Pulling Together In A World Tearing Apart Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Can't we all just get along? Despite the hopeful talk, humanity is fracturing along fault lines that seem unrepairable.

So what can bind together diverse races and ethnic groups? Paul tells us that there can be only one common denominator. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, things are really getting bad out there, with war and strife mingling with government corruption everywhere.

People play the blame game, and the battle lines get drawn, even splitting families apart. How will Paul address this in our study of Ephesians? Dave, that's an excellent question, and I'm so glad to be able to remind people that the Bible has an answer to racial tension, to many of the difficulties and divisions that we have within the church. How does Paul address this? Well, he emphasizes the fact that we are one body, we are one man, we are one temple, and through Jesus Christ there is a transnational unity among all believers. Now, that needs to be lived out, but thank God we have the basis upon which that can be done. I'm so glad for the many of you who support the ministry of Running to Win, and I want to emphasize that we are right now in our matching gift challenge. What this means is that any gift that you give during this period of time will be doubled. Here's some info.

Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. I trust that you will use this opportunity to become a part of something that is continuing to grow, gospel-centered, and going into some new languages in the next 12 months. I believe that the desire to belong is one of the most deeply felt needs that any human being could have. We all want to belong. The problem is that we live in a fragmented culture, and because it is so fragmented, as a nation at least, it's very difficult for us to get together. That sense of belongingness has been lost. I don't know if you read the Trib this past week, but I did notice an article in which it says, in this fragmented culture, the only thing that can bring us together for a few minutes is the last episode of Seinfeld.

What did it? Well, I think we need something a little stronger than a show that I've been told is based on nothing, which is also very interesting. It used to be that common hardships bound people together. The problems that they had would unify them because the matter of survival was so important.

And if it was not common hardships, it was common values. People would say, well, as long as we believe the same, as long as we have at least a basic understanding regarding God's existence, that brings us together. Well, we need something deeper than that. You say, well, what if we have even common love?

Common love surely is going to do it. Well, that's much better, but I want you to know that according to the Bible, there is a unity that is even deeper than that, even deeper than that. I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to the second chapter of the book of Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 2. As you know, we have been studying this book together, and the Apostle Paul reminds the people to whom he is writing that it was the Jews who had the special blessing from God. They were the chosen people, but they did not share their faith.

Here's what happened very briefly. God chose Abraham and his descendants and says that through you, all of the families of the earth are going to be blessed, and they were to share the knowledge of Jehovah with the people who lived in their day. What happened was they began to glory in the fact that they were chosen, and they actually thought that they were better than others, and they ended up withholding, if you please, the message of the knowledge of Jehovah, and they kept it for themselves.

They failed in the mission program. Now, what the Apostle Paul is going to do is to describe how the Gentiles were without God before Jesus Christ reconciled them, and as we go through this description, there are five different phrases, and I pick up the text in Ephesians chapter 2, and we shall begin with verse 11 and verse 12, rather. When we look at the text, we are going to see that even though it describes the pagans of another era, it also describes people today very clearly.

You will know who we are talking about once we read this incredibly accurate description. For example, the Apostle Paul says in verse 12, remember that at that time you were separate from Christ. Separate from Christ.

What an experience. Some of you can remember what it is like to be separate from Christ, can't you? You remember the days before you were converted to Jesus.

You remembered the emptiness and the hollowness of it all. Now, why is being separate from Christ such a serious situation? Well, quite frankly, it is because in Jesus Christ alone there is eternal life, and Jesus is the only way to connect with God.

There is no other way it can be done. So we're talking about a serious situation. Yesterday, some of us caught a cab and we came here to the church and discovered that the man who was the cab driver belonged to a different religion that does not recognize the deity of Jesus Christ. In fact, it is very strongly opposed to that, the deity of Jesus and that Jesus is a savior. He's only a prophet. And that man, as I shared the good news of the gospel with him, was a man who is without Christ and therefore, as we shall see in a moment, without hope.

It's not a pretty picture. You'll notice it says without citizenship excluded from the citizenship of Israel. You were a Gentile. You were a pagan. You had to stay outside the boundaries.

You stay on your turf. You're not a member of God's nationalistic community called the Jews. And then he says without covenants. After all, the covenants were given to Israel. Now, they were given to Israel that by means of those covenants, the world might be blessed. But as I mentioned, the Israelites kept it to themselves. And so there they are as individuals who feel alienated.

I'm talking about the Gentiles cut out of all the blessings. You had an experience like that where everybody else seems to be blessed and helped and you are on the fringes and you're on the outskirts and you're not a part of what is happening. And then notice it says without hope, without hope. Do you understand the despair? Do you know that it was true that archaeologists have uncovered graves that go back to Roman times and all of those tombstones are written the Latin words without hope, without hope. What a way to die.

What a way to live. And then finally, he says without God, you're without God. Oh, I know that you might believe in this God or that God, but you are disconnected from God just as surely as a socket is disconnected from the plug after you've pulled it out.

You are just, you don't connect with God. And the result is despair. You want to understand some of the despair of contemporary society, just read some of the atheistic existential writers, people like Sartre, for example, talking about his despair in the theater of the absurd. He's talking about the fact that there is really no hope.

All that you need to do is to make decisions to authenticate yourself, but he can give no guidance as to what is a good decision or what is a bad decision. Was it not Camus who began one of his books by saying that the only sensible, the only important issue to be discussed is suicide. Why? There is despair. You ought to read those writers and you ought to become acquainted with your neighbors and friends and their despair and then you and I ought to cry.

We ought to cry for our world. It's a tough picture out there. Sin alienates us from God. It cuts us off from him. It cuts us off from one another and it even cuts us off from ourselves until we experience that great depth of hopelessness. Now many people are hopeless and they don't know it.

They're actually still living on the thrills of this world, but someday they will discover that their situation is totally without hope. Dante's words, abandon all hope ye who entered here. Well, that's a dark picture, but notice the excitement now in verse 13. But now in Jesus Christ, God has intervened. Remember the last time Paul had an expression like that? It was right here in the second chapter when he talked about the fact that we were dead in trespasses and sins. He said in verse four, because of his great love with which he loved us, he made us alive together. But because of his great love.

But now what a wealth of meaning is in that phrase. God has come. You'll notice that Paul says, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were a faraway, you've been brought near through the blood of Jesus. For he himself is our peace who has made the two into one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace. What Paul is saying is that because of Jesus, he bridged the gap between Jew and Gentile. Jesus reconciled us to one another. He reconciled us to one another.

And how did he do it? First of all, he abolished the law, which is the wall that is spoken of here, the ordinances. You know, in the Old Testament, you were told exactly what you were supposed to eat. You were told what grasshoppers you could eat and what grasshoppers you couldn't eat. I mean, have you ever read the book of Leviticus recently?

All of those detailed regulations. And the people were supposed to keep them and know them and know what an ossifrage was. I mention that because it's one of the things that were forbidden, and I'm very rusty on what an ossifrage is.

Now, here's the point. Remember when God wanted to show to Peter that he should go to the Gentiles? There was an old manner of unclean food that was given to him in this vision, and he said, I can't eat it because it's unclean. And God says, rise, kill and eat because God is now declaring those foods clean because the purpose of the distinctions that God was trying to make in the Old Testament, that purpose has now vanished with the coming of Christ and that barrier with all of its regulations has been torn down.

But there's something else here that is implied. When he talks about the wall being torn down, in the area of the temple, there was a wall that would not allow the Gentiles to come too far. In fact, in 1871, archaeologists, they uncovered the plaque that was actually set up there to warn people from coming into the temple area. And it said something like this, no foreigner may enter within this partition except that he be arrested and be put to death.

And it was also very clear it was your fault. This is the warning. Gentiles, stay away.

Do not come into the temple area, at least not close to the inner shrine, into the inner sanctum. Now, can you imagine how that made Gentiles feel? I mean, who are we? Why are we excluded?

Why is it that God can't accept us and you have all of that prejudice and you have all of that sense of alienation and that sense of exclusion and the anger that comes when we are excluded? All of that was spelt in the breast of the Gentiles. But now Jesus, as we shall see, has taken it all away. He abolished it. The wall is no longer there.

In a moment I'll point out in the text where it says we all come to the Father in the same way. Remember, and doesn't time go by quickly? I was just reflecting on the fall of the Berlin Wall, and that already was 1989.

You still see the pictures in your mind. You see all the excitement because the wall has finally been torn down. Finally, Germany is unified. Not everybody maybe was happy with the unification, but thank God that at least the wall isn't there anymore was torn down. Now, in the very same way, Jesus came and he tore down those walls, and the text says that he made one new man.

Now, notice carefully. First of all, the wall came down, and secondly, it says he established in his body one new man, one new man, so making peace. That's verse 15, the last part of verse 15. Now, one of the early preachers put it this way. He said that it isn't just that Jesus took Jews and Gentiles and says, I want the two of you to be together, and so you simply tie them together and say, somehow, now you're together. Now get along.

No, no. He took the world of the Jews and the world of the Gentiles and in effect obliterated both worlds and says, I am going to create a brand new world, something new. It's like taking a silver and a silver statue and throwing it in the fire and the lead statue and throwing it into the fire also, and out comes a statue of gold, something brand new. Now that's what God did, because the body that is being spoken about is the body of Jesus Christ being made, which now has Jews and Gentiles, and he has reconciled them and established them in one body. Jews don't have to become Gentiles. Gentiles don't have to become Jews, but they are fundamentally one because the unity is greater than Jew and Gentiles. Blacks do not have to become white. White do not have to become blacks, and they can both have their cultural heritage.

Why? It is because God has established a unity that is deeper and more profound than race could ever be. Women do not have to become men. Men do not have to become women because God has established something that is deeper and more profound than gender, as Paul says in the book of Galatians. He says in Jesus Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, neither male nor female. God made this one.

The poor don't have to live like the rich, and the rich don't have to live like the poor, though the rich should help the poor. But you have all of this diversity, but in the midst of it, it is stronger than economics and stronger than all of the barriers that we can possibly erect. In Christ, a new man has been miraculously created by God. Now, it's difficult sometimes for us to see that unity, isn't it?

For example, some of us struggle with this question. How do we relate to those who may belong to denominations that do not preach a clear gospel at all, the majority of whom do not know Christ personally? But nevertheless, within those groups, there are those who are genuine believers and have been made one with all believers in Jesus Christ.

We don't know exactly what this unity looks like. But then, of course, on an easier level, we know that there are many groups and many churches here in the city of Chicago and elsewhere throughout the country who believe as we do, who are also made one in Jesus Christ through faith, and we are one with them, and the world should at least get a little picture of what that looks like. Remember that story of during the war in France, there was a man who died and was killed in the war, and some of his comrades wanted to bury him in a cemetery, and they came to a church with a cemetery around it.

You know the picture of how that often was. The cemetery was right next to the church, and there was a reason for that. It was to establish, by the way, the unity of the body of Christ, the saints in heaven and the saints on earth.

And so it was really saying that you have to walk past the alumni association to get to the undergraduates. That was the whole theological lesson that was being taught. But they came to the church, and the priest asked whether or not the man was baptized a Catholic, and they said, no, he is not baptized a Catholic. And he said, I'm really sorry, I feel badly about this, but he can't be buried within this cemetery because he's not a Catholic. And so they took and they buried him just six feet on the other side of the fence, and that's where he was. They came back the next morning, and they were looking for the grave.

They wanted to put some flowers on it, make sure that everything was okay, and they could not find it. They paced up and back, and they paced along the fence where they had been, and unbelievably, there was no grave there. And then the priest explained, he said, that he could not sleep at night because of the decision he had made, and he got up real early in the morning, and he moved the fence so that their comrade would be included within the cemetery. Now, that's what Jesus did to us Gentiles. Jesus came along and he moved the fence. Now, it's not as if, you know, we're opening the fence for anyone, and we're simply saying it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you somehow believe in Jesus, that that's what really qualifies you. We understand, those of us who have been redeemed by Christ. We understand that the body of Jesus Christ has its limitations, but what I'm saying to you today is that all those who have been bought by Christ, all those who have responded to the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are members of the same body, and we must be willing to move that fence to make sure that the unity of the Spirit is kept in the bond of peace, as the Apostle Paul says in this letter. Now, today I speak to many people who say, you know, all this business of reconciliation, I'm tired of it.

You say, I haven't done anything wrong. I'm not prejudiced. Why should we talk about reconciliation? Now, comments like that usually come from those who know that they are within the fence. They have a good sense of identity. They have a good sense of belongingness. They don't see the need for reconciliation, but I need to tell you today that there are many of our brothers and sisters who do not sense that belongingness. They feel as if they have been put on the other side of the fence, and those of us within the fence who have that sense of identity, we have to reach out to them, and we have to say, you too are a member of the body.

You too have the same privileges. You also have the same destiny. We are together one in Jesus, one in Jesus, and I think it's important for the people of the world to see that somehow, however it comes out. To see it in individual churches, yes, most assuredly. When they come into our doors, they should see the unity of the Spirit, but also beyond our doors to others who are also redeemed, and the world needs to see that these people can get along because there is a unity that is deeper than all of the other things that I mentioned just a moment ago. Now watch this. Paul says that Jesus Christ reconciled us to one another, and the basis of it all, we get to now in verse 16, is that he reconciled us to God.

That's really it. You'll notice it says in verse 16, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which he put to death their hostility. You and I have some inborn hostility towards one another. I don't care what you say. We are born prejudiced people, and it doesn't matter what color our skin is. We are born prejudiced.

We are born self-seeking. We are born filled with a sense of hostility regarding those who do not respond to us as we think we should, and the cross, the Bible says, put an end to this. You know, my friend, it's only when we meet at the foot of the cross, confessing the fact that all of us have the seeds of racism, covetousness, all the sins that you can list.

We cannot bring about reconciliation by shouting at one another across racial fences or any other fence. We have to accept the fact that when Jesus died, he unified us, and now we have to ask how do we work together to make our better, to make things better? I'm so glad to be able to tell you that last year we sent out more than 32,000 life-changing resources, books and sermons, helping people run the race of life, all because of people like you, this ministry is continuing to expand. And also, this is the period of time when we have the matching gift challenge. What that means is any gift that you give to the Ministry of Running to Win during this period of time will be doubled, up to $90,000. Some of our supporters have said that they so deeply believe in this ministry that they are willing to double your gift.

Would you become a part of this? Here's what you can do. Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now, because I believe that this is so critical, especially during this period of time, I'm going to be giving you that contact info again. But first of all, let me emphasize thank you. Thank you for becoming a part of the Running to Win family. We deeply appreciate you.

We appreciate your prayers. Here's how you can connect with us. Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

Right now, go to rtwoffer.com, call us at 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Pastor Erwin Lutzer with part one of Pulling Together in a World Tearing Apart, the seventh message in his series, Between Heaven and Earth, taken from the book of Ephesians. Next time, some final thoughts on the unity only possible at the foot of the cross. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.