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1:43Again, it's a longer letter, but here's the end of it. The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epic in the history of America. I'm apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the Great Anniversary Festival. And it ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shoes and games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward and forevermore.

2:28Now you will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I'm well aware of the toil and the blood and the treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration and to support and defend these states. Yet through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see the end is far more worth all, I can see that the end is more than worth all the means. And that the posterity will triumph in that day's transaction.

3:06It's written by John Adams to his wife, Abigail Adams, on July 3rd, 1776, the day after the men met to establish the Declaration of Independence. You see, John Adams understood the great obstacles that were standing in the way of freedom 247 years ago. And as he reflected upon these obstacles and he remembered what stood in the way of freedom, he began to understand the significance of the union that had taken place that day. It changed the entire course of America, and it made America what it is today. And so he calls for this great celebration, of which we did this past week, and a great celebration across the land from generation to generation to generation, as long as America is America. And so we celebrate. And we celebrate the 4th of July to remember the sacrifices that were made, to remember the obstacles that had to be overcome to secure the freedoms that we enjoy today.

4:20And we remember the union that overcame all of that. And so that's why we celebrate, and we should praise God for the freedom that we have in America today. I hope you took some time to do that this week. We live in a great country, and we should thank God for it, and we should celebrate it. But there is another union, another letter that I want to read to you this morning, and it speaks of a different kind of union. And it's a union that's far greater than even the union that took place in 1776.

4:56And it's the letter that Paul wrote to the Ephesians. So go ahead and turn there in your Bibles. In the letter to the Ephesians, Paul mentions our union with Christ. And our union with Christ becomes one of the predominant themes throughout the entire letter to the Ephesians. And as you're turning there, I want to just remind you of a brief, give you a brief overview of where we have been. I know we're sporadically going through Ephesians as I'm able to preach through it. And so I just want to bring you up to speed of what Paul is thinking as we come to our text this morning in chapter 2. But back in chapter 1, you may remember that Paul brings up this idea of the union with Christ, and he talks about how it was planned before the foundation of the world. Our union with Christ was thought through and planned out before the foundation of the world, that God would bless us and he would choose us to be in Christ, that we would be united with Christ. And that's where this union takes place. And through this union with Christ, in Christ, we are not only chosen, but we are adopted into God's family. It's in Christ we are adopted as sons and daughters of God. In Christ, we are redeemed. In Christ, we are redeemed. We are purchased. We are forgiven in Christ. All our sins can be forgiven through our union with Christ. And then he reminds us that we are given an inheritance among the saints, an inheritance that was then sealed until the day of redemption, sealed in Christ. So all these things are flowing out of this plan for God to unite us with Christ, to bless us in Christ. That was verses 1 through 14 of chapter 1. And then in verses 15 through 23, you see Paul beginning to pray that the Ephesians would understand that union, that the eyes of their heart would be enlightened, and they would begin to see the significance that the union with Christ plays in their life. And they begin to understand these things. And they would come to the knowledge of God, the full knowledge of God. And they'd be able to see and understand the great power that is in Christ and is directed towards us. And that was his prayer in chapter 1, verses 15 through 23. And then we come to chapter 2.

7:30And Paul reminds us of the obstacles that stood in the way of this great union with Christ. That's what he begins to do in chapter 2. He reminds us that we were dead in our sins. That was the greatest obstacle that stood in the way of us being united with Christ. It was our own sin. We were dead in our sins. We were cut off from the life of God. It's how we lived. It characterized everything that we did. We lived according to the flesh, according to the desires of our flesh, and we were by nature children of wrath. That's what he says. But in Christ, he overcame that obstacle, and he made us alive in Christ. He raised us up with him, and he seated us with him, with Christ, in the heavenly places. And he prepared us for good works, all of that taking place in Christ. But that obstacle of sin had to be overcome. And so he reminds us of that in the first 10 verses. And then we come to verses 11 through 22, and that is what we're going to be looking at this morning and what was read to us in the scripture reading.

8:43And here, Paul reminds us of the obstacles that stood between us and Christ, specifically as Gentiles. Now, let me read the... We're only going to cover the first three verses this morning, but that whole unit, 11 through 22, is One unit of thought, one unit of thought, but we'll look at the first three verses. Let me read those verses again to you, verses 11 through 13. It says, Therefore, remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who were called uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision, which is performed in the flesh by human hands, remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. We'll stop there. You'll notice that this passage, this unit of thought, begins with the word therefore, therefore, and it tells us that this next thought is related to the prior thought. Again, we just saw that the first 10 verses of chapter 2, Paul highlights our individual need to be united with Christ. Each and every one of you, each and every one of us, needed to be reconciled individually to God.

10:18Here in these verses, Paul begins to focus and shift thought towards our corporate need to be reconciled to God, to be united in Christ collectively as Gentiles. That's what Paul wanted them to see. He wanted them to understand the significance of this union with Christ. And so he says, therefore, remember. He commands them to remember. That's a command, actually, the only command in the first three chapters of Ephesians. Chapters 4 through 6 have lots of commands. But the first three chapters, it's the only one. The only one. And it's to remember. To remember.

10:59And it means to bring to the forefront of your mind. That's what it means to remember. He's not just commanding them to write down these things on a sticky note, you know, and stick it on the fridge so you don't forget it. He's commanding them to think deeply about something, to think deeply and to think continually, to continually bring it to their minds. Think deeply and remember often. That's the command. And so what are they to remember? Well, he wants them to remember, again, the obstacles that kept them as Gentiles from God and from his people. That's verses 11 and 12. And then he wants them to understand the significance of being united with Christ. And that's verse 13. And so that provides an outline. If you're taking notes, we're going to remember the obstacles of the past. And then I want you to understand the significance of the union that you and I share with Christ. Christ today.

12:02So let's begin working through this text. Again, beginning in verse 11, it says, Therefore, remember that formerly you Gentiles in the flesh. What were some of these obstacles that prevented the Gentiles from being united to Christ? I want to look at them with you this morning. Number one, you need to see that they were hated by God's chosen people. They were hated by God's chosen people as Gentiles. They were Gentiles in the flesh, Paul says. And the word for Gentiles is the Greek word ethnos. Ethnos refers to a group of people, a tribe, a nation, a people group. If you've gone to any kind of missions conferences, they always talk about the unreached people group, the ethnos of the world. And so in the most general sense, it refers to the nations of the world, the people groups of the world. All these different groups of people defined by where they are from and their culture and their language, different communities of people. And when you look around the room this morning, you will notice that we are not all from the same ethnos, are we? We're from different ethnos. We are from a variety of different backgrounds, different cultures, different nations of the world.

13:28And so he says that they were gentiles. Gentiles in the flesh. They were ethnos. In the Old Testament, and specifically from the vantage point of a Jew, a Gentile referred to any nation other than the Jewish nation. That's what a Gentile was. It was the Jews and the Gentiles. The Jews and everybody else. And so, again, if you're here this morning and you're not an ethnic Jew, guess what? You're a Gentile. And so this passage is speaking directly to you as a Gentile.

14:00And furthermore, the Jews would consider any nation other than their own to be a foreign nation because they did not worship the God of Israel. They did not worship Yahweh, the one true God. And so they worship foreign gods. And so they were a foreign nation and they considered them to be pagans. The word Gentile was often used to communicate that. When they would call someone a Gentile, they were calling them pagans. They were referring to the fact that they did not worship the one true God.

14:39And not only did a Jew consider them to be pagans, but they considered them to be unacceptable to God, unacceptable to God because they were uncircumcised. And that's what Paul brings up in this passage in verse 11. Notice what it says next in the text. It says they were called uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision. Which is performed in the flesh by human hands. What does that mean? Well, it means they were uncircumcised. They lacked the sign of the covenant that God had given the people of Israel in Genesis 17. You remember back in Genesis, I won't have you turn there, but God entered into a covenant with Abraham. He called Abraham out from all of the ethnos, and he made a great ethnos, a great nation out of Abraham, and he promised him all these things, promised him to bless him. And God says this to Abraham in Genesis 17: Now, as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you, throughout their generations. And this is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised, and you shall be circumcised in the flesh, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. A sign of the covenant. And he goes on to say in verse 14 of that same chapter: But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh, that person shall be cut off from the people. They shall be cut off. He has broken my covenant. And so, for some 2,000 years, from the time of Abraham to the time of Christ, God almost exclusively worked with the Jews.

16:30And so, if you were a Gentile, if you were not a Jew, the only way you could have a relationship with God and with Yahweh, the one true God, was to be circumcised, to enter into the covenant and receive the sign of the covenant and be assimilated into the Jewish life. Now, of course, this was God's doing. This is how he worked with God's people, with the Jewish people. But the Jews severely distorted this view of circumcision and the purpose of it. And that's what Paul means when he says in our text this morning that the so-called circumcision, he's talking about the Jews. He's talking about the Jews that were circumcised outwardly, but not inwardly. Did you know it's possible to be a Jew and to be circumcised outwardly, physically, but not of the true circumcision? Paul brings that up in Romans when he says, For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly. And circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. You see, the Jews had turned the whole sign of the covenant of circumcision into an act of self-righteousness. And it became a barrier or an obstacle. To entry. That's what they had done. And they began to make it more about the outward act of circumcision than the inward spiritual covenant between a person and Yahweh, but between a person and God.

18:16And so Paul brings this up and he says, This issue of circumcision was one of the biggest obstacles between a Jew and a Gentile. And in fact, you will notice the quotes, you see that in your text, the quotes around the word circumcision, uncircumcision. It's because this became a label. There's a label to describe the entire group of Gentiles, and it was a derogatory term, a derogatory term to express the hatred that they had towards anyone that was not a Jew, to anyone that was of the uncircumcision. I think we can relate to this. We have several terms in our culture that are used, derogatory terms that are used to express hatred of other people groups, people from other ethnic backgrounds. I won't repeat them. But we understand the ideas. This was of similar nature. And so the Jews would call them Gentiles. They were saying they were uncircumcised pagans.

19:19And it was this lack of circumcision that led them to see them as unacceptable to God. And so the Jews just constantly treated them as outcasts of society. Shut the Jews out. They cut them off from the life of God and from the people of God. They wanted nothing to do with them. They hated them. And this, of course, is particularly evident when we come to the scriptures and we look through the unfolding of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Do you remember the story of Jonah? Remember that?

19:55What was the book of Jonah all about? It was this people of Nineveh, right? This wicked pagan people of Nineveh. And God calls a Jew, a prophet, Jonah, to go to them. And he calls him to go to them because these wicked people of Nineveh, their wickedness had risen up to the Lord and he was going to judge them. And he calls on Jonah, a prophet of God, to go to them and call them to repent. And how did Jonah respond? He ran. He ran. Why did he run? Because he so hated the thought that this nation would repent and that God would show favor on them.

20:38He so hated them that he even wanted to die. When God forgave them, when these people, when he eventually went and proclaimed the message of God to these people and they repented and God showed mercy on them, Jonah wanted to die. He was so angry. That is the epitome of the thought of Jewish culture and the Jewish culture. Jewish thought towards the Gentile. They hated them. And then, of course, you come to the New Testament and Jesus and his disciples. What were the scribes and Pharisees all worked up about? That he would even consider interacting with Gentiles, with the Samaritan woman, right, and all of that. And so you see that in the Gospels. And then, of course, in the book of Acts, you see Gentiles, the gospel coming to the Gentiles, and they start getting saved. The Spirit of God comes and fills the Gentiles, and it became this huge struggle for the Jewish believers in the church to understand that. It was a totally foreign concept that Jews and Gentiles could mix.

21:47You see, the people of God that had been chosen out of the nations to be a blessing to the nations, these were the ones that hated the Gentiles. They despised them, and they threw up obstacles and barriers to keep them out. And that's what Paul is reminding us here. He's reminding the Ephesians of this great obstacle. And he says, continually bring this to mind. Bring this to mind. Before Christ came, you were hated by God's chosen people. You were shut out.

22:19Well, he goes on, and he describes a second obstacle. It says that at that time, you were separated from Christ. At that time, what time? That former time before Christ came, before you were united with Christ. He's pointing backwards. He's saying, remember that time that you were separated from Christ. What does it mean to be separated from Christ? Well, you can put it like this. You were without a Messiah. That's what it means. The word Christ was a title and referred to the Messiah. It says you were separated from the Messiah. You were without a Messiah. No association with him at all. And that was because, of course, the Messiah was promised to who? To the Jews, right? Not to the Gentiles. It's promised to Israel. And so they were separate from Christ. They were without a Messiah. And you would know, if you studied much of the Old Testament at all, this is a major theme of the Old Testament. As you go through the Old Testament, we begin to see this promise of a Messiah coming developed through the Torah. You come through the first five books of the Bible, and you come to Deuteronomy. And Moses tells the people that God's going to raise up a prophet from among their countrymen, just like you. And I'll put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. This coming prophet, this coming individual, that the words of God would be in his mouth. So you begin to see. This promise of Messiah. And in 2 Samuel, you see Nathan speaking to David and talking about this kingdom that would never end, this coming king that would be established and established forever. And you go through the Psalms, and you have the messianic psalms that were promising the Messiah that was coming, and then all of the major prophets looking forward to the day when the Messiah would come to the people of Israel.

24:31We know this. And then, of course, you come to Matthew 1:1. Do you remember how the Gospels open up? It says, the record of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. And so you have this theme. And if you were a Jew, you were expecting and looking for the Messiah to come. That was on the forefront of your mind as a Jew. You remember Simeon? Remember Simeon? In Luke 2:25? It says, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel. And the Spirit was upon him, and it had been revealed to him that he would not see death until what? Until the Lord's Messiah had come. You see, he was looking, longing for, waiting for the Messiah to come. And as a Jew, that was what you did. But as a Gentile, You had no expectation of a Messiah. That was totally a foreign concept to you. And before the gospel came to Ephesus, these Gentiles had never heard the name of Christ. They knew nothing of the Messiah. They were an unreached ethnos, an unreached people group. They were separated from Christ. They were at that time separate from Christ, outside of Christ. And that kept them from being united with him.

26:04And so, again, they were hated by the people of God. They were separated from Christ. And number three, the third obstacle, they were excluded from the commonwealth of Israel. Excluded from the commonwealth. The word translated commonwealth is a word politia. Politia. And it speaks of a political entity or a state. It refers to a group of citizens, if you will, a group that has been defined as a specific community of people. And so this, of course, is what God had done for the nation of Israel. Again, you remember back in chapter 12, before God called Abraham, everybody was a Gentile. Everybody was a part of the ethnos. But then God called Abraham out. And he called him out and he promised to bless him and create a nation, a commonwealth, a community. Of people.

27:02And that community became the nation of Israel. All of Abraham's descendants became the nation of Israel. And God set them apart as a nation and his own special people, a special possession of God, a holy nation. And so the Jews were God's chosen people. And he caused, as such, he caused his divine favor to be upon them. He blessed them. That was part of the deal. He blessed them. And so the Commonwealth of Israel then was God's place of blessing. And if you wanted to be blessed by God, you had to be included in the Commonwealth of Israel. That was where God's blessing was. But Paul says in chapter 2 of our text that the Gentiles were not included. They were excluded from the Commonwealth. Some of your translations may put it as alienated. They were alienated from the Commonwealth. They were estranged or shut out from the community of God's people. Another way to put it was that they were without citizenship. They were not citizens. They were resident aliens, if you will. In other words, you may live here. You may live among Israel, but you don't belong here. No citizenship, no privileges, no blessing, no favor from God. You are excluded. From the community of God's people.

28:35And that became a huge, significant obstacle that stood in the way of Gentiles coming to Christ because they were excluded in so many ways. They were excluded. But that was number three. Number four, I want you to see that they were strangers to the covenants of promise. They were strangers. The covenants of promise, and that's an unfamiliar term maybe to us, but a covenant was an arrangement by God with his people by which he promised them future blessings. So a legally binding arrangement between God and his people. And of course, in the Old Testament, we have several covenants that are mentioned and described. You've got the Noahic covenant, where God promised never to flood the earth again. You've got the Abrahamic covenant, which we mentioned. The Mosaic covenant, the Devitic covenant, the New Covenant. You're probably familiar and heard of many of these. However, in this context, I think the covenants of promise are speaking of the Abrahamic covenant. I think he's going back to the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis chapter 12, where it was recorded and it was then reaffirmed with Isaac and Jacob and David all throughout the Old Testament. And I think he's referring to the Abrahamic covenant because this was the thing. Foundational covenant and became the basis by which God dealt with his people.

30:09It was the basis. It was a foundational covenant, and it was primarily a promise by God to bless. You remember that in chapter 12 of Genesis? You can turn there if you'd like, just for a moment. Genesis chapter 12, verse 12 is where it's recorded first. And it says, This: Now the Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great. And so you shall be a blessing, and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you, I will curse. And then in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. So, again, you see this great covenant, this great promise by God, and it was a promise to bless Abraham and to bless his descendants, to bless Israel, the nation. And that blessing, as we go through the New Testament, was displayed in many ways. It became a promise to prosper. Them. God prospered them. He multiplied them. He gave them a land to live in. He gave them a kingdom. He gave them a king and promised a king whose kingdom would never end. He promised to save them. He promised to redeem them. He promised to give them life, eternal life, to dwell with his people forever. All of these promises, all of these incredible promises that we see God making throughout history to the nation of Israel, they can all be traced back to this foundational promise of God to bless Abraham, to show favor to Abraham and his descendants. And so when we come back to Ephesians 2 and our passage this morning, Paul is saying that as Gentiles, you were at that time, before Christ, you were strangers to these covenant promises.

32:26They were foreign to you. You were a stranger and a foreigner because you were not a descendant of Abraham. And so, again, the Gentiles, he said, had no promises from God, no guarantees, no securities, no nothing. They were strangers to the covenants of promise. And as a result, Paul says that they had no hope and they were without God in the world. That was the status of life as a Gentile before Christ came. No hope. They were completely hopeless. And that is the fifth obstacle that we see in our text. They were completely hopeless.

33:11Do you know what hope is? I like how one of the commentators defined it. He says, hope is confidence based on credible promises from someone who can actually perform those promises. That is real hope. Let me say it again. Confidence based on credible promises from someone who can actually perform those promises. You see, you have to have both. You have to have the credible promises. They've got to be real promises. But someone can make some of the greatest promises in the world to you, but if they cannot deliver on those promises, there's no basis for hope. There's no confidence. And so it requires both. And as we've already seen this morning, the Jews were the ones with the promises, not the Gentiles. They were strangers to those. They were disconnected from God's people, disconnected from the promises, and therefore they had no hope, no basis for hope.

34:17They were also hopeless for another reason, and that is because they were without God in the world. Notice that last phrase, they were without God in the world. So they were hopeless, and they were godless. This Phrase without God is actually the word atheos. Atheos. It's the word we get the term is where we get the term atheist from. So Paul is saying that they were atheists. But he wasn't saying that they were atheists in the sense that they didn't believe in any God. They certainly believed in gods. They had many gods that they worshipped. Do you remember Acts chapter 19? Paul had gone to Ephesus and he had been preaching the gospel to the Ephesians there in Ephesus. And the Ephesians, by the way, were a bunch of pagans.

35:10They were pagan Gentiles. And he preached the gospel to them, and there was this enormous revival that had taken place. And all these people began confessing their sins and disclosing their evil practices and bringing all of their magic books, right, the books of magic, and they burned them. And they turned to the Lord. There was this great turning to the Lord from their evil ways. And there was this guy named Demetrius. You remember him? He was a silversmith. And he had this nice little cush business making idols and shrines to Artemis. And so when Paul came in and preached the gospel and all these people were getting saved, Demetrius gets all upset because he messed up his business. Business. People weren't buying idols anymore. You remember? And so he gets all his fellow tradesmen together, and they all get up in an uproar and get upset and angry with Paul because he was telling people that the gods made with hands were not gods at all. And so they cry out with rage. Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. The Ephesians. You see, the Ephesians weren't without any God. They had plenty of gods to go around. And so what Paul was saying was that they were living their lives without the one true God. That's what he means when he says that they were atheists. And again, it wasn't as though they didn't know or they weren't aware of the one true God. Romans 1 reminds us that they know that their creator existed. But instead, they suppressed that truth.

36:55They shoved out. They rejected that truth about God because they loved their sin. And so they exchanged the truth of God for a lie so that they could worship the creature rather than the creator. That's Romans 1 and 2. The problem was they just didn't want to know the one true God. And let me tell you, when a person rejects the one true God, they cut themselves off from all source of hope. That is what you do when you reject God. When you live your life without God, Is one of the most hopeless states you could possibly be in because you're completely cut off from all source of hope. And that's what Paul says about the Gentiles: that before Christ, they were cut off from God's people, they were cut off from Christ Himself, they were cut off from the promises of God, they were cut off from the source of hope, and they were completely hopeless. Completely hopeless. Such were the obstacles that stood between the Gentiles and their union with Christ.

38:11And it was a very dark and hopeless situation for them. Now, I could end the sermon here, but I'm afraid that if I did, you might leave here without any hope. And I certainly don't want that to happen because it's very depressing, right? All these things to be completely cut off from God. No hope is a depressing place to be. And Paul is not reminding him of these things. They're not commanding them to call these things to mind so that they might be depressed. Rather, he's calling these things to their attention so that they might understand just how significant of a thing it is to be united with Christ.

38:52It is a significant thing to be united to Christ, especially as a Gentile. And that's what these narratives. This next verse tells us as we close out our time together. These next few words in our passage this morning offer some of the greatest words of hope that have ever been written. And you need to understand them. Notice what it says in verse 13. It says, But now, in Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

39:29But now, you remember just a few verses earlier in verse 4, we had these great words of hope. But God, you may have remembered me preach that. It's the same emphasis here. This great change has taken place. In the past, you were a Gentile completely shut off from God, but now, but now, it brings great hope to a completely hopeless situation, and it tells us of a great change that has taken place. What change is that? What has changed? Well, first of all, their relationship to Christ had changed. Their relationship to Christ had changed. You see, in the past, again, as Gentiles, they were separated from Christ. We saw that. They were outside of Christ, outside of his salvation. No Messiah coming, no Savior, no one to save them from their sin. But now, they are in Christ.

40:30They are no longer separated. They are no longer outside of Christ. They are in Christ. They have been united with him. And notice also the title of Christ now has a name attached to it. You see that? Paul says that they are now in Christ Jesus. The Messiah is identified as Jesus, the person of Jesus. He is the Christ. He is the Messiah. And it is in Christ Jesus that these Gentiles had found salvation. It is in Christ that they had been made alive and raised up with him and seated with him. They had found their salvation in Christ. That's what had changed. They had come to him and they were united to him.

41:20No longer outside. But this union with Christ, this change in relationship to Christ, brought about another change, another change, and that was their relationship to God and his people. See, when Paul says in the past, as Gentiles, we were far off. Formerly, we were far off. You see that? What does he mean to be far off? Well, again, if you were a Jew, you were considered to be near to God. You were near to God because God lived among them. Remember, they had the tabernacle, and then later the temple.

42:01God dwelled with his people in that way, and his people could draw near to him. His presence was among them. And so as a Jew, you were near to God. But as a Gentile, of course, you were considered to be far away. You were kept on the outside, in the outer courts, outside the nation, outside the temple, kept at arm's length, at a distance from God and from his people. And so Paul says they were far off. They were far away. And so were we as Gentiles. But Paul says that those of us who were far off, but now in Christ Jesus, we have been brought near. We have been brought near. Near to what? Well, near to God. Near to God and near to his people. All of the obstacles, all of the barriers that we have been discussing this morning have been overcome. They've been removed. They've been taken out of the way so that we can be united with Christ. And when we are united with Christ, we are brought near to God. We are able to come near Him. And we are united to His people. All those who have been united in Christ are united together. And that becomes the entire point of the rest of Ephesians 11, 2, 11 through 22. It's about the uniting of Gentiles and Jews together in the church as the people. Of God.

43:32And so, again, in Christ, they are no longer excluded from the people of God. They are included in the community of God's people. They have been adopted into his family. They are no longer strangers to the promises of blessing, but now in Christ, they have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. They're no longer hopeless and without God in the world, but they have been brought near to God. And they have been connected to God as their only source of true hope. See, they've been brought near, been brought near. And again, that phrase, have been brought near, you need to know this, it is in the passive voice, which means they didn't bring themselves near to God. You don't bring yourself near to God. It's passive. Something brings you near. God brings you near. And notice what Paul says brought them near to God. How did they come to God? How do they get united in Christ? It says it's by the blood of Christ. That is what brings us near to God.

44:46It's the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross. That is the only thing that can bring a person near to God. It's the only thing that can overcome the obstacles of sin and overcome all the obstacles that we talk about. Talked about this morning. It's only by the blood of Christ that you can come to him. And so, this morning, if you are here and you find yourself outside of Christ, if you find yourself far away from God, this is an invitation to you. It's an invitation to change your relationship with God today, change your relationship with Christ today.

45:29How do you do that? Well, you come before Him, you humble yourself before Him, and you acknowledge that you are hopeless without Him. And you confess your sins, you turn from your sins, and you confess that Jesus Christ is the only Messiah, the only Lord and Savior, and that there is no other name under heaven by which you must be saved. Come to Him. Be united with Christ today. You can be. And it changes everything. It changes everything. It's here where you can receive all the blessings of heaven. You can be forgiven of all of the sins that you've ever committed. You can be forgiven.

46:13And you can be brought into the family of God and you can be adopted as a son and daughter of God Himself. I call you to do that this morning, if that's you. If you're here this morning and maybe you're already in Christ, Know many of you are, and you have been brought near to God already by the blood of Christ, then this is an invitation to remember. To remember the significance of what it means to be united in Christ. Remember the obstacles that stood in your way that had to be overcome, that God overcame on your behalf. Remember them continually. Bring them to mind because that is a day worth remembering. It's a day worth celebrating, the day that you are united with Christ, because it's the day that changed the entire course of your life. It's a day worth celebrating. And so, as you leave here today, I encourage you to do that, regardless of where you are. Some of you need to come to Christ. Some of you need to thank God for being in Christ. I pray that you would do that. And I pray that you'd come back this evening because we're going to be celebrating that very thing through the Lord's Supper this evening at 6 o'clock. So I pray that you would come back. Pray with me as we close out our service.

47:42Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for the work of Christ on the cross, the blood that was shed on our behalf. God, because without it, we were hopeless. We were dead in our sins. We were cut off from the life of God, and we had no chance of changing it ourselves, and you brought us near. And so this morning we celebrate and we remember. And I pray that as we again leave here, that this would be on our minds every day and that it would bring about a thankfulness and a gratitude that never ends.

48:24We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.