One Reconciliation

We're going to get Ephesians 2. I do need to mention one thing I forgot to mention, and that is if you are a merge age young adult, we're doing a little QA this coming Saturday, March 2nd, at our home. For any of you that are interested, 7-9, it's a special merge event, and you can come, and we're going to have a time of just talking about and answering any questions you've got about life and doctrine and theology and anything. It'll be a fun time together. We are in Ephesians 2 this morning.

And so I hope that you're there. My wife Used to have a way when things would hit like DEF CON 5 with our girls at home, a way of ultimate punishment. And they hated it. By the way, if your kids like the punishment you give, you need new punishment. You need to inflict pain upon them appropriately.

She would, this is with the two oldest girls, they're three years apart, they're arguing, fighting, which I know probably never happens in your home, but in our home, every once in a while it happened. And she would finally, when they would not stop and they were little girls, she would put two chairs together and she would make them sit knee to knee. and stare at each other. And just stare. Make them look right into each other's eyes.

Yeah.

Now, I've talked with my girls about that punishment, and it was their least favorite. They hated it. And I think that it's wonderful. And it's wonderful that they hated it. Yeah.

Because what it did is it taught them something implicitly, even in the subconscious of their life moving forward. And that was that the person that you're so angry with right now. The person that you're so frustrated with. The person that you least want to be around in the whole world. is part of your family.

and you cannot run from them. You have to face them. Life is filled with people. with situations, with dynamics. that you have to face.

Now, I had no idea Kyle was going to share a story about praying for a guy's stick. Right? And then This guy who uses a stick to defend himself and a shepherd, which is sort of interesting, by the way, right? Use one as a tool of vocation, one as a tool of shepherding or caring for cattle and so forth, and one as the same thing as a tool of weaponizing. That Kyle ends up being a part of helping him understand that the gospel is the kind of thing that doesn't just work vertically, but it works horizontally.

And then this man who carries a stick to defend himself has to learn what it is in that moment to lay down his stick. With a friend, with somebody who's he's wronged, to sort of sit knee to knee. as it were, and engage. This text is a text about that in some ways. And I want to walk us into that, but to do it effectively, we probably need to see the text that sits, I think, behind this text in the life of Paul.

So if you look up on the screen, we'll talk about one reconciliation, but you're going to see from Acts chapter 21.

Now, just by way before I read this passage. From Acts 22. All the way Pretty much to the end of Acts. You have Paul making his way progressively toward Rome. because he's gotten himself into legal trouble, so to speak.

Starts with the Jews and then moves to the Romans. He appeals to Caesar. At one point, they tell him you probably could have been let go, but you appealed to Caesar.

So to Caesar, you appealed, to Caesar, you'll go. And the last portion, last fifth or so of the book of Acts is all about this journey, this movement through trial. all the way through across the sea and then ultimately To Rome, but it all starts here. This is the incident that causes the problem. For Paul.

Now, what I want you to do is pay close attention to what is underlined when I read it, because knowing that this incident is what sits behind Paul heading. To Rome, and knowing that he is writing this Ephesian letter, most likely from prison there. Gives us an indication into what's sitting at the backdrop for him as he writes it.

So we read. When the seven days We're almost completed. The Jews from Asia, seeing him in a temple, stirred up the whole crowd, laid hands on him. Crying out, Men of Israel, help. This is the man who's teaching everyone everywhere against the people and the law and this place.

He's violating our Judaism. Moreover, he even brought Greeks, Gentiles, into the temple. and has defiled this holy place. This is their objection. For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple.

Accusing him of something. I just want you to see the central nature of their accusation. is he violated our temple by bringing a Gentile in. Then all the city was stirred up, and the people ran together. They seized Paul, dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut.

And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion. He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. Then the tribune came up and arrested him, ordered him to be bound with two chains. And he inquired who he was and what he had done.

Ephesians chapter 2. Keep that text in mind. Keep what's underlined there in mind and listen. We're going to look at the middle portion, as I told you two weeks ago when we were in this text. The middle portion of a broader section, 2.11 through 22 is one section.

We looked at 2.11 through 13 this morning. We're going to look at 2, verse 14 through 18. Verse 11, I'll begin to give us context. Therefore, And the therefore means in light of the gospel, that has been articulated in chapter 2, verse 1 through verse 10. In light of that, remember that at one time you were Gentiles in the flesh.

That many of you were Uncircumcised, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision. The Jews looked at you and they looked at you condescendingly because you were not circumcised, which is made in the flesh by hands. And I told you two weeks ago that that's Paul's way of saying it's not a real spiritual circumcision. It didn't do anything for your spiritual life. It was just something material, but the Jews were trusting in it.

falsely, and now they falsely looked at you, Gentiles, condescendingly because you didn't have the same thing in your flesh, that mark of religiosity and tradition, and now they're looking at you condescendingly. Remember that you, you Gentiles, were at the same time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. You didn't have citizenship in Israel. You were strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. You were lost.

You had no connection to God or his people. And they looked at you. and saw that you were disconnected and they were condescending. toward you because of it, but now. In Christ Jesus.

You who once were far off have been brought near, what? By being circumcised? No. By obeying the law? No.

By being obedient? No. By holding to the tradition? No. By becoming citizens of Israel?

No. What? been brought near by the Blood of Christ.

Now With that in mind, We go to verse 14. And we'll read 14 through 18.

Okay. For he himself is our peace. who has made us both one. and is broken down in his flesh. This Jesus in his flesh is death, the dividing wall of hostility.

By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one. No. Man. In place of the two.

So making peace and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility, and he came and preached peace. To you who were far off, that's the Gentiles, and peace to you, those who were near, that's the Jews. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

So as we begin to summarize this text, right? What is it saying? It's saying that Christ in his death has eliminated the hostility that sat between two ethnic peoples, Jews? Gentiles, and in so doing, he eliminated that, but how did he do that? He did that by bringing them together, but bringing them together to because of and to the foot of the cross.

and pointing out that in the cross the Greeks, Gentiles, in the cross, the Jews, We're all reconciled to God, and therefore they find their reconciliation with one another. And in doing that, he doesn't make the Gentiles Jews, and he doesn't make the Jews Gentiles. In doing that, he says he makes one another. New man. It's a whole new thing.

A whole new creation.

Okay, so this is about reconciliation vertically. that yields reconciliation horizontally.

Now with that said Right? In a sense. Which it was completely unplanned. And I mean this, I had no idea. that when Kyle stood up here, he would share a story.

about the gospel. Not just reconciling a person. But then that person immediately goes and finds a way to get reconciled to somebody that he had a broken relationship with. That's the message today. That's the message.

So, what I want to do is, I want to think about seven different, you'll see it here, but seven implications of Christ being our peace. It's in your notes. If you want to jot them down, that's fine. But this is the first one, and we just have to start right out of the gates and work our way through the text. A rejection of peace with one another.

is a rejection of Christ. It just is.

Now, even hearing that, I understand. But you don't know. What they said. I don't. But you don't know the way they're acting.

I don't. But you don't know The baggage I bring to it. I don't. You don't know? Their past pattern.

I don't. You just don't get it. I don't. And I don't need to. They don't need to.

Do you know how much unspirituality is overcomplicated by you don't know? You don't know? Um Look at your text. Verse 14, for he himself is our peace. Christ is our peace, who has made us both.

One. has made us both one. This idea is, this is what Jesus has accomplished for us. He has brought us who were and you're not more alienated from someone in here, Than you were some or some fellow believer, than you were. uh comparative to a Jew and a Gentile in a first century.

There's so much animosity, so much history.

So many cultural artifacts that make them enemies of one another. They're just apart. And he says, but he has done something, and he has made you both. We'll talk more about sort of how he did that. That's we'll get into in the next point.

But for now. You need to ask a couple of questions. Yourself. Three of them. Here's the first one.

Is your offense with whoever has frustrated you in your life. Is that offence more precious to you than Christ is? If it is, you'll hold on to it. If it is, you'll let it hang there. If it's more precious to you than Christ.

Is your anger more powerful than the blood of Jesus? Is it more powerful? than the blood of Christ. If it is You'll reject the blood of Christ and you'll stay angry. Is your wound deeper than his wounds?

Is your wound?

So deep. It's cut you so deep. That the oh you know, I I had to I I mentioned I preach my uncle's memorial. It's a little over a week ago. And my cousin beautifully sang a song at that that I had never heard.

And I think it's an old song, but some reason I'd never heard it. It's called Scars in Heaven. I don't know if you've ever heard the song. But the song has this beautiful line about how when you enter glory, You are enraptured by one who has scars on his hands, and they're the only scars that will be there. For eternity.

I was struck by that. The idea that the wounds of Christ are the only wounds that will persist.

So if that kind of vision of eternity is what sits there for us as believers, why would you let another vision enrapture your present? where you hold on to wounds over against his wounds.

So those three again. Is your offence more precious to you than Christ is to you? Is your anger more potent than the blood? And Is your wound deeper than his wounds? Jesus preached a bit about this, Matthew 5, 22 through 24.

In the Sermon on the Mount, he said, But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the counsel. And whoever says, You fool, will be liable to hellfire.

So, if you're offering your gift at the altar, you're coming to worship, and there remember that your brother has something against you, what are you supposed to do? Keep on going. Leave your gift there before the altar and go. Be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift. Don't abandon worship.

But abandon it for a moment. Don't abandon it forever. Get back to worship, but do not get the cart ahead of the horse. And don't pretend that there's peace with you and God when there's not peace between you and your brother or you and your sister. The blood of Christ.

and what he wrought. on your behalf says for you to get that order properly. Secondly. Accepting Christ as our peace means a release of hostility. For he himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down in his flesh, and he gives this picture: the dividing wall of hostility.

By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, That he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace. When I read the end of verse 14, 15, often scholars have various interpretations of what is the dividing wall referring to. I think sometimes Sometimes in my reading of Greek New Testament. Commentaries over the years, if there's one thing that I see that sometimes I see scholars do that I think sometimes they miss. is uh sometimes they can get so in the trees that they miss the forest.

And what I mean by that is they're looking for that one thing that this thing is when it seems like it might be bigger than one thing.

So they asked the question, what's the dividing wall? What is it? And so it's this, it's this, or it's this, or it's this. And I'll submit to you that I think the dividing wall has a it's it's it's sitting here as an illustration, so it's physically pointing to something. It's pointing to relationally to something.

And it's pointing theologically to something, and it's all right there in the text for us. It's just saying something about a number of things that all relate the same thing.

So the Balustrad was this four and a half foot wall that separated the court of the Jew from the court of the Gentiles.

Now remember, I read to you Acts 21. What is it that Paul is in prison for? He essentially ignores the dividing wall. That's what he's accused of. Not that he did that, but he's accused of that.

He's accused of violating that, and so it's probably not by accident writing from prison. Later, he alludes to that very thing. as this thing that separates people.

Now the dividing wall of what? What's it described as? The dividing wall which is. Hostility or enmity. It's relational discord.

It's I want nothing to do with you because of the way you are. It's what you symbolize, what you stand for, the kind of person you are, and therefore I am separate from you. For them, it was ethnic enmity. You're a Jew, you're a Gentile, stay away from me. And the animosity that came entrenched.

In that idea. It's one of the reasons, quite frankly, that a number of years ago, I did a sermon series that dealt with sinful systems in our culture, and this was the text that I preached. Uh in regard to racism. And the sin of racism. You can go back and listen to that online.

But this text is very much about that. This is utterly ancient racism, by definition, is what he's addressing in the text. And he's trying to show that the cross mitigates hostility, but it mitigates it beyond just ethnic enmity. There's even a kind of theological piece that's pointed to, and that is explained in the next phrase. In his flesh, the divine law of hostility, how do you do it?

How do you do it? Look at it. By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.

So, by taking the law that has all of these commandments that expresses itself in, in the Greek word is the dogma scene, the dogma. expressing itself in the decrees Expressing itself in the things that we hold you to. He does away with those.

So If he removes the law, from separating a Jew and a Gentile. Here's a question for you. Why if your brother Why if your sister in Christ has rubbed you wrong and you are offended by them, what they've said, what they've done, how they've acted, the way that they've treated you? Why is it that you get to continually hold them at the foot of the law rather than at the foot of the cross? Why?

That has been done away with. The word for abolish there is the idea of catargeo. It means it's been rendered inoperable. Think of it like a military place that has been bombed. It's not that it has been completely done away with and annihilated.

It means that that location that has been bombed has been rendered inoperable. It no longer can do what it once was able to do. It doesn't function in the same way. any longer. Romans 10, 4, For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Now, that verse is gorgeous and beautiful when I sit with my sin before the cross of Christ. That's wonderful. I love that verse. I just don't love it as much when it comes to me applying that cross to your life. I don't like it as much.

Because you ticked me off. You just niggle at me. You got the same patterns of behavior. I got the same patterns of behavior. And now I'm Being called to rehearse this thing that I love to receive but have a hard time giving.

Yeah.

So what does that mean? That means that I have to assess you less than I assess me because I have to ask the question, why are my pipes so corroded that I have a hard time letting the gospel pass through them? I have to ask some important and crucial questions about that by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, what, that he might create. That he might create in himself one new. Man, in place of the two, so making peace.

Number three, accepting Christ as our peace means accepting. one another. in one body. Here's why I needed to emphasize this point. Because We Take the concept of peace.

And we tend to diminish it. from its background in the Hebrew concept of shalom. And so for us, peace becomes the cessation. of hostility. Which it is in part, but that's only half the story.

Peace is also the active acceptance of someone. It's not merely that I'm no longer going. to be have my feathers ruffled by you. I can do that in a lot of ways. I can do that and be hardened toward you.

I can do that and ignore you. I can do that and disengage from you. I can do that and hate you. It does not mean. that we have peace.

It means that we have the cessation of external hostility. But he didn't just cease external hostilities. He made peace. He made peace. So that means that I have the work in my soul.

of accepting one another. Romans 15:7 reads, Therefore, welcome one another. And that would be okay. But then darn it all Scripture messes it all up for my anger. As Christ has welcomed you.

Who here has repented of the same sin repeatedly?

Okay. Okay, two of you, two of you, raised your hands.

Okay. The rest of you meet with those two afterwards, and you can learn what it is to repent of the same thing repeatedly. Apparently the rest of you have done it, you just haven't repented it. Um You go back again. And again, and again, and again, and again.

And you can feel like Jesus is tired. The father's tired of hearing your same old whiny Complaining, I did it again, I did it again, I did it again. And you'd be wrong. He's not. He receives you.

He receives you. He doesn't say again Crying out loud.

Sorry, Jerry. I didn't mean to look at you. He doesn't do that. No, no, no, no. Why?

Because his... Scarred? Hard hands are open still. And he receives you. He receives you.

He was wounded and remains wounded for you.

Okay. So he receives you, and now you have a responsibility to rehearse that to others. And you, who don't bear the weight of all the sins of the world, who you bear the weight of your own sin and the sins of people in your sphere that sin against you. Yes, you do have that. I understand that.

But that is not the same as bearing away the sins of the whole world that your Savior did upon the cross. And you? in that limited offense. don't have the right to withhold. You have to accept one another.

Sometimes I think we take a bible, we're kind of like the old actor W. C. Fields. There was an old anecdote about W. C.

Fields. His character was often like comedic, but curmudgeonly and stuff like that. From from what I've seen, he was actually kind of like that. In real life, he kind of played a character that he was kind of like. In fact, he used to have a pellet gun that he would hunch down behind shrubs, and people who came upon his property, he would shoot them with it.

So he was not exactly the kindest man ever, and in the latter portions of his life. He was leafing through the text of Scripture of all things, and a friend came upon him, quite astonished that he, W.C. Fields, was reading through the text of Scripture. What would he be doing? And they asked him that.

They were surprised. What are you doing? Why are you reading the Bible? And his answer as he looked down was: I'm looking for loopholes. I'm looking for loopholes.

I'm looking for loopholes. I think sometimes that might be how we approach things. But you don't know how hard it's been. We'd like to create loopholes. The gospel won't let us.

Uh Accepting Christ as our peace. Means that we as the church become a whole new race that's raceless. You could say we're a whole new class that's classless. If you want to say it that way. He points out here that we are making peace here, that this peace has been made in this one.

New Man, it's a it's a third. It's taking one ethnic group and another ethnic group and bringing them together into one new man. 1 Corinthians 12, 13. For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body. One body.

Church, Jews or Greek, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one.

Now here's what that means. You can say it's uh uh uh uh race that's raceless now. Class, it's class. I put that in quotes, by the way, because that was commentator Harold Hohner's reference, and I love that statement: a race that's raceless. Here's the idea.

The idea is that when you speak about your identity, how do you speak about it? Right? A white Christian? You're an Asian Christian? You're a black Christian.

You're a Latino, Latina Christian, Hispanic Christian? You're a Polynesian. Christian? Is that how you think of yourself? Do you think of yourself, your primary identity through your class?

Through your gender? Your primary identity is through your race. This is part of the challenge we have in society. is that we have not let the church be our primary identity.

So our starting place is not the cross, and then we move out from there.

So I'm a Christian. Who is White is a ghost for the most part.

Okay, I mean even in July I'm I'm white. You might be here, and you are a Christian who is brown or black. You might be a Christian of Asian descent. That's that's wonderful. There's ethnic aspects to your culture that we should celebrate.

We shouldn't diminish, we should celebrate it. But no one's ethnicity comes prior to, above, or supersedes the cross. It doesn't, and that's true of self-identity, and that's true of other identity. And it's deeply important. It's deeply important that we start here.

That we start with the cross of Christ and we don't move out away. Jesus did not say he would build the white church. He did not say he would build the black church. He did not say he would build the Hispanic church. He did not say he would build the Asian church or the Polynesian church.

He said he did not say he would build the American church. He said, I will build My! Church. It's his church. And he decided to make it one new man with a bunch of people that are white, brown, yellow, red, and everything in between.

That is his joy to do. And it needs to be our joy to celebrate it. And if you're off kilter on that, there's one answer for that, and that is repentance. And he'll receive you. as he always does.

Verse 16. Uh I'll read verse 15 again, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace and might reconcile us both to God. in one body. Through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

Now, what you should notice immediately is that he's not reconciling you and you and you and you. He's reconciling. Yeah.

He's reconciling us in one body. Accepting Christ as our peace means accepting that we are both accepted by God, and that is only because of. Christ. That's only you say, well, isn't it aren't you doubling down on what you already said? Yes.

Yeah.

But you need to see it in a different way. The next point's going to see it in a different way. You got to think this thing through because I'm so predisposed when you upset me to be alienated by you that I lose myself in the anger of the moment. And I got to step back and more myself in not just the idea that Jesus wants me to live at peace with you. It's not so surface as that.

It's that the very core of my identity, every time I bow in prayer and present myself to God before him, I don't do that as an isolated molecule. I do that as one who is part of the church who has been reoriented to him through being reoriented to you. I can't separate it. And the moment I start to do that, I create this little individual, personalized dynamic where now I can have Jesus and I don't need the church. And it's so foreign to the New Testament and the grotesque nature of American Christianity and our democratic individualism that has fostered that is absolutely repugnant.

To New Testament theology. It knows nothing of New Testament theology whatsoever. And we have to reject that, and we have to say, no, we come. Before him, and we come before him always as one of a body. Always as one of a people.

Yeah.

He is reconciled. This hostility in this verse is not the hostility with each other, it's hostility with the Lord. But they're all of a piece. They're all of a piece. And when the one gets washed away, so is the other.

And it always starts with my hostility before God washing down and eliminating my hostility with y'all. And God is the one who does that. Colossians 1:19 through 22. For in him. The fullness of God is pleased to dwell in Christ.

So He's fully God. That's the idea. And through him to reconcile to himself all things is what Jesus did, whether on earth or in heaven. Making peace by the blood of his cross sounds like similar language. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind by doing evil deeds, he's now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

Thank the Lord He did that for us. Amen. Amen. Verse 17. And he came and preached peace.

To you who are far off, we saw that back in verse 13, right? And peace to those who were near. He brought people far off close, but people who were near were also lost. He's saying, Jews and Gentiles, you were both lost. And he came and he proclaimed peace.

Now, I want to put something up for you and show its implications, okay? Accepting Christ as our peace means that any effort at reconciliation that avoids the cross of Christ is futile.

So let's just put this in our common. Public dynamic in our culture.

Okay? Our common public dynamic in our present culture. And I want to be an equal opportunity offender here, so if you're on the left. Politically, I hope you feel offended and if you're on the right. I hope you feel offended.

It'll be a great time for us. If you're on the left. Just please note. That if you want to create DEI diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, that are outside of the cross of Christ. You are wasting your time.

You're wasting your time. You will not have those. outside of the cross of Christ. Because outside of having myself freed from my sin, I'll always hold yours against me. And even if I'm able to somehow muster up the human courage to move forward for a moment in a selfless way and forgive you.

It'll recycle itself, and I'll still, in my mind, even in my subconscious at times, I'll still be holding things against you. Here's what's fostered. When I move towards Towards diversity, equity, and inclusion without the cross of Christ. When I move that direction, Inherently What emerges is tribalism. It's always going to emerge.

Because I'm always going to gravitate towards what is familiar to me. And I will not want to be existing in the unfamiliar. The gospel is what presses me to exist in the unfamiliar. It's why we have to be a multi-generational church. It's why we need to be a multi-ethnic church.

It's why we need to be a multi-class church. It's why we need to celebrate diversity in that way. It's because we celebrate it, not because diversity is awesome. We don't celebrate it for diversity. We don't celebrate it so we get some merit badge that now the culture looks and goes, look at that place, everybody's welcome.

We do it because it just is the outflow of the cross of Christ. That's it. It's just what Jesus. Proclamation is and says That's it.

So if you think you can have DEI efforts outside of the cross of Christ. You're wrong.

Now if you're on the right. and you're part of a church that rolls its eyes. Which The American Conservative Church. has often done. Mm.

I've seen it. I've seen the last couple of years even. at historic feelings of a of alienation. You think, what's the big deal? What's the this isn't 1850?

Get over yourselves. What's the big deal? What's the problem? You're no longer an immigrant. You're in the country.

Chill out. Just celebrate the opportunity of living in the land of the free and the home of the brave. You're a naive person. who doesn't understand that we all bring our own stories to the cross. You're not accounting for all that the cross Does in terms of the story that it is.

Rectifying. That is rectifying. Because I know none of you have a past, right, that still is sitting there in part of your story as you sit before the cross, right? Oh wait, you do? Oh wait, you have your own brokenness.

Oh. Oh, wait, your relationships that were broken are still struggling. Wait, the past that you had still bothers you. Wait, things that your grandfather, your father said, still come up and hang on you sometimes, right? Yes.

So don't roll your eyes. A historic alienation. Celebrate the fact that we can all walk to the cross together. And we don't have to be dominated by it anymore. Celebrate that we can walk to the cross together and live in that reality.

But don't roll your eyes. Don't trivialize. Sit with the weight of the cross. Let it sit on your soul. And if your brother or sister is struggling for it to sit over their soul, do something that's really awesome.

But foreign to a lot of us. Be patient with them. Just be patient with them. Sit in love with them. And just let it get around for a while.

Let it get around for a while. I've found in my own life that there are areas that the cross has probably not yet fully saturated. I hope you'll be patient with me as it does. Finally, For through him we both have access in one spirit. To the Father.

And I'm not going to say much about this because it'd be a spoiler for next week. Accepting Christ as our peace means we have mutual access to God via the one Holy Spirit. I get The beauty of coming. To God in Christ, because He gave me His Holy Spirit and He gave it to you. Here's what that means.

That means that no class, no ethnicity. That means that no amount of sinfulness in your past versus any amount of sinfulness in my past versus any amount of sinfulness in your brother or sister's past give you a more privileged or a less privileged access to God. We all get the same access to God. Why is that?

Well, we'll get to this next week. But we'll get there because. There's been a shift. And the shift has been from a temple. A temple that you go into.

A temple with a physical location? Right? That was the case. Under Judaism, it's the case with traditional legalistically bound religion today. Go meet God in a temple.

And what Paul is going to tell us next week is that's changed. has changed. You don't go that way anymore. Instead, you go. through a temple.

The church that he's building. This this body of believers, right? That you are in that way, the temple. 1 Corinthians 6 will say. And we'll talk about that next week.

Close with this story. I've shared it before, but it's the best way I can illustrate the point this morning.

So forgive me if you've been here long and you've heard it, but it's been a few years. I'm a grandfather. On my father's side, my dad's dad. Was a um Determined. perseverant, patient in some ways man, but he also was kind of grouchy and crusty.

And he had these both parts of him, right? He was the guy who would read the Bible and was a Sunday school superintendent in a church for 52 years, and he was a guy that would. squeezed the chin of a dog until it yelped. I don't understand how they fit together, but they did.

Okay. Crusty. Um later in life. He got ills hospitalized a few years before his death. But his body was starting to Fade down.

He was probably in his at this time he was probably 80 years old or so. He passed away in about 80, 86, 87. And he was in a hospital in Oneana, New York. And the He had a room that was a double room, it wasn't a private room, and so he's in one bed, there's somebody in the other bed, and it's got the little curtain you pull across, privacy kind of thing there.

So He ends up talking with this guy, and this guy's primary language is German. And they start talking. They're both old men in a bed next to each other. 80 years old. And as he talks, my grandfather, who had fought in the Pacific Theater, in World War II.

Starts talking with this guy and this guy had been a German soldier. In World War II. And they began to talk. A couple days went by, my grandfather, getting to know him a little bit. Woke up, and as he woke up in the morning and opened his eyes, this German soldier.

Former German soldier, now 80 years old, is bent over and looking over him as he lays in his bed. Naturally, he might wonder what in the world is happening. And As he bent over, He began to pray. over my grandfather. And he pulled out of his pocket a wooden cross.

It's about this big. It sits in my nightstand on my side of the bed. And it was an old wooden cross, and he handed it to him as a gift. When my grandfather was dying, Fast forward seven or eight years, and my grandfather's dying. in a hosp uh in a nursing home.

Yeah.

His one request every night was that the nurses from the nursing home would bring that cross to him so that he could rub it while he went to sleep. And he would rub that cross, thinking of the cross of Christ, as he went to sleep. I love that picture because It's only in the cross that two 80 year olds. Who, if 60 years prior had met in an open field in Europe, would have killed each other. could be brought together.

It's only that cross that could make an old man. Lay. In his dying breaths. And no. that the next step will be okay.

Both were true. Because of the cross of Christ.

So celebrate. Celebrate that when you close your eyes, if you're a believer, you'll go to glory. But don't you forget. That that means you don't get to hold anything against your brother or sister. Who has wounded you?

Father, I pray that you would guide and direct us. And you would help us to be champions. of non-resentment. Champions. Gospel, champions of grace, champions of grace.

Of mercy, champions of love. Thank you for forgiving us, for redeeming us. for holding us near, Lord. And I pray your blessing upon each of these people that you would draw them close to you, Lord, this morning. And Lord, stir us to make right what may have been wrong.

In Jesus' name. Amen.