Prejudice, Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. So God not only saved us and made us alive, but God says, look, whenever you, and we'll see this in a moment, whenever you put your faith in Christ, the Bible says you're placed in Christ. And what that means is that where you are, Christ is. In fact, Paul says in another passage, Christ in me, the hope of glory. If you're a believer right now, Jesus Christ is here in your presence. He's inside you through his Spirit.

But where Christ is, so are you. So he said, I've seated you in the heavenly places. Now, these are done deals. God says, I've done this.

This is a finished deal. You not only are saved by grace, but you've been seated in the heavenly places. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt.

Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again, he shows us how God's word meets our world. Over all these last months and there have been so many different things happening, I don't think anybody will ever forget 2020. I don't think anyone can forget it.

It's a year like no other year. But one of the issues that has come up once again in our culture and something that you may feel and something you hear people talking about, that we haven't really addressed culturally to the degree we're addressing it right now. It's a single word. The word is prejudice. Just think over these last months. Prejudice.

You start feeling it, you start talking about it. The Oxford Dictionary says this. Prejudice is an unfair and unreasonable opinion or feeling, especially when found without thought or knowledge.

Wow. Unfair, unreasonable, without thought and knowledge. And yet we're prejudice. Prejudice is part of the human race.

This idea of no thought, no knowledge and still be prejudice. Let me illustrate the principle. Five hundred years B.C. Aristotle.

Made this observation. He said that heavier objects will fall to earth, the gravity faster than lighter objects will. That was his conclusion. And for 2000 years, completely unchallenged. Everyone said Aristotle said it.

It's true. Then in 1589, Galileo decided he would challenge it. And so he brought the leading scientist to the Tower of Pisa.

Now, I don't know how far the tower leaned then in 1589, but he took a 10 pound object in a one pound object up to the top of the tower. And he dropped them both simultaneously. And they observed that it hit the ground at the same time. So he did it two more times, three times in a row.

When he had finished. The scientist said to him, we don't believe our eyes. Aristotle was right. That's prejudice. We don't believe our eyes. Aristotle was right. It's still that way. That tells you how ingrained this idea of an unreasonable prejudice on our part is as being part of human beings.

They've been all over the world. As long as there have been people, there's been prejudice. And what I want to talk about this morning is this. If you were a child of God. There's no place for prejudice in your heart. None.

You have no reason and no point to any prejudice at all. So I want to start where we start. I want you to open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter two, Ephesians chapter two. This is one of the favorite chapters for almost all evangelical believers. You'll notice there'll be verses in this chapter that you probably memorized.

Now, what I want to tell you today is this. Evangelicals love the first 10 verses. They love those and they completely ignore verse 11 on.

We love the first 10, but we don't even think about what occurs after that. In the beginning here, what Paul writes is this. God is going to tell you and me who we really are. That's what God is going to tell us, who we really are. From God's point of view. So he starts out and says this. Paul speaking first to Gentiles, he says, And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.

There you are. That's God's assessment of you before Christ. You were dead in your trespasses and sin.

Wow. Well, by the way, how many things in your life have you seen a corpse do? I start thinking of all the possibilities of what a corpse can do.

Not much, huh? Because they're dead. He said, Yeah, that was you. He said you were dead in your trespasses and sins. He said, in which you formally walk. That's a metaphor for lived according to the course of this world.

In other words, you live just like everybody else in the world and you were dead and they were dead. He said, according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, he said of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. He said, You just simply follow the lead. Of Satan himself. First, the sin originated with him, then spread to mankind. And he says, And that's all you were from God's point of view. Then he changes in verse three and he says this among them, we, too, all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

And we're by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. Notice the pronoun change. And we all. Who's he talking about?

Him. Jews. He's talking about Jews, he says, first of the Gentiles, you were dead in your trespasses and sins.

And by the way, all the Jews, same thing. We were all dead in the trespasses and our of our sins. And he says that we formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh.

We were by nature children, even as the rest. So what he told us so far, what's God's assessment of mankind? You're all dead. The religious Jew or the irreligious Gentile won't matter, you're all dead. Now, if you came for an encouraging message, those first three verses today don't help much, do they? Like, wow, that's what I needed to know. I'm dead.

You were dead. Look at verse four, though, but God. What is the solution to the death of mankind, but God? But God being rich in mercy. Grace is getting what you don't deserve and mercy is not getting what you do deserve.

What you do deserve is the judgment of God. But God is going to show all humankind mercy. He said, But God, he said, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us. For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son for God so loved. Paul says in Romans that while we were still at enmity with God, he loved us. God's solution to man is I love you so much. I'll bestow my mercy on you.

Through my own plan. He said, even when we were dead in our transgressions, God made us alive with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. God says these are all dead people. I'll make them all alive. He's going to tell us how in a moment.

But notice there's nothing that man does. God made us alive. You don't make yourself alive. By the way, that would be a definition in this context of what religion is. What's religion? You make yourself alive.

But here's the problem. How does a dead person make themselves alive? I mean, we've all lost loved ones, though you wish you could look in the casket and say, look, make yourself alive. Dead people can't make themselves alive, but God can. And God, he says, made us alive. He said, by grace we have been saved.

And he raised us up with him and he seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So God not only saved us and made us alive, but God says, look, whenever you and we'll see this in a moment, whenever you put your faith in Christ, the Bible says you're placed in Christ. And what that means is that where you are, Christ is. In fact, Paul says in another passage, Christ in me, the hope of glory. If you're a believer right now, Jesus Christ is here in your presence. He's inside you through his spirit.

But where Christ is, so are you. So he said, I've seated you in the heavenly places. Now, these are done deals. God says, I've done this.

This is a finished deal. You not only are saved by grace, but you've been seated in the heavenly places. He said in verse seven, then so that in the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Oh, by the way, it lasts forever. In the ages to come, God says, I saved you, I made you alive. I put Christ in you and you in Christ and where you are, he is and where he is, you are.

And by the way, this lasts forever. Now, that's great news. That is really, really good news, considering the bad news of verses one to three. But I want you to understand something.

It's all in the context. Of you understanding who you are. All that you and I are, all that we are is a sinner saved by grace. There is nothing else that we are.

You don't bring anything intrinsically good to the table. You know, God saved me because I'm so lovable. You see, now that's not true at all. Now, he explains it in verse eight, the very famous verse. He explains it in verse eight with the word for. And I always tell you that's an explanatory gar in Greek.

Let me explain what I mean. For by grace, you have been saved. By grace, the gift of God, by grace, you have been saved through faith. There's our part through faith.

Now, understand something here. Faith has no merit in and of its own. Everybody has faith. The only merit to faith is what is your faith in? And so no matter everybody in the world has faith, if I were a staunch atheist, I have faith in my own reasoning. I can't prove God doesn't exist, but I believe that faith that he doesn't exist. So I have faith. Everyone has faith. There's no merit in faith.

The reason I say that is someone will interpret this in a little bit different way in a moment. It says, for by grace, you have been saved through faith and that not of yourself. It's the gift of God. The word that.

What does that mean? Because it says and that not of yourselves. It's the gift of God. Hyper-Calvinists will take that passage and say the word that the antecedent to the word that is the word faith. In other words, your saving faith isn't your faith.

God gave you a supernatural faith to actually believe this. That's what he means. But it doesn't. It's really simple in Greek. The word that in Greek is neuter. The word faith and the word grace in this passage are feminine.

You never use a neuter. You see pronoun to talk about something that's feminine. Even John Calvin, when he did this passage himself, said he's not talking about faith or grace. He's talking about salvation or the gift. He's talking about your salvation. Notice for by grace, you have been saved through faith and that your salvation, your gift is not of yourselves. It's the gift of God. Notice why he says that nine, not as a result of works. So no one can boast.

It's very important for us to understand other than faith, which doesn't have merit. What else did you do in order to be a safe person? And the answer is zero. Nothing. Now, you're having bound eternity with God. It's amazing gifts you have.

Paul says in Ephesians one, we have all the spiritual heavenly, all the gifts and spiritual and heavenly places. It's a wonderful thing. But what did you do to get those? Nothing. Now you say, why do you keep saying this?

Because prejudice is always based on your own pride. And I'm here to tell you, you have nothing to be proud of. Nothing.

You didn't bring anything to the table. You just believed what Christ did for you. You know, as he says, not a result of work so that no one can boast.

Now he says, let me explain something, though. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them or live in them. When I think of that and myself, I think I am the work. I am God's workmanship.

And so are you. I am God's workmanship. What I mean, God did this. Whatever I am, God did it. OK, now, after I become saved, do I do good work for God's glory? Yes. That's the point.

He says, yeah, you should walk in them. Not to get saved, but the fact that I am saved. That's about as clear as something could be.

Now, what's interesting about that is so he has said. Everybody's lost. Gentiles are lost. Jews are lost. You're only saved by grace and mercy of God.

That's the only thing you have. So the distinction of human beings is there's no such thing as a Gentile human being or Jewish human being or a black human being or a white human being. From God's point of view, none of that exists.

They're only lost human beings and saved human beings. And the only difference is the grace of God. Through faith, that's a difference. So therefore, and this is what that's so important.

What I've said before was simply this. When you get there and you see what he's talking about and how this works. When you get down to verse 11. Now he tells you why he wrote the first 10 verses. You see, he wrote the first 10 verses, not just to tell us about salvation's by grace and grace alone and faith of faith alone in Jesus Christ. That's true.

And it's wonderful when it makes a great refrigerator magnet. But that's not why he told us. He told us so that we're not prejudice. You should not be prejudice against anyone.

Anyone. There is no room for prejudice in your heart. Now he's going to explain what he means by that. He says, therefore, I remember what I've taught you, if you see it, therefore, in the Bible, what question did he ask?

What is it, therefore? Therefore is his conclusion. In fact, everything he said in the first 10 verses is this is what I want to talk about. Therefore, all of sin and fall short of the glory of God, all are dead, spiritually dead. The only ones who have received the mercy and grace of God have done through through faith. And it doesn't matter if you're a Gentile or a Jew. None of that matters. Therefore, remember that he said formerly you and he's talking now to the Gentiles. In the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision, which is performed in flesh by human hands. You remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the Commonwealth of Israel. Strangers of the covenants of promise and having no hope and without God in the world. Now, the reason he is saying this is this. Everybody's prejudice.

You can go anywhere in the world. And you'll find prejudicial people. I mean, I always think about this when I think of prejudice. I grew up in a town of about three or 4000 people. That was totally the people in that. That's a small town.

All right. And I lived in the west end of town. In the west end of town was called the extension.

It's called the extension of town, not the real town, just the extension. And almost everybody except three or four families in that area. Not my family, but all the families in about eight or 10 blocks there were all Hungarian immigrants.

All of them. They came to work in the factories. My friends, their parents spoke Hungarian.

They're there. My friends could speak English and Hungarian, but they all spoke Hungarian. So when I started having friends who were from the regular part, what we call uptown, their parents even would say to me, Oh, you're from Hunkyville. What? No, you're from Hunkyville. You're down where the Hungarians are. It's only town of 4000. My goodness. They call them Hunkyville.

What is that? It's just prejudice. We're prejudice about almost anything. I mean, you can go anywhere in the world and you'll find people with prejudice. We've had missionaries in Africa and they've talked how prejudice one tribe is against the other tribes.

Unbelievably so. In places like Rwanda, they committed genocide. Because they're prejudice. We hate anybody. Who isn't like us. That's prejudice.

That's the way this is. But of all the people that are prejudice in the world, probably there is no group of people at this time more prejudice than Jews. They're the most prejudice people. And the reason are the most prejudice people. And please understand what I'm saying when I say this is because God initiated it for them.

They had God behind it. You are my chosen people. You see, you are my chosen people. You are not. They aren't, but you are.

So what do you think? We're the chosen people. And they're not the chosen people. So they ended up calling the Gentiles, who everyone who wasn't Jewish is Gentile, they called the Gentiles the filthy goyim, the filthy Gentiles. They didn't have anything to do with Gentiles. In fact, they were socially distancing from Gentiles long before 2020. They social distanced from them completely.

They didn't want to even touch them. They're unclean. That's prejudice. Now, the other group in Ephesus are the Greeks. Now, the Greeks are an extremely prejudicial group of Gentiles. The Greeks are prejudice against anybody who's not Greek.

If you're not Greek, you're no good. The Greeks gave us a word from back then that we still use today. They gave us the word barbarian. OK, and the Greeks view a barbarian is this. Everybody who is not Greek speaks like this.

Bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar. That's the way they speak, and they're all barbarians. But we're Greeks. So you take the prejudicial Greeks and you take the super prejudicial Jews and guess where they all find themselves? In church.

Here we are now in church. You see, and that's not the only problem. The church of Jesus Christ has masters in it and slaves.

Now, there's some prejudice going on here. Masters and slaves, slaves and masters. You see, and that's what Paul is trying to address. So he says to the Greeks, he said, the circumcision calls you uncircumcised.

He said, notice, though, there's things about you that are true. One, you're separate from Christ. Two, you're excluded from Israel, the chosen people. Three, you're strangers of the covenant of promise. Four, you have no hope. And five, you're without God in the world.

Paul sets the record straight for that. And so what we're talking about is two completely, completely lost group of people. In our world, prejudice has become a little more narrow, especially over the last six months. Americans are notoriously prejudiced based on race. That's how Americans see it.

It's them and us, different races. That should never be the case for any believer in Jesus Christ. and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online. At that website you will find not only today's broadcast, but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word, 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website fbcnola.org.

That's fbcnola.org. At our website you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.