As you are making your way back to your seats. I'd invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Ephesians to 11 through 13, which will be our passage for today's sermon. But before we read it, I'd like to point out that our passage today starts with the word. Therefore, now in seminary, we always say, when you see the word, therefore you ask the question, I don't know if anybody knows it.

What's the therefore? Therefore, well this therefore is there for a big reason. It's carrying a lot of weight from the passage that comes before it, is it not? Pastor Mark last week walked us through what is one of the most well-known passages in scripture, and especially for us in the reformed faith. For by grace, you have been saved through.

Faith, and this is not of your own doing. It is the gift of God, not the result of work so that no one may boast for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Paul is saying that by a grace that you cannot earn through a faith that you did not earn, you are saved by God.

And because of this we strive towards obedience to his revealed will. So to introduce our passage, we have to ask, have this context that because of your salvation, because of the way you are saved, therefore, what, let's read together. Please stand with me for the reading of God's word from Ephesians two 11 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.

The prophet Isaiah tells us that people are like grass and beauty, like the flowers of the field, while the grass withers and the flowers fade. But this, the word of our God will stand forever. This is the word of the Lord. I see God, you may be seated.

Therefore remember, therefore, remember, it's important to pause and remember what God has done for us in our lives. And as I stand up here in this pulpit for the first time, I remember my first ever Sunday worshiping at Trinity after I was hired full time and we're actually worshiping right here, but not in this building.

We were worshiping in a tent. Does anybody remember that? Yes. Well, I remember because I was asked to read scripture, and as I walked up to the front and I was reading from the book of Isaiah, I felt this horrible, sharp pain in the back of my leg. I was like, oh no, but I can't shout out, I can't say anything.

I'm reading scripture. I don't wanna distract. So I kept reading and as soon as I was done, I looked down, there was this big old horse fly on the back of my calf. And so I, you know, I did what anybody would do. I had my Bible, this Bible in my hands, and I whacked that horse fly off the back of my leg and I spent the rest of the service annoyed at the wealth that had shown up on my leg.

It, it was annoying, but needless to say, we've come a long way since those days from being in the tent, have we not? But remembering being here five years ago in a field with a porta-potty and a pile of rocks for the kids to play on and a, a tent with horse flies in it, it makes me wonder and appreciate all the more, how God was just as good to us in those days in giving us that tent as he is now in giving us this beautiful building.

But quite a lot has changed. I remember how different things were and how different things are now, and the least of which I have to worry about is horse flies getting on my lake. But if you see one, let me know. I've got my Bible. But this practice of remembering how things were and how things are is the core of what Paul is asking the church to do in our passage today.

Therefore, remember, therefore remember, and to summarize, the main idea that Paul wants the church to remember is this, because Christ has saved us from the alienation of who we were. We now have a new belonging in who we are because Christ has saved us from the alienation of who we were. We now have a new belonging in who we are, and that is the, those are the two points I want to consider in our passage today.

The alienation of who you were and a new belonging in who you are. So 0.1, the alienation of who you were in 0.2, a new belonging in who you are. So let's start off with the alienation of who you were. In the first part of today's passage, Paul is reminding the Gentiles of the Church of Ephesus that they were at one time strangers from the covenant, alienated from God's people and separated from Christ.

He says it like this. Look with me at the first two verses of our passage. Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision or saying you were called the uncircumcised by the people who are circumcised. 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, and to understand why Paul is separating the Gentiles from the commonwealth of Israel and using terms like circumcision and uncircumcision and covenants.

To do so, we have to knowledge, have a knowledge of how God has been working with his people from the beginning. It's why it's so important for us not just to read the New Testament, though it's easier, but also to read the Old Testament. Everything in the New Testament reflects on the Old Testament and everything that the New Testament's talking about and what's coming next still reflects on the Old Testament and here that's happening.

Paul is talking about after the fall of Man through Adam and Eve, sin entered the world. But God made a covenant a promise that he would do something about it, that he would send somebody. That's Genesis three 15, the fancy word, the proto Gallian, the first gospel. And later God calls a man named Abram, and he, he makes a covenant with him saying that through his descendants, all of the nations would be blessed, all of the nations would be blessed.

And so from Abraham who becomes Abraham, the nation of Israel is formed. And they're God's chosen people and God gives him them His law so that they might obey it and they might be wholly pure and clean before God. You read that in Leviticus. That's what the law is for everyone else. All the other nations that are not Israel are considered Gentiles and they're generally, but not always outside of the covenant of grace that God makes with his people.

But one of the signs that that marks that distinguishes God's people from the others is the mark of circumcision. But God is consistent throughout the Old Testament that in telling Israel that, hey, part of the reason I'm making you my people and giving you my law, so that is so that you might be a light to the nation so that you might show everybody else me, he says this in Isaiah 49, 6, I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth and what happens?

Through Israel, through the line of David. As as promised in two Samuel seven, Jesus Christ is born to live a perfect life and die for the sins of many, so that all who believe in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. It's the, is the great news of our gospel. And after the sacrifice in the resurrection of Christ, though, Jesus tells the disciples at the great commission to do what?

Go and make disciples of all nations. Even the Gentiles. Even the Gentiles who were once separate from the covenant strangers to the covenant strangers, to God's people as shown through their uncircumcision, are now God's people of people who are not defined by ethnicity, but defined by faith. So here in Ephesians, we see the fruit in the payoff of the story that God had been telling and had promised for thousands of years, and it is beautiful.

It's beautiful. It's one of unity. It's the culmination of God's story that he'd been telling for thousands of years. And so now for these new Christian Gentiles here in the church of Ephesus who are welcomed into the covenant of grace, Paul's command is to remember what it was like before you were in the covenant.

Remember what it was like before you were saved. Remember who you were. Remember what you acted like. Why? Well, it's difficult to see how far you've come without recognizing where you started. One thing I love about doing youth ministry is I have the chance to watch so many of them grow up so quickly.

I've been doing it for five years, which for me has felt like a long time, but I've been going to school the whole time. I've been doing the same thing. I've been going to work every day. It, not much has changed for me, but for the youth, I've watched some of them grow up from little kids into adults. It's amazing.

Growing in their faith from something that they maybe have heard about to maybe something their parents brought them to do at church, to something that they actually believe. And while it's easy to notice that in others, especially those who are growing up so fast like kids or teenagers, sometimes it's hard for us to notice what God is doing in our own lives.

'cause we live with ourselves every day. We don't notice those changes. Who we were without him to who we are with him. We don't notice those changes as much. And Paul's words for us mean that we too must remember that at one time we, all of us were separated from Christ. All of us were strangers to the covenants, and all of us were alienated from God's people.

We all had a life of unrepentant sin and a lack of growth in righteousness. Now. You might be thinking there, sitting there thinking to yourself, okay, Nathan, well, it sounds like you're saying when I became a Christian, I left behind the sinful, disobedient, angry, hateful, hardened hearted person that I was, and now I'm supposed to be none of those things.

But actually I feel like the old person is still me sometimes. Like I still feel the sin and the guilt and the shame and the thoughts that I think and the things I say to other people. And yes, me too. I'm right there with you. I feel that. But the promise of the gospel is not that we are made perfect when God saves us, it's that we are being made perfect when God saves us and youth group are going through the book of Philippians and a few weeks ago we talked about Philippians one, six, and Paul says, and I'm sure of this, that he who began a good work and you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ, not now.

God began the good work in you. He will perfect you, but he has not perfected you yet. The Westminster Confession of Faith says it this way in chapter nine, when God converts a sinner and translates him into the state of grace, he frees him from his natural bondage under sin, and by his grace alone enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good.

Yet so that as thy by that reason of his remaining corruption, he does not perfectly nor only will that which is good, but also will that which is evil. We want cessation from our sin. We want perfection. We long for that, but that's not what we experience right now. It's not. We have this war of two natures of who we were and who we are now.

It's a war, but there is good news about this war. Tim Keller says it like this. When you become a Christian, you don't move from warfare to peace. You move from a battle. You cannot win to a battle you cannot lose. You move from a battle. You cannot win to a battle that you cannot lose. So Paul, in our passage to the Gentiles today says, Hey, you who were once far off, remember what it was like when you were losing that battle.

Remember how far God has brought you into a phase where you cannot lose that battle? But now I think remembering the old self is easier for some of us than others. For those of us who became Christians after our childhood, you might more easily be able to see how much God has done in you. How much God's grace has changed you from who you were, and that's amazing.

I've heard so many of your testimonies of how who you were and who you are now, and that is awesome. But for others of us who grew up in the church like me, maybe you were baptized as an infant. You may not remember at a time when you did not know Christ, and that is also awesome. That is what I hope for for the kids at this church, that they never know a day without Christ, without Christ's love for them.

That's what we want. That's what we hope for, but it might make remembering the old self difficult. Or That's what I thought when I first read this, but when any of us, any of us experience the corruption of sin, when any of us feel, feel far too guilty to call ourselves Christians, when we feel overwhelmed by dark thoughts and doubts, when we experience the old self, and that that's true for new and old Christians alike.

When we experience that we believe sin is winning, but that is a flashback to who we were. That is living like the alienated self that is living like not who you are today. We forget. That's why we're called to remember. It's living like the old self, but whether we remember when we were alienated or we only know that at one time we were born into sin and separated from the covenant and alienated, we all experience the reality that when we forget who God is made us to be and act like we act like we are not saved, we act like we are not the person we are.

It's a tension. It's that tension that we will struggle with our whole lives. We'll be made perfect at the day of Christ, not now. Paul talks about this tension in a really relatable way in Romans seven. You might already know what I'm talking about for I do not understand my own actions for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me for I know that nothing good dwells within me. That is in my flesh for, I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For, I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

Now, if I do, what I do not want is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. I love that passage because it is so relatable, is it not? The difference between the old self and the new self is this, Paul says it in our passage today. The old self had no hope, but we have hope. We have hope. We have hope that he who began a good work in us will bring it to completion.

That is our hope. It makes the struggle worth it. That tension. It makes it worth it. When we forget that we are no longer alienated, we grow content in that sin, we grow unwilling to move forward through it. That's why Paul tells us to remember how far God has brought us, and remember the belonging that we have in Christ today by forgetting who we once were.

We forget who we are now. We forget that we have a new belonging. And that brings us to 0.2, a new belonging in who you are, a new belonging in who you are. After reminding the Gentiles and Ephesus that a at one time you did not belong, that they once were far off. Paul then says this in first verse 13, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, brought near by your your own work.

No brought ear by your personal value that you bring to the table. No. Brought ear by your wealth to pay your way in. No. Brought ear by yourself. Righteousness, absolutely not. You don't belong by any of those things. You belong because Christ earned righteousness for you and his death, and he's delighted to call you his church, his sons and his daughters.

You are adopted into a family in which you belong. You are. I remember that belonging is something that I've always wanted and maybe it's something that you want too. Belonging is a general innate desire that we have from a young age. I think we all have experienced a time when we do not belong. When I was in middle school, I had a friend who I hung out with all the time, and his family was more wealthy than mine, but that never really mattered all that much.

We were just going over to his house and hanging out. But I remember one day after school, his dad came downstairs and said, Hey, we're gonna go to the country club for dinner. I said, great, cool. We're gonna go get dinner. But he looked at me and he said, you're gonna have to change. There's a dress code.

And I was probably wearing some like nerdy graphic t-shirt, didn't fit the dress code. And so I had to borrow my friend, a friend's, you know, collar shirt. And I had very little experience with country clubs at this point in my life. But we got into his Porsche and we drove over through the gates of the country club and we drove up and I got out and a man took the car away who was the valet, and we walked into one of the nicest buildings I'd ever been in.

And that's when I started to feel like I don't belong. Not only did I have to change what I looked like, but I was like, I've never been to a place like this before. I didn't know the etiquette, I didn't know how to act. I didn't know all these people and I really didn't know why I went to the bathroom, why there was a room before the bathroom.

I still, I had to look that up a few days ago. 'cause I still don't know. But I really didn't know what I should order. When I sat down, what was, what was appropriate for me to order the menu? Had prices for food that I was shocked by. I had never seen prices like that. Everything far, seemed far too expensive for me as a guest to get so to fit in, to pretend that I belonged.

I was just gonna order what my friend did. Genius, great plan. But when the waiter came over, he, of course started with me. I said, oh boy. Okay. So I freaked out and in my most confident tone I said, I will have the kids' hamburger and french fries, which was the cheapest thing on the menu. And it was cor, of course, met with strange looks from my friend's dad and my friend.

But to me, it seemed like the right thing to do because I didn't want to impose, I wanted to belong, I wanted to fit in. It stemmed from a feeling like I did not belong there. And I think most of us have experienced that feeling of not belonging before in some way. I. Maybe when you were a kid, you felt like you didn't, you didn't make friends easily at school.

You didn't belong on the playground, you didn't play the same games, you didn't like the same things. Or maybe in the classroom you didn't understand the lessons as much. Everyone else seems to get it. I don't seem to get it. What's wrong with me? And as you get older, as teenagers, many teenagers question if their friends actually like them.

They find out that their friends hung out without them, and they say, why wasn't I invited? What is it about me that I don't belong? That they didn't want me there? Or you're, you are on the outside of an inside joke. They made memories without me. Why aren't I worthy enough to hear this joke, to be a part of this?

I don't belong. As an adult, we have even more opportunities to feel like we don't belong. How much money we make, whether we have a spouse, kids, what our kids are interested in, their hobbies, where we live, what we do for work, our own hobbies, who we vote for. We all have opportunities to feel like we don't belong with others.

We've all known this isolation, this otherness at some point in our lives because we want to belong and sometimes we don't. But in our passage today, Paul is telling the Gentiles that they do now belong and that nothing will take that from them. You didn't earn it and nothing will take it from you. It's characterized as a juxtaposition, which is a fancy word to say, a contrast to the first part of the passage.

Remember that at one time you were separated from Christ, you were separated. No longer remember that you were one strangers from the covenant. You were strangers. No longer remember that there was once a division between you and the Jewish. There is a division no longer, and I think that that point there is where we find an important.

Message from this passage for us today, because see, if you've read scripture up until this point, you'll notice that from the beginning, from the inception of Israel as a nation, they're constantly at odds with the Gentiles around them. War exiles, pagan gods idolatry. It's around 2000 years of tension and Israel following the laws and, and trying to be God's people and the Gentiles not following the laws and appearing unclean and unholy to them.

And it causes what Paul later goes on in the next verse for next week, to call a dividing wall of hostility put up between these two groups, a wall. But if you've read the book of Acts, you know that this wall did not come down easily after the death of Christ. Even Peter struggled first to accept that Gentiles would, could be part of God's people Now.

Peter who walked with Jesus struggled to understand that. And if you've read the gospels, you know that the people that Jesus corrected the most were these Jewish religious leaders who placed so much identity and so much value in their own ability to follow their law and their own ethnicity, that they were blind to their own God.

When he showed up to them face to face, they didn't get it. See, when we find identity in something in our lives, it sneakily becomes the chief aspect of who we are. All of a sudden, battle lines are drawn. A wall is put up between us and the people who don't have that identity. It's called weaponized belonging.

We weaponize our own belonging. It's saying, okay, I belong here and I found a belonging that I value, but everybody else who's not in here, I don't know. I don't know about you. This is the root of the human tendency to exclude and divide racism, nationalism. The differentiation between those who have and those who have not.

My political views versus their political views, my team versus their team. But remember that the church in Ephesus was not just made up of Gentiles, it was made up of Jewish people as well. This is not just a message. Our passage today is not just a message to the Gentiles to remind them of who they are.

It's also a message to the Jewish people in the church who say that you know Paul saying, Hey, your identity can no longer be just in your ethnicity and your nationality, but because of Christ's death, both Jew and Gentile, both those people who you thought could never be a part of the group that you belong to, they now belong and you belong.

You're equal in the eyes of God. It's what Paul says in Galatians 3 28. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female for you are all one in Christ Jesus. It's beautiful. He's telling them, Hey, you've received a new identity in Christ and it's your chief belonging.

It's your, it's your main belonging, your, your core identity as, as a Christ follower, as a Christian, as being in the church. That is who you are and that is true for you and for me as well today. That's true for us. When we belong to the community of God, it's a belonging that's meant to be our core identity.

That is not only how we view ourselves, but how we view others as well. It outweighs everything else that we built for up for ourselves as identity. It's not that those things are bad, but they must take a backseat to who you are as a Christian, as a Christ follower is what you have the most in common with the people sitting in here.

But just like we forget that we were once alienated, we also forget that we belong. We forget that we belong. I know how many of us struggle to get here on a Sunday morning, or maybe we hesitate to go to community groups or even join one because we feel like we don't belong in that group. We feel like we can't possibly belong.

Our guilt and shame from a week of sin feels too heavy. My family's not as perfect as everyone else's. I, I don't want, I don't want that comparison to happen. I don't want people to see my mess. My mess is too much. When we fall back into that alienation and we forget that we belong, we forget that we belong.

When you sit here on a Sunday morning though, and you look around and you see one another, you see your brothers and sisters, those that's who you are in Christ as brothers and sisters. But you also see people who are wounded by sin just as much as you are. We are all absolutely wounded by sin. There's no perfect one who attends here.

There's not. We were all once alienated. We were all once separated from Christ. Nobody has earned their way in. Nobody has done it by their own virtue and their own righteousness and their own ability to follow the law. Nobody has done it. That means you sitting here right now on March 23rd at Trinity Presbyterian Church, you belong here.

And I don't mean in some generic way that it's say to everyone everywhere you sitting right here belong in Christ. That is the reason you belong. The person sitting to the right of you, to the left of you, in front of you, behind you, your kids, you belong. And that is an eternal relationship that we have with one another.

It's not just something that you have for a short time. It's an, it's an eternal relationship. It means that the work that you put into the people in this room, the people in this church, the prayer requests that you share with people, the prayers you pray for people, the friendships you make, the meals you make for one another, the events that you attend, the invitations and the hospitality, all of that has eternal significance.

These are eternal relationships bought by Christ's blood in which you have a new belonging. Again, it's not because of the money that you have that you fit in here. It's not because of the clothes that you wear. It's not because everyone really likes you or thinks you're cool, although I do really like you guys and I think you're cool.

It's because you belong in Christ. That is the reason. That is the reason you belong. It's because Christ looked at you and your sin and your worthlessness, and just like he does for every other Christian, he says, you, I want you and my family. I want you and my family, you're not worth anything outside of me, but I give you worth.

I want you, you didn't earn this. I want you, it's an unearned, but a valuable belonging that you have. But I think though that one major application for this passage that we must remember is that we have to avoid the same temptation that the Jewish people fell into is making our belonging in Christ and us versus them mentality.

It can happen easily. I, I remember I attended a Christian private school before college, and one of the things that they would teach us in our senior year is it was, it was a big focus on, hey, you're about to go out into the world. You're about to go off into college or wherever you end up. Um, and it's different.

You're gonna encounter the world. And it was, these were important lessons, um, about the dangers and temptations of evil that may, you know, approach us. And that, and it's core, it's a good lesson to teach, right? Discernment, wisdom, apologetics, very important. But in practice, for me it looked a little different because when I showed up to the University of Tulsa, I had internalized some fear of the other.

And yes, I did encounter different religions and I did encounter different gender identities and atheist professors who were antagonistic to Christianity. But I went in with the attitude that all these other people were out to get me. Rather than realizing that these were just wounded people who were in need of shown being shown God's love, that's who they were.

It's part of the reason why Paul tells us to remember who we were. Because when you encounter people that are not yet Christians, when you encounter people that you've made into the enemy, if you remember that at one time you were just as separated from God and just as alienated from the covenant, if you realize you were just like them, then you remember that they are in just as need of grace as you were and as you are.

I've heard it said this way. If the death of Christ doesn't destroy the hostility you have for another group of people, then you don't understand what he did for you on the cross. If the death of Christ doesn't destroy the hostility you have for another group of people, then you don't understand what he did for you on the cross.

This was the sin of the Pharisee and Jesus's parable in Luke 18 who said, thank you, God, that I'm not like other men. That was his sin. We cannot have an undeserved belonging and then use it as a weapon against people who don't yet belong. It doesn't work that way. Our call is to outlove the world is to be a light in the darkness.

You cannot be a light in the darkness if your fear of the dark ever keeps you from entering into it. The world is full of broken, alienated. People like you once were, like I once was, who desperately need Christians who actually believe in the transformative power of the gospel for them. To show them that what it really means to have a true belonging, we must be a light to the world and show them what it means to have a belonging.

That we believe it, that we believe we belong. If you are not yet a Christian in here and you feel like you don't belong here, or even if you are a Christian and you feel like you don't belong here, I'm sorry if you felt alienated from the church because of actions of Christians, that's a hard thing.

There are none here, I'll say it again. There are none here who deserve the grace that they've received. Nobody's earned their way in. And what God requires of you if you're not yet a Christian, is a recognition of your own woundedness and your own alienation, and a repentance of your sin showing that he is at work in your life and he has given you grace and faith.

That's what last week's passage was about. But if you're here today and you struggle to place your own identity first and foremost in Christ above other identities you have, like your political party or your family, your home, your income, remember that you have a new belonging. Something that you have to remind yourself every day.

And again, those things are not bad in themselves, but they are not who you are at your core. They can't be, it's not an easy thing just to replace an identity, right? But that's why you and I need each other. It's why we have the church. It's why we remind each other of who we are daily. We live our lives as a family, as a body, building each other up in the recognition that we are made new.

We don't have to live in that forgetfulness. We live in remembering. And finally, if you're a Christian who weaponizes your own belonging in Christ to look down on others, realize that this is a grave sin. It is one need, uh, a need of repentance. It's one I must fight all the time. It's one I think that many of you must fight as well.

It begins in doing what Paul says here, and remembering that you were at one time alienated you were at one time alienated and separated from Christ and a stranger to his covenant. Our calling in this world is to show God's love. So that people might see the power of his grace. There's a power in his grace, a grace that you did not earn, and a belonging that you cannot lose.

Let's pray.

Lord God, I thank you so much for Trinity for this church. I thank you that you have made us into a family who belong with each other. God, I pray that as a church, we never forget our own unworthiness to merit salvation, but we also never forget the worth that you showed for us in your death on the cross.

Lord God, let us be a church who loves those who currently experience alienation for you, from you Lord, and let us be a light in the darkness and walk in humility as we do so. Amen.

Sermon transcript is computer generated.