Remember, Remember (Part 2 of 2)

What the Bible teaches is true about all of us before we became followers of Jesus. We were without God, without hope, enslaved to sin, spiritually dead. Those seem like the kind of things we'd prefer to put behind us and forget about once we become Christians. But today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains why it's so important for us to remember those details. He's teaching today from Ephesians chapter 2. We're focusing on verses 11 and 12. The court of the Gentiles was separate in the temple precincts from the Jewish people's place, and a big sign said, You enter beyond this on peril of death.

If you proceed where you have no access, you will die. Get out. And that was a distinguishing feature of life. Now these Jewish people and these Gentile people are sitting together, breaking bread together, and calling each other brother and sister. So church, the community of God's people, was clearly not about attending services or signing up or fulfilling duties. It was about the fact that they had been made a new creation. You see, the Jewish people then began to rely on the mark of circumcision as what it was all about. And Jesus says, So it is not what it's all about.

Well, that's enough on that. That's the first thing that we need, the first line of approach. We need to realize that the division that he's addressing here is a real division, is a significant division, and they were calling each other names, Jew and Gentile. Now, secondly, notice the condition of the unconverted Gentile.

What is the condition of the unconverted Gentile? Well, he starts verse 12. Again, remember, number one, separated from Christ.

Separated from Christ. When you read the opening of the Gospels, particularly Luke, you remember, for example, Simeon, who was waiting for the consolation of Israel. It's an interesting phrase, isn't it? It's sort of matched by Anna, who was in the temple day and night, and she was waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

Interesting phrases. Well, what are you looking for? Well, there is a Messiah who is coming. There is a Christ who is coming.

I'm here waiting for him. And then the amazing moment when Simeon takes the child Jesus in his arms, and he says, Lord, you can let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have now seen the salvation. Paul, when he is up, charged before the Roman authorities by the Jews who were antagonistic towards him, who were saying, this man has opposed our Judaism, this man has disrupted everything, he then says to Festus and to Agrippa, listen, that's not true. The reason I am up here on a charge is because the things that I have been saying are directly related to, quotes, the hope of Israel. And what is that hope of Israel?

It is that the Messiah who will come is the very Messiah of God. And that was a Jewish expectation. But it wasn't a Gentile expectation. It wasn't a Gentile hope. Remember, he says, you were separated from Christ, you had none of this. You weren't looking for any of that.

None. Secondly, you were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. They neither had the badge of the covenant, nor did they enjoy the blessings of the covenant. Because those blessings were blessings of belonging, and they didn't belong. You didn't belong in here.

You had no part in this. Separated, alienated. Thirdly—and he just really builds on this, doesn't he?—strangers to the covenants of promise.

In other words, they had no knowledge of, and no right to, the promises that God had made to his people. I will make you a people. I will bring you into this land. I will bring you out of bondage.

And so on. And Paul's writing, and he says, you know, you Gentiles who are reading this letter, you had no access to any of this. Fourthly, you had no hope. Having no hope. What does that mean, that they didn't have anything to look forward to at all?

No, not ultimately. But the Jew was always going somewhere. The Jew was a pilgrim.

The Jew's sense of history always had a destination in view. If you'd said to them, where are you going? They'd say, we're going to the promised land.

Where do you want to go? I want to go back to Jerusalem. But the Gentiles had none of that. For them, history was heading nowhere. Faced with the futility of death, their existence was essentially meaningless.

Having no hope. And fifthly, without God in the world. Without God in the world. You say, well, God was in the world, so why were they without God? Well, the things that God had made clear to them, by way of creation and by way of conscience, they had suppressed.

They'd turned their backs on those things. And on turning their back on the living God as he's made himself known, they didn't believe nothing. They started to believe everything. They believed all kinds of things. They created all kinds of gods. Gods that suited their fancy. Gods that would apparently do as they asked.

The same remains true today. If we reject God's revelation of himself in Scripture, if we suppress the truth of God, then we will find that we are very quickly taken up with superstition and with novelty. We will find that we have in ourselves, as Calvin said, you know, that the heart of man is an idol factory. That we have within ourselves an immense capacity for creating gods of our own. So the 21st century Western culture rejects God by way of revelation, turns his back on his commands and his guidelines for living. Doesn't find itself isolated and atheistic. No. Surrounded by all kinds of notions and superstitions and ideas. When will they ever learn?

When will they ever learn? Is the answer just blowing in the wind? Is it?

No. Well, you say this is very interesting historically, but what does it possibly have to do with me? That's my third and final point. Number one, that we would notice that the division is between Jew and Gentile. Number two, that we would understand that Paul is describing there the condition of the unconverted Gentile, heathen, ethnoi.

And then number three, that we would realize that in describing the unconverted Gentile, he's giving to each of us a description of our pre-Christian condition. So you're here today, and you believe in Jesus, and you love Jesus, and you are a follower of Jesus. This tells you what you were like before you became a follower of Jesus. Before your eyes were opened to the truth, before your heart was softened, before you and I came to believe in Jesus, before we were up here and we were baptized and said, you know, I don't care who knows, or actually I do care who knows because I want everyone to know that Jesus Christ is Lord and King, and here I am. Before that, what were our lives? Well, we've seen it in part in the first ten verses, haven't we? We were dead, we were disobedient, we were enslaved, and we have in Christ been made alive, we've been raised up with Jesus, we've been seated with him. Now Paul says, I want to remind you again, let me remind you, here is what you were. Hendrickson summarizes it quite perfectly, and I'll give it to you in five words. I wish I'd thought it up.

I was tempted to suggest that I had, but everybody would find out. He says, This is your condition before you come to trust in Jesus. And by deduction, my friends, if you have not come to trust in Jesus, this is your condition.

Here's the summary. Christless, stateless, friendless, godless, hopeless. Christless, stateless, friendless, godless, hopeless. That's why we need to be reminded of the grace of God. That's why verse 11 follows verse 10. That's why it follows verses 8, 9, and 10, because he's been saying to them that the reality into which you have been brought had nothing at all to do with your background, had nothing at all to do with your behavior, had nothing at all to do with the fact that you look like an interesting prospect for God to include in his company. Because remember, he is making, he says down in verse 15, he is making one new man in place of the two.

One new man in place of the two. What is he saying? That there is a whole new community that God is making that comprises converted Jews and converted Gentiles. And it is not that the Jew seeks to be Jewish, or the Gentile tries to become Jewish, or they create some kind of quasi-relationship, but that together they both are united in the person and work of Jesus, and that it is his grace that has made this possible. A song that we never sing here contains the lines, How helpless and hopeless we sinners had been, if he never had loved us till cleanse from our sin.

Okay? How helpless and hopeless we as sinners would have been, if he never had loved us until cleanse from our sin. That's such a vital distinction, isn't it? Because God commends his love toward us in this, says Paul, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So religion, in all of its forms, essentially offers to people a kind of moral lecture. If you will try and stop this and start that, you can probably put yourself in a position where God may finally include you in his group. The gospel says the absolute reverse. It says that God in Christ is reconciling the world to himself, and that when this dawns upon us, we come to receive the reconciliation, the redemption which has been accomplished, then applied to our lives. And we realize, then, this is all of grace, all of God's goodness. It's important, I think, to recognize the fact that here in verse 11, you come to the first imperative that Paul uses. He'll come back to his imperatives in chapter 4.

But this is the first imperative. It's 33 verses of indicative and then an imperative, making the point that he has not been providing a moral lecture. He has not been giving to the Ephesians good advice about what they can do to make themselves acceptable to God. He has been giving to the Ephesians the good news of what Christ has accomplished to bring them into a relationship with God. And the good news is that having put us in that position with himself, he now puts us in a relationship with one another. The reason that we need to remember is to prevent us from re-raising many of the barriers of hostility.

You see, local churches are really good at subdivision. Really good at saying, Well, I'm in the… and you're in the… and I'm the… and so on and so on. So he says, You need to remember that this is what you folks were. He does it routinely in his letters. I'll just give you two cross-references.

You may follow them up on your own. For example, when he's giving Titus basically sermon material to preach to his congregation—again, in Ephesus—he says, Remind your people to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, ready for every good work, speak evil of no one, avoid quarreling, gentle, perfect courtesy towards all people. Well, that's quite a list.

Why? Listen. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. Not least of all the Jews or the Gentiles. He says, You're going to have to make sure your congregation understands this, Titus, because… And they need to remember what they were like before Jesus. You have the same thing, classically, in 1 Corinthians 6. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don't be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

That pretty well covers the whole shooting match right there, doesn't it? And here's the glory of it. And such were some of you. And such were some of you. Remember what you were. That's what you were, he says. That's not what defines you now. You're no longer defined by your sexuality. You're defined by your identity in Christ. You're no longer defined by the fact that you did a prison sentence that lasted thirty-two years. You're defined by your identity in Christ.

You're no longer known as the little cheat, Zacchaeus. You're known as the man who comes from the house to which salvation has come. In other words, when a church, when a local church starts to act as if it never was this, as if somehow or another it is a community of the respectable, it is a society of the people who've never done anything wrong, never done anything bad, then it lies through its teeth, and it makes it virtually very, very difficult for anybody who knows himself, who knows herself, to be in need of this kind of restoration and reconciliation, to come forward and say, This is what I am. And you can then say, Well, I can tell you that this is what I was, but look what Jesus has done.

That's the point that he's making, and it's a vital point. If the epitaph had been written before Jesus, then it would have read on the tombstone, separated, alienated, helpless, hopeless, but in Christ it now reads reconciled, united, and seated. And Paul is going to go on, and we'll come back to this in our following study. He's going to go on and make it clear that God is putting together a completely new creation, a spiritual temple, and the local church in Ephesus there in its gathered communities should be one of the places in Ephesus where the deepest divisions are seen to be dealt with in Christ. And by deduction, Parkside, as a local congregation in the greater area of Cleveland, is supposed to be in some measure one of the places in which the deepest divisions are dealt with in Christ. Those divisions cannot be dealt with by social engineering. Those divisions are not ultimately dealt with by human exhortation. The only way those divisions are dealt with is when the gospel, the grace of God, is preached, it's understood, it's believed, and it's applied to every area of life. We may not yet be Revelation 7, the company that no one can number.

We're clearly not. That is out in front of us, but it doesn't stop us from being prayerfully and purposefully and energetically committed to heading in that direction. And one final word. Perhaps you're here today, and all this what you wear, there's no—you're still in the wear, because you've never reckoned with Christ.

Perhaps you have reached this weekend filled with the kind of longings that are represented in the songs of the sixties, the folk songs, the longings for the lion to lie down with the lamb, taking the swords and the materials and seeing them burned. And you actually have a deep-seated longing for a repaired world. I haven't gone to check, but the sticker on the back of your car will be one of many, and it says on it, Coexist. Coexist. You've got a star of David, you've got an Islamic symbol, you've got a cross, you've got all those things. I get that.

I really understand that. You're saying, Why can't we live together? How will this be brought about? When will we ever learn? And the answer is in learning from Jesus.

Not in the lowest common denominator, forsaking all our convictions, to agree on nothing, but to heed the call of Jesus, particularly this call. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.

For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find what you're looking for, which is rest for your soul. Come. Take. Learn. Find. When will you ever learn?

Maybe today. It is as we remember that we are hopeless and helpless apart from Jesus, that we are enabled to humbly embrace our new identity, united together with fellow believers in Christ. We're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life.

Alistair returns shortly to close today's program. If you are benefiting from our current teaching in the second chapter of the book of Ephesians, and you'd like more, you can study the entire book of Ephesians with Alistair. Listen to the series for free on the mobile app or online at truthforlife.org, or if you'd prefer, you can purchase all 83 messages on a single USB for just $5.

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You can ask for your copy when you make a donation at truthforlife.org slash donate, or call us at 888-588-7884. Now, here is Alistair to close with prayer. Father, thank you that the Bible is more than sufficient for our investigation. Thank you that we can go away and read the Bible and see if these things are actually there. Make us students of your word, Lord. Grant that as we read the Bible, we might be reminded of what we were outside of Christ, what it means to be in Christ, the challenges and privileges that are now ours for some who are wrestlers, as it were, on the troubled sea, who long for good to triumph and for evil to be vanquished, who long for oppression to cease and for justice to be established. Grant that in healing, Christ's invitation to come and to take and to learn and to find the deepest longings of their hearts that are all clouded over, all impregnated with self and with sin, may be set to rights in the one sufficient sacrifice of Jesus, reconciling us to yourself. For we pray in his name. Amen. is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living