E Pluribus Unum Then and Now

Well, if you have your Bible with you, I hope you do. We're going to be in Ephesians chapter 2 this morning. We are continuing our ongoing study through Paul's letter to the Ephesians. And I want to start this way. If you had been watching television in the United States on the night of July 8th, 1971.
Any of the three networks. That's all there was back then. There were three networks. So if you were watching TV, it was one of the three networks. And if you watched that night, you would have seen this commercial on television, which aired that night for the very first time. I'd like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love. Grow apple trees and honeybees and snow white turtledoves.
I like to teach the world to sing with me. Perfect harmony. Perfect harmony. Keep it company. You've never seen that commercial before. Okay, most of you. That's a legendary television commercial. The Coca-Cola Company, when they aired that commercial in July of 1971, that commercial drew...
100,000 letters to Coca-Cola from people who saw the commercial, who shared their personal experiences of how the commercial had made them feel. They asked for copies of the lyrics. 75% of the letters they got were from people under 30.
And many of the letter writers wanted to know, when are you going to air the commercial again? Because I want to see it again. They called their local radio stations and said, would you play that commercial? They were hooked on the song. There's a whole story behind it that's a fascinating story. And I won't go into it. But Coca-Cola in 1971 was tapping into a deep longing that was in the heart of viewers. It was a time when the Vietnam War was going on. And in the news every day, there were protests and there were...
strife and there were riots at home and there were bombings and there was a longing for peace and harmony in our world for people to come together and people to buy each other a coke when I was in elementary school.
We were taught, and that was in the late 60s, we were in music class, we were taught a song that we sang for our parents at an assembly one time. And the lyrics to the song we were taught were, let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. Let there be peace on earth, the peace that was meant to be. With God as our Father, brothers all are we. Let me walk with my brother in perfect harmony.
The radio was filled with songs that had that same kind of sentiment. We all sang along to, come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now. I think it's so groovy now that people are finally getting together.
Come together right now, ride on the peace train, put a little love in your heart. I mean, this is what we were singing. What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It's the only thing there's just too little of. And maybe the best known of these songs, the one that is still today an anthem for peace and harmony, the one you've probably heard no matter how young you are, is the one that says, imagine all the people living life as one.
Or in peace. You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join me and the world will live as one. All these songs reflect this deep longing in the heart of human beings, a God-given longing for there to be peace on earth, harmony among men. In fact, think about it. When the news of the birth of Jesus was announced, what did the angels say? Peace on earth.
That's what we were longing for. It's what we do long for. But no matter how much we long for it, it seems elusive. It doesn't come. That's a sober matter for us to be thinking about in a time when there is the conflict taking place in the Middle East with men and women dying as a result of conflict between people. I don't know if you've thought about this, but there has never been
There's never been a year in human history when there was not a war happening somewhere in the world. I wasn't sure if that was true, so I asked Grok AI if it's true. And here's what Grok said. No, there has never been a year without war anywhere on Earth in recorded human history. Reliable historical analyses.
Conflict databases and expert consensus all conclude that armed conflicts, wars, civil wars, other organized violence between groups, have occurred in every single year for which we have records, going back at least 3,400 to 5,500 years. We long for peace among men, and it doesn't come. It doesn't happen. Why not?
The psalmist asked that question back in Psalm 2. Why do the nations rage? James asked the question in James 4. Why are there quarrels and what causes fights among people? Can't we all be friends? Can't we all just get along? Is there a path that would lead us to peace? John Lennon thought the path that would lead us to peace is if we just get rid of religion.
That's what the song Imagine says. Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine there are no countries, it isn't hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Others think it's not the end of religion that would bring peace, it's the homogenization of religion. So we don't need to end it, we just need to make it homogenized. That's what the
coexist people promote. You've seen these bumper stickers, right, that say coexist, and they have symbols for a variety of different religions. All religions are the same, they say, and the key is tolerance. We just need to tolerate one another. That's how we'll have peace, just coexist and tolerate one another, except that doesn't seem to work either. Bumper stickers have not led to more coexistence and tolerance.
The passage we're going to look at this morning in the book of Ephesians tells us that it's not the abolition of religion that will bring peace and harmony. It's not coexisting or tolerating one another that brings peace and harmony. It is the world submitting itself to the lordship of Christ, and not just in our lives, but that profound awareness of the lordship of Christ throughout the world that will bring
the peace we long for. It's a recognition that what God has done for us in Christ, forgiving our sins, drawing us near to him, giving us hope and a future, that's what brings lasting peace and harmony in our own souls, but also among people. It's when we are reconciled to God that we can be reconciled.
reconciled to one another. You fix this and that fixes this. If there's a problem here, the problem is here first. Does that make sense? If you're not getting along with one another, the problem is you're out of sync with God because when this gets right, this gets right. We're going to look this morning at
three verses in Ephesians chapter 2, and we're going to look at what Jesus has done to bring peace and harmony to our lives and to the world, and we're going to look at how he did it. And while our focus will be on those three verses, 14, 15, and 16, I want us to read the context for the passage. So we're going to start back at verse 11 and read through the end of the chapter. Let me pray for us before we read this together. Father, we ask for you to be the one who would illumine your word to us.
this morning lord we confess that our hearts are sluggish and hard and we need your spirit to soften our hearts and prepare us to receive your word and not just to be hearers but to be doers of your word so speak through your word by your spirit to our hearts today we pray in your name amen
Would you stand for the reading of God's word this morning? Ephesians 2, starting in verse 11, here's what the Bible says. Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision, by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.
and strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself, and these are our verses for this morning, for he himself is our peace, who has made us both one.
and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him, we both have access in one spirit to the father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.
Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Amen. You may be seated. May God bless this reading of his word. The grass withers and the flower fades. The word of our God.
will last forever. So I titled this morning's message, E Pluribus Unum, Then and Now. And that, of course, is Latin. You know that Latin, E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one. And it's on every coin you own. It's on every piece of, every dollar bill you have.
Ever since the Coinage Act of 1873, E Pluribus Unum has been on all of our currency. It is not, by the way, the official motto of the United States. It's the de facto model, but it's not the official. Anybody know what the official model of the United States is? In God we trust, which is also on our currency. Which I think is interesting that both in God we trust and out of many, one.
found their way onto our coinage and are a part of our motto when we as a country broke away from great britain 250 years ago we designed somebody designed a a seal the great seal of the united states and those words e pluribus unum were added to the seal so you see them in the little banner there on the seal and
It was designed to reflect the unity among the 13 colonies that were breaking away. Interestingly enough, count the letters in E Pluribus Unum, 13. That's part of the reason for that. That's just a little tidbit. There's nothing biblical about that, but I just thought I'd throw that in. So the verse in Ephesians chapter 2 that we're looking at this morning points to the priority of unity and harmony in the plan of God.
among god's people that there would be unity and harmony and i want to talk this morning i want to start by talking about that priority of unity verse 14 paul says that god has made us both one and the us he's talking about here goes back to verse 11 where he's talking about those who are the uncircumcision the gentiles and those who are the so-called circumcision the jews
they had experienced the circumcision of the flesh, whether they had a...
experienced the circumcision of the heart or not that was questionable but you had these two groups that hated one another or looked down on one another and Paul says in Christ God has taken these two groups that hated one another and he has made them one this is what Jesus prayed for on the night before he was crucified in John 17 in the high priestly prayer he's going to die the next day he knows that he's praying for his disciples and he says I do not
ask for these only, that is for these who are in the room with me, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that's us, that they may all be one. What kind of one? Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. The unity he's looking for is that we would enter into the
Unity and the harmony that has been experienced by the members of the Trinity since eternity passed, forever it's been experienced, were brought into that. He says, I pray that they would be in us, that we would come together, and that the world would believe as a result. Unity is a priority.
in the heart of Jesus. Unity with one another in marriage, in the church, in every relationship. And that unity begins by being in Christ. Just to remind you, being in Christ means
You become a new person with a new identity. You have a new allegiance. You serve a new king. You're a member of a new society, a new country, new citizenship. You have a new home address. That's what it means to be in Christ. All things become new. Jesus prayed that we would be in him, and as a result, we would be in unity and harmony with one another. This was the burden of his heart. And Paul addresses this priority of unity.
at other places in the Bible later in Ephesians. He's going to talk about that. In fact, as soon as he moves from talking about what God has done for us in Christ, the next...
thing he says is, I pray that you would be, I exhort you to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. That's in Ephesians 4, 3. This is, by the way, one of the things I have prayed for us as a congregation over the last 18 years, that God would be pleased to help us be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
The Bible tells us, the Psalms tell us how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in what? Unity. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul said, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. The Bible presents unity within the body of Christ and among human beings.
as an urgent, Spirit-empowered, Christ-centered priority that is essential for the church's health, witness, and maturity. It's a priority for God. Is it a priority for us? This unity that the Bible is talking about here is not sentimental unity.
It's a unity in him. What unites us together is our common allegiance to, our common confession of, our belief in Christ. It's a unity that is based on truth. But while the Bible talks about being one in Christ, the Bible also talks about the priority of being at peace even with those who are outside the body of Christ. So we're to be united together around the truth that we...
corporately confess, but we're also to be at peace with all men. Romans 12, 18, if possible, as far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. And we're to love our enemies. So those who are outside the family of God, we should still be pursuing peace with. Reconciliation comes when we are united together in Christ, but we can be at peace. We can reflect the love of God for those who are outside.
the body of Christ. United in Christ at peace with all. That's what we're called to and it should be true for all of us as followers of Jesus. And again, are these matters, unity in the church and being at peace with all people, are these priorities for you in your relationships? It is in this context in the book of Ephesians that Paul is helping these new Gentile believers
understand not only god's plan for uniting jew and gentile together and making them one new entity but he wants them to understand how this priority happens he wants them to understand what god has done so that this reality can exist so he's he's going to go from the priority of unity to the how of unity let's talk about the how
happens first Paul says it happens because of Jesus he himself verse 14 is our peace what does that mean that Jesus is our peace well let me quote John Piper here because Piper offers good insight on this he says what this means is that the peace of God or the peace of Christ can never be separated from God himself and Christ himself
If we want peace to rule in our lives, God must rule in our lives. Christ must rule in our lives. God's purpose is not to give you peace separate from himself. His purpose is to give you peace by being the most glorious person in your life. That's what the Bible means when it says he is our peace. Peace is found in him. The peace we long for, peace in our own soul, peace with our fellow man, cannot happen.
on our own. We can't engineer that. We can't make that happen. You can't get along and coexist and tolerate one another apart from Christ. Maybe you can do it for a limited time, but to get the kind of peace we all long for, we have to come together united in Christ. We have to be made one. That's what verse 14 says. He is our peace. In him we come to know peace.
with him and then with one another. And it happens because he makes us one with one another by bringing us into his family, making us a part of the fellowship that exists within the Trinity that they've been experiencing forever. He is our peace. He has made us one. And the verse says he's done this. He has broken down the dividing wall, broken down in his flesh, the dividing wall of hostility.
What's the dividing wall of hostility? What was at the core of the hostility that existed between the Jews and the Gentiles? Why did they hate each other? Was it just ethnic hatred or was there something more? Well, the wall of hostility that existed between Jew and Gentile came about as a result of God's law. Now just follow me here. When God gave the law to his people, Israel,
He set them apart from everybody else on the face of the earth. If you read the newsletter this week, you were reminded that when the Old Testament talks about the law, there are really three parts of the Old Testament law. There is the civil law used to govern the city, state, the nation of Israel. There is the ceremonial law given to govern the religious practices in ancient Israel. And there's the moral law.
given to govern the behavior of our own hearts and these overlap so the moral law has ceremonial components the ceremonial law has moral components there's not a hard line between them they're connected but in general though there are those three divisions
Part of the law is about how to rightly worship God and serve him. That's the ceremonial. Part of it is about how to execute justice when people sin against one another. That's the civil law. And part of it was there to talk about how we live a life that's pleasing to God and that lines up with his character. That's the moral law. This law is what made the Jews different from the other nations. Following God's law made them religiously different.
civilly different and morally different. It set them apart. That's what the word holy means. When God says to Israel, you will be holy unto me, he means you'll be set apart. You're going to be different from the rest of the world. And because of the law coming to Israel, over time, two things happened. First of all, the Jews began to look at God's law and following God's law, and they saw the benefits of following God's law, and they began to think they were better than everybody else.
They saw themselves as intrinsically more noble, more righteous, more holy, favored by God. I mean, they started to think proudly of themselves. You remember the Pharisee and the parable that Jesus tells in Luke 18 about the Pharisee and the publican who both go out to pray? How does the Pharisee pray? God, I thank you that I am not like other men.
I'm not like the extortioners or the unjust or the adulterers. I fast. I tithe. I keep the law. Look at how special I am. Israel began to see themselves the way that Pharisee saw himself. They began to see themselves as better than the Gentiles. In fact, they began to see the Gentiles and refer to them as Gentile dogs.
developed self-righteousness. They saw themselves as superior in every way and they prayed that God would send the Messiah who would one day reinstall them, ruling over all the nations like they were back in David's day. And their superiority would then spread throughout the earth. Things would be like they're supposed to be. Now let me just say, nobody likes smug, self-righteous, superior people. Then or now.
Nobody likes it when you think that way, when you act that way. A lot of people perceive that in you even if it's not there. A lot of people see Christians and think they see themselves as self-righteous or superior, smug. And the reason they perceive that is because some people, some of our brothers and sisters act that way. Sometimes you may act that way. You may give that impression.
That's not what God has saved you for so that you can go around and say, look at how much better I am than you. When we do that, when we are smug and self-righteous, we build a thicker wall of hostility between us and those who are outside of the faith. And that's what happened between these people in Israel and the Gentiles. Instead of Israel being a light to the nations, Israel became an irritant.
to the gentiles meanwhile the gentiles who didn't have the law they became riddled with immorality with greed with abusive power lust was a huge issue they devalued human life there's a long list of the sinful practices that characterized the greco-roman world outside of christ and they looked at the jews with their odd little superstitious religion who saw themselves as superior and they just laughed at them
They said, these Jews boast about how powerful their God is, but for centuries now they've been under our control and under our rule. If their God is so powerful, how come they're our slaves? Of course, the Jews kept telling whoever would listen that God would send that Messiah, someone like David, and they would again be reinstalled to world domination. And for the Greeks and the Romans, that idea was ridiculous, that this little tribe over in the desert was somehow going to rise up and be the world superpower.
So there's this thick wall of hostility between the Jews and the Gentiles for those reasons. And that wall of hostility is actually, that was the spirit of the age, but there's actually a picture. There's a concrete picture of the wall of hostility. And the pun is intended there because here's that picture. This is a picture of what the Temple Mount would have looked like back in Jesus' day. And can we zoom in here?
So yeah, so this is the center part of that, the big structure on the far left side, that's the holy of holies. And that's where the priest would go.
Only the high priest, only once a year, he would go and make a sacrifice, an offering to God. He was the only one allowed in there. It's the holiest place in this temple complex. Outside of that, there's this surrounding area. That's the holy place. And that's where sacrifices were made regularly. Only men were allowed to go into the holy place, into that courtyard around the Holy of Holies, and they would go there to offer their sacrifices. And then this outer place is the court of...
the women so the women could come in there and men and women and families would come in there when they would come to the temple for their sacrifice offering or when they'd gather for feasts or festivals they could come into the court of the women now if you zoom back out outside you've got the court of the gentiles
So you can see in the middle is the complex, and these Gentiles, Gentiles could come into this court outside, but they couldn't go through the door into the court of the women. In fact, in 1871, archaeologists unearthed a stone sign that hung to the entrance of the court of the women, and written in Greek, it said this, it said, no foreigner may enter within the balustrade around the sanctuary and the enclosure. Whoever is caught...
on himself shall he put blame for the death which will ensue. Gentiles passing through into the court of the women, penalty of death. That's the wall. That's the wall of hostility, the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles.
Paul in Ephesians 2 says, Jesus has broken down this wall of hostility. There was a concrete picture of that wall that separated the Jews from the Gentiles. And the picture is Jesus comes along and tears that wall down so that the courtyard is open to everybody. So how exactly does Jesus tear down the wall of hostility? Well, the Bible tells us he did it in his flesh.
I'll come back to that in just a minute. It also tells us he did it by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. Now the word for abolish there means to be idle or to render inactive, useless, or ineffective. Abolish doesn't mean completely done away with. It means it's on the shelf. It's set aside.
And now this sounds odd because you may remember that Jesus himself in the Sermon on the Mount said, I did not come to abolish the law and the prophets. He said, I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not...
So what Paul is saying in Ephesians 2, when he says Jesus has abolished the law expressed in its ordinances, he is saying that Jesus accomplished what the law was pointing to. He didn't dismiss it, he fulfilled it. And because it's been fulfilled, that law that Jesus fulfilled is now idle, inactive.
useless, ineffective. Since the law was the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles and Jesus has now fulfilled the law, that wall has been torn down. There's no separation in the family of God between the Jews and the Gentiles. And the law that he's talking to expressed in ordinances is primarily talking about the civil and ceremonial law and how Jesus fulfilled that.
All of the ceremonial law in the Old Testament was meant to point to Jesus. It was meant to be a picture of Jesus. So when lambs were sacrificed, that was meant to be a picture of Jesus. When the high priest was installed, that was meant to be a picture of Jesus. Throughout the Old Testament, law after law, practice after practice is meant to point to Jesus. Read the book of Hebrews, and that's the thesis in the book of Hebrews.
The Old Testament is a shadow or a type pointing to the greater thing, which is Jesus. And what Jesus came to do was to be the living fulfillment of the law, which he had been hinting at all along. So with the law fulfilled, the wall torn down, Jesus is now making in himself, this passage says, one new man in place of the two, making peace. Now, if the law divides, how does the gospel make us one?
If the law builds a wall between the doers and the non-doers,
How does the gospel bring us together? Here's how. It unites us in the common reality that whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, whoever you are, you have the same problem, the same issue. We're all sinners before a holy God. The Jews thought that they were righteous.
and that the Gentiles were the sinners. The Gentiles thought they were smarter and more sophisticated than the Jews, and that the Jews had some wild ideas about what is right and what's wrong and about sin. The gospel comes and unites Jew and Gentile in a common understanding of the dilemma that exists between men. The gospel says to the Jews, I got bad news for you.
You're no better off than the Greeks or the Gentiles are. Your sin may look different, it does look different, but your heart is just as evil, just as wicked as the Gentiles' hearts are. Just a different kind of wickedness, different kind of evil. And Jews, if you have any doubts about your heart being evil, those doubts can be put to rest when you put the Son of God to death on a cross. We saw just how wicked and evil you really were.
You claim to love God. He sends his son and you crucify him. And then to the Gentiles, the gospel says, you've ignored and neglected the God who created you, the God who created the heavens and the earth. And as a result, you now find yourself in this downward moral spiral that will lead to your destruction.
And so the gospel comes along and says you have the same problem whether you're a Jew or you're a Gentile. And the problem is not that one is more moral and the other is immoral. The problem is you are both separated from God. The wall of hostility between you and God has not been torn down yet. Once we see that we have the same problem, that we're all in the same boat, then the gospel comes and gives us the good news.
And the good news is there's one solution to the problem that both of you have. It's the same solution. Jesus offers in his flesh the power for that wall that separates you and God to be torn down. It is in him, not in law-keeping or self-righteousness, not in your own intellect or your own wisdom, that the wall separating you and God is torn down, that you can be right with God.
The point is the gospel says we are united in the same solution because we all have the same problem. Jew, Greek, whatever. That's the only solution. The saving work of Jesus dying on a cross and paying the price for our sins.
That's the only solution. Look at verse 16. When Jesus saves us, it says we are reconciled to God. The dividing wall between us and God has been torn down. And there's a picture of that too in the Bible because when Jesus was hanging on the cross, what happened to the temple and the curtain that kept people separated from God? It was torn in two from the top to the bottom.
God himself doing the tearing to expose now and say what has kept us separated has been removed on the cross. In verse 16, God killed the hostility that existed between Jew and Gentile and between man and God. So we're first reconciled to God and from there we can be reconciled to one another. We become one body. And Paul says here it took the cross for God to accomplish this uniting plan.
Part of his plan to send his son to earth to kill the hostility. Through his death and resurrection, God brings peace. We find peace in him, peace with one another, peace with him, and peace in our own souls. Now, I told you I titled this message, E Pluribus Unum, Then and Now. Let me talk a little bit about the now part.
Then it was God sending His Son to tear down the wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile, making them one new entity. Today it's God's plan that we, as His children, who have received new life in Christ, that all of us would be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace in the church, both in the local church and in the universal church. That's what Paul will say in Ephesians 4.
And in fact, turn there for just a second. Just flip over a page to Ephesians 4. Look at what it says. It says, verse 3, we should be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. But go back one verse. For there to be unity and harmony and peace in the church, we will need humility and gentleness and patience and to bear with one another. Forbearance.
These are key qualities for us to grow in and develop if we're going to experience the peace for which Jesus died, unity within the church. And I'm going to resist preaching the sermon on Ephesians 4 until we get there, but I'll just point out those four words as four character qualities that are essential for there to be peace among men. Humility, gentleness, patience.
and forbearance. This is what God expects of us. This is what God wants to bring in our lives so that we can be united with one another. And I hope you pray as I do that God would expand, that he would grow these things in our own lives and that it would lead to the peace and unity we're looking for. When there's a fracturing of that peace, you will
almost always find a lack of humility or a lack of gentleness or a lack of patience or a lack of forbearance. That's why these are essential for peace to exist. I also hope, you will pray as I do, that there would be increasing diversity in our local church that we would have here.
worshiping side by side, men and women from different cultural backgrounds, from different socioeconomic backgrounds, different ethnic backgrounds. Don Carson has said, the church is not a group of natural friends, but natural enemies bound together by the love of Jesus. I hope that's who we can be and what we can be as a church. I hope that moving forward, that's what Redeemer will look like. That as we remember all that God has done for us in Christ, who we used to be,
where we were headed before God came and saved us, that will humble us and will fill us with love for one another who are different from us, but who love Jesus. I pray that the dividing wall of hostility that might exist in our hearts would continue to be torn down by the Holy Spirit. And I'll close with an illustration here that comes to mind as I think about that dividing wall between hostility and how it can exist between two people.
And it's a story I've told many times in the context of talking about forgiveness, but I think it applies here. Do you know who this person is? Anybody know who that is? That's Corrie Ten Boom. And if you've not heard of Corrie Ten Boom, she was the daughter of a Dutch watchmaker, and she and her family harbored together hundreds of Jews in the watch shop in Amsterdam during World War II.
keeping these Jews safe from the Nazis. It's believed that she and her family were responsible for saving the lives of nearly 800 people during that time.
were betrayed by a fellow Dutch citizen and all of them were divided and taken to the Nazi death camps. Corrie and her sister Betsy were taken to a camp called Ravensbrück. And her story is told in a book and a movie called The Hiding Place. When the war was over, Corrie was invited to speak in churches about her experience in the prison camps. And one night in Munich, Germany,
back when Corrie looked like this when she was a younger woman. After she had finished speaking that night in Munich, she was standing in the front, the church was emptying, and she saw coming down the aisle a man who she recognized. This man had been one of the guards who stood guard over the shower room at the prison camp where she had been at Ravensbrück. Corrie said,
He came up to me, and he was bowing and beaming, and he said, how grateful I am for your message, Fraulein, to think, as you say, he has washed my sins away. You get the picture, right? Corrie is now face-to-face with a man who had been one of her oppressors in the camp where she had been imprisoned and where her sister Betsy had died.
She had just spoken about God's forgiveness, about his redeeming love, inviting people to give their lives to Christ, and here comes one of these guards wanting to shake her hand. Do you think in her heart there was a dividing wall of hostility between her and that man? It would be unnatural for there not to be. What would you do in that moment? Would you shake that man's hand? Would you be able to say, Jesus is our peace?
He has torn down the wall that existed between the two of us. Here's what Corrie did. She said, I kept my hand at my side. She said, even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled in through me, I could see the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man. Was I going to ask for something more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me forgive him. She said, I tried to smile. I struggled to raise my hand.
And I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again, she said, I breathe the silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness. She said, as I took his hand, the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder, along my arm, through my hand, a current seemed to pass from me to him.
And into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. She said, so I discovered that night that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges. When God tells us to love our enemies, he gives along with the command, the love itself. What Corrie could not do on her own, in her own strength, God gave her the grace to do, to be able in the power of the Holy Spirit,
to remember the gospel, to remember what she had been, to forgive this man and for the dividing wall of hostility between the two of them to be torn down so that together they could be brother and sister in Christ. Those who had been enemies are now in the family and can love one another. That's the supernatural power of the gospel. And I would pray that it would be the case for all of us as believers in the local church and beyond the local church.
that we could all be one in Christ and expressing that kind of love for one another because of what he has done for us. Let me pray. Lord, we read about this dividing line of hostility, and it's easy maybe for some of us to think about those where we hold bitterness, where we have hostility, where we are more like the Greeks and the Jews, and where the hostility still remains.
And Lord, we ask this morning that you would tear down that wall in our hearts. That there would be unity in your church among your people. And not just a sentimental unity, but a unity that is strong and anchored in the truth of the gospel. Lord, we pray for our world. We pray for the peace that is absent in our world. And we pray that as people see the unity of believers,
they would be drawn to the only source of peace for their life and for our world, and that is you. And we long for the day when your kingdom will come, your will will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and peace will reign. Lord, I pray this morning for anyone here who has not experienced your peace, for those who have never surrendered their lives to you. They've either been relying on their own self-righteousness like the Jews were,
or they have been operating with disregard for you like the Gentiles, in either case, Lord, I pray that you would help them see their need for salvation, for forgiveness, their need to be made new, and that today could be the first day in that journey for them. We ask these things in your name. Amen.