Message of the Week

The Little White Community Church

Scripture: Eph. 2:11-18     Jan. 14, 2024

Message: “How to find peace!”    by Pastor George Gnade

Intro.: 1. Last week we learned about the way to salvation. It was based on Eph. 2: 8-10. “For by grace are you saved through faith. This is not of your own doing. It is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

2. “Grace” means we can never deserve it. “Faith” means we are trusting in Christ to do it for us. “God’s workman-ship” means even the good things we do in the present were prepared by Him for us to do. Therefore, God alone deserves all the glory.

3. This brings us to vs. 11-18.

A. In vs. 11-12, the Bible describes the hopeless condition of the Gentiles before Christ came.

1. On the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples, the gospel was preached to the Jews and many were saved. Soon after that, God sent Paul to preach Christ among the Gentiles also. 

a. That included the city of Ephesus where many Gentiles were saved. So in vs. 11, Paul reminds the Ephesians that they were Gentiles. The Jews usually referred to them as the “uncircumcised.”

b. That is because when God called Abraham to follow Him, He commanded him to circumcise all of his male descendants. This was an outward sign that God had chosen the Jews to be special. How? Because through them, the Messiah, otherwise known as the Christ, would be born.

c. From that day on, the Jews looked down on the Gentiles, and the Gentiles looked down on the Jews. 

2. Now circumcision was normally done on the 8th day after a Jewish male was born. In vs. 11, Paul describes circumcision as that which was “done in the body by the hands of men” to show and remind their children how God had called them to be special.

a. He then describes how the Jews were special. As Israelites, they were “citizens of Israel and had received the covenants of promise.”

b. That included the covenant God made with Abraham that someday Jesus would be born through them. It also included the covenant made on Mt. Sinai when God gave them the ten commandments, along with all the laws regarding animal sacrifices.

c. He also came to dwell among them in His temple where they could come to receive forgiveness and worship the true God.

3. So in Eph. 2:11, Paul was reminding the Ephesians who were Gentiles that, before they knew about Jesus, all those spiritual blessings given to the Jews were unknown to them. Therefore, in the last part of vs. 11, Paul says “you were without hope and without God.” 

4. That created a wall or barrier between the Jews and the Gentiles. It led to great conflict between them. 

a. Satan wanted to destroy the Jews to keep the Christ from being born. The whole O.T. is the story of how Satan kept tempting the Jewish people and leading them astray.

b. This in turn led to more fighting and more wars between the Jews and the Gentiles. That is why, in vs. 14, Paul calls this barrier between them “a dividing wall of hostility.” As you all know, that hostility has continued to the present day.

5. So before the coming of Christ, the Gentiles had no hope, no true knowledge of God, and no peace. Sadly, by rejecting Christ, many Jews were not much better off.

B. The Bible describes this problem as being circumcised in their flesh, but not in their hearts (Rom. 2: 25-29).

1. Circumcision was meant to be like a confession of faith. It was meant to mean they believed the promises of God  about the coming of the Messiah and were living by faith in the God of the Bible.

a. Now Christian churches in our day are divided over baptism by immersion and infant baptism. Many feel baptism took the place of circumcision. But the point I am making is whether you were baptized as a baby or later on as an adult, your baptism is no more valuable than circum-cision was if you don’t believe in the Lord Jesus and have Him in your heart. 

b. The outward sign has no meaning without the inward commitment to the Lord Jesus.

2. Likewise, many Jews throughout history have turned away from the Bible and rejected Christ as their Messiah. Without Christ, they have no more hope than the Gentiles. 

a. The apostle John put it this way. In I John 2: 23, he said: “No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.”

b. That is how anyone who desires hope and peace can find it. We can find it in Jesus.

C. That brings us to the good news Paul teaches us in Eph. 2: 13- 18.

1. In vs. 13-14 , he writes: “But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, who has made the two one, and destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”

a. In Christ, Jews and Gentiles are no longer divided.  The Bible says we are all one in Christ. Why? Because Jesus died for all of our sins; and through His shed blood, everyone - Jew or Gentile, man or woman, slave or free- who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved.

b. Sin destroys our relationship with God. It separates us from God. It makes us like an enemy of God. To deliberately sin and disobey God is to be like an enemy of God. But while we were still His enemies, Rom. 5:8 says: “God has shown His love to us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  “Therefore, being justified by faith, we now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). 

2. When we find peace with God, Jesus teaches us to show love to each other.  That is the new commandment that He has given us. Thus Jews and Gentiles who believe in Jesus are no longer divided; in Christ we are united. In Christ, we are “to love one another as Jesus loved us.”

a. In Eph. 2: 15-16, Paul puts it this way: “His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both (Jew and Gentile) to God through the cross, by which He put to death the hostility between them.”

b. So instead of hating each other, Jesus set the example by forgiving and loving us instead. And that is how Christians are to love each other.

In Conclusion: 1. In vs. 17 -18, it says: “He came and He preached peace to you who were far off (meaning the Gentiles) and peace to those who were near (meaning the Jews who had received the O.T.). For through Him, we now both have access to the Father through His Holy Spirit.”

2. My friends, the world may be full of war, but we who know and believe in Jesus have God’s peace within us; and through us, we can offer that same peace to those around us. That is what Jesus wants us to do.