The Far Off Brought Near

Well, if you have your Bible with you, I hope you do. We're going to be in
Ephesians chapter 2 again this morning, and I don't know how much you have thought
about this as we have been continuing this study through the book of Ephesians, but
I have had a growing realization as I've been going through my own study of this,
that there was a 2 ,000 -year period, more than 2 ,000 years from the time that God
called Abram in Err of the Chaldeans until the time when Jesus died and was
resurrected, that 2 ,000 -year -plus period, God's main focus with people on planet
Earth was happening among one family. Now think about that.
In 2 ,100 BC, it's estimated that there were between 20 and 50 million people on
the Earth. Now, that's a lot fewer than we have today, certainly, but that's a lot
of people.
And God's work in those days was with one family out of 20 to 50 million people,
whatever the number was. That's pretty remarkable. God who created all things,
created all people, was actively engaged in superintending his creation, knew every
one of the 20 to 50 million people who were on the face of the earth.
He knew them by name, but he chose to limit, for the most part, his direct
engagement with his creation with the people to one family,
one tribe, the tribe of Abram. And it was not even everybody in that family that
God had that interaction with. When God came to Abram and called him out of Err of
the Chaldeans. He made a promise to him. We think of it. It's known as the
Abrahamic covenant, and it's in Genesis chapter 12. And here's the promise he made
to him. He said, I will make of you a great nation. And I will bless you,
and I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless
those who bless you, And him who dishonors you, I will curse, and in you,
listen, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Now,
from the time that God made that promise to Abram until the resurrection of Jesus,
all of the families of the earth were essentially outside of the blessing of God,
because the blessing of God was concentrated on Abram and his descendants. And it
wasn't, as I said, all of his descendants, because you remember Abram had two sons.
He had Ishmael and he had Isaac. And God's blessing did not go with Ishmael.
It stayed with Isaac. And then Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau, and God's
blessing went with Jacob and not with Esau. It was ultimately the descendants of
Jacob who was renamed Israel, so they became the Israelites.
They became for the next 20 centuries the place on planet Earth,
the people on planet Earth, among whom the favor and blessing of God came,
while the rest of the people on planet Earth were outside of those promises,
those covenant promises, that blessing. The other people knew little or nothing about
the God who had created them. Now, they had evidence, because as the Bible tells
us, all men everywhere can look up at the sky and recognize that there's a God.
All it takes is looking around at creation and you go, okay, this didn't just
happen on its own. And all men everywhere have a conscience that tells them what's
right and wrong. So there were 20 to 50 million people on planet Earth who knew
there was a God in their hearts and knew what right and wrong was, but for the
most part, they ignored it and for the most part, God's work on planet Earth was
with the descendants of Jacob. Now, sometimes others would be included.
So think of Rehab, who was a Canaanite, who was living in Jericho. And when the
Israelites came and attacked Jericho, God spared Rehab, brought her into the family
of God, and in fact, she became one of the progenitors in the line of Jesus.
When you look at the line of Jesus, Rehab is mentioned there. Or think about this.
Think about when God went to Jonah and said, I want you to go and preach about me
and preach repentance to the Ninevites. What was Jonah's response to that?
He wanted nothing to do with that plan. He ran from that plan and when he finally
in obedience went and preached to the Ninevites and they heard and responded to the
message of God, Jonah was mad because God was bringing outsiders into the family.
Jonah didn't want these Nineveites, these wicked Nineveites, to come into the family
of God. The story of Jonah shows us just how deep -seated Jewish hatred was for
those who were outside of the covenant, for those who were outside of the people of
Israel. The Jews didn't want God to show favor to non -Jews.
They were jealous. They wanted blessing for themselves and everybody else, they wanted
judgment for them.
And people who were Gentiles, the non -Jews, they had their own gods that they
worshipped. Because here's the thing, everybody worships.
Atheists worship.
Atheists worship themselves or they worship creation or they worship something.
Everybody worshiped. We all have a heart to look around and give praise to
something. So these non -Jews were looking around and creating their own vantage point
for their own worship. And they either had never heard about the one true God who
was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or they had heard about this Jewish God,
but they saw him as just one of the many tribal deities. He was their God, not
our God. That's how they saw it. Now all along, God had said to his people,
Israel, he had said, I'm going to make you a blessing to the nations. I'm going to
bring my glory to the nations through you.
Most of them wanted to keep God for themselves, but God's plan all along was that,
go back to the Abrahamic covenant, through you, all the nations of the earth will
be blessed. That's been the plan from the beginning. And probably the best known
places where we see this spelled out of the Old Testament are in the book of
Isaiah. So in Isaiah chapter 2, one of the best known passages about this, the
Bible says it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house
of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be
lifted up above the hills and all the nations shall flow to it. Now that's a
picture of God being lifted up and exalted. That's the mountain of the house of the
Lord, and all the nations coming to worship God. It goes on to say, many people
shall come and say, come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of
the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways, that we may walk in his paths,
for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
So this is God saying to the Israelites, all the people are going to come and
worship me through you. In Isaiah 56, here's how it's put. The foreigners who join
themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, to be
his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it and holds fast
my covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my
house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my
altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. And then in
Isaiah 66, the Bible says, from new moon to new moon from Sabbath to Sabbath, all
flesh shall come and worship before me, declares the Lord. So while God was
concentrating his favor and his blessing on this one family, this one tribe,
the descendants of Jacob, excuse me, Abraham, Isaiah, you Excuse me, Abraham, Israel,
the descendants of, yeah, Jacob, Israel, while he was concentrating his favor, the
plan was always that through them, his glory would go out to the whole earth, and
the whole earth would respond to that. 2 ,000 years was a long prologue until Jesus
came, and when Jesus came, that's when the plan opened up. That's when God said,
now is the time for my glory to go out to all nations. And so you remember what
Jesus said to his disciples after his resurrection. He said,
you are to go and make disciples of what? All nations. You are to take what has
been inside the tribe of Israel, and you're to take it to all nations. And in the
years that followed the resurrection and dissension of Jesus. That's exactly what
Jesus' disciples did. The Apostle Paul was chief among them, the apostle to the
Gentiles. He went outside of the tribe. He brought the good news of God's grace and
his mercy and his love to these outsiders, these Gentiles, who were either ignorant
about God or, again, they thought of him as kind of a tribal deity for the
descendants of Jacob. They thought that But the only people that that the god of
jacob intended to bless was the israelites now the reason i'm giving you this whole
overview of a of redemptive history in the nation of israel is because of the
passage we're going to be looking at this morning in his letter to the ephesians
paul makes it clear to them how god has extended grace to them in spite of their
sin and how he has chosen them and forgiven them and redeemed them because of the
grace and mercy of Christ. And then in the middle of chapter two, he says, they
were once far off from God, but now they have been brought near.
What used to be true about them was they didn't know about God, they didn't care
about God, they wanted nothing to do with God,
They didn't really seek him in any way, and what's now true about them is they
have been brought near, they've been brought under his grace, into the family, the
ethnic dividing line between the people of Jacob and the Gentiles,
that ethnic dividing line has been erased, and God's grace has been unleashed to the
whole world. And while the majority of the physical descendants of Abraham and Isaac
and Jacob were rejecting the Messiah who God had sent. Now all of a sudden,
the other nations, the Gentiles, were responding and embracing the message of the
gospel as God was sending the message of His glory out to the whole world. We're
going to see this this morning in verses 11, excuse me, verses 12 and 13 in
Ephesians chapter 2. And again this week, I think it would be good for us to read
the whole passage starting at verse 11 and going through the end of the chapter. So
I'm going to read that here in just a minute. Let me pray again. Father, we need
your spirit now to be the one who teaches us, who leads us, gives us understanding
into your word. All is vain, Lord, unless your spirit comes and does his work.
So we ask for that this morning and ask that you would speak to us by your spirit
through your word. We ask it in your name. Amen. Would you stand with me as we
read together the Word of God for the people of God? Ephesians 2, beginning at
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 covenants
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 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. May God bless this reading of His word,
you may be seated, the grass withers, the flower fades, the word of our God will
stand forever. We're going to look at two things from these two verses this morning,
verses 12 and 13. First of all, I want us to see the Bible's description of what
it's like for a person or a nation, a group of people, to be far off from God.
What's it like to be far away from God? And then I want us to look at what it
takes for the far off to be brought near.
And let me say this again as we begin. As we look at these verses, it's easy for
us to see this description of what it looks like for the far off and those who
are brought near and to think Paul is talking about individuals who have been far
off and are brought near. And while that's true for individuals, what we'll see
here, the application here is more about the Gentiles as a group, a tribe, a
community, who were far off from God being brought near to him. He's already given
his readers a portrait of what it looks like when an individual goes from being far
off to brought near. He says, you were dead back at verse 1 of chapter 2.
You were dead in your trespasses and sins. God, who is rich in mercy, made you
alive in Christ. Now in verse 12, he says, remember that as a society,
your society, your whole tribe was cut off. As a people, you were far away from
God and you've been brought near. His point is not merely that before becoming
Christians, they were without Jesus. That much is obvious. He is speaking here of
the fact that they were cut off from Christ. This is the first point he makes. You
were separated from Christ. In fact, he's got five descriptions here in verse 12 of
what it looks like to be far off from God. And the first description is that you
were separated from Christ. And again, the point is not merely that you didn't know
Jesus. The point is you didn't know
context for needing a Savior or having a Savior. That was outside of their thinking
as Gentiles. Paul's been talking over and over in this letter about the fact that
the Gentiles are now in Christ, that the Ephesians are in Christ. You go back and
read the first chapter and a half and you will find that phrase in Christ used 18
times in the first chapter and a half. The first 15 verses, that phrase is used 13
times, in Christ, in Christ, over and over again. And being separated from Christ is
the opposite of being in Christ. You are in Christ now, but one time you are
separated from Christ.
So the first 12 verses in chapter two are a or excuse me,
the first 12 verses in chapter one are a catalog of the benefits we have in
Christ. And so to be separated from Christ is to be outside of those benefits.
If being in Christ means that you have every spiritual blessing, being separated from
Christ means you have no spiritual blessing. If being in Christ means you have been
chosen and adopted, being separated from Christ means you are not a part of the
family. You're still outside. These Gentiles, as a society, were separated from
Christ. They had no religious system to address their spiritual needs.
And their biggest spiritual need was the need for forgiveness and transformation.
It's all of our biggest spiritual need. All of us have the same spiritual need,
we need to be forgiven of our sins, and we need the work of the Spirit to
transform us more and more into the image of Christ. And these Gentiles were
separated from the only mechanism, the only thing that can bring about those two
changes, that can offer forgiveness or can bring about transformation. The Greeks and
the Romans did not think about sin the way that the Jews thought about sin. They
saw sin, if you were a Greek and you sinned, that meant that you were not living
up to cultural norms. And they didn't see their pantheon of deities as somebody you
needed to worry about offending or being forgiven by. Other than the fact that those
deities might be more powerful than you and might be able to smite you in some
way, Other than that, you just tried to live up to cultural norms. So this idea of
needing to be forgiven from your sins was something that the Greeks thought of more
horizontally than vertically. I need you to forgive me. They weren't thinking about
needing a God to forgive them because they saw their offense as being against one
another rather than being against God. Now, the problem with that way of thinking is
that We have a conscience, and when you sin, and you know you've sinned,
your conscience bears witness to your sin, and you experience guilt and shame from
your sin. And the Greeks, being separated from Christ,
had no way to deal with their guilt and their shame. When they would sin,
they had nothing to, they could go to their friend and ask for forgiveness, but the
guilt and the shame of their own actions stayed with them. Every human being has a
conscience that bears witness to the fact that we sin, and our conscience tells us
that what we've done is wrong before a holy God. We feel guilty and ashamed for
how we have violated God's law. And, of course, the Bible tells us that in Christ
there is no condemnation. So if you're separated from Christ, you feel the guilt and
the shame. In Christ, there is no condemnation.
Separated from Christ, you're under condemnation.
The idea that there would be a Messiah who would take away your guilt and your
shame by bearing it in his own body and his own sorrows, the Greeks had no
category for that. That's a whole new idea. And Paul wants them to remember what it
was like when they were separated from Christ and they were having no way to deal
with their own guilt and shame and having no power but their own power to try to
affect transformation in their own lives. All of us would look at our lives and
say, there are things we would like to be different about our lives. There are
things we would like, we'd like to respond differently. We'd like to not act this
way or start acting this way. We'd like our lives to be better. And if all you've
got to draw on is your own power to make that happen, one or two things will
happen. You'll succeed and become self -righteous, or you'll fail, and you'll be a
failure.
But these Greeks who are separated from Christ, that's all they've got to deal with.
Now in Christ, they have a new power, the power that raised Jesus from the dead,
that can bring about real transformation, that is not just behavior modification, but
it's a change of heart.
So these Jews, first of all, or excuse me, these Greeks, first of all, he said, I
want you to remember what it was like when you were separated from Christ, when you
had no awareness, no power to deal with transformation and nothing to erase your sin
and your guilt. Secondly, I want you to remember what it was like to be alienated
from the Commonwealth of Israel. They had no method,
they had no way to be a part of God's family and God's people.
They were outside of standing here. And he's using the term commonwealth of Israel
here not to talk about a geopolitical reality. It's not that they were not political
citizens of Israel. He's talking about being outside the place where God's favor and
blessing was being experienced on the earth. So as Gentiles, they were living away
from where God was pouring out blessing and favor, where God was blessing his
people. Because they were alienated from the Commonwealth of Israel, they were cut
off from him. They had no standing before him, and they found themselves alienated
from the one society on earth where God's special favor and love was being
experienced. Think about this. For 2 ,000 years, if someone was outside of Israel,
they had no way to be saved. In the time before Jesus came, if you wanted to be
saved, the only way you could as a Gentile be saved was to come inside the camp,
to become an Israelite, to begin to follow the Jewish laws. And so that happened.
There were people who joined themselves to the nation of Israel and came under the
law. But that's the only way you could do it. In fact, probably the best
illustration of this in the Bible is the story of Ruth. So if you've read the book
of Ruth, you know that Ruth and her mother -in -law, Naomi. Ruth was from Moab. She
was not a Jew. Her mother -in -law was a Jew. Naomi was a Jew. And they were
living in Moab, and their husbands died. And Naomi says, okay, I'm going to go back
to my people because I have no one else to take care of me. I'm going back to
Israel. And Ruth says to her, I'm going with you, even though I'm not a Jew.
She says, wherever you go, I'm going. Wherever you lodge, I lodge. Your God will be
my God and your people will be my people. She's coming inside the Commonwealth of
Israel, which was the way that you could experience the blessing of God. It wasn't,
this is where it was happening inside Israel.
And to say your people will be my God, it's not just your God will be my God,
it's your people will be my people. She knew that she could not experience the
blessing of God apart from being a part of the people of God. And by the way,
that's still true today. Those people who say, well, I'm a Christian, I'm just not
a part of a church, I just do it on my own. You can't experience the blessing of
God outside the community of God's people, because God pours out his blessing in
covenant on his people as a whole. Or maybe it's better to say it this way.
You'll experience some of the blessing, but not all of the blessing. You can
experience some of the joy of salvation, but you'll be missing something if you're
not a part of the people of God. Those who are far off from God have no remedy
for their sin, no way to experience transformation, and they have no place in God's
family. And then there's a third thing, he says. They are not beneficiaries of the
promises or the covenants of God. In this passage, he says, you are strangers to
the covenants of God. And we could spend the rest of this morning and next Sunday
and several Sundays talking about the covenants of God, and it would be a profitable
study to do that. But in general, let me just say this, there were four big
covenants in the Old Testament. So you have the covenant that God made to Noah
after the flood where he said, I promise I will not wipe out the earth with a
flood. That, by the way, is a covenant that God makes, not just to Noah and his
family, but it's to the whole earth, it's to all people, and it's a unilateral
covenant. You don't have to do anything God promises, I'll do this no matter what
you do. The second covenant is a promise that God makes to Abram, the one that we
just read recently. It's that he will bless him and his family, And again, it's an
unconditional covenant. It's one -sided. God says, I will do this. Then there is the
mosaic covenant that comes with the giving of the law, and this is where God
promises to bless those who keep his law, and it's conditional. So this is two
-sided. This is God saying, read the latter chapters of Deuteronomy, where God says,
if you do this, you'll be blessed. If you do this, you'll be cursed. So the Mosaic
covenant is a conditional covenant that God makes. And then finally there's the
covenant that God makes with David, and that's the covenant, the Davidic covenant,
that is the promise that the line of David, that kingdom will be forever, and he
will establish his throne forever. The Old Testament also points ahead to the new
covenant that is coming. So while we see these four covenants in the Old Testament,
there's the promise of a new covenant. You read about it in Jeremiah and in Ezekiel
where he says, I will make a new covenant, I will take out your heart of stone
and give you a heart of flesh. It's the promise of the New Testament. It's the
promise of Jesus. Now these Gentiles, for the most part, were completely ignorant
about these promises God had made to his people, these covenants that God had made.
Not only were they ignorant of them, they were excluded from them.
So they were not, other than the Noahic covenant, which was for all people, the
covenant for Abraham and his followers, they were excluded from that. The covenant
for those who followed the Mosaic law, they're excluded from that. The covenant that
he makes with David, they're excluded from that other than the fact that they'll be
under the Davidic reign.
So when God makes these promises to his people, the Gentiles are outside of the
blessing of those promises. It's like if you said to your kids this morning, if you
sit still in church and you're a good kid, I'm going to take you out for ice
cream after church. Okay, that doesn't mean you're taking every kid out for ice
cream after church. It's just your kid. That's the only one you've made that promise
to. And even if somebody hears you making that promise to your kid. If they're not
in your family, the promise doesn't apply to them. God's promises, his covenants,
were made with a particular people, and those who were far off from God were
strangers to those promises. So they are far off,
no remedy for their sin, no empowerment for transformation, no standing among God and
his people, no benefits from God and his promises. And then the next thing he says
in this verse, he says, you are without hope.
Without hope for this life and without hope for the life to come. Those who are
far from God have to confront the issues of meaninglessness and futility in life.
It's like Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, who looks around at life and says,
if there's no God, Life is meaningless. Life has no purpose. Life is vain.
Life is empty.
If there's no God, here's what life is. You're born, you live, you die, the end.
And it has no meaning. You've probably heard of the 19th century German philosopher,
Frederick Nietzsche. Nietzsche is perhaps most famous for having declared that God is
dead. And what he was saying was that God had, did not have the, that people had
rebelled against God to a point that God was irrelevant in their lives. And then
Nietzsche said, and when that's true, life becomes absurd and meaningless. And you
ought to live accordingly. And he's right. If there is no God, life is pointless.
It's absurd. It's meaningless. And if that's true, you might as well embrace the
meaningless of life. When I'm talking to people who are agnostics or atheists,
and I say, why do you try to be a good person? Why do you try to live a good
life? And they say, well, I just think that's how you're supposed to live. Why? Why
don't you just live for your own pleasure? Well, because I, why? Why does morality
matter if There's no God. If we are just meat sacks, as some people call us,
if that's all you are, then why not just live to indulge your meat sack?
Nothing matters, live like nothing matters. That's what it looks like to live in a
world without hope. If there's no God, if we're just evolved meat sacks living on a
rock that evolved Billions of years ago, we might as well give up hope and move
along. Paul wants the Ephesians to remember what it was like to live like that.
To live in a society that offered no hope, that provided no promise of hope.
No standing to deal with their guilt and shame. No standing to be a part of God's
family. No access to the blessings of God. No hope for meaning or purpose in this
life, and in short, they were without God in this world. That's the last thing he
says, cut off from him personally and as a culture. Now, look at that list of the
description of what it was like to be a Gentile, and it's also a description of
what it was like for you before you came to know God. It's true for us as
individuals, it was true for them as a culture. Maybe it describes you this morning.
Maybe this is where you are today. It's a pretty bleak picture. And it's why people
who live in a culture where these things are true tend to turn to drugs and
alcohol, or they tend to turn to pleasure or prosperity or fame or whatever they
think is somehow going to satisfy the longing in their soul for there to be
something more than just this life. Again, read Ecclesiastes. All is vanity,
so eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die. That's the philosophy if there's
no God.
Or to quote, Freddie Mercury, nothing really matters. Nothing really matters to me.
Folks, are you working side by side, or you are working side by side.
With people, this is their life. This is where they're living. They have no hope.
They have no God. They have no way to deal with shame and guilt in their life.
They have no power for transformation. They are outside of the blessing of God that
we know as believers. And you should remember what it's like to live like that and
think about what it's like to be in a community or a society where that's how
you're living.
You know the name Douglas Murray? This picture of Douglas Murray, he's a British
author, he's a debater, he's a journalist, he is a self -professed non -believer who
nevertheless has great respect for and admiration for Christianity and the positive
role it has played in building Western civilization. He calls himself a Christian
atheist because he doesn't believe in God, But he thinks religion is a good thing
and has benefit for a society. Well, I agree that that's true, but I would say to
him, it may have benefit for a culture, but you don't have any way to deal with
your guilt and your shame. You don't have any way to bring about personal
transformation in your life other than self -effort. You don't have the blessing that
comes from being a part of the community of God. You don't have hope for the
future when you're without God in this world. There are a growing number of people
in our culture today who are starting to see the benefit that Christianity brings to
a civilization and what happens when it's excluded from a civilization. Nobody wants
to live in a world where the Christian influence is removed because we see what
happens when that takes place. It's bleak. But Douglas Murray doesn't want to bow
the knee. He doesn't want to submit himself to God. See, that's ultimately people
who live far off from God, who have heard about God but choose to live far off
from him. Ultimately, they're not doing so for intellectual reasons. Ultimately,
they're doing so for moral reasons.
They refuse to give up their position as the ruler over their own lives and come
under the authority of someone who's going to tell them how to live.
Ultimately, the folks you know who are rejecting God, that's why they're rejecting
Him. It's not because they don't see the logic of the arguments. That's just a
pretense. The ultimate reason why somebody remains far from God is because they don't
want anyone telling them what to do. They want to stay in charge of their own
In Ephesians 2 .12, Paul is saying to his readers, don't forget what it was like to
live like that. Don't forget when you live that way. Don't forget that the rest of
the world around you is still living that way.
And then he includes a second but in chapter 2. So back at chapter 2 verse 4,
after being talked to how he talks about, you're dead and your trespasses and sins.
He says, but God who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he
loved us has made you alive in Christ. Here's the second but. He says, you were
far from God, but now, it's another glorious turning point here,
but now your life was bleak. Now it's not anymore. Now in Christ Jesus,
you've been brought near. And you've been brought near, he said, because of the
blood of Christ. You've been brought into Christ. You're in the community. You're in
the family. You're experiencing the blessings. You have hope. You have forgiveness.
You have transformation.
You were far off, but now you've been brought in here. A few weeks ago, I went to
Dallas and got to see my beloved San Antonio Spurs. It's been a long time since
I've done a Spurs illustration and a sermon, so bear with me here. I'm a big fan
of the San Antonio Spurs. I went and these are my sons and we had a chance to go
see the Spurs, play the Dallas Mavericks, not just play them, beat them as they did
with all 11 games they played in February. The Spurs have won. That's a, only five
times has that happened. Well, you don't want to know all the facts about the
Spurs. But if you look at this picture, you can see that the back wall of the
arena is four rows behind us. Okay, here's what it looked like.
When we look down at the playing court, at the court, here's what it looked like.
That's, we were far off.
We could barely see what was going on down. It was great to be in the arena. I
loved it, but we were far off. Now, I want you to just imagine for a second that
if, while we were watching the game, somebody came up to us and usher and said,
you four, come with me. And he took us from our rows high up in the arena and
took us down and said, Victor Wenbignon wants you to sit on the bench with him for
the rest of the game. We would have a very different perspective on the game at
that point. We would be right in the middle of the action. We'd be experiencing the
game in a different way than we were experiencing it from the fourth to last row
in the American Airlines Center. When the Bible talks about being brought near, it
means you've been welcomed into the throne room of God. You're there on the bench
as the action is going on. It gives you a whole new perspective on what God is
doing, what's going on in the world. You have been brought near to that.
You have access. You have relationship. You've been brought to the center of the
activity. And you've been brought there by the blood of Christ, or we should say by
the bleeding of Christ, because it's not his actual blood that brings us there,
it's what his blood represents. His blood represents his suffering and his death,
which gives us the access to God. And it's so important that you remember that you
have access to God not because of anything you bring, but because of what Christ
has done. Imagine if, you know, I told you a couple weeks ago, Marianna and I were
on this marriage cruise that we did. Well, imagine showing up at the cruise terminal
and saying, we'd like to go on the cruise. And they would say to me, have you
paid for the cruise? And if I said, no, but I bought cruise clothes,
so I'm ready to go. In fact, as I thought about that, I thought, anybody know who
this person is? person is? Can anybody? Who knows who that is? That is, for those
of you who don't know, that's Thurston Howell III from the television show Gilligan's
Island, which was a big hit back in the 60s. And he was always dressed for the
cruise, the three -hour cruise that they went out on. Maybe you don't do this. Maybe
you'd get the full captain's regalia. You go out and buy what a captain of a ship
would wear. The next one, don't I have a picture of the cat? Yeah. So you get
dressed up like this and you show, I have the captain's clothes on. They would say,
that's fine. You have to pay to get on the cruise. Being dressed in the captain's
gear will not get you on here.
Jesus paid the price so that we can draw near and he paid it with his blood.
It was his death in our place. He shed his blood so that the debt is paid so
that we can draw near.
You understand why God's people sacrificed lambs for centuries? They did it so that
the picture would be burned into their head that access to God requires blood. In
fact, in the book of Hebrews, it tells us that the shedding of the blood of bulls
and goats does not bring you access to God. It was always there to be a picture
of what does bring you access, which is the blood of Christ, the once for all
sacrifice.
The sacrifice of all those lambs was so that when the Jews eventually would see
Jesus bleeding and dying on a cross, they would put two and two together and say,
this is the Lamb of God who is taking away the sins of the world.
Charles Spurgeon said it this way. He said, Beloved, it is a thought which ought to
make our hearts leap within us, that through Christ's blood,
there is not a spot left on any believer, not a wrinkle or any such thing.
O precious blood, removing the hell stains of abundant iniquity and permitting me to
stand accepted in the beloved, notwithstanding all the many ways in which I have
rebelled against my God. Christ's blood, he said, is the key of heaven's gate,
the silencer of the conscience, the blotter out of sin. As we close this morning,
let me ask you where you stand in relationship to God this morning to Jesus. Are
you far off? When we've read through the list of what it's like to be far off,
did you say, you know, that kind of sounds like me. If you're far off,
it's for one of two reasons. If you're far off, it's either because you are a
child of God who has wandered away. Sheep do that. They wander from the shepherd,
but God is a good shepherd who seeks his sheep and brings you back home. God may
be speaking to you this morning to say it's time to come home because you have
wandered off, you have been far off, it's time to come back where there's
forgiveness, where there's blessing, where you can experience the fellowship of God.
You might be far off because you've wandered away. You might be far off because
you've never drawn near in the first place. Maybe you've always watched Jesus and
Christianity from a distance, like the seats I was in watching the basketball game.
You've watched it from up there, and you've looked down and said, huh, that's
interesting, but you've never drawn near. You've never come to Christ,
and maybe you're hearing the good news here for the first time, or maybe you've
heard it before, but for some reason this morning it's making sense to you. You can
draw near today.
Here's how. First, you acknowledge that your life is headed in the wrong direction.
You admit that when you try to run your own life, you make a mess of things. You
acknowledge that you are a sinner and you need help. Secondly, you believe that God
sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for your sin, that He is God who came in
human flesh, lived the life you needed to live, but didn't, dive the death that you
deserve, and then rose again from the dead so that you can be saved. And then
third, you turn. You turn from the direction you've been going, and you turn to
follow him.
When you do that sincerely from the heart, Jesus says, you're drawing near. I'm
bringing you near. You're welcome into the family. And you can do that this morning.
Now maybe you're here this morning and instead of being far off, you have drawn
near. You are near to God. You would say that you are walking near to God day in
and day out. Not perfectly, you still stumble, but your life is on track to follow
Christ and you are drawing near. If that's you this morning, this passage is saying,
don't forget where you came from. And don't forget that people around you are still
there. And don't forget that someone was bold enough to ask you to church or to a
Bible study and keep pestering you, right? Don't forget that somebody loved you
enough and cared for you enough to share the gospel with you and then do that for
these people who are far from God, far from hope, who need to hear the message.
Ask God for an opportunity this week to invite someone to church or to share the
gospel with them so that those who are far off can be brought near. Pray with me.
Father,
thank you for the truth of your word. Thank you for drawing us near. Thank you
that we who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
Lord, help us to remember what it was like without you and break our hearts for
those who are still living far off from you.
And Lord, I pray for any here this morning who have wandered or who have never
come to you that they would come. They would hear your voice, they would see your
glory, they would be drawn to you and that they would turn and come.
I ask this in your name. Amen.