Vision pt3

Ryan Abernathy

Vision • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

Ephesians 2:11–22

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WE SEEK TO EMBRACE OUR ADOPTION INTO GOD'S FAMILY AND TO LOVE OUR NEIGHBORS AS FAMILY.

I started church planting in 2011. And back then I was reading everything I could get my hands on about church, culture, and religion in America. Even worse, I was reading the footnotes. Yes, I was that guy.

Now when you get done laughing, I want you to hear about an interesting book I picked up during that season called Bowling Alone. It was about the demise of community in America and it was fascinating. I have never shaken it.

One of the points was the majority of Americans don’t have a community. In fact, apart from immediate family they have no one to call in a dire emergency. That stuck with me as we planted and as we merged. And that is one of the reasons why “family” has always been a part of our cornerstones. People need family. They need community. They need someone to call when the world is falling apart.

The Message of Ephesians 4. A Single New Humanity (2:11–22)

long before Feuerbach and Marx the Bible spoke of human alienation. It describes two other and even more radical alienations than the economic and the political. One is alienation from God our Creator, and the other alienation from one another, our fellow creatures. Nothing is more dehumanizing than this breakdown of fundamental human relationships. It is then that we become strangers in a world in which we should feel at home, and aliens instead of citizens.

Our understanding of what we mean by family, has to start with an understanding of where we are with God. So I want us to look together in Ephesians 2 at what God says about His family.

(Read Ephesians 2:11-12)

We all start off the same way with God- alienated. In this passage, Paul is speaking to Gentiles, but the same is true of all people. We all start off disconnected and cut off from God. That is what sin does.

Look at verse 12- it leaves us “having no hope and without God”-

But something changes when you add Jesus to the equation.

(read verses 13-18)

Jesus does something for us we could not do for ourselves:

He brings us near

He breaks down dividing walls- ends hostility between us and God and us and others

He makes peace and reconciles us to God

He gives us a new name to call God- Father

The Message of Ephesians c. The Reconciliation of Jew and Gentile to God (Verse 16)

This, then, was the achievement of Christ’s cross. First, he abolished the law (its ceremonial regulations and moral condemnation) as a divisive instrument separating men from God and Jews from Gentiles. Secondly he created a single new humanity out of its two former deep divisions, making peace between them. Thirdly, he reconciled this new united humanity to God, having killed through the cross all the hostility between us. Christ crucified has thus brought into being nothing less than a new, united human race, united in itself and united to its creator.

Earlier in Ephesians 1:5 Paul says God “adopts” us- He brings us into His family

That means something- you are at the table, you have a place in God’s home, you have access to the Father, you are secure in that position

How often do you remember that?

So much of our security comes from our understanding of this position. If we are adopted into the family, we are not rejected. It is a permanent condition. It cannot be voided or invalidated. An adopted child cannot be denied their acknowledgement in the inheritance.

In short, you have security.

So if we are secure in that position, how does that mean we are to relate to other people? (dealing with family feuds)

(Read vs19-22)

Well it means INSIDE the Church, we have fellow family members. We are “members of the household of God.”

Ephesians The Result of Reconciliation (2:19–22)

The social structures that now picture believers are (1) a mutual citizenship as God’s people (literally, “saints”) and (2) a family relationship with other believers (members of the household of God). Paul uses a play on words in which the word for foreigner (paroikoi) is contrasted with oikeioi, “household members.” The same word occurs in 1 Timothy 5:8 in a literal sense, meaning one’s own family, and in Galatians 6:10, meaning the family of believers

It means:

You are not alone

You have responsibilities for one another

Here is the second thing, you have a family legacy. (Talk about my dad and granddad’s legacy)

Now your earthly family’s legacy may not be that great, but your Heavenly Father’s is. So how you represent that family matters and you have a family worth inviting someone else into- even if your earthly legacy isn’t that great.

The Message of Ephesians b. God’s Family (Verse 19b)

Brethren’ (meaning ‘brothers and sisters’) is the commonest word for Christians in the New Testament. It expresses a close relationship of affection, care and support. Philadelphia, ‘brotherly love’, should always be a special characteristic of God’s new society.

You have a calling to invite a fellow image bearer into the family!

That changes how we see people- we see people as potential brothers and sisters, not as misfits unworthy of adoption!

Because, Jesus is building, in us, a temple- a holy place- in which He dwells. We are making as His family a home for the homeless where they are welcomed by the Father!

Ephesians The Result of Reconciliation (2:19–22)

The function of a temple is to be a dwelling for God (though with the biblical understanding that God cannot be localized or confined to a building). So the previously alienated and sinful groups have now been joined together, stone by stone, so to speak, as a holy temple for the God to whom they have together been reconciled. It is striking that the words for joined together and rises (literally “grows”) occur also in 4:15–16, where they describe the growth not of an inanimate temple but of the church as the living “body” of Christ

(Gospel presentation here- come home!!!!)

For some of you this morning, as followers of Jesus, you need to understand your valuable place in the family

For some of us, we need to end family feuds and forgive and reunite

And for some, you need to come home!

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