The girl says to you, I really like you but just want to be good friends.
And then you discover that they've been texting and messaging your best friend
behind your back and carrying on a relationship with them.
How do you feel?
Angry.
And the question is, when the anger flares, what do you do with the hostility?
Angry.
What do you do with the anger that you feel towards this person who was before your friend?
Or when you're married, your spouse has a credit card.
Maybe you've seen your mum and dad do this.
And they go on a shopping trip and they load up the credit card.
They just come back from the shops having spent a lot more than they were meant to have spent
on the credit card.
And mum or dad suddenly realises that the other one has caused the family huge problems for
the next few months as they grapple with paying a debt which they're otherwise unable to afford.
And so one of them is very, very angry with the other.
What do you do with the hostility?
What do you do with the anger?
Well, you've got your mum and dad's car.
They've given it to you.
You're on your red peas.
And you do what you know you shouldn't have done.
You've had a couple of drinks.
It's not very intoxicated but you have an accident.
And the car's not covered by insurance.
And you've got to go home.
Well, the policeman takes you home to tell your mum and dad the story of what has happened.
They're furious.
What does it take to remove the hostility?
Now, I can give you Ephesians 2 in a nutshell.
So let me tell you Ephesians 2 in a nutshell.
The first half which Deb preached last week is about how God removes hostility between him
and people.
And the second part where I'm particularly focusing tonight but I want to spend a little
bit of time in the first part is how God deals with hostility between people.
So between us and God and between us and one another.
And he uses a particular example to make that.
So if you remember that, you've got the thruster tonight but it's quite another thing to take
it to heart and apply it to yourself and what that means.
So Ephesians chapter 2 is written against a background of hostility.
And the hostility is on those two different fronts.
And Deb preached to us last week from verses 1 to 10 which is a fantastic passage.
And in that passage, the hostility which is described is justified.
It's between good people and God and it's about us giving offence to God and God being
angry with us.
And in verse 1 it says,
Now that's a mouthful if you've never heard it before but let me tell you it's very simple.
You, me and everybody else dead in transgressions and sin.
God is justifiably angry and we are described as by nature objects of his anger.
So people who have rejected God, which is the whole lot of us, are dead meat as far as God
is concerned without Christ.
And it's a problem because when you're dead, you can't do anything to change your circumstance.
Death is the ultimate description of helplessness.
So the big message of the first half of Ephesians is what God has done about this situation.
So in verses 4 and 5 he declares the great news, the great thing that God has done.
He's taken the initiative, he's stepped into this situation and it says,
And so it says that God has actually stepped into the middle of this hostility himself, even though it's his own anger.
He stepped into the ring, he's struck a death blow to sin and death.
He died for us, he's brought us out from under his anger and we have been brought from death to life and this is described, it is by grace you have been saved.
But the second half of Ephesians is about a different kind of hostility.
Hostility is something that we all understand, we participate in, we've been in both sides of it, we've been really angry with somebody ourselves, we know that experience.
And we also know the other experiences, which is quite a helpless experience sometimes, is to be on the receiving end of another person's anger.
They're angry with me and I can't control their anger, they're just dumping on me and I'm feeling it and I'm crushed by it.
God has been keeping his promises and working his purposes out through the Old Testament part of the Bible, through the descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob for nearly 2,000 years before this is written.
And in the words of Isaiah, God's people, the Jews were meant to be a light to the Gentiles.
And the goodness of God was supposed to be seen in them.
And nations were intended to be drawn to the Lord God Almighty who had been so kind and faithful to his people.
People were meant to look on and say, I want to be part of that.
But the reality was different.
And the Jews had received all this goodness from God and instead of holding it with humility and holding it out in an embracing way to the nations,
they had this great sense of entitlement and privilege.
And they're proud of the special status that God gave them.
And they looked down their noses, they despised those that didn't share it.
You know, we sit in church, don't we, tonight?
Right.
And for those of us who understand the salvation that we've received, it is a very great thing.
But what an appalling thing to hold it to ourselves and not want to share it with others.
It's the grace of God that we've come under in the first place.
So the Jews had a name for everybody else in the world who wasn't a Jew.
They called them, our translation, Gentile.
But in Greek, it's ethnos, the ethnics.
We translate it nations.
And when you use the word nations, we probably think of that as quite a good, a positive sort of translation.
But for Jews to refer to the ethnos, it was a term of derision and hate.
So if you weren't a Jew, you're an ethnic.
John Stott, in his commentary, wrote that the Jew had an immense contempt for the Gentile.
The Gentile said the Jews were created by God to be fuel for the fires of hell.
That's what you were made for.
Is anybody here tonight from a Jewish background, if you want to say?
You don't have to.
My presumption is that most of us aren't.
And so for the Jews, we are fodder for the fires of hell.
Back here.
And God said, God, they said, loves only Israel of all the nations that he has made.
It was not even lawful to render help to a Gentile mother in childbirth.
For that would simply be to bring another Gentile into the world.
And until Christ came, the Gentiles were an object of contempt to the Jews.
The barrier between them was absolute.
If a Jewish boy married a Gentile girl or a Gentile girl married a Jewish boy,
the family would have the funeral for them.
Such contact with a Gentile was the equivalent of death.
The separation between Jew and Gentile was seen in the temple.
God didn't actually live in the temple,
but the centre of the temple was the symbol of where God's name was
and his place was and how he dwelt with his people.
And the Jews could come fairly close,
but the Gentiles had to stand at a distance and look,
stand outside the gate, stand outside the wall and look into the temple,
but not come close into the temple.
And archaeologists have actually found some of the signs
which were around the temple, saying, stop.
And they said these words exactly,
no foreigner may enter within the barrier and enclosure around the temple.
Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his own ensuing death.
Stop or die.
Really interesting, you catch a glimpse of it in the book,
in Acts of the Apostles,
because there's a place there where Paul is in serious trouble with the Jewish authority
because they heard a rumour that he'd actually desecrated the temple
by taking Jews into the temple area.
Something he shouldn't, he didn't do it, but that's what they thought he did.
So these guys really hated one another.
And the hatred is particularly driven by the Jew towards the Gentile.
There is a state of enmity between two groups of people
that God had always intended to draw to himself.
Now we understand hostility.
We played with that at the beginning.
We engage in it one way or another.
We've been on the giving and we've been on the receiving end, I presume.
When people are fighting,
when they're having a quarrel with one another,
we have to be very careful when we listen to one another's stories.
Who do we listen to first?
We listen to our friend, don't we?
In my family,
the kids when they're younger,
they don't do it anymore,
but they have a spat with one another.
And sometimes they come running to mum or dad
and both of them may be trying to tell their story
and win their case and win you over
and help you to understand why the other one got it exactly wrong
and I was right.
And Kerry and I get involved
and all of a sudden,
Kerry and I are arguing and fighting with one another
and the kids patch it up over here.
And you look back afterwards
and you scratch your head and think,
how did I get involved in that?
And it's the same with adults.
We listen to our friends.
We know that they always tell us the truth.
But we know that they tell us their hurts
from their perspective and with their flavour.
And most of us shade ourselves in a better light
than the person that we disagree with
because we probably want to convince you
that we're right and they're wrong, don't we?
One thing's absolutely certain.
There's always another side.
And sometimes it's come from a really simple thing
at the beginning of one person
just not understanding clearly
what the other person was trying to communicate.
I said something to a friend the other week
and it muddied the waters for me
and it created feelings of distress and alienation,
all sorts of things.
And then we talked about it.
And when we talked about it,
I realised that I'd distorted things in my mind
and gone to places on my own
where I'd got it wrong.
Ephesians chapter 2 is a wonderful chapter
and verses 11 to 22 in particular
because it declares that God has engaged
in a great exercise in conflict resolution between people.
God is in the business of repairing and restoring relationships.
And he addresses both sides of this Jew-Gentile divide
one at a time.
He goes to the Gentile first,
the ethnic, the ethnos.
And in verse 12 he says,
Now let's put ourselves in those shoes because that's us.
Before Christ,
you were destitute.
We were destitute.
We weren't part of the covenants
or the deals that God had done with people.
They didn't know him.
We were genuine no-hopers,
no relationship with God's people,
no relationship with God.
We stood outside his promises.
We had nothing to look forward to
except judgment and rejection,
fodders for the fires of hell,
as our Jewish enemies would say.
But it's not where God wants things to remain.
And in verse 13 it says,
But now in Christ you who were once far off
have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
God has acted to bring those who were far off near.
He's brought us in.
And he's brought us in from a long way out.
And he didn't do it by making us Jews.
We are brought near to God by the blood of Christ
shed on the cross for our sins.
We have been forgiven
through the undeserved kindness and grace of God.
It's a wonderful message.
It's a wonderful place that we've been brought to.
But this is not a hostility.
This is not a divide
which is about one side being really wrong
and the other side being right.
Both sides have to move in their thinking
and in their stance.
They both have to understand God in a new way
for true reconciliation to occur.
And so he turns and he speaks to the Jews
and he says in verse 15,
Christ has abolished the law
with its commandments and ordinances.
that he might create in himself one new humanity
in the place of the two
thus making peace.
And he might reconcile both groups to God
in one body through the cross
thus putting to death that hostility through it.
It's a big statement.
The commandments and the laws have been abolished.
That is a bombshell which was dropped by the Lord Jesus himself
and it got him executed.
It's continued in the lives of the apostles
and some of them are losing their lives for it as well.
Because I think if you're a Jew
and you hear somebody come along
and say the commandments and the laws have been abolished
then what you really hear
when that is said
you hear something said like
it's now okay to lie
and steal
and commit adultery
and do murder
and do whatever you like
go for it
because these guys are saying
the law has been abolished.
But that's not what it's about.
The law has been abolished
but in a sense
it has been completely superseded.
Everything that the law was designed to do
has been met in Christ.
It has been completely fulfilled in Christ.
When I was a child
I'd go with my mum
and do the shops in D.Y.
Deb probably did this too.
Hmm.
All the banks in the northern beaches
were down in D.Y.
even before Inghamall.
That says how old I am doesn't it?
And
my mum would queue up
one after another
at three or four different banks
moving money around
and she'd have me and my brother and sister in tow
and we were really little
and we'd go from one bank to another
getting bored stiff
while she waited in queues
while they counted money
and sometimes going back
to the first bank
that she started with
because she had to take something back there
after she'd gone to that one.
I got sick of writing on those bank slips.
You don't do that anymore.
You sit at home
you push a few buttons on the internet
we still love money don't we?
We move it around
we haven't got the tax for money
but you do it on the internet
it's all done in five minutes
and you go home
old ways are made completely obsolete
by the new
and thank God for it.
You guys and girls have got it easy.
So Jesus has made the old way obsolete
and even the Jews have to move ground
in their understanding
of this process of reconciliation.
They can't cling to the things they used to.
So when Jesus died on the cross
the Jews long awaited Messiah
became the perfect sacrifice
that never needed to be offered again.
He died for the sins of his own people
the Jews
but he also died for the sins
of people in the world
who knew nothing of God
and nothing of his people Israel.
He died for the nations as well.
And that's why he writes
in verses 17 and 18
he came and proclaimed
peace to you who were far off
and peace to those who were near
for through him both of us
have access in one spirit to the father
peace to the far off the Gentiles
peace to those who were near the Jews
the hostility that existed between them
and that kept them separated
has been completely extinguished
and dealt with in Christ.
We have been brought together
by the Lord Jesus Christ
he has made us one
through Jesus
we have access to God
through his spirit.
And you get this picture
of God being the most amazing reconciler
bringing people who absolutely hated
one another's guts together
and it happened through the death of his son
by the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ
and God extinguished hostility
between himself and people
he removed hostility
between people and people
you and me
that we can be in relationship again.
And it's God's church
that bears witness to that reality.
Verse 19
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens
but you are citizens with the saints
and also members of the household of God
built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets
with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone
and in him the whole structure is joined together
and grows into a holy temple in the Lord
in whom you also are built together spiritually
into a dwelling place for God.
You get this magnificent picture
of God doing something quite glorious
in building his church.
People who were once deadly enemies
are brought together by the blood of Christ.
Outsiders are now regarded as citizens
and members with the saints.
In fact it says
we're built upon the foundations
of the apostles and prophets.
That's a great description
because the apostolic preaching
which is recorded in the New Testament
as well as the prophets of the Old Testament
the scriptures anticipating the coming of Christ
it's really saying
in a funny way
that the church is founded
on the word of God.
And so word based ministry
is at the heart of what we do
it brings the dead to life.
And the cornerstone
of this magnificent building
is Christ himself.
We keep proclaiming
the life saving message
of a crucified and resurrected saviour.
We believe
if you believe in Jesus
you respond to that message
and trust Jesus Christ as Lord
you are saved.
So it's talking about
God's people together.
This is not you just in your seat
by yourself.
This is us as a group of people
together
that God is corporately
building into a spiritual building
in which his spirit dwells.
I would think that
before I came tonight
if I asked many of you
where does the Holy Spirit dwell
if you're a Christian believer
you would have said in my heart
he indwells me
and he empowers my life
and that's a true thing to say.
But the language here
in this passage
is not focused on you
and your individual experience
it's focused on
the powerful effect
of the spirit of God
being at work
in the body of his people.
If you understand this teaching
it should completely transform
the way you view church.
I've got a hunch
that a lot of people
at 5 o'clock
or 5.30
don't have the same
sorts of problems
as some of the people
in the morning.
I think people
and some of us
have good theology
have good Bible understanding
when we read these things
but our passions
and our feelings
lead us to places
that don't really reflect it.
Probably an example of that
a while back
talking about
if you changed the church around
and changed it
from one direction
to another
and one person said
but this is the church
and it's so important
that we've got the long aisle
and why is it important
that we've got the long aisle?
So it's there for us
to have a long aisle
to walk down
when we do weddings.
And the notion of church
and the importance
of the building
anyway gets distorted
and we go to funny places
with it.
The church of God
is not the building
it's a spiritual community
and so the church
is not the building
as beautiful
or as ugly
as you think this is
everybody will have
their own opinions
about what they think
about the building
this is a space
in which the people of God
gather to worship God
and to encourage
each other in Christ.
And if this building
wasn't here
or if our government
said to us
in a few years
down the track
you can't meet there
you're not allowed
to gather as Christians
I hope that you
would ignore the government
at that point
and maybe not come
to this building
because it might be
dangerous for you
but go and meet
down in Blue Gum Forest
or Beach and Park
devil provide the toilets
and the food
but Beach and Park
or somebody's home
but go somewhere
meet together
and do the same sorts
of things
that we're doing
tonight in this building
and you see the beauty
and the miracle
of what God has done
he gathers people
from whom his hostility
has been removed
and from that
he opens the door
to relating
without hostility
to one another
we've already said
most of us
don't come from
Jewish backgrounds
this is about us
where we've come
we've been brought in
we are privileged outsiders
who have been invited
into the family
by the blood of Christ
maybe not so much
tonight
but in the morning
there are so many
different ethnicities
which are represented
in our church family
and we gather
as the people of God
and when we gather
as the people of God
we gather as one
because God has dealt
with our hostilities
in the cross
of the Lord Jesus Christ
no one culture
stands over another
we need the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ
to make us one
it's not just in house
that this teaching applies
or it's not just in house
that this remarkable building
has an impact
and remember
this remarkable building
is a spiritual community
it impacts God's world
as well
we as a body
in the sermon
on the mount
Jesus calls us
to be salt and light
not just as individuals
but as the body
of believers
that we are
in the world
in which we live
I had a fantastic time
over the last week
reading a book
by Michael Cassidy
who was the long term
leader of African
Evangelistic Enterprise
which is the organisation
that Darian and Vanessa
serve with in Africa
and he wrote a book
he's written a number
of books
but one of the books
he wrote
was called
A Witness Forever
and it's an account
of South Africa's transition
from apartheid
to democracy
which is in the early 1990s
the year was 1994
and at the beginning
of April
a civil war
began in Rwanda
that led to genocide
which claimed
800,000 lives
in 100 days
it's one of the most
appalling things
that's happened
in my own lifetime
and at the same time
South Africa
was sitting
on a powder keg
and people believed
that something similar
might happen
the first post-apartheid
democratic election
where Nelson Mandela
became the president
was scheduled
for the end of April
and one of the major
black African parties
was refusing
to take part
in the election
so it wasn't just
black white apartheid
all that sort of stuff
it was black on black
and there were all sorts
of groups and rivalries
all over the place
and the consequence
could only be
civil war
if the election
went ahead
and it could only be
civil war
if it didn't go ahead
and the world
was watching
and everyone knew
that a bloodbath
was likely
now the international
mediators
Henry Kissinger
who was really famous
for his mediation
in the Middle East
and Lord Carrington
from
Kissinger was from the US
and Carrington
was from Britain
arrived in South Africa
on April 12
and these were
two big world
hot shots
at conflict resolution
and they spent
no more than
48 hours
meeting all the main
players
and they got back
on their planes
and they flew home
on April 15
having made
zero progress
and with Kissinger
predicting
Armageddon
election in South Africa
election day
loomed only two weeks
ahead
April 27
12 days in fact
and still
with no solution
no man made solution
long story
many twists and turns
great book to read
but 12 days later
when a relatively
peaceful election
occurred
most of the
secular media
the people
who don't give
Christians
a very good run
most of the
secular media
was talking
about this event
in terms of
a miracle
that God
had intervened
and talking
about the glory
of what had
occurred
two weeks
before
Kissinger
had walked
past Michael
Cassidy
and scoffed
at him
when he said
I'm praying
for you
what happened
well a lot
of things
happened
and many
of them
over a period
of time
but God
pulled the
strings
in quite
miraculous
ways
to draw
them together
in these
next 10
days
and people
were able
to see
that God
brought
reconciliation
God
ended
hostility
in his
own way
when the
very best
efforts
of the
world's
biggest
minds
had
completely
failed
there'd
been a
process
which had
been going
on for
several
years
where God's
people
a group
of
Christians
had hosted
meetings
at a
game lodge
in a
quiet part
of South
Africa
where over
a period
of time
numbers of
significant
political
leaders
had come
and they'd
met with
one another
with their
guns under
their pillows
but they'd
met with
one another
face to
face
man to
man
and they
told their
stories to
each other
of where
they'd come
from and
expressed their
difference and
talked about the
things that they
had been grappling
with and so they
could no longer
hide behind their
opinions and their
ideologies they
had to face one
another as people
and talk as
people and many
of them discovered
that their deadly
enemy was in
fact a Christian
person who shared
a deep Christian
faith and they
became able to
listen to one
another because
God in Christ
had removed the
hostility that they
had with one
another and the
other thing that
was going on there
are many other
things going on but
one of the things
going on was that
the church was in
earnest prayer all
across the nation
our people from all
sides and
backgrounds were
praying it
culminated in a
weekend where 30
thousand people came
and prayed in one
place they wanted
double that number
but people with
guns stopped many
of them even getting
there but people
broke into smaller
gatherings all over
Africa and were
praying for their
nation and the
crazy thing was that
the rest of the
world the first world
was sending in their
top journalists their
top conflict
journalists to film a
bloodbath and God's
people were on their
knees in a most
dramatic way but the
cross of the Lord
Jesus Christ is what
removes God's anger
from us it humbles
our own hearts when
we realize how much
we have been forgiven
and it gives us the
starting point for
beginning to forgive
another friends the
gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ should
transform each one of
us first so if you
don't know Christ
you're not in a
position to be able
to begin reconciling
with other people
because you need to
have your own sins
dealt with first
but having had your
sins dealt with it
should then become the
transforming power in
the relationships that
we have with one
another I loved reading
Michael Cassidy's book
it had me in tears at
many points because it
reminded me again that
God is powerful in
prayer and by his
spirit to remove
hostility between
people even nations
for us to be able to
sit with a brother or
sister in Christ and
hear what life and the
world is like for them
before we begin to
judge them and push
our genders and our
grievances on them
it comes back in a
really practical way
it comes back into our
families it comes back
into marriages perhaps
marriages which are
struggling relationships
which are struggling
if you are married to a
Christian person if
you're planning to get
married to a Christian
person and I hope that
you are when you marry
they're not just your
spouse they're also your
brother or sister in
Christ whom he has
redeemed
marriage counsellor said
to me once he said
they said don't stop
talking and listening to
one another and some
marriages some
relationships wither on
the vine as we retreat
into hurt shells and
stop communicating and
what happens is tenderness
gets lost guilt and
resentment grows but God
has given us great tools
in Christ for dealing
with hostility and
resentment and finding a
true and rich
reconciliation which
glorifies God
it's the same in our
church family
things happen sometimes
which hurt and wound
deeply
wrongs occur between
people how we speak
what we say what we
thought we withdraw from
one another we no longer
talk to that person and
all that does is confirm
the fractures but God
has given us the tools to
keep communicating in
Christ to love one
another and to experience
deep reconciliation which
gives him glory he gives
us the power to be able to
begin to forgive and to lay
aside the anger and the
hostility so I want to say
if God can save a nation
heal and save a nation
which I think he did do in
South Africa not the end of
the story but he certainly
did back in 94 surely he is
powerful to deal with
hostility that we have and
experience in in our
families and in our church
family in Ephesians
chapter 2 it says in
Christ Jesus we who were
far away have been brought
near by the blood of
Christ we've been brought
near to Christ we've also
been brought near to one
another and Christ binds us
together or builds us
together into a dwelling in
which God lives by his
spirit let me pray we do
pray heavenly father that
you would help us to grow
in our understanding of
what it means to be indwelt
by your spirit in a
corporate way we cherish
you we we thank you for
your mercy where you have
saved us and where
individually we know
something of your spirit at
work within us but we pray
here at St Paul's that we
might know something even
greater which is the power
of your spirit at work in
us as a body as a body
that we would be a
transforming influence in
this community in which we
live and we pray this in
Jesus precious name and for
his sake amen
him
so
us