Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

How do you make a church?

That seems like a simple question, but don’t be fooled.

History’s path is littered

with the remnants of churches.

Many followed a man who, once he was gone, the followers scattered.

Others

came about to fight some great injustice and lost heart over time.

They are not just names in dusty church history textbooks, lost to time.

In our last lesson, we discussed what God was doing—he was creating a masterpiece in the church.

He told them in the verse we left off with:

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

(Ephesians 2:10, ESV)

He was crafting something the world had never experienced.

This lesson answers a question.

“How does God make his masterpiece?”

Let’s find out what Paul says about that in Ephesians 2:11-22.

Discussion

Before and After

Before secular scholars blushed at the way time was divided, BC (before Christ) and AD (in the year of our Lord).

Even though modern scholars have strained Christ from the timeline, they could not eliminate the reality.

Paul describes what life before Christ was like and what it became after.

The Chosen People

When you read through the Old Testament, a single fact is apparent.

God had chosen Israel as his people.

It started with Abraham.

Standing as an alien in Canaan, God made him solid gold promises.

They would be the foundation of God’s choosing a nation to be his nation.

It started with a symbol of dedication, one unheard and not practiced by the nations.

God’s people would have a physical mark of dedication in circumcision.

“You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.”

(Genesis 17:11, ESV)

After the passage of over 400 years, a tattered group of slaves left Egypt under the leadership of one of their own, Moses.

God took them to the desert of Sinai, where he made them his own people.

Listen to what he told them:

“For you are a people holy to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.”

(Deuteronomy 14:2, ESV)

No one would have the spiritual status of Israel.

In it, the promise of a great blessing would flow.

They believed that the coming Messiah belonged to them and none other.

That emphasis was carried on in the New Testament until it grew old and cracked with time.

When Jesus made a journey outside of the friendly Israeli territory, he found himself confronted by a poor and hungry Canaanite woman.

She begged for help.

Jesus seemed callous, but both he and the woman recognized the social convention of the times.

And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.””

(Matthew 15:26–27, ESV)

To the Jews, the Gentiles were filthy strays looking to infect their godly purity with their actions.

You ignored them, drove them out, and made sure they understood their place.

It became problematic in the infancy of the church.

So strong was this teaching of special privilege that Jewish Christians had a demand: be circumcised as we are, or you cannot be a child of God.

“But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”

(Acts 15:1, ESV)

It is this picture Paul shows in the opening of this lesson.

Using four phrases, he paints the bleak spiritual destiny of Gentiles.

“Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”

(Ephesians 2:11–12, ESV)

Listen to the punctuation marks:

They were the “uncircumcised, the filthy outsider.

They were separated from Christ or the anointed one, the Messiah.

For Jews, the Messiah was sent explicitly for their race and none other.

They were in a state of estrangement from God’s way and had no access to the “secrets” of the almighty.

They were strangers to the covenant.

It was not meant for them and was unavailable to them.

This left them “without hope and godless” in the world.

They were born into depravity and had no chance of changing that state, no matter what happened.

God’s promises were for his people, not for them.

But Now

Verse 13 opens with a lightning bolt.

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

(Ephesians 2:13, ESV)

But now...something dramatic has happened.

In Christ, those distant to promises, excluded from hope, were “drawn near,” a term the Rabbis used to describe those near to God.

Christ had done something dramatic.

He was creating his masterpiece in the church.

But how? Did God merely say, “now both of you are in the church, “go get along?”

Is this a merger of two different groups?

Many times we speak of it that way.

For convenience, we all talk of “Jewish Christians” and “Gentile Christians.”

Yet, this passage demolishes that reality.

Years ago, I had a friend who was a preacher part of a merger of two churches.

Men would try to mediate middle ground to meld and merge two backgrounds together.

It would seem to be easy.

Both groups believed in the church, believed in Christ, practiced immersion for the forgiveness of sins, and conducted the Lord’s supper each Sunday.

Both had what we call “the distinguishing marks of God’s church.”

Yet, he said it was the hardest thing he had ever done.

They argued about everything.

How many men serve at the Lord’s table?

Which songbooks to use?

Who are going to be the elders?

Who is going to be the preacher?

What time will they start worship and Bible classes?

What will be their curriculum in Bible classes?

The truth is humans bring their egos and their own expectations to such an arrangement.

God would not have any of that.

Instead, he was doing something dramatic.

He was not creating unity, but a unit, different from any of them had been before.

Twice in this lesson, he gives this insight:

“For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:14, ESV)

He has made us one.