Kainos People

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. In God's eyes, there are no good people and bad people. There's no winners and losers. There's no strong people and oppressed people.

There's no people who have it together and dysfunctional people. There are only bad, dead, sin-sick rebels, children of Satan, sons and daughters of disobedience, all of them without God and without hope in this world. And Jesus' blood was what changed and saved all of us, Paul says. Thanks for joining us again today on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Bitovitch. Well, it's a new year and we're launching into some brand new teaching here on the program starting today. Later this week, we'll begin a new series through the book of James. But first, let's start with a sermon that Pastor J.D. preached at the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham last year called Kynos People.

Pastor J.D. leads us through a beautiful passage in Ephesians 2 that speaks to the power of Jesus' death and resurrection that was able to do what we could not, break down the wall of hostility between us as brothers and sisters. Rather than being a distraction from the gospel and from our pursuit of the Great Commission, we'll learn why ethnic unity is actually essential to these things.

Remember, you can catch this all new teaching online anytime at JDCreer.com. But for now, let's jump into Ephesians chapter 2. For a few years now, we have said that our goal as a church, we say 25 by 25, as in we would like for our congregation to be 25% ethnically diverse, at least 25% ethnically diverse by 2025. We have said that because when you consider the demographic statistics of the region that God has put us in, if we achieve that goal, that will mean we're reaching all the types of people that God has brought to our community and not just one slice of them.

Now, I know for some of you, just talking about this raises questions, well-intended questions, I believe, but questions like, well, you know, is this similar to some worldly quota strategy like we went through at my previous job where this was kind of, you know, forced on everybody? And some of you ask, well, you say, you know, I don't even understand why we're actually talking about this. If we just, you know, preach the gospel, if we just preach the gospel and teach the Bible, won't all these things just work themselves out? And listen, on one level, of course, I profoundly agree with you. We are definitely a gospel above all people. We believe the Bible is sufficient for all things. It teaches everything necessary for the Christian life and our primary central calling is to preach the gospel and to make disciples.

So yes, 100%, absolutely, amen. But as I'm going to show you today, the gospel has both a vertical dimension and a horizontal dimension to it. It has a vertical reconciliation with God.

That's what it's all about. But that gospel and the experience of it leads to horizontal transformation. And the apostles that write our New Testament under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they're always really, really clear in talking about both of those dimensions. We're going to see that in how Paul lays out one of the greatest gospel chapters in the Bible, Ephesians chapter two.

Ephesians chapter two, these opening 10 verses might be the clearest, most compact declaration of the gospel found anywhere in the Bible. Here's what Paul says in those breathtaking verses, verse two. He says, and you, you, talking to the church, you were dead. You were dead in your trespasses and your sins. And you were by nature.

You were by nature, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. You see, it's by grace that you've been saved. Grace means entirely a gift from God.

It's nothing about you. He has raised us up with him now. He's raised us out from that place of death and condemnation to be seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

That is all vertical. We were hopelessly condemned in our sin when Jesus came down on earth to rescue us on a rescue mission to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. He lived the life that we did not live.

And then he died to death that we should have died. That's what the gospel is. The gospel is not about a social program that we live out. The gospel is not about great things that we go out and do. The gospel is about a gift that God gave to us. But then, verse 11, Paul immediately turns to the horizontal implications of that gospel rescue. The key word there in verse 11, as always for Paul, is the word therefore.

Therefore for Paul means that we're about to transition to an effect of what I just said. In light of the breathtaking things that I just said to you about the gospel, you need to remember, he says, remember that at one time you were an outsider, you were a Gentile. You were separated from Christ. You were on the outside. Everybody was on the outside when it came to Christ.

You were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. But God broke down in his flesh that dividing wall of hostility because he wanted to create in himself one new man in place of the two, and he wanted to make peace. Verse 16, and that would reconcile us, he said, not just to God. Reconcile us first to God, but that would also reconcile us to each other in one body through the cross. Y'all listen, just so you are aware, historically, racial strife in Paul's churches was a real issue. We think it's bad now.

I might suggest that then it was even worse. The Jews in this church had a hard time worshiping beside Gentiles because, a few reasons. First, for the first couple thousand years, God's people had always been Jews. For the first 2,000 years, if you wanted to know God, you became a Jew. You learned Hebrew. You picked up Jewish customs. You joined up with the nation of Israel. So being Jewish, knowing God and being Jewish were basically the same thing. But then Jesus comes along and launches his whole whosoever will program, and a bunch of Gentiles start believing and joining the church.

So now you've got these new churches with Gentiles and Jews together. God, it just sounds so beautiful, doesn't it? I mean, just warms your heart. It's just so, so touching and so beautiful.

Yes, Lord, yes, Lord. But here's the reality. Those Gentiles, they came in with their own Gentile weirdness. They had their own Gentile customs, their own Gentile fashions, their own Gentile music preferences, their own Gentile political perspectives. Pastor Brian often says that we know multiculturalism was an issue in the early church simply by how much of Paul's letters talk about food. Food isn't an issue in a homogenous church. You know you just eat your kosher meal and you're happy. But then you've got Gentiles showing up at the potluck, and they start bringing in things like bacon jam and grandma's pork rinds. And the Jews are like, what is happening in our church? But see, that's what happens when you shove two cultures together. What one group eats offends the other group.

And food is really important to us. Amen? And so Paul has got to deal with it. Add to this the fact that for years, these Gentiles had been oppressing the Jews. So now you've got representatives for the Jews. You've got representatives of the people who caused your family so much pain sitting right beside you in church with their hands lifted to the same God that you worship. And so yeah, this whole one in Christ thing sounds beautiful for us to read 2,000 years later, but it was hard for them to live out. And what's interesting to me is that Paul, it seems to me, could have very easily avoided all those problems simply by planting separate churches for the two groups on different sides of the city. He could have gone over to the east side of Ephesus and planted the first Baptist Jewish church, and then gone over to the west side and established the first Baptist Gentile church on that side.

Everybody in each of those two churches would have liked the same music, they would have eaten the same foods, they would have shared the same basic political and moral viewpoints, their small groups would have never gotten awkward. Those homogenous congregations would probably have grown more quickly, at least in the short run, if Paul had planted it that way. But Paul's like, no, that might grow more quickly, but God wants to show off his power by doing something the world cannot do, something that the world craves but is unable to accomplish, and that is to bring these cultures together as one. I mean, gathering a large group of people is no proof of God. Paul says that happens literally every Saturday in the Roman Colosseum. The size of a crowd is no proof of God's power. No, God shows off his power in the church in a different way, and that's by bringing together into one body those who are divided in society. So here's what I want to do today from this passage.

I want to explain, number one, why the pursuit of ethnic unity is an important part of our mission, why this is not a distraction from that mission or caving to some worldly agenda. Let's just be really clear. I'm going to say this as clearly as I can up front. I'm just going to use the Bible today. If what I say offends you, I'm going to ask you, when you ask me or write me or confront me wherever, I'm going to say what part of what I'm saying did not come from the Bible.

I will answer your email. I will. I'm just saying this book is what we're going to talk about. If you're the kind of person who's going to hear this and just leave, then I'm going to suggest that you might not understand church at all. This issue aside, church is not supposed to be an inspirational weekend event that caters to your religious preferences. This is a family you join, and being family sometimes means wrestling through hard conversations. It means sometimes being in situations where you're like, I don't really like being here. So if your impulse in this is just to leave, well, you should ask yourself if you're actually part of the family of Jesus or you're just a religious consumer who likes to be entertained on the weekend.

Look, I'm 50 now, so I can be old and cranky. That's number one. The second thing I want to consider is this. Number two, what obstacles stand in our way at the Summit Church in particular? What stands in our way of ethnic unity? I'm just going to play the role of your aged, wise 50-year-old pastor and point out a few things for you.

These should be fun in a manner of speaking. Do notice that I'm using the phrase ethnic unity on purpose because I think that's a more biblical goal than diversity is. We're not simply after a diversity quota here. Our goal is unity because that's what Paul is after. That's what Paul says the implication of the Gospel is. You can't control the demographics of your society, but you can control, you ought to be able to control through the power of the Holy Spirit, what God is doing among people that he is bringing to faith in Christ.

The point is not us achieving an ethnically diverse audience or having the right color faces up here on stage and then us all going back to our separate communities to live separate lives. What we're after is what Paul talks about in Ephesians 2. One new man, one new body that demonstrates the glory and the power of Jesus. You with me?

Number one, here it is. Why the pursuit of ethnic unity is an important part of our mission. Let's go back again and actually reread what Paul says in more detail, starting verse 11.

Paul's big therefore. Therefore, he says to this congregation, therefore, remember all of you, not just the Gentiles, but Jews and Gentiles. At one time you were Gentiles.

Gentiles just means non-Jews outside. You were Gentiles in God's eyes separated from Christ. You were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.

In the Old Testament, those two phrases meant the same thing. To be alienated from the commonwealth of Israel was to be separated from Christ. When you came to know God, you joined Israel. Paul said to these Gentile Christians seated right beside the Jewish ones, you were foreigners to the covenants of promise. You were without hope, without God in the world. Now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off, you've been brought near by the blood of Christ because he himself is our peace. Verse 14, who has made us both one and is now broken down in his flesh, the dividing wall of hostility. Around the Jewish temple was a literal wall.

I wish I could recreate it up here for you. It's about 10 feet high. It made a really thick stone. On that wall, there was a sign on it that read, and I quote, any Gentile entering beyond this wall will have only himself to blame for his ensuing death. That wall separated in the Jewish mind for the Jews coming into the temple, that separated the good from the bad, the clean from the unclean, the safe from the unsafe, the holy from the unholy. Now we might be politically correct enough in our day not to know not to put up walls like that, but in every church, we still got dividing walls. Walls that in our mind separate the right kinds of people from the wrong kinds.

The good from the bad, the safe from the unsafe. Those could be ethnic walls, could be educational walls, could be political party affiliation walls. Anything that puts people into categories and gives you a group that you belong to that makes you feel superior, that would be the dividing wall Paul's talking about. Paul says Christ tore down all those dividing walls by showing that there's really only one category of people, sinners.

There's only one kind of sinner, dead sinner. Critical race theory is wrong. We are not primarily members of a social group. We are primarily people made in the image of God. That means that all of us, regardless of race, ethnicity, background, or class, we've got one common problem. That problem is not where we are on the social chain.

That problem is sin. We were all on the outside when it came to God. There was no hierarchy, whether we're Jew, Gentile, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, or something in between. In God's eyes, there are no good people and bad people. There's no winners and losers. There's no strong people and oppressed people.

There's no people who have it together and dysfunctional people. There are only bad, dead, sin-sick rebels, children of Satan, sons and daughters of disobedience, all of them without God and without hope in this world. And Jesus' blood was what changed and saved all of us, Paul says. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. We'll return to our brand new teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to quickly introduce you to our featured resource this month. You know, so many people have a desire to know God, but they have no clue where to begin. Well, let me tell you, memorizing scripture can be a great place to start. No matter how well we feel like we already know God, we could all certainly look to firm up that foundation. That's what makes this time of the year so special.

It's a new start. We must keep putting the Word of God into our hearts so that when life cuts us, we bleed the wisdom found in scripture. So this month we've put together a pack of 52 memory verse cards for you to help you carry God's promises every day. Being able to share the scriptures in a moment of need can be such a blessing to you and those that you're trying to encourage. So commit to memorizing more of His Word in 2024 than ever before. We'll send the set as our thanks for your gift to the ministry right now.

So give us a call at 866-335-5220 or check it out at jdgreer.com. Now let's return to our teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD. Ethnic unity is not the gospel. It is an essential implication of the gospel.

Furthermore, Jesus' death and resurrection, Paul says, verse 15, creates a whole new race, a whole new kind of humanity. That word for new there in verse 15 in Greek is kynos. Everybody say it with me, kynos. Say it again, kynos. Kynos doesn't just mean new, as in most recent, as in this is my new car. I traded in my 2015 Toyota Camry for a 2023. New in kynos means an entirely different kind of man, a whole new type.

I traded in my horse and buggy for a car. That would be a kynos transportation change. Not new as in most recent, but new as in a whole different kind. In other words, in Jesus' resurrection, Paul says, he created a whole new kind of people, a whole new race of people, so to speak.

Now, let me be clear. That does not erase our previous ethnicities or make them unimportant or irrelevant. No, God made the various cultures as a display of his glory.

God created that because he just thought it would be so wonderful if we had different cultures. Revelation 22 says that we will bring the best of our individual cultures into heaven as a display of God's glory, of God's glory, which I can't wait to experience. Us West Virginians are going to be bringing our folk music and our John Denver songs, our fighting spirit and our waffle houses into heaven for everybody to enjoy those along with us. That's going to be our gift to you. You're in your culture. You're going to bring something in there.

We're going to have the best of everything up there, and it's going to be awesome. No, this new race does not erase our previous ethnicities. It does not make them irrelevant. It just gives us a common, united identity that is more important than our ethnicities even is to us. Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile, who's a black pastor up in Washington, D.C., a friend of mine, talks about the concept. He calls it the third race.

It's been so helpful for me. He says, all right, let your first race represent whatever race you are. In my case, Caucasian. Whatever you're not is your second race. So for me, black, Hispanic, Asian, Arab, whatever goes in that category. Your third race, he says, is who you are in Christ.

Here's what Thabiti says. He says, when I became a Christian, it's not that my first race disappeared, but my third race, who I am in Jesus, became more important and more defining to me than my first race did. I no longer find my fundamental identity in being a black man or let it fill me with an ethnic pride that divides me from others.

In fact, he says, I can even lay that identity aside when I need to. I feel more commonality with my brothers and sisters in Christ than I do even with those from my own ethnic class. That is how all Christians of all ethnicities are supposed to feel. Paul says that actually creates peace, not by erasing the racial distinctions.

You don't want to erase them. God created you that way. It's part of his glory in you. But in Jesus, he gives you a more defining reality.

In Jesus, there's only one kind, only one kind of person, and that is sinner, and that is dead, only one type of believer, and that is alive in Christ, fully adopted into God's family, partakers of his glorious inheritance. The end. Hallelujah. Amen, somebody.

Right? Paul then goes on in chapter three to make this amazing statement. He says, that supernatural union of Jews and Gentiles together in one body was so that, and I quote, God's multifaceted wisdom may now be made known to the church, to the rulers, and the authorities, and the heavens.

Hey, somebody, question. How's God's wisdom going to be made known to the skeptical world? By how good and how convincing my preaching is, is that going to be it? Oh, by the winsome apologetics, by showing that there's no other explanation for what happened in the first century than the resurrection. Is that how we're going to convince this skeptical world that Jesus is who he says he is and that he's real?

Oh, I know, I know. You say, no, no, it's going to be through the music. See, people will feel God moving in the music, and they'll become convinced God is here, right?

Maybe it's by how many people are coming. I know, you see, left out most important one, it'll be our dramatic acts of service and love. They'll see how generous we are, how much we're giving to the community, and they'll say, man, those people, they have to be just like Jesus. He's got to be real. Is that what you're saying?

He's got to be real. Is that what it says? No, those are all good, and we will do all those things, but what makes the rulers and authorities take notice is the unity in the body of Christ by bringing together what could not be brought together any other place. Historian Rodney Stark, in his book called The Rise of Christianity, said that one of the primary things that made the early church grow so quickly was that it was the only place in the Roman Empire where the different ethnicities and the classes got along. The Romans, you see, had created these metropolitan unlike anything that had come before them. For the first time in history, people from wildly different cultural backgrounds were thrust next to each other, and that led to all kinds of cultural clashes. On top of that, Roman society was very hierarchical. You got slaves and merchants and aristocrats, and they're all now in close proximity. That led to a lot of class warfare. Rodney Stark says, you look at the early literature, and you'll see the early churches were the only places where those groups came together as one and called each other brother and sister.

That was extremely attractive to those Romans, those Romans rulers, because that's what they wanted but could not produce, not for all of their Roman might, not for all their philosophers, not for all of their Roman entertainment and all their culture. They couldn't do it, and those churches demonstrated something that every single human being knows instinctively. Whether they're a Christian or not, they know this instinctively, that we all share ultimately a common problem. We have a common identity, and God has given us a common hope. That unity got the world's attention because the gospel accomplished something that Rome, for all of its power and might, was utterly unable to do. That's why I say ethnic unity is an important part of our mission and not a distraction from it. Ethnic unity is not the gospel, but it is a validation of our gospel.

Let me turn to the work ahead and identify what's going to make it challenging. First of all, number one, Satan. The next several chapters of Ephesians are all about the demonic powers and how they're aligned against the church. Y'all, Satan hates this kind of unity, especially in the church, because this is the demonstration of the gospel. This is what gets the attention of the world, so he hates it. So you can be doggone for sure that he's going to be opposing it this week. That's Pastor JD with brand new teaching about the importance of ethnic unity.

We'll finish this message tomorrow, but if you missed any part of it, don't forget that you can always catch up on this or any other Summit Life broadcast free of charge at jdgrier.com. You know, JD, it seems like sometimes I want to be able to recall scripture easily, but I'm a little rusty on some of the memory verses I learned as a kid, and I certainly always have the desire to know more scripture by heart. I don't know, Miley. You do it pretty well. When I see you quoting scripture up on stage, it comes out pretty naturally. So I'm pretty sure you have instilled this as a discipline in your own life.

But let's just say this. I know how you feel. There are times that I'm like, I know there's a verse in here somewhere that applies to the situation, but I can't come up with the words of it. And so, you know, even as an adult, I continue to hone this discipline of scripture memory, which is why we're so committed to it and excited about it here at Summit Life. We have a collection of 52 beautifully designed cards, conveniently sized that you can carry around, whether in your wallet or your purse or put on the dashboard of your car or wherever it is that fits on your fridge, that would just remind you of the one verse a week you could memorize. Again, imagine if this time next year you knew 52 verses you didn't know now.

Your life would be different. And so we want to give this tool to those of you that support us here at Summit Life. When you choose to support Summit Life at jdgrare.com, we will send you a set of these cards as a token of our appreciation. It's our way of just saying thank you and investing in your spiritual life and to thank you for helping us spread the life transforming message of the gospel. We'd love to get you a set of these cards today, and they come with our thanks when you donate to support this ministry. Summit Life is kept on the radio and online by listeners like you.

So when you tune in, you've got another listener to thank for the message, and you can extend that gift to someone else by doing your part to keep this program going. Give today and remember to ask for your set of the scripture memory cards. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or you can donate and request the set online at jdgrare.com. That's jd-g-r-e-e-a-r dot com. I'm Molly Vidovitch. Thank you for joining us, and be sure to tune in again tomorrow as we conclude this important teaching called Kynos People, Tuesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.