serving war-crime sentences.

Application

If you have hostility with God, the first step is coming to the cross of Christ for salvation. You will no longer have hostility with God but hope in God.

How can you remind yourself that you do not have hostility but hope at Colgate Baptist Church. Call one member this week!