The Mystery and Mission of the Church

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. There's one problem of man and it supersedes race, religion, gender, education, and even political persuasion. And that problem is sin, and the solution to that problem is the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ who did for all of us what none of us could do for ourselves. Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and apologist, J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Okay, raise your hand if you've ever tried investigating your family tree. It seems like everyone wants to know who they are and where they come from these days, so it's no surprise that ancestry testing is so popular right now. But the real question is, does our family tree actually define who we are?

Can we truly find out what we should be doing just by having this information in our pocket? I think we'd agree the answer is no, but pastor J.D. addresses that question head on today as he continues our teaching series called Mystery and Clarity. He's helping us understand our true identity and our purpose in a message that he titled The Mystery and Mission of the Church. So grab your Bible and let's get started. Paul makes this turn in Ephesians 2 11 where he starts talking about the church. This passage begins, the very first word is therefore, therefore, and that is very significant because therefore connects what he is about to say with what he has just said. In other words, he's not just randomly bringing up the church, he's saying the incredible experience of salvation that he's just described in Ephesians 1 and 2 will lead you to involvement in the church if you really get it.

All right, so if you have your Bibles and I hope you do, open them up to Ephesians chapter 2 and we're going to begin in verse 11. This passage I will acknowledge freely before you is very challenging for most Americans because sociologists who study spirituality in America say a couple of things are true about us as Americans. The first thing is that there is enormous spiritual hunger in America. In fact, that's kind of at an all-time high in our country in our country right now. Second thing they say though is at the same time there is a move away from institutional religion. All right, so a high desire for spirituality but a move away from institutional religion. 81% of Americans answered yes to this question. Do you believe that you can be a very good Christian without attending a church?

81% of Americans said yes. So here's the way I would state the question to you. Can God be powerfully at work in your life apart from being a part of Christ's body, the church? You ready for this? This is the most politically incorrect statement of the day.

The answer in the New Testament consistently and without exception is resoundingly no. Now I know some of you say, well why are you talking to us? We're the good guys. We're here right now. Yeah I know, I know you guys are here but many of you that are here are not here if you know what I mean.

You're still on the sidelines. The joke that I use every single starting point that we do which is that event where people that are starting to get connected to the church that's the first place they go, starting point. The joke that I use every time is that that the church in many ways is a lot like a UNC football game. UNC football game you got 22 guys in desperate need of rest surrounded by 22,000 people in desperate need of exercise and that's the church. Of the 4,000 or so that come to church here on a weekend only about one third excuse me one half of you are connected in a small group.

Only about a third of you are involved in some kind of intentional ministry. Now by the way that's not all bad I realize it's because we got a lot of new people here. Those of you that are new I want you to feel like you can take your time and checking things out before you get involved especially if you're new to Christianity. I don't want you to feel rushed. I want you to like a friend of mine says I want you to feel like you can sit and soak for a while. I'm telling you some of you are starting to get waterlogged.

You start to get that prune look about you that you get if you've been in the bathtub too long. Some of you've been here so long you're starting to molt. You are a Christian and you have been here for six months or more and you still don't know anybody except for that greeter that you sort of know that greets you every time you come in hand you a worship guy if that's the only person you really know right and if you are still not connected or involved in anything we need to send you back to Toyota because you are a factory defect right something's stuck on you something's not working so what we're going to do is we're going to read this passage where Paul talks about the nature and the purpose of the church and then we're going to try to answer four questions.

Here they are. First question is why we should be involved in the church. The second question is how involved we should be in the church.

Then the third question is what the mission of the church is and then number four what the implications of that are for for you. First thing we're going to do is we're just going to work right through this passage so beginning in verse 11 here we go. Therefore, therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh you were separated from Christ and you were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. You're like commonwealth what's Virginia got to do with this and what's a commonwealth anyway my wife is from Virginia and I'm always like why can't you be a state like everybody else all right um I don't know but don't get caught up on that word the important thing is not the word commonwealth the important thing is verse 12 is what it says in verse 12 that to be separated from Israel was to be separated from Christ. See how it says separated from Christ alienated from Israel. God revealed himself first to and through the nation of Israel and so if you were separated from Israel you were separated from Christ. The other nations didn't know God and if they wanted to know God they had to become Jews and to enter the nation of Israel. You Ephesians Paul says and you Americans for that matter you were part of the separated alien nations. You were verse 12 strangers to the covenants of promise having no hope and without God in the world. Now this is crucial to everything Paul is about to tell them.

Paul is reminding them that they were people who were outsiders with no hope and this perspective was to form how they think about all of their relationships. So since it is so important could we stop and just reflect on that for a minute about us also. When the gospel was first preached don't you think about this when the gospel was first preached and this book Ephesians was written our people our ancestors unless you were Jewish Greek or Italian our people our ancestors were about the farthest people from God that you could imagine and sometimes we forget that when Jesus and the apostles talked about taking the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth they were talking about us. The civilized Roman world had a name for us called us the barbarians. When Jesus gave the great commission our great great grandparents were swinging from trees with their faces painted blue and clubbing each other with wooden mallets. That's what our ancestors were doing.

Our society was like one big Cameron indoor stadium. In fact I found this website where you can type in your name and it tells you what you would have been called in barbarian what you would have been called called in England 2,000 years ago. My name means beastly drinker of blood. Veronica's name means the dragon whisperer.

I kid you not. That was us we were barbarians and we were outsiders and that has enormous implications for how we relate to each other which I'm going to get to here in a minute but before I get to that I want you just to reflect on this because one of the things that I most desire for you especially you students is for you to embrace the global focus of the gospel. There's a scholar named Philip Jenkins who has coined the term the new global south to refer to those new regions of the world where Christianity is most flourishing today specifically South America Africa and parts of China and India the new global south. I just finished a book by Mark Knoll called The New Shape of World Christianity. Knoll says and listen very closely to this he says in 1900 over 80 percent of the world Christian population was Caucasian and over 70 percent of the world Christian population resided in Europe.

2009 when he wrote the book there are more practicing Christians in Africa than in all European countries combined. On any given Sunday there are more Christians in church in Kenya than in Canada. There are more believers worshiping together in Nagaland than in Norway. Uganda has more Anglicans than Britain, Canada and the United States combined.

The same is true for Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria. This past Sunday there were more Presbyterians at church in Ghana than in Scotland. Brazil now sends more overseas missionaries than does Britain or Canada. In 1970 there were no legally functioning churches in all of China but it is estimated that today this Sunday the number of practicing Christians in China is equal to the number in the United States.

The largest church in Korea has more people present for a single worship service than are at Canada's 10 largest mega churches combined. And the looming explosion of Christians is in the Muslim world where two-thirds of all unreached peoples now live. People like to say oh Christianity is a western thing that Americans shouldn't try to oppose on everybody.

Get real. Christianity is not a western thing. It has never been a western thing. If anything it's a middle eastern thing that has come to the west and it's now headed around the world and it's not going to stop until it's finished.

I love how Bob Roberts says this. He says Christianity began as a Jewish movement to God. It will conclude as a Muslim movement to Jesus. The gospel is a global thing. It is for all peoples of all times in all places in the world. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. As we take a brief pause from today's teaching I want to share with you about a fantastic resource from Summit Life that's available to you free of charge each day. Our daily email devotional is a great way to develop a daily habit of keeping yourself grounded in the Word of God. These devotionals even follow along with the current teaching series here on Summit Life and they include a scripture reading, a devotional thought, and a prayer prompt to help you start your day on the right foot. We know sometimes, heaven forbid, you might miss our program but the good news is that these daily devotionals cover what we're talking about here on Summit Life so if you miss a day you can stay caught up with a quick reading in your email.

It's completely free and you can sign up today at jdcreer.com slash resources. We hope that these devotionals will be a source of encouragement and growth in your walk with Christ and remember our resources are made possible by the generous support of listeners like you so sign up today. Now let's get back to today's teaching with Pastor JD Greer here on Summit Life. Verse 13, but now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ for he himself is our peace who has made us both one and is broken down in the flesh in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. These verses acknowledge something that we all know is true and that is that our world is very divided and there is real hostility between various peoples.

We're probably more aware of that now than ever. Samuel Huntington wrote a classic book a few years ago called The Clash of Civilizations in which he talks about this coming world crisis as civilizations are being thrust together and hostilities are being pushed to the surface. Paul acknowledges that there are dividing walls of hostility between peoples. The Jews had a literal wall on the outside of the temple with a little sign on it that said no Gentiles and a little warning that said if they pass beyond this sign they had nobody but themselves to blame for their death.

That wall separated in the Jewish mind the good from the bad the clean from the unclean and by the way don't just think that's a Jewish issue. All cultures have walls. Every culture has a way of defining itself with walls and those inside the walls are basically good and those outside the walls are basically bad. I have traveled around the world in the last 20 or so years. I think the number I've been in like 34 different countries in the last 20 years including living in one country in Southeast Asia for two years and I've never been in a culture.

I say this without hesitation. I have never been in a culture including our own that did not see themselves as implicitly better in some ways than everybody else. Why is that true of just about every culture in the world or every culture in the world? Psychologists tell us that there is something fundamental to human nature where we're always trying to lift ourselves up above others. It goes back to an insecurity that we feel before God. We think that if we're better than others then that makes us valuable as people.

So we find things about ourselves or our group that set us apart from others. Our race is just better. We're smarter. We're better athletes. We show more courage in battle. We're more generous. We build a better country or we've been more successful. We're just better people. Our families are stronger. We treat our women better and then we place around our culture this imaginary wall that distinguishes us and makes us feel like we're better than those who are on the outside.

And by the way, don't just limit that to issues of race. We find things about ourselves individually that set us apart from everybody else. Do you make a certain amount of money? Well in your mind that kind of puts a wall around you and that makes you better than people who don't make as much money than you. And so you're part of an elite society who makes a certain kind of income. You made a certain score on the SAT and got into a certain school and that means you're part of an insider group. And people on the outside of that group who couldn't get in that school or didn't make that on the SAT, they're kind of inferior. In high school you rank yourself by how athletic or how good-looking you are.

You go into a high school lunchroom, it's like all the the various groups are sitting together with a little wall, imaginary wall around them. You got your your jocks and your your dorks and your hot girls right and then you got your dorky jockish girls and then you know you got all these places and and every group it's almost like you can see there's a little wall around them that says we're better right. I mean we're the dorks say we're smarter that makes us better.

The jocks say well we're better looking and we're better athletes we sleep with more girls and that makes us better. Every group has got something that sets them apart. For many of you the most defining wall to you is your political persuasion. It's the people who agree with you that are the good and educated people and you look with hostility on everybody else outside that wall.

If you don't believe that just watch Keith Olbermann or Sean Hannity or The View and watch how they talk about people who disagree with them politically. You getting this? Walls of hostility. Christ Paul says tore down those walls by giving us a whole new way of understanding inside and outside. Verse 14, for he himself Paul says is our peace who has made us both one and is broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.

How? By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two thus making peace and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross thereby killing the hostility. The walls the walls of hostility got torn down between Christians because the work of Jesus shows us that humanity has a common problem sin and there's nothing any of us can do about it. Remember Ephesians 2 we are dead we were dead in our sin and there's no degrees of dead.

Yes I have seen the princess bride right but there's no such thing as nearly dead. There's one problem of man and it supersedes race religion gender education and even political persuasion and that problem is sin and the solution to that problem is the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ who did for all of us what none of us could do for ourselves. None of us were on the inside Paul says.

We were all on the outside. Sin's curse on us means that there are no good people and bad people there's no winners and losers there's no people who have it together and dysfunctional people. There's only bad dead dysfunctional losers who desperately need the salvation of Jesus and Jesus blood cleanses us all alike and furthermore when Jesus rose from the dead see this verse 15 he created in his resurrection get this a whole new race of humanity. See how it says verse 15? He created in himself one new man out of the two in other words Jesus was born as a Jew but he was not raised as a Jew or a Gentile he was raised as a completely new man.

Get this he started a third race. Listen this is radical what I'm about to tell you. That means if you are in Christ your identity is not primarily as a white man or a black man or a Hispanic you are a new race of man in Christ. Your identity is not primarily as an American or an Asian or a Hispanic. I know those things are important but they're all secondary distinctions. You're a whole new third race and Paul says if you understood that but if you understood that the hostilities would die away.

Why? Well because a it shatters pride there's nothing in your past that should make you feel better than others or nothing that should make you feel inferior to others and it gives you something in common with other believers that is so fundamental to who you are that it supersedes everything else in your life. A few years ago I took a mission trip over to Malaysia. I was speaking at a college student conference there.

I'm college students from all over Malaysia and parts of China and I spoke four nights in a row. After the first talk a couple girls approached me from they were originally from China and we had this conversation and I noticed this girl one girl she was just asking the most incredibly insightful questions. She was not a believer said she this is one of her first exposures to Christianity but she was so curious about it and we probably an hour after each session I sat with him and just walked them through some things. On the third night she puts her faith in Christ. It was awesome she she comes to Christ and she just wept and it was it was beautiful right. On the fourth day I'm sitting somewhere and one of these girls comes up and talks to me she says you probably don't know this and you probably don't realize this but that girl the one that came to Christ last night she's considered royalty in our country. I was like well why she said because she's a 65th generation direct descendant of Confucius that's her family lineage she is like a she's like a princess that explained all the really hard questions she was asking. So I talked to this girl later and I said they called her Christine I said Christine do you realize that there's something true about you that's not true about many people and that is you are a blood descendant of two very important people. One was Confucius and the other is Jesus Christ you have the blood of both of them in your body and she said she got a thought back she goes that's I've never thought about that see that's pretty interesting she said but you know now that I know that Jesus blood is what defines me now that I know that I have his blood the fact that I'm a blood descendant of Confucius doesn't really matter to me that much anymore. See what happens when you realize watch this when you realize that your primary identity is something that Christ gave you something his blood provided for you all the other distinctions they're still there but they just aren't that important anymore the gospel does not mean that I cease to be white or that you cease to be black or that somehow I have to start acting like I'm from some other culture I mean that would be a disaster right I mean think Eminem right it means that more important to me than being American or being white is the fact that I am bought by and raised in Jesus in Christ we have something larger in common than our racial identities and cultural preferences we have Jesus he gives us our true identity you're listening to summit life the bible teaching ministry of pastor and author J.D. Greer so J.D. we have a pretty cool and unique resource for the month of July can you tell us just a little bit about it yeah so in this series mystery and clarity we are just looking at the book of Ephesians one of the most powerful books in the new testament um you know Ephesians Paul just goes to extra links to say hey if you're an employee and you're dealing with a boss and the boss is bad this is how you should work that out if you're dealing with kids that are rebellious this is how this looks like one of the things that we wanted to do to help you go more more deeper uh let's just say deeper into the book of Ephesians is one of these little gospel flip books think of it like a book of flashcards it'll help you identify key themes highlight passages good verse memorization suggestions a reading plan to take you through not just Ephesians by the way but Ephesians Philippians Galatians and Colossians so anyway we would love to give this resource to you as a reference for any time you are reading through the new testament just go as always to jdgrier.com it's our gift to you for becoming a supporter of our ministry well you heard him head over to jdgrier.com today that's jd g-r-e-e-a-r.com we'd also love to send you a copy of our newest resource the second part of our gospel flip book series covering the books of Galatians Ephesians Philippians and Colossians it's yours with your gift of 35 or more to this ministry call us right now at 866-335-5220 that's 866-335-5220 or as always you can visit us online at jdgrier.com i'm molly vidovich join us again tomorrow as pastor jd greer reveals that in a sense christians are kind of like lego bricks we can only accomplish our mission when we're working together that's wednesday on summit life with jd greer today's program was produced and sponsored by jd greer ministries