Close
Ephesians
2:6-22; 3:1-11
Page 2
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 2nd 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 2nd 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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