Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

When I was 23, I lived in Seattle.

On the outside, it looks like this beautiful city, nestled up against the water with mountains in the background, but as you drive through it and around it and look out your window, in the shadows of the overpasses, you’ll see these tiny underground cities full of homeless people.

There’s this massive divide between rich and poor, all existing in the same space, but living completely separate from each other.

We live in a world that is very divided.

When I was 23, I lived in Seattle.

On the outside, it looks like this beautiful city, nestled up against the water with mountains in the background, but as you drive through it and around it and look out your window, in the shadows of the overpasses, you’ll see these tiny underground cities full of homeless people.

There’s this massive divide between rich and poor, all existing in the same space, but living completely separate from each other.

But the worst division I saw was in my high school.

In high school, everyone divided up by race, then they divided by age, then by popularity.

So all over my high school campus, there were all of these tiny groups, and none of them communicated with the others if they didn’t have to.

Then one day, I’m walking up to school and out of nowhere, every one of these groups rushed towards the middle of the campus and had this all out brawl.

Cops showed up, people got arrested, I saw a teacher get flipped.

It was wild.

All of the division and tension got so bad that everyone just snapped.

When Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians, one of the greatest divisions that existed during that time was between the Jews and the Gentiles.

These two groups of people hated each other.

Jews believed that the gentiles were created to “fuel the fires of hell.”

It was so bad, that if you were Jewish, it was illegal for you to help a gentile women while she was giving birth.

Gentiles didn’t like the Jews either.

They conquered the Jewish nation and felt that they were socially and politically superior to them.

So, all of these division existed: political, cultural, religious.

But what happened in the city of Ephesus was that the gospel was preached, and both Jews and Gentiles became followers of Jesus.

So Paul’s writing to Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, and this entire letter outlines the coming together of these two very different groups of people.

And what Paul is saying is that

Main Idea

Through the blood of Jesus, God has moved us from alienation from himself and others, to reconciliation to himself and each other.

Let’s look at

Scripture

Context

Alright, so we’re dipping into the middle of the letter, so let me catch us up to what Paul’s said so far.

In chapter 1, he’s doing some pretty high theology.

He opens with this poem where he gives high praise to God the father for the amazing things he’s done through Jesus Christ.

Through Jesus, anyone, this means us, can be adopted into God’s family, and in him we find God’s grace.

And this grace changes how we understand our lives.

Paul writes in 1:10 that God’s purpose was to unify all things in heaven and on earth under Jesus.

God’s plan was always to have this huge family of restored people unified under the Lordship of Jesus.

He then writes specifically to the Jewish Christians saying: This is our inheritance, this is what we’ve been hoping for since the time of Abraham.

But then he writes to the non-jewish Christians, how we were brought into his family through the work of the Holy Spirit, How Jesus saves us and then the Spirit seals us, guaranteeing our inheritance.

God has brought both Jew and gentile into the family of Jesus, fulfilling what he promised to Abraham thousands of years before.

After this, Paul goes into a prayer.

And he prays that these followers of Jesus would not just know about the gospel, but would personally experience the power of the gospel.

That the power that raised Jesus from the dead and exalted him would now energize them and would be at work within them.

Then, in chapter 2:1-10 Paul elaborates on God’s grace, retelling the story of how the gentiles, and how we, came to know Jesus.

He says we were dead in our trespasses.

We were desperate.

We were hopeless.

No matter where we’re from, who we are, what we have, we’re in a mess and in need of gospel transformation.

But God, in his love and mercy saved the gentiles, forgave them of their sins, and joined their lives to Jesus’ resurrection life and brought them back to life in the process.

And he can and will do the same for us.

So, when Paul writes “Therefore,” he has in mind all of this.

Exposition

Reconciled to God

Looking now at verse 11, Pauls tells the gentiles to remember.

And he wants them to remember 2 things.

First, he wants them to remember that they were once called the “uncircumcision” by the Jews, who called themselves the circumcision.

So right here, right at the beginning, Paul lists this divide that used to exist between the Jews and the Gentiles.

And this divide was huge and deep, and it went back for generations.

It was, first, a religious divide.

The Jews worshiped the one, true God, and Christian Jews knew Jesus, but gentiles, before they knew Jesus, worshiped the Roman gods.

They were divided religiously.

Then the divide was cultural or social.

The Jews had all of these rules and practices that they followed, which were meant to set them apart from all other nations and religions, and this was meant to show the holiness of God, but instead the Jews used it as a reason to separate themselves from the gentiles and to look at them as others or as unclean, or as not worthy of being in the same space as them.

But, at the same time, the Gentiles were the ones who conquered the Jewish nation.

They’re living on land that’s been owned by the Jews for thousands of years.

So, to me it makes sense why the Jews aren’t so friendly towards the gentiles.

And so Paul wants them to remember that they were one referred to by the Jews as the uncircumcised.

And he’s calling them to remember this because he wants them to see how alienated they once were from one another.

And so Paul wants them to remember that they were one referred to by the Jews as the uncircumcised, which was very divisive and demeaning language.

And he’s calling them to remember this because he wants them to see how alienated they once were from one another.

But there’s more than this.

They weren’t just alienated from each other.

The second thing he wants them to remember is that they were once separated from Christ.

And because of this, they were excluded from citizenship in Israel, they were foreigners to the covenants of the promise, they were without hope and without God in the world.

Yeah, they were on Israel’s land, but they didn’t belong to the Kingdom of God.

The religious and social separation was bad, but this was far worse.

They had no Jesus, no home, no friends, no hope, and no God.

As Paul says, they were “far off.”

Alienated from God and the people of God.

And this is us before we knew Jesus, before we’ve surrendered to him, this is our situation.

We’re separated from God and his people.

Incapable of truly loving God and having community with each other.

It’s impossible for us to be bonded together.

And this is us before we knew Jesus, before we’ve surrendered to him, this is our situation.

We’re separated from God and his people.

Incapable of truly loving God and having community with each other.

It’s impossible for us to be bonded together.

Paul is telling the Ephesians to remember where you were before God’s love reached down and found you.

Remember how you were alienated and divided from each other.

Remember how hopeless and desperate you were.

But he doesn’t leave them there.

He says in verse 13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

The gentiles who had no community and no God have now been brought into God’s family.

The gentiles, who were alienated and separated from the kingdom of God, who previously didn’t have the promises that the Jews had, have now been adopted and brought near.

And this has only occured because of the blood of Jesus.

Because of Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross, our sins were dealt with, and he is reconciling us to himself.

Reconciled to each other

But Paul keeps going.

God has reconciled the gentiles to himself.

And in doing so, the tension and division between them and the Jews is now gone.