Back

Brought Near By the Blood

Ephesians 2:11–13

Posted by Josh Gilchrist on September 13, 2026

00:00 00:00

Big Idea: Live in light of God’s plan to save people from all nations.

Preview of 2:11–22

Sized-up by Others (2:11)
Separated from Christ (2:12)

2:1–3	2:11–12
Three verses	Two verses
Addresses in second person	Addresses in second person
Remembering what you were	Remembering what you were
“you”	“you Gentiles in the flesh”
	Called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision
Dead in trespasses and sins	Separated from Christ
Following the course of the world	Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel
Following the prince of the power of the air	Strangers to the covenants of promise
Following the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience	Having no hope
Living in the passions of the flesh	Without God in the world
Carrying out the desires of the body and mind
Children of wrath by nature

Selected to be Brought Near (2:13)

Automated Transcription
Note: this transcription is computer-generated and may contain errors.
0:21
Good morning, Faith Bible Church. Please open your Bibles to Ephesians 211. We're going to continue our series on Ephesians, which we've called Life in Christ Together. We just finished going through a beautiful gospel masterpiece in Ephesians two one through 10 that starts with the grim reality that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, but God, in His great mercy and love, has made people who were dead alive in Him, and raised them up and seated us in the heavenly places with Him, and that He saves us by His grace, not not by our own merit, and he hasn't just saved us, but he continues to work in our lives. He makes us into his workmanship, his his masterpiece, and he prepares good works that we get to to walk. And today we're going to begin the next section of Ephesians chapter two, Ephesians 211 through 22, as a continuation of the thought, and it talks about corporate gospel realities for people. Please stand with me for the reading of scripture. I am today just going to read and discuss Ephesians 211 through 13. 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. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. This is the word of God. Please join me in prayer, Father. We come before you with gratitude for the work that you've done in making us alive in your Son Jesus Christ, we were dead, and you intervened. It's solely by your grace that we are saved. We have no ground to boast before you, Lord. Yet, Lord Jesus, we confess that we're prone to place our confidence and pride in what we do or what we don't do. We can experience great conflicts in our approach to other people because of that, but Lord, because of you, there's unity that we can now walk in. Holy Spirit, we need your help to cause us to remember where we would be had not the Father brought us near by the blood of His precious Son. We need you to help us see that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. Help us to remember that salvation is because of you, so that none of us may boast. We thank you for what you've done in saving us not only from our spiritual death, but saving us into one new person: your your church, your beloved bride. Help us to remember what we are. Help us to remember where we would be without you, Lord. We pray for Christ our Hope Bible Church and Christ the Redeemer Church and True Hope Church, all churches located centrally and close to downtown. Lord, we pray that they would be faithful to your word and that you would use them in their communities and their spheres of influence, Lord. We pray that the believers there would worship you in unity and harmony that you have made possible, Lord. Pray that we would worship you in the unity and harmony that you have made possible. Be with us now as we continue to worship you in our time in the Scriptures. Amen. Please be seated. If you ever struggle with loving someone that God has placed in front of you at church, remember who you were before Christ. Remember the words that we just studied in in recent weeks. It's by grace that you're saved. It's it's through faith, and that's not your own doing. It's it's God's gift to you. Last week, Dan talked to us about how we like to do and do, and we allow our works to become a source of comparison toward other people, whether a comparison of insecurity or a comparison of arrogance, arrogantly you or you know in an insecure manner. Actually, we might say something like, "Why can't I have the the skills and opportunities that that person over there has? We. Insecure because we're not like other people, or we can arrogantly say, "Why can't that person just do things the way that I do it? Why can't they see it my way?

5:09
There's other areas where we can become arrogant and insecure and can experience division in our relationships within a church. Schooling choices would be a big one, whether I homeschool my kids or send them to private or public school. Ministry tactics, the way that we run a group, do a group, practice a group, what we think should happen during during the worship time, how people dress at church. There can also be a generational age gap sort of a difficulty. Sometimes there's people in this room who know what skibbity means. I don't know what that means, and I probably shouldn't have said it since I don't know what it means. And then there's other people who are young who would say, what does it mean to say that something is groovy? Something is groovy. There's tons of different ways that we can divide or see that we're we're different for sure. This one's one of my favorite. Whether you call the stage before marriage, dating, or courting, what you do with your leisure and entertainment time, and the most important thing about us is not where we land in those different preferences and topics. The most important thing about us is our relationship with God, and our most important need is to be brought from spiritual death to to life, union with Christ, and once that happens, continuing to to walk in that life. As you look around the room, and that that can be a good thing to do when we're talking about life together in Christ, seeing the people in this room that God has brought together today, you probably see some differences. You see people who come from different backgrounds, different cultures, even you see that. But those in this room who are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ are your brothers and sisters. They're your fellow saints, and God not only calls us to walk in unity, but He's He's created it. He's purchased it by His blood. It's a blood-bought reality that we're called to walk in. Ephesians four three says that life in Christ together means that we're eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. The world around us seems to to clamor about unity. Got to be unified. We got to come together. But the question that I always comes to my mind: unity around what? Unity from what? The reality is, all that we can offer ourselves when it comes to unity apart from Christ is Ephesians two one through three, being dead in our sins, walking the course of the world, being controlled by the prince of the power of the air, living as children of wrath-that's really, truly the only unity apart from Christ. True unity, biblical unity, comes from having our deepest need met, being brought near to God, being reconciled to Him. Now, what we've just learned about individual reconciliation, about how God saves us and makes us alive as individuals, really has corporate implications-implications for how we live our lives together. God doesn't just save you from your sins. He saves you into a family. In the New Testament times, there were Jews and Gentiles coming together in heaven. By God's grace, there will be people from every tribe and language and tongue and nation singing before the throne. Worthy is the Lamb, there's no cookie cutter converts to Jesus, and what I mean by that is when we come to Him by by faith, we have different backgrounds, different cultures, different experiences, and God magnifies Himself by taking a wide variety of people and making them one. Maybe you're here and and you find yourself, or you just have a habit of struggling with with other people. It's it's kind of a normal thing for us to do. You could arrogantly look at someone who's who's new and say, "I don't know how that person is going to fit in here. That person is too Californian. I don't know how that Californian is going to fit in with the you know Birkenstock wearing coffee loving flannel rocking pace of life of the great Pacific Northwest. I don't know how he's going to do it. Or you could be on the opposite end. You could be new and showing up. Like I don't know how I'm gonna fit in with these people and their Birkenstocks and their flannels and they're wearing shorts with a flannel.

10:06
I just don't quite understand it. Okay, but even more seriously, like these people have deep, tight knit, long lasting relationships, and I just don't feel like I fit in, and I don't know how I'm gonna do that. Well, I'm here to tell you today that the unity that God has has created is is helpful for us. And the second half of Ephesians is all about how God takes those that He brought from death to life, and He unites them as one new man, one new person, His household, His His church. And so, the big idea for today that we would do well to live out is this: live in light of God's plan to save people from all nations. And we're going to focus on the Gentiles in Ephesians 211 through 13, which literally means the nations. And if that big idea is a little cryptic, let me just explain it to you. Live in light of God's plan to save people. To to live in light of God's plan to save people from all nations starts with rejoicing in your own salvation, rejoicing in what God has done for you, and then that moves to remembering that God has a plan for other people, and and rejoicing in that salvation for your brothers and sisters, rejoicing that people's greatest needs are met in Christ. So we're going to look at three stages in the redemptive history of the Gentiles in verses 11 through 13. I want to give you a short overview of the next section that we'll be looking at the next five weeks, including this week, today I'm going to talk about the predicament of the Gentiles. After I do that, next week Dan is going to talk about the peace of one new man, how Christ is the believer's source of peace. The world wants peace too. The best way to find peace is to be at peace with Him. Jesus breaks down the barriers first between sinners and himself, and then between sinners and other sinners. It's his his plan and design, and he reconciles both Jews and Gentiles to himself through the cross. In two weeks, we're going to look at verses 17 and 18, and the the preaching of peace, both Jews and Gentiles, though it might be explained a little bit differently, need the same message of the need for peace with Christ and how that is achieved. But in the preaching of peace, when Christ comes and preaches peace and brings peace. Both groups now have the same access. There's not Jewish access to Jesus and Gentile access. It's it's the same access through the Holy Spirit. In three weeks, we're going to learn about the provision of membership and citizenship. In verse 19, Gentiles, thanks to God, no longer need to consider themselves outsiders, newcomers, strangers. They're now fellow citizens with the saints, one new group, one family-not the ones from New Orleans, but the ones in the Bible. We're members of God's family, brothers and sisters. Finally, in four weeks, Brian is going to talk to us about how God makes both groups into a place of worship, God's holy temple, in verses 20 through 22, and we'll look at the origin and purpose of the church. But for now, let's look at the Gentiles' predicament in verses 11 through 13 and the three stages of redemptive history, and the first one is the Gentiles were sized up by others. Ephesus was a Gentile city, and so a majority of the converts that Paul is writing to were most likely Gentiles. And from the word Gentiles, we get the root for ethnicities. It's an umbrella term for all non-Jews, probably one that relates to a lot of us, most of us. Paul has been talking to them all throughout Ephesians two in the second person, saying, "You were dead, you were made alive, you've been saved by grace. Then he says, "We are his workmanship. Then in verse 11 he goes back to you and he's addressing in second person this group of Gentiles and he gives them a command I want you to remember something I want you to remember what you were formerly remember that I don't think he's saying just only remember that he wants people to remember the gospel. He wants them to remember grace. Wants to remember that they're his workmanship.

14:46
A part of treasuring that grace is remembering what you once were. And so Paul gives some explanation of how they were known in the flesh by other human beings. How they. Were regarded by by the Jews, he says they were called the uncircumcision by what is called the uncircumcision. And I'm going to just give my definition that I gave when I was a teacher at Northwest Christian, teaching middle school Bible for uncircumcision and circumcision. And here's my definition: If you don't know what that means, go home and ask your Parents, it was something that was was done just electively for Jews. It was something that Jews were expected to do in Old Testament times, and they would often do it customarily on the the eighth day of a child's life. Uncircumcision would be not participating in that, and in the ancient world, pretty much Gentiles were uncircumcised. That was was the custom. Now, circumcision. After God gave Abraham the the covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, and ratified it, He asked Abraham and his descendants to participate in circumcision as a sign of the covenant, not something that saved them, not something that justified them before God. This is after Abraham's belief and trust in God had been counted to him as righteousness. But you can read about that that custom in Genesis 1710 through 11, and rather than just being a sign of the covenant to the Jewish people, it became a source of pride. They started to think that they were super special because of it, and they thought that the uncircumcised were were less than special. David, even in First Samuel 17, used it negatively to refer to to Goliath. It was a term of derision. You uncircumcised dogs. So the Gentiles, Paul is saying, were called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision. What's what? What do we make of the use of "You're called this" by what is called? I think Paul is just saying that humans like to call each other different things and give people different labels, but then Paul goes on to say something about circumcision that it's literally something done by human hands, and so it would fall into the category of human works listed in verse nine, and it's therefore not something that saves. As human beings, we tend to size people up based on external things, don't we? We can do that to one another as believers and forget that what matters most is not the work of our hands or our minds, but the fact that we're God's workmanship-that God has worked in us. Instead of saying, "Look what God has done in my life! Praise God for His work! It's like, "Look what I've done! Look at how that makes me different than you. We can also size people up based on just appearances. James talked about it about people having a tendency to show favoritism to people who show up who look like they're wealthy and well dressed, and shun people who are more shabbily dressed, look a little more destitute. And I just want to say, if you're you're here today from the suburbs or you're here from the inner city, your greatest need is not to adhere to a dress code, your greatest need is reconciliation with the Lord, being brought from death to life, and then walking in that new life. We can easily treat people according to what we see on the outside because that's easy; it's noticeable. Now I'm going to share a little story, and I promise that all bitterness is gone. Okay, this is a long time ago. There's no bitterness at all. It's a funny story, but my my wife and I and my kids used to get a lot of flack because I'm a Denver Broncos fan. People would just give me a hard time about that and laugh about it and in your face. There was a person who every time we would see him, oh, here come the Bronco fans! Here come the Bronco fans! It was so memorable that one of my kids actually this week actually recalled that being a vivid memory. Like people used to give us a real hard time that we liked the Broncos. I know that some of you are going to give me a hard time. I can take it. It's okay.

19:20
Well, a lot of time has passed since then, and I've forgiven Brian Sayers. It actually wasn't Brian Sayers. I think this was before Brian Sayers's days here. But one day, when the guy did that, said, "Here come the Bronco fans. I just smiled and said, "You know, we have names. And he smiled and said, "I know that you do, and it was great. We're unified, you know. But it can just be so easy to take these external things. And probably I wore too much Bronco gear at church. That's probably the moral of this story: is if you do that, people will just start to associate that with you. But it also seemed to be an identity that he attached. To me, but the point I'm trying to make is, it was just an external thing. There's no eternal significance who you root for. Okay, Cougars or Huskies, okay, Broncos or Seahawks. It it can still become part of our identity to other people, and even to ourselves, we can put too much into that. And praise God that He unites Bronco fans and Seahawk fans and Lions fans, Huskies and Cougar fans, and unfans. Those of you who couldn't care less about sports. Okay, we see you and we love you and we appreciate you, and God wants to unite us together. But it's interesting how we can unify or be in disunity based on logos made by human hands? We can size people up based on other things. I've mentioned some of those already: school choice, parenting styles that are a matter of preference and really not a violation of God's clear instructions of how we're to raise our children. There can be a lot of different approaches to that, expressiveness or lack of expressiveness in worship. Maybe some of you remember the Tim Hawkins skit. There's the touchdown worshiper. There's the holding the TV worshiper. You know the hand motions. You know we can be judgmental about that. What we see on the outside with people, the way other people dress, the type of diets. Look at all the sugar they're giving their kids over there. Look how deprived that poor kid is, and all the just whole food stuff that they make them eat. We can easily make those things the most important things. Something a lot different than those things. Going back to the early church at Ephesus. In the early church, there was just a really big division based on circumcision or uncircumcision. Gentiles were getting saved and coming to faith and coming to the same churches that Jewish converts had been to, and it was a little tricky for some of the Jewish converts. In Acts 15, in the early church, there was a council that was held, and there were actually some people, some Jewish converts, who spoke up and said, "These Gentiles need to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses if we're going to consider them genuine Christians. It was a problem even for the Apostle Peter in the the early church at Antioch. Peter played the the people pleasing game. Maybe you've had a friendship. It's kind of junior highish, but a friendship that's hot and cold, based on who else is around. Someone is your friend, so long as other people aren't around. And this is what Peter pulled. Peter was in Antioch and was breaking bread and fellowshipping with Gentile converts. But then some high-profile Jewish convert showed up on a visit, and he withdrew. He was aloof, and he was not only that way himself, but he, being so influential, caused other people to see this is the way to act. We're only about these people and not those people over here. And Paul confronted him and said, "That's inconsistent with the gospel, that is not in step with the gospel. the The point is that the ground is level at the cross. We all have the same need. We're all sinners in need of saving. Living in light of God's saving people requires us to renounce what we believe we've made of ourselves that makes us worthy, that makes us superior to other people, more deserving than other people. Paul wrote in Second Corinthians 516 a. He says, "From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.

23:57
We don't just see people based on these labels and what we see on on the outside, what team logo they're wearing, how they're dressed, what they look like, types of customs that they practice, we see people with spiritual eyes. We see people as having spiritual needs that only God can meet, and so these Gentiles here in verse 11 are simply sized up as being uncircumcised, but this was all just according to the flesh. So that's our first stage, sized up by others. Second stage in the redemptive history of the Gentiles is that they were separated from Christ. Look at verse 12 with me. If you are a grammar nerd like me from my English teaching days, you'll notice that verse 11 there's not even a complete thought. He just says, "Remember, you Gentiles who were this and that and that and that. And then he finally, in verse 12, continues the thought. Remember. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ. In this verse, Paul is going to unpack five things that that were true or weren't true of the Gentiles, basically. And the first is that they were separated from Christ. They they were far from him. They were without him. The fact that they weren't from Israel meant that they would not have known of him or been anticipating him. Jews from Israel, all throughout their redemptive history, were receiving revelation and prophecies about this coming Messiah who would deliver them? Gentiles didn't have that. Flip over in your Bibles to Romans nine four through five. Another passage where Paul is talking about-he actually talks about Israel and some of the privileges that they had as a nation. Romans nine four through five. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, being chosen God's chosen people, the glory, seeing God's mighty mighty deeds, being guided by a cloud by day, a pillar of fire at night, the covenants. We'll get to those in a minute. The giving of the law, the the worship, the temple, the tabernacle, the the Levites, and the promises. To them belong the the patriarchs. We just spent a good season learning about the patriarchs in Genesis here at this church, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever, Amen. And so Paul is actually what he's saying. The most important thing to come out of Israel is is the Christ. He descended from the nation of Israel. He is the seed of Abraham, and all throughout the Old Testament, there's signs pointing ahead to this coming Messiah, so the Jews were anticipating the the Gentiles didn't have that. They they generally practiced polytheism and were grasping after and seeking to appease a pantheon of gods and goddesses. So they were separated from Christ. Second, they were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. A better word for commonwealth would be citizenship, which is the right to belong to a group or an entity of some sort. And belonging to Israel had some special privileges, some special prerogatives, and things that I just mentioned in Romans, Romans chapter nine, and Gentiles were without these privileges. At best, in Old Testament times, they could be foreigners allowed to live amongst the people, but they didn't have the same rights. Third, they were strangers to the covenants of promise. Being alienated from citizenship to Israel meant that they were unfamiliar and unacquainted with the covenants that God had made with Israel. Probably the most significant covenant of promise would be the Abrahamic covenant. If you can turn to early or yeah the beginning of your Bibles, Genesis chapter 12. We're going to look at Genesis 12 two through three. God made a covenant with with Abraham, and it it happened in stages. In Genesis 12 two through three, He says, "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So he promises that you're going to become a great nation. You're going to have a great name. You're going to be a blessing. I will bless you, and in fact, everybody in all the earth will be blessed in you.

29:07
A few chapters over in Genesis 15, he promises prolific offspring like the sand of the seashore and the stars and the skies, beyond the ability to count. And then he promises the promised land. You're gonna you're gonna get some land. So one commentator says that in Ephesians two, when he talks of the covenants of promises, he's talking mainly about the the Abrahamic covenant, but other covenants enhance that. The Abrahamic covenant is the the umbrella one, and the Davidic covenant is an enhancement, because in that covenant there's the promise of a Messiah, a son of David who will sit on the throne forever. There's the promise in the new covenant of a new heart that has God's law written on it, and. A desire to know Him and walk toward Him. So those are some of the covenants of promise right there that the Gentiles were strangers to. They didn't understand. There are also fourth those who have no hope. They literally had no hope in in the living God or hope directed toward him. Now they might have had hope, just as we have different kinds of hope. Those of you who are fans of sports probably hope that your team does well. You hope that your fantasy team goes well. You hope that the meal that you have after is delicious and satisfying. You hope that you don't get into a car accident on the way out. There's a lot of things that we hope for in that sense, but this is a different type of hope-a hope directed in God and His promises. Gentiles might have hoped in the goddess Artemis; they probably did, living in Ephesus. They would hope that Artemis would give their women safe childbirths; that they would be guided in motherhood, and that the youth among them would be kept safe. They might trust in Artemis, hoping that she would guide the men to successful hunts when they went hunting, and also protection from wild boars and dangerous animals while they were out doing that. But there were no promises that Artemis has ever made. There's no covenant of Artemis. What they would probably hope for is that they hadn't offended Artemis, so that all those things and aspects of life wouldn't be a disaster. The Jews had all the covenants of promise and the hope of a Messiah through that. The fifth thing that Paul says in verse 12 is they were without God in the world. We actually get the term atheist from the phrase without God. It means to be without a relationship to God, to Yahweh. It can also mean that they had never heard of gods or God, and the latter was definitely true. They hadn't heard of of the living God. They were aware of of Him, as Romans one makes clear. But instead of worshiping Him, they worshiped the creation, and they came up with names like Artemis, Zeus, and and Poseidon, and connected those to different forces of nature. I found this interesting this week as I was studying Gentiles actually accused early Christians and Jews of being the atheists because they didn't practice polytheism. They thought it was weird. Like you only worship one God. How atheistic of you! But the reality is, the Gentiles were without the one true God, the one who created them and sustains them. So to summarize all five of those things, Paul is just saying that these Gentiles were not God's people-they were without Him. They were without hope. They were alienated from belonging to Him and even knowing about Him. But the same God who made those covenants of promise promised blessing to all the families of the earth, which includes the Gentiles. In your notes, if you picked up a daily or weekly is what we call not daily. We anyway, there's a chart in there. I just thought it was cool to compare some of the parallels between the first three verses of Ephesians two and verses 11 and 12. They're both beginning with Paul calling his audience to remember something, to remember what they once were. They're both addressed to someone in the second person, but it just gets more specific as he talks directly to Gentiles, to the uncircumcision, and then he gives a list of all of these dilemmas and problems that people couldn't overcome in and of themselves, things that needed God's intervention.

34:07
Both, like I said, are grave predicaments. Verse three ends with being children of wrath, like the rest of mankind, and verse 12 ends with having no hope and without God in the world. God originally chose Israel to be His covenant people, who would represent Yahweh to the nations, put His glory on display, so that those nations could come to Him and and see and turn to Him. Israel was to represent the Lord as as priests, according to Exodus 19 five and six, and foreigners were actually allowed to partake of the the Passover according to Exodus 1248 if they were circumcised. So God has always had a. Plan and desire for the nations. While the Gentiles were separated from Christ due to their ignorance, their familiarity, and their ignorance and infertility, and their idolatry, God never abandoned His plan to bless all the nations. He allowed Jesus, the seed of Abraham, to come to fulfill the law and promises and offer salvation to all people. Now, just because Israel had all those privileges, it doesn't mean that they took advantage of it. Some some people grow up in church their whole lives, hearing the gospel, hearing about Jesus, hearing about God's promises. They have godly Christian parents who are an example. That was certainly true of my life. You you grow up having family values or Western values closely tied to what Scripture says, but unless we put our faith in Jesus, unless we allow Him to make us alive and to bring us near, we're not taking full advantage of all those things. If most of us trace our lineage back, I'm pretty confident that most of us are Gentiles, our ancestors were. A lot of us are a mix, but because of that mix, we would fall into the category of Gentiles and nations. At some point, if you fall into that Gentile category, your your ancestors were completely unaware of God and completely separated from Christ, but thanks to Jesus and His charge to His disciples to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth, we're here in Spokane, Washington, in the year 2026, worshiping Him. And there's still people out there, the ends of the earth who need to hear this message. The point I'm trying to make is that any knowledge that you have, no matter how long you've known it, is a gift from God. We ultimately need Jesus as as our Savior, whether we have had knowledge for a long time or not. Without that, we're just like the Gentiles described here in verse 12, separated from Christ. Our third and final stage in God's redemptive plan, the redemptive history for the Gentiles that helps us live in light of His plan to save people from all nations, is that the Gentiles were selected to be brought near. Verse 13 begins with a powerful contrast to what he's been saying in 11 and 12. But now in Christ Jesus, this is similar to the interruption that Paul made in verse four after talking about people being dead in their sin, but God being rich in mercy. It's like Paul is saying here in verse 13: "That was then. This is now. That was then. This is now. You were once far off, and now you've been brought near. You were Gentiles in the flesh. Now you are saints in Christ Jesus. They were once far off. Paul has been using language in the previous verse to describe that they were alienated, separated, strangers, hopeless, and godless. the The term far off, far away, far is often used to describe the nations and Gentiles and near would be used to describe the people of Israel who had the covenants, who had the law. But in in First Kings 841, when Solomon is dedicating the temple, he he prays to God and he prays that God would answer the prayer of any foreigner who would turn to seek Him and pray to them. Anyone from a far-off country who would do that, Solomon said, hear him and draw him to yourself. Psalm 148 verse verses 14 is just one of many examples that describe Israel as a people near to God. But now here in Ephesians 213 the Gentiles who were once far off have been brought near. They've been brought near. They didn't bring themselves. They didn't come themselves.

39:29
They didn't convert to Judaism or pass a citizenship test to become Israelites. the The bringing near has been done for them by someone else. Look down in Ephesians two at verse 19, the second half of that. Paul says, "You're no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints. He doesn't say you're now fellow. With the Israelites, but with the saints. Next time we're going to talk about God making one new man. But really, the reality is that there's no Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, even though those labels and titles remain external realities. There's only saints. One new man, one new body. So, I encourage you to take any ethnic, professional, or preferential label that you would emphasize in your life and notice in others, and realize that if you are in Christ, you are a saint. So are your other brothers and sisters, and you're brought near by the blood of Christ-nothing but the blood of Christ-and it's being brought into a personal relationship with Him, and then a relationship with one another. You have access to God through Christ's blood. It's it's sin, brothers and sisters, not our ethnicity or our worldly labels that separates us from God. And the bloody death that Jesus died on the cross redeems people from their sins. It's the the way that redemption and the only way that redemption can be accomplished, being brought from spiritual death to life, is only made possible through the blood of Jesus. And it was the price for the forgiveness of sins. In the near future, Dan is going to talk about how Christ came to preach peace, and I said this already, but both groups need the same message, the same gospel elements. Both groups need the blood of Christ. They need to be brought near by the blood of Christ. Israel had so much in their scriptures that foreshadowed bloodshed, a sacrifice of a spotless lamb whose blood would cause God's wrath to pass over them. Animal sacrifices. The Gentiles were ignorant and unacquainted, but nevertheless, the idea of sacrifice was not foreign to them at all. Ephesus was home to one of the biggest temples in the world at the time. It was the Temple of Artemis, where people would worship the goddess Artemis. And outside of that temple, there was an altar where people would come and sacrifice animals, shed the blood of animals, hoping to earn favor from Artemis, hoping for safe childbirths, protection for children, protection for the hunters. They'd hope that they had made a sufficient sacrifice, but my question is: Is that really hope? I hope that I've done enough. I hope that I've sacrificed enough. Paul wanted them to know that real hope was not found in a sacrifice that they could make for God, but in the fact that the Son of God took on flesh and made a once-for-all sacrifice for them. Only Jesus' death on a cross, faith in that acknowledgment of your sin and why that was necessary. Only through Jesus' blood can we be reconciled to the Father. He's the only way to peace. But like I said, all believers for all time, because of that once-for-all sacrifice, have access to God. Just as spiritually dead human beings can't generate spiritual life in and of themselves, human beings don't have the power to achieve biblical unity on their own. It has to be created and founded by Jesus Christ and Him, bringing us near before Him. We must remember the blood of Christ in our encounters with other people, with other believers. Paul did that in First Timothy 115. One of his trustworthy statements. It's a trustworthy statement that Christ died for sinners. Then he says, "I'm the chief of those sinners. He he saw the the seriousness of of his sin and how it caused Jesus to shed his blood, and it caused him to have a humble approach to the people. So Christ has the power to unite polar opposites from extremely different walks of life, he did it with Matthew, a tax collector, and with Simon, who was a zealot, guy who was pro-Roman and a guy as anti-Roman as you can get. He did it with Paul and all of Paul's all the converts, the Jets. Gentile converts, he could do it in Ephesus with the Jewish and Gentile converts.

45:05
He can do that in our church with older and younger people, doctors and mechanics, teachers and contractors. But we must remember God's work in us and let Him continue to work in us, and we need to remember where we would be without Him. If you're here today and the Bible is is new to you, I'm I'm so glad that you're here. You may feel foreign and unfamiliar all this Bible talk, but we hope you know that you're welcome here. I'd love to meet you if you're you're new. If you look around this room, you'll you'll see a bunch of sinners, a bunch of sinners brought near by the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ died for sinners, and our only hope is being made alive from that state of sin and spiritual death, and being brought near by by the blood that He shed, we've all turned aside to our own way and worshiped things in creation, relied on our own wisdom, thinking that it's better than God's. But God, rather than punishing us now, punished his son Jesus Christ to to pay the penalty for sin. He made a once for all sacrifice that you can trust in and have hope in. You can be brought near to God by confessing your sin and trusting in Him, and you can be brought near to the people in this room as we've been brought near by God's grace. If you are here and you struggle with someone who's different than you, which you probably do if we're being honest, there's something that irks us. Remember that the blood of Jesus has given you both access to the Father. Nothing that either of you do or that either of you are really amounts to anything before God, unless that's trusting in Christ and resting in His redemption. If you find yourself just wanting to be around people who are just like you, let me challenge you to embrace the the multi generational, multi ethnic blessings and flavor of the church. Let me talk a little bit about age. It's it's cool to have young adult ministry and college ministry. That's a job security thing for me. I'm thankful for that, but the reality is, people who are younger need people who are older in their life to to encourage them, to help them walk through stages that they've already gone through, to be able to to offer that encouragement, to offer equipping so that you can go and minister to people who are younger than you too. Our ministries that focus on younger younger people, young adults, college, youth, and children's ministry really need older people to to come along and invest in the younger generation. And us older people really get the benefit to you, younger people. Offer encouragement to us, old folks for sure. Don't strive just for sameness. God has a wide variety of people that He's purchased with His blood and unified through His blood. Will you walk in that Unity. If you're newer and feel like you can't fit in, let me just encourage you to be a faithful brother and sister in Christ. Now you have the ability. You've been brought near. You have the encouragement of scriptures. You have a lot to offer. We had our first Northside DAXA Growth Group this Thursday, and I was encouraged by everybody there. But I was particularly encouraged when we broke up into guys and gals and just shared prayer requests. All the guys were just speaking into each other's lives and trying to offer encouragement for the things that people are sharing. And that's something that any of us can do in a growth group. That's something really any of us can do after church in our spiritual conversations, but there's one man, young man in particular, who's only been coming to faith for about a month, and he just jumped in. He participated, and he is encouraging his brothers to draw near to God and live in dependence on Him by by reading His scriptures and depending on His Word, and so I've been to one growth group with that guy, and I'm already immensely encouraged. He's been brought near by the blood of Christ, just as I have, just as his brothers have. I'm going to close with a quote from John Piper on you. He says, "The deepest unity among God's elect is a given. It's a given.

50:05
We don't create unity. Man doesn't make it happen. When we come to Christ, we are grafted in by the Spirit to one body, Jesus Christ, and members one of another. So that the command in Ephesians four is to maintain the unity, don't create it; show it to the world. May we walk in the unity that God has prepared beforehand, living in light of God's wonderful plan to save people from all nations, your brothers and sisters in Christ. Let's pray, God, we are in awe of everything that you've done in accomplishing salvation for people from Jewish background and Gentiles, which includes the full gamut of people. Lord, we thank you that your gospel is advancing forth and going to the ends of the earth, Lord, we thank you for the way that it's touched our lives, Lord. We thank you that because of your blood we have access with our brothers and sisters, Lord. Help us to walk in unity. Help us to not live independently, forgetting that you've also saved us into a body, into one new man, into your church, Lord. We we thank you and praise you in Jesus' name, Amen.