Ephesians 2:6-22; 3:1-11Print Page 2 Unity in Christ

Ephesians 2:6-22; 3:1-11

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It said in the beginning of this chapter that we walked according to the course of this world, walk, meaning to meander. Your life and my life was without purpose. I lived without purpose. My purposes changed each day, they involved my own pleasure and my own satisfaction and my own goals, and I threw those goals away and picked up new ones as soon as I got tired of them. And if I got into a relationship with someone that was a hassle, I got rid of ‘em, because I was a no-hassle kind of guy. And I was completely self-centered. And whatever the world and Satan handed me, my flesh was ready for, and I was meandering without purpose. But now--God has come into our lives, he has saved us, and now we have purpose, we are the poema of God to a lost world. We are the expression of God to a lost world, his workmanship. And there are good works that are fore-ordained that we should walk, it indicates, in the sphere of those things. And again, the thing that strikes me here as I go through this…it is the degree of parent-blaming that I hear in the church, the degree of saying ‘Well, I grew up in this kind of home, and dysfunctional is the big catch-word--my father was an alcoholic, I was sexually abused, I was in a foster-home, I went through this, I went through that--and you know, all of that pain is real, and the scars left by those things are real--but the point of all of this is, that now, because of the world that we have to minister to and convey the gospel to, is a world full of pain, and abuse and drunkenness, and hopelessness. It is only fitting that God would take us, turn our scars into his brush-strokes, and that we would become his “poema” to a lost world, to be able to tell people, “I was sexually abused, but Jesus Christ was sufficient. He will forgive you and give you life, and remove the sword of bitterness from your hand, and open your eyes.” [And right here I want to add something. There is a book titled “For Whom The World Was Not Worthy”. It is about an evangelist couple in World War II Yugoslavia. In the book the evangelists wife, also a woman of prayer, meets this old lady who had seen all her sons slaughtered and was handed a basket filled with their eyeballs by the perpetrators. She went insane from grief and pain. Upon this evangelist’s wife and the prayer-group with her learning of this woman’s plight of grief-caused insanity, they prayed over this elderly lady, and Jesus healed her and restored her sanity, and then she became a believer herself. To say Jesus doesn’t heal our scars, which may seem small compared to this event, is ridiculous. This is the type healing Pastor Joe Focht is talking about. And this old lady was too far gone to be able to pray for herself. She had to be healed before she was sane enough to ask Jesus into her life.] I was raised [Pastor Joe talking about himself now] by an alcoholic father who caused hell in our home. But I have a father now who was willing to give his own Son that I could have life. I went from foster home to foster home, and to understand what it’s like to be on the outside looking in, to want to take a machinegun and walk into a McDonalds and blow everybody away. But Jesus Christ has taken all of that away from me. And you see, instead of, it says in Ezekiel 18, God says “I don’t want to hear you blaming that generation anymore.” If your parents were idolaters and worshipped Molech and they offered children to idols—and yet you decide to follow me, you will not be punished for the sins of your parents but you’ll be accountable for your own walk. But if your children are wicked they won’t receive the reward for your righteousness.” Because each generation will give account to God for itself. And God is sufficient for those things. And again, we’re all members, we’re all adult children of sinning parents. That’s the biggest group you can belong to. And so will your kids, by the way. And the remarkable thing, is that he can take us with all of our pain and all of our scars, and turn us into the answer that the world does not have and is looking for. You know, if we all came from hunky- dory situations where everything was wonderful and everything was prosperous and if we all came from functional families--whatever they are, I’ve never heard of one--I’m not in one now, I’m doing my best, but you know--what would we know about the pain the world is existing in and wrestling with? What would we know about the darkness they face, and the broken-heartedness and the bitterness and the pain? The point is, that Christ is able to lift up our head out of the muck and the mire, and the life that we have is a life that goes on from this point into the future, not into the past. You can go sit on the psychiatrist’s couch. And you can sit there and you can tell him, ‘My Mom did this and my Dad did this, and I did this, and that happened and this and that, you can retrace all of this nonsense in your whole life that brought you to that couch and pay him $100 for him to tell you you’re nuts. You knew that before you went. You could have paid us $100 and we’d have told you. [laughter] But that psychiatrist can’t take you any further than that. And with Jesus Christ there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. And the psychiatrist doesn’t have that for you. He can tell you ‘I can see that you are the sum of all of the insanity you’ve lived through.’ I can’t believe he went to college all those years to discover that about people. [Sometimes going to those guys just makes you more bitter about your past, I know, my ex-wife went to this therapist guy, all he succeeded in doing was digging up all the past hurts in her life, which exaserbated her anger and bitterness.] That’s what Nicodemus said to Jesus. ‘Do I have to go back into my mother’s womb?’ ‘I am the sum of all the insanity of my life. How do I do this over again?’ And Jesus Christ said ‘You have to be born of water and of the Spirit’, and it indicates to me all the way through the Bible that the cross of Christ and the new birth is sufficient. And man, do we need to get our eyes off of our scars and off of our bitterness. [We do that by handing them to Jesus in prayer and forgetting about them after that.] You know, the point is, are we really willing to take what Christ has put at our disposal, and let go of the hatred, and let go of the bitterness, and let go of the pain, and set our eyes on the future where there is a world without end, where there is an inheritance that’s undefiled, that is kept, that fadeth not away, that is reserved in heaven for us. Are we really willing to look around now and know that we’re in another family that is more functional, this [church] family right here is fairly functional, it ain’t perfect. And if you look hard enough, you might find somebody like you, and get disappointed, a human. But he’s given us a family, he’s given us his Word, he’s given us a future. Everything about the life we have in Christ is ahead of us. This is as bad as it gets [until the persecution of Matthew 10 & 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21 comes—our final exam time], it only gets better from here on in. This abundant life that we’re experiencing now is as bad as it gets. And it says Jesus Christ has taken us, with all of those scars, and now through the work of his Spirit, through his salvation, we have become the ‘poema’ of God, the way that God expresses himself to the lost world. That’s why it’s emphatic in Matthew when it says ‘You alone are the light of the world [Matthew 5:14-16], you alone are the salt of the earth [Matthew 5:13].’ No Buddhist and no Muslim and no Krishna--and I am not judging their motive or anything like that, I’m just saying--they do not have the answer. You alone. And that answer is, part of that answer is the fact that you and I, we all have our own story, we could all write our own book. We all have our own pain, we all have our own little tales, but it really comes up in verse 4, where it says “But God…” That’s where the past is cut off and the future begins. All of the pain and all of the bitterness and all of that--“But God”, “But God”--butted into my life and changed it, and gave me a future, and released me, and cut the strings of the past, and the chains, so that now we’re not purposeless, we’re his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, a new creation, it says. That’s what matters, the new creation, the new man in Christ. The old man, one thing, the new man in Christ--we have the mind of Christ--“created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” And again, the only other place I find that in the New Testament, that idea “before ordained” is in Romans--Paul must have been on a roll as he was thinking about these things—in Romans it says that “what if God, willing to show his wrath, and make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath and fitted them to destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy”--that’s us here this evening--“which he hath before prepared unto glory.” Same phrase, only other place. And again, it says there, he has “before ordained us unto glory.” Pretty amazing stuff. It says here “for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” (verse 10) “Wherefore” because of all this, “remember” the tense is “continually be remembering” “that you being in time past Gentiles in the flesh”--now that’s in the flesh--“who are called Uncircumcision in the flesh made by hands”--you can tell Paul’s digging a little bit here. I mean, he’s the guy who’s got the revelation of the church and what it really is and develops [into] in the New Testament. And he digs a little bit here, when he says “wherefore, remember that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh”--in other words, your flesh is Gentile flesh, it wasn’t Jewish flesh (he’s speaking to the Ephesians) “who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision in the flesh made by hands, that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens”--now this is a description of the government and the politics and the media. No wonder things are so messed up--“being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers [foreigners] from the covenants of promise,”--they knew nothing about them--“having no hope, and without God in the world.” Sad condition the world exists in today. And here’s another “but”, verse 13, like the one back in verse 4. “But now in Christ Jesus you who sometimes were far off are made nigh [king James word for “near”] by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both [Jew and Gentile] one, and hath broken down the middle wall of separation between us;”--and again, in the temple precincts in Jerusalem, there was a wall that separated the court of women and the Holy Place from the court of the Gentiles, and there in Hebrew, Greek and Latin [it said], “Any Gentile that passed that wall took his own life into his own hands” because it was punishable by death. And Paul is playing on that now, saying that the ‘wall of partition has been broken down between Jew and Gentile—“having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in the ordinances; for to make in himself of twain [Jew and Gentile] one new man, so making peace.” [Now the Stearns translation shows that this verse isn’t negating the commandments, but the enmity between Jew and Gentile] That’s new in quality, that’s one new kind of man, that’s a Christian man. So there is no more, in Christ there is no more Jew or Gentile [even though Paul, Peter, James, John all encouraged the Jewish believers to maintain their Jewish heritage and cultural ethnic customs of worship as believers in Yeshua, and for the Gentiles to maintain their own customs of worship that were developing. Subsequent church history shows, deplorably, that the Gentile Greco-Roman churches squashed the churches of the Messianic Jewish believers in Yeshua, so that only the Greco-Roman churches remained. Now Messianic congregations filled with Jewish believers in Yeshua are springing up everywhere, bringing the gospel of salvation back into the Israeli nation and to all Jews worldwide. This is as Paul, Peter, James and John would have wanted it--the two separate groups of believers, both one in Christ--making one new man. Sort of like a man and a woman, making a new person, one flesh. It takes the two to make one “complete” person. And even here Pastor Joe concurs.] And I thank God for some of the Messianic fellowships and outreaches that Jesus Christ has raised up. But I want you to know this, you are not a 2^nd class citizen because you are not a Messianic Jew [as any decent non-Torah observant Messianic Jewish pastor (or rabbi, as they call themselves) will wholeheartedly concur]. Because if you are, then so was Abraham, because he was a godless Gentile, it says in the end of Joshua, who worshipped idols on the other side of the Euphrates river. And the idea is, now in Christ--maybe you had Uncircumcised Gentile flesh, they had Circumcised Jewish flesh, but the idea is we’re in the Spirit from another dimension where God’s family is named from, we’re all born of the Spirit of Christ--and the Spirit of Jesus Christ--and the Spirit that lives in you is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, is the same Spirit that lives inside a born-again Jew or born-again Muslim or anybody else who’s born-again. [And he’s referring to a Muslim person who has accepted Jesus as Savior.] Israel is the apple of God’s eye nationally, and he has a special place for the Jew, and has a special promise that he will maintain and fulfill to the nation of Israel. Romans 11 tells us about that. But “in Christ” now there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither male nor female, bond nor free, we’re all one in Christ. And you cannot improve on that unity, you can’t improve on it. And he says here that ‘Christ has broken down and made one new kind of man, so making peace.’ “and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby, and he came and he preached peace to you which were afar off,”--Gentiles--“and to them that were nigh”--to the Jews. “For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (verses 16-18). Now you’ve got to understand, Paul is the guy, you know. Peter really doesn’t spend time on it, James doesn’t spend time on it. Paul is really the guy who sees the church and is given the revelation of [about] the church, the body of Christ, that the middle wall of partition is broken down. He’s going to tell us in chapter 3 that this was a secret, it was something that was hidden in ages past that even the prophets really didn’t understand--that God had taken Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, and called him and appeared to him by grace, by election, and brought him into the land of Promise--Haberu, which we get Hebrew from, it just meant a nomad, a shepherd--and the promise was then given to Abraham whereby Isaac was born. From Isaac through his seed comes Jacob, who’s name is changed to Israel, who has 12 sons who are [become] the 12 tribes of Israel, or the children of Israel, the children of Jacob. And God takes the Jews and sets them aside from all other people on the earth as the apple of his eye, his covenant people, the people that he worked with on the earth, and desired that they would be a priest nation--to communicate to the rest of the world the truth about the one true living God. And it was through the Jews that the Messiah has come. So it tells us in Romans 11 not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought, don’t be ignorant of this thing, that God has a covenant with the Jews. And it’s because of their blindness that we have been grafted in. And there should be a certain humility on our part toward Israel, realizing what it cost them as a nation to bring the Messiah into the world, that they were a special target of Satan throughout the history of the world, because it was through their bloodline the Messiah would come, who would destroy all of his [Satan’s] work and seal his future of being damned in the lake of fire.

But Paul is now saying, ‘Look, this now has been broken down in Christ. In Christ there is one new kind of man.’ We both [Jew and Gentile believers] have access to the Father in one Spirit, which is the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit of Jesus, you know, are you Jewish? No, [but] our God is, I guess, I think Hebrew may be the language we speak in heaven, I’m not opposed [to that idea] at all. I like swarma and I hope we eat it throughout eternity, and filaful, that’s fine with me. “Now therefore are you no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God”--incredible family that we belong to--“and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone”--Now is it NT prophets or OT prophets? You can pick, we’re all entitled to our opinions. I feel like my life personally isn’t built on NT prophets. I know about Aggabus, but I don’t really know about the rest of ‘em. I mean, certainly my life is built upon the things Isaiah said and Ezekiel said and Elijah said, the minor prophets and Daniel and so forth. So I think in context here of Israel and the Old Testament. He will in chapter 3 make mention of NT prophets also. I believe there’s a difference between the gift of prophecy and being a prophet. I believe that Billy Graham is a prophet. When we had lunch with some of the folks on his staff, they said when he wants to write he has to leave the country. He lives in a cabin. But the President has his phone number, Yeltsin has his phone number. All these people from around the world call him and dump on him all the time. And he can’t say ‘Ruth, tell him I’m not here…Hey, it’s Yeltsin, wanting to know what to do.’ And remarkably, these people get to the top of the pile and realize how empty it is, they find out what’s going on, on the scene, they find out about nuclear weapons drifting around the world. They want to know what in the world is going on. And he said every world leader since Winston Churchill has taken him aside and questioned him about the 2^nd Coming of Christ, every world leader--Chinese, Russian, American, they all want to know--because they get to the top and they know it’s closer than they admit they know to us. I think he’s a prophet. He speaks to kings and to queens and world leaders. So I think there are prophets today. [And in spite of how disliked Mr. Herbert Armstrong was in the eyes of other Christian leaders, he was queried along these same identical lines. He had met with a great many of the world’s leaders, kings and queens on many occasions toward the end of his life.] I think you’ve got to look out for most of them though, especially if they’re trying to convince you that they’re one. Jesus said “As the Father has sent me so I send you.” And I think what you want to take note about that is that Jesus said “I don’t bear witness on myself, but the Father who sent me, he bears witness of me.” So, you know, you figure if a guy, why does he have this ad in the paper? You know, ‘Healing! Evangelism! Come see--hoops, seals, elephants!’… You know, if he’s so great he doesn’t need advertisement in a newspaper. So I would be a little cautious about those who claim the place of a prophet, especially when they want to prophesy in your life and tell you what God wants you to do. Because God sent his Son to die so he could talk to you. But I think they are around. But I think here, back to the point, we’re looking at Old Testament prophets.

Verse 20, “And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,”--here’s the important thing, we can all agree on this--“Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.” The idea is, everything is measured off of Christ. Doesn’t say he’s the capstone. Some guys get out there [on the hairy edge of doctrinal interpretation] and say it’s the capstone on a pyramid, all this nonsense. This is the cornerstone. It was laid first, everything was measured off of it. It’s part of the foundation. Jesus Christ himself is the chief cornerstone and everything else in the building is measured off of that cornerstone, everything else. [And Jesus is called the Word, or Logos of God in John 1:1-11. The Word of God in print is the Bible, Jesus in print, so who do you think inspired the Word of God through the Holy Spirit?--when speaking to or inspiring Prophets what to write? 2 Peter 1:20-21, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture [Tenach, Old Testament] is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” See how Jesus is the cornerstone both in the New and Old Testaments. See Acts 2. The very same Holy Spirit was inspiring the apostles who inspired the Prophets in the Old Testament or Tenach. In other parts of the New Testament the Holy Spirit is also called the Spirit of Christ, and alternately, the Spirit of the Father--one God in three persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit--don’t ask me to explain--but that’s the connection.] Everything in our lives should be measured off of Christ Jesus. It’s an interesting thing, you know, because it will talk to us here about how we grow--we’re growing into this building, fitly framed together and so forth. The interesting thing about Christ and your experience with Jesus Christ and the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, it’s so much different than all of the knowledge we’ve experienced. Through life, as you went to school and you learned different subjects, biology and algebra, trigonometry…and you learned those things to a degree…but the interesting thing in learning spiritual things, we don’t learn through out senses, we don’t learn in the same way, through our five senses. And you never learn all there is to know about Jesus being your foundation, that continues to expand. It’s almost like the light comes on more and more, the more you know the Old Testament the more you understand the New Testament [and I am finding that so very true, having recently become an active member of a Messianic Jewish-Christian congregation. Having a Jewish pastor, brought up learning the OT Scripture, the Tenach, but taught in the light of the New Testament, I am coming into so much more of an understanding of how the two, Old and New, are intertwined and meshed together--the deep symbolism in all the aspects of the Mosaic temple worship, directly pointing to Jesus Christ, his sacrifice and atonement for all of our sins, the church--and that God wants to dwell with his people, mankind, eternally--incredible symbolism of the Old pointing to its fulfillment and direct application in the New. There is something vital Gentile Christianity needs to learn from their Jewish brothers in Christ, the Messianic pastors and rabbis in congregations spreading around the globe at this point in time. Calvary Chapels are beginning to understand this, but other Christian fellowships and denominations need to start realizing the significance of this, and the significance of the Messianic movement itself. For more understanding, log onto http://www.UNITYINCHRIST.COM/messianicmovement/messianicmovement.htm .] The more you read the New Testament, the more you understand the Old Testament. The more you pray, the more you understand about Christ. The more you have fellowship with the body of Christ--the idea is, it’s much different than a subject [in school], you know, the Bible isn’t like a biology book, once you get to the end of it, you’re glad, or Cliff Notes, that’s what I read when I was in high school, if I could get through them. You know, I never read till I got saved. Jesus does amazing things. I used to sit in English class and hit my pencil, and my English teacher hated me, “Focht, stop it! You’re driving me crazy!” I sat up in the front row. But you know, predicate, nominate and verbs…and I was sitting there thinking ‘Bell’s gonna ring soon and I’m gonna get outa here.’ That was just me. I think it’s wonderful that there are people who understand those things. I wasn’t one of them. But when I got saved, God gave me an amazing desire to read. And the amazing thing about the Bible is that it’s not like any other book. I’ve read it cover to cover I don’t know how many times, but the idea is, every time I go back to places that I assume I’m familiar with, I find things I never knew were there. It’s like an onion where you pull layer after layer. The idea is there’s NO bottom, the depth to it is incredible. And it uncovers other parts as it uncovers itself. So the thing that I see that is different about our measuring everything off of Christ, all of life, measuring marriage off of Christ, measuring parenting off of Christ, measuring school and career and the value of money off of Christ--money, by the way, is a great tool to use against Satan, it really is--you know, measuring the way we spend ourselves and our resources off of Christ. There’s this continually expanding experience in depth and height and in breadth. He’s going to talk about the love of Christ and your spiritual growth with him. It isn’t just one subject at a time, kind of like it was in high school or something. And he talks about that. He says first of all the foundation is Jesus Christ, the way it’s formed, the formation in verse 21, “In whom al the building fitly framed together--and continually growing (present perfect tense)--unto a holy temple in the Lord.” And so this is where it’s saying, there’s this continual growing as it is measured off of Christ--as an individual, as a church, through the centuries--an holy temple in the Lord. “In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit” (verse 21). Now that’s an incredible thing to say about human beings, isn’t it?--that God wants to live in you by the Holy Spirit. By the way, this Holy Spirit didn’t come from a dysfunctional family. You have the mind of Christ which doesn’t need healing of the memories. He’s only got good memories. And it says you’re being builded together for an habitation of the Holy Ghost [k. James]. That’s pretty incredible stuff, that God desires to be at home in you and that you can be at home in him. And again, there’s this concept of a family, God drawing us into not cheap familiarity--and I think again, with almost reverence we step on that ground where we cry “Abba, Father”, can I really be that familiar?--does he really desire that kind of intimacy? I can tell you without a doubt that he does. Any of you who are parents have learned within the confines of those relationships that you have with your children, of what it means to love your children, to care about their well-being. Again, I’ve learned more from my kids about the love of God than I have from any theologian or commentary. We are part of that family, being builded together into a habitation of God wherein we would be comfortable in him, growing in him, and he would be comfortable in us. Pretty incredible stuff, trying to communicate to us.”

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