The Great Divide: the Uncircumcised and the Circumcised

Well, if you have your Bible with you, and I hope you do, turn to Ephesians
chapter 2 this morning. We're going to get there in just a minute. We are returning
to our study in the book of Ephesians, which we started back in September,
and we were moving along up until Christmas. We took a break at Christmas and are
just now getting back into it. So I want to give you a little recap so you
remember where we were and what we had been learning when we were in chapters one
and then the first half of chapter two in Ephesians. Paul begins by telling his
readers, these Gentile Ephesians, that God has blessed them with every spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places. These first recipients of this letter,
the Ephesians were Greeks, they were Gentiles, and Paul wants to make sure from the
outset that they understand that by putting their faith in Jesus,
male nor female, there's no Jew, no Greek, all are one in Christ. They have every
spiritual blessing. God has called them. God has predestined them to be adopted into
his family. God has redeemed them for himself. God has forgiven their sins. He has
given them insight into the mysteries of his will. He has given them a share in
the divine inheritance, and he has sealed it all with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
That's what he says in the first half of Ephesians chapter one and he says my
prayer is that god will enlighten your heart so that you can get your arms around
this so that you can begin to understand all that god has done for you in christ
and that's chapter one and then when he gets to chapter two he steps back and and
reviews their personal spiritual journey with them you were dead in your trespasses
in sins you were controlled by the flesh You are under the domain of the devil,
but God who is rich in mercy has made you alive in Christ. You are saved by grace
through faith, and you are his workmanship created in Christ for good works that he
prepared beforehand for you to walk in. So that's the overview that brings us to
where we are this morning as we get to Ephesians 2 .11, and this is really a
turning point in this letter. It's a new section because in chapter two where Paul
has been talking about reconciliation he starts by talking about one aspect of
reconciliation which is our personal reconciliation in Christ with Christ with God and
then in the second half of the chapter he talks about us being reconciled together
as the body of Christ so two distinct groups of people made into one group of
people he reconciles us to himself individually really.
society, two very different groups of people, actually people from every tongue,
tribe, and nation, from all kinds of backgrounds being brought together and finding
our unity in Christ. And that's the big picture of the verses we'll be reading
through this morning. I have to confess, as I started working through this passage,
my intent was that we would be able to move at a robust pace and cover three
verses this morning. But Sadly, as I got into it, I thought, there's so much in
verse 11. That's where we're going to be. So I hope you're okay with that. Maybe
if I'd had more time to work on it this week, I could have found a way to cover
all three and keep it in my time frame, but you're just going to have to settle
with my thoughts on verse 11 today. But for context, we will read from verse 11 to
the end of the chapter, just so we understand what Paul is saying here. Let me
pray for our time in God's word before we read it together.
Father, we need now your Holy Spirit to come and open the eyes of our heart.
Enlighten our eyes. Help us to see clearly what it is that your word is saying,
and help us not just to see it, but to believe it. And Lord, may it transform our
lives. We ask that this morning in your name. Amen. I'm going to ask you to stand
as we read together the word of God, this is the word of God for the people of
God. Ephesians 2 beginning at verse 11, Paul writes, 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 once 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,
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 last forever. Okay, As I said,
one verse, verse 11, here's what we're going to look at from this verse this
morning. Four things. First thing I want you to see is where this passage begins.
Therefore, remember. Why is this command here for us to remember what's it all
about? Secondly, I want you to see what Paul has to say about those who are called
the uncircumcision. Then I want you to see what thoughts Paul has about those who
are the so -called circumcision by the work of hands. And finally, I want you to
see what God's word has to say about true circumcision, which is the circumcision of
the heart, which is the circumcision that is pleasing to him. So that's where we're
going. So we'll dig into that. The passage starts with this instruction from Paul to
his readers to remember. And actually, it begins with the word therefore, and people
who study the Greek will tell you that when you see the word therefore, it's the
Greek word H -I -N -A, when you see that word therefore in your Bible,
you should always ask yourself the question, what's the therefore, therefore? Because
it's telling you, based on what you've just read, there's a conclusion you should
draw or there's an action you should take. These Hennah clauses are called Hennah
purpose clauses. based on what you've just read, here's what you should do. Here's
how you should respond. And that word, therefore, is actually used 11 times in the
book of Ephesians. It's only used once in the first half of the book, and then
it's used 10 times in the second half of the book. And what the Bible's telling us
is that because of what Christ has done for us, that's what chapters one, two, and
three in this book are about,
by individually and personally saving us, making us alive in Christ, bringing us
together into his family, uniting us together, because of these things, therefore, we
should respond this way. That's why there are so many therefores in the second half
of the book, because the first half of the book is here to tell us what God has
done for us. And it's interesting because He says, therefore, remember.
verbs in the book of Ephesians and this is the first of them and it's the only
one in chapters one, two, and three. The other 39 imperatives are in chapters four,
five, and six. So chapters one, two, and three are about, well, we could divide it
up this way. You could look at it this way, two halves of Ephesians. Chapters one,
two, and three are about the gospel story. So they tell us what is true.
is what is true using indicative verbs. The second half of this book is what we do
based on the imperative verbs. And the first three chapters all have a bunch of
indicative verbs telling us what's true, and then the last three chapters have the
imperatives. So the first and only imperative verb in the first half of the book is
right here in verse 11 of chapter 2. And it's a command for us,
it's not just a suggestion, it's a command for all who are in Christ to remember.
I'm going to tell you a secret.
Remembering is the key to your Christian life.
We think it sounds like an innocuous word, like remember, like that's something we
should try to do on occasion. No, remembering is the key.
over and over and over again as we walk. We are to meditate on these things.
We are to call them to mind regularly. And this is a command, not a suggestion.
Therefore, remember.
Remember what is true about you before you came to Christ. Remember what God has
done for you in Christ. Remember what He has promised you as his child. Remember
and re -believe these things because that's how we renew our minds and that's how we
walk through this world remembering these things. We sometimes will sing a hymn that
begins with the statement, I cast my mind to Calvary where Jesus bled and died for
me. That's an active choice we make to cast our mind in that direction.
You don't just remember like a thought pops into your head and you go, oh, yeah, I
remember that. No, this command is saying, get up every day and remember.
Remember what's true. Remember the strength of the Word of God. Keep casting your
mind to these things. Renew, reset your mind.
Remember. R .C. Sprole points out that in the Old Testament, the root concept of
apostasy was that the nation kept forgetting. He says this,
as long as God's people, or God's redemption was clear and fresh in the experience
of the people, they were zealous in their worship and their obedience.
But as the memory of God's blessings faded, then their zeal began to fade as well.
It is this link between memory and the motivating power of gratitude that produces
the fruit of righteousness. Is your life lacking the fruit of righteousness?
You need to do some more remembering. You need to be reminding yourself of what is
true, anchoring your heart and soul in what is true, and you need to be drawing on
the strength of that. You want to do an interesting study this week? Pull up the
ESV Bible online and type into the search box the word forgot. And see where you
find it in the Old Testament. See where in the book of judges it says they forgot
the Lord their God. See in 1 Samuel where it says, but they forgot the God who
had saved them. See in the book of Psalms where it talks about, but we forgot the
Lord, we forgot his works, and see what happened as a result of forgetting.
When you forget what God has done for you, when you forget what's true about you,
your life will begin to veer off course in a direction away from God. When you
remember and re -believe, your life will be anchored in what is true.
It's not just the Old Testament that talks about how important it is not to forget,
but to remember, in 2nd Peter, which some of the men who are doing a men's Bible
study are going through right now, in chapter one, Peter says this. He says,
therefore,
I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are
established in the truth that you have. Now let me just stop right there. People
who remind you of things you already know are people that I tend to get annoyed
by, right? Somebody who keeps saying, don't forget this. Like, yes, yes, I know. But
this just points to the fact that the things we already know because of our in
-dwelling sin and because of the work of the devil, we easily forget what we already
know. So Peter says, I intend to remind you of what you already know, even though
you know them and are established in the truth that you have. He says, I think it
is right as long as I am in this body to stir you up by way of reminder,
since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus
Christ made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure
you may be able at any time to recall these things. Peter says, that's the key
here for me to tell you, so you hear it the first time, that's learning it, but
when I tell you the second time, I'm reminding you. It's what I do every Sunday. I
get up here and remind you. You're either hearing it for the first time and going,
I didn't know that, or you're hearing it for the 40th time and going, I needed to
remember that either way it's what the bible calls us to because it is remembering
these things that is going to make a difference but it's not enough just for me to
do it you have to learn to do it yourself it's not enough for somebody else to be
your reminder you have to learn how to remind yourself here's an example of how
this works a well -known example from the book of lamentations Jeremiah is fixating
on his troubles, his pain, his affliction, he's overwhelmed by it. That's why it's
called lamentations. He is filled with regret and lament until he gets to these
familiar words in chapter 3, verse 21, but this I call to mind.
And therefore, I have hope. And then what does he call to mind?
what he knows is true. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies
never come to an end. They're new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The
Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I will put my hope in him.
When you are being swallowed up by circumstances, when you're being overwhelmed and
overcome by what's going on in life in our world today, in your own world today?
What you need to do is recall, remember, because as you call it to mind,
therefore you will have hope. That's where hope comes from. You find your hope,
you trust him again, you walk with him by faith. So this passage that we're reading
in Ephesians 2 .11, the passage that begins this new section,
the one imperative verb in all of the first three chapters is remember all these
things I'm telling you about what Christ has done for you remember this call it to
mind reflect on it regularly remember what's true about your life before God saved
you remember that you're saved by grace through faith remember that you are his
workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works and this is where Paul starts to
get specific with his readers who are Gentile Christians about their situation as
Gentile Christians. And he begins to address them about what was true of them as a
community and not just individuals. So we're going to switch from talking about
remembering to talking about this group that Paul says has been called the
uncircumcision.
He doesn't call them the Gentiles. He calls them the uncircumcision. He says, that's
what you have been called. And why does he use that designation? Why doesn't he
just say, and you who are called the Gentiles? Well, the reason he doesn't do that
is because of what circumcision pointed to in Paul's Day. Now,
I assume you know what the act of circumcision is. For many years, I would come to
church and hear people talking about circumcision and I kind of nodded my head. I
didn't know what that was. I had no idea what that. We didn't learn that in
elementary school. If you don't know what circumcision is, there's Google and chat
GPT. You can go home and look it up this afternoon. I'm not going to get into it,
all right? But let me tell you about why circumcision is important.
In Genesis 17, God comes to Abram and he says,
I want you as I'm calling you out to be my people. My blessing is going to be on
your family. He said, but
So the cattle know, I belong to him, the rancher knows, you're my cattle.
Circumcision is that branding. He says that the reason it's given is to mark those
whom God has chosen, not because God's going to forget who are his own, but so
that we know that we are his own, and so that everybody else knows that we belong
to him. And this active circumcision was designed to be a sign of the covenant
promise and the promise was God saying I will be your God and I will be God to
your descendants after you and this is the sign that will indicate our special
relationship so this physical act served primarily as a sign between God of his
commitment to his people and then his people's reciprocal obligation to him to obey
the covenant, to follow the covenant. The practice set the nation of Israel apart
from the other tribes. There were some other nations or tribes. The Egyptians
practiced circumcision, but most of the neighboring nations did not. But for Israel,
circumcision was the essential requirement for membership in that covenant community.
In fact, the only way a Gentile could become a part of the covenant community,
the only way you could come in, if you were not born a Jew and circumcised as a
Jew, when you said, I want to join with these people, then if you were a male,
you had to be circumcised. You had to be marked. You had to pledge your allegiance
in that way. This was a sign of belonging to this covenant people.
And for the Jews, and this is key, for the Jews, someone who was uncircumcised,
that was seen by them as a clear indication that they had no part in the promise
or the blessing of God. So anybody who was uncircumcised,
they saw that person as wicked, godless, and outside of God's love and care and
covenant. This became obvious in the history of the Old Testament between the Jews
and the Philistines, but it spread to where all Gentiles were seen this way.
Anyone who was not a Jew, anyone who was not circumcised as a Jew, was seen as
wicked and godless and outside of God's blessing, outside of God's care,
outside of God's love. God did not love the uncircumcised in the Jewish mind. And
over the years, as the Jews began to be ruled over by the uncircumcised,
the Greeks and the Romans in particular, their hatred for them grew, and they began
to think of the Gentiles, not just as Gentiles, but as Gentile dogs. In fact, in
the temple, in Jerusalem, you know, there are courts, there's the Holy of Holies,
and then out from that is the court of the men, then out from that as the court
of the women, and not from that as the court of the Gentiles. And the Gentiles
could get no farther, no nearer to God in temple worship than the court of the
Gentiles. If they went past the court of the Gentiles into the court of the women,
they could be executed on the spot because they were violating the sacred terms.
You couldn't draw near to God as an uncircumcised Philistine or an uncircumcised
Gentile. Traditional Jewish men recited a prayer every morning.
They would say, God, I thank you that I am not, I thank you that you did not
make me a Gentile, a woman, or a slave.
That was their prayer. Bible commentary, commentator William Barkley, who's pretty good
on historical stuff, says this. He says, the barrier between Jew and Gentile was
absolute. if a Jew married a Gentile the funeral that
in doing so, you would be bringing another Gentile into the world.
We think about race relations in our day and hostility between the races. Between
Jews and Gentiles, it was as toxic or more toxic as anything we've experienced in
our day. And this is why, in the early church, there was an uproar. You remember,
when Peter first gets the call to go and take the gospel to a Gentile. In Acts
chapter 10, Cornelius, he sits down at his house, and this is after Peter's had the
vision of the ham sandwiches coming down from heaven, and God said, you can eat
those now, and Peter goes, I'd never touch him. God says, I'm calling them clean,
and then Peter gets to Cornelius's house, and he goes, oh, God is calling clean
what I've been calling unclean my whole life, not just ham sandwiches, but Gentiles.
And so Gentiles are hearing and responding to the gospel, you get to Acts Chapter
15, and the church is getting together and going, what do we do about this? Can we
have Gentiles in the church? Do they have to be circumcised? And they have a whole
council meeting, and they have to wrestle with this. When Paul went on his first
missionary journey into the region of Galatia, he was followed by Judaizers who would
come along after him and say, oh, you're a Christian now? Great. We're here to
circumcise you. They said, nobody told us about circumcised. Oh, yes, you've got to
be circumcised in order to be acceptable to God. And so there was this uproar as
the church tried to figure out, what are we supposed to do with these unclean
Gentile dogs who now want to follow Yahweh and believe in the Jewish Messiah?
Now, the reason I'm telling you all of this is so you get an understanding of the
deep division that existed between Jews and Gentiles. and the Gentiles understood that
that Yahweh sent the Messiah, and he is here to redeem us, and you're invited in.
Well, you've grown up as a Greek learning about other gods, different gods, and
you've also learned that these Jews hate you, would you have an instinct immediately
to go, I want to join up with you guys now and follow you? No, you'd be pretty
put off by that. In fact, the fact that there were Greeks and Romans who were
responding to the gospel can only be explained by the work of the Holy Spirit,
going before them, and by the power of the gospel and the power of God's word. As
fewer and fewer Jews were believing in the Messiah, Gentiles were now believing in
the Messiah to where the Gentiles were starting to outnumber the Jews. So the idea
that a Gentile would say, I believe in and promise to follow the God of the Jews,
those people who have been calling me a dog and see me as unclean and wicked, I'm
going to give my life to their God?
That's a big jump for a Gentile to make. But that's exactly what's going on here.
And in fact, by God's design, as I said, more Gentiles believing in Jesus than
there were Jews at that point. So the Ephesians, back to them, they had to wonder
about their status as citizens in the kingdom of God. When the Jews come and say,
you're invited in, in the back of their mind, they had to be thinking, yeah, but
invited in as what? I mean, do we really have the same status as the people who
grew up in Israel, who have been to the temple, who have always followed Yahweh,
are we being invited in to full participation? Yesterday, Marianne and I, as we flew
back from Miami, we were on a big plane, a 7 -7 -7. So we walked through three
classes of cab.
cabin extra. And instead of four rows, now there are seven rows,
or seven seats across, not seven rows, but seven seats across. So four seats across
in one, then seven seats across and then we get to our part of the cabin where
there are ten seats across. So the folks up front, they got four seats across, a
lot of leg room, a lot of arm room, they can stretch out. The main cabin extra,
They can sit without having to necessarily touch the person next to them. Back in
our part of the cabin, we were there shoulder to shoulder for the three hours plus
the two on the tarmac that we were in there. Sardine part of the cab. So I'm
thinking about the Gentiles, about the Ephesians, and they're getting invited in, and
they're probably thinking, yeah, but what class of service are we going to be in?
Are we being accepted in, do the Jews have business class status,
and we're going to be in the back of the plane the whole time? They must have
thought that their place in God's family would be at the end of the dinner table.
Do you ever wonder that about yourself? Do you ever wonder if your place in the
plan of God, among the people of God, is is a back row place.
You ever wonder if where you belong because of your, I mean, some of you, I know
some of your stories, some of your stories include a long season of pretty blatant
sin. Do you ever look at that and think, well, because of how bad I've been, I'll
never be up there with the guy who grew up in a family that was, they were
Christians for six generations and he made a profession of faith when he was six
and never wavered from that. He's going to be in the front of the plane. I'm going
to be in the back of the plane because of my baggage and my sin that I've got
with me. Ever wonder about that? Paul is telling them and us that that's not how
God operates, that there is no second -class status among the people of God in
heaven. Paul started this letter by telling these Gentiles that they are the
inheritors of every spiritual blessing. He's trying to tell them, look, you are
brought in to full acceptance from the God of the universe who loves you in the
same way that he loves your Jewish friends, every one of his children.
God loves them, God loves you and me, in the same way that he loves every one of
his children. And why? Not because of who you are, but because of who Christ is.
See, God's love for you is not based on your track record. It's based on Christ's
track record. It's not based on what you did or didn't do. It's based on what
Christ did and didn't do. And that's why when he looks at you, he sees you through
the lens of Christ and loves you with the same love, think that God loves you with
the same love he has for his son.
That's mind -blowing. That's how God's love works. And Paul is starting this letter
to make clear to these Gentile Ephesians that God has blessed them beyond measure,
that they are fully accepted into his body. But he does want them to take a minute
and think back to what their life was like as uncircumcised Gentiles, and we will
get to that next week when we pick up.
You're called that by the circumcision, but by those who are called the circumcision
is because Paul wants his Gentile readers to understand that these circumcised Jews,
that the physical act of circumcision was only ever designed to point to a spiritual
reality and never to confer some special status on the basis of the physical act
itself. And this is seen throughout the Bible. So God.
God's speaking to the nation of Israel, and he says to them after he's given them
the law, and now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? But to fear
the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord, your
God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and
the statutes of your Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good. By the
way, God's making a covenant with them. This is their part of the covenant. This is
what God requires of them in their keeping of the covenant. Then verse 14,
he says, Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heavens of heavens,
the earth and all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your
fathers and shows their offspring after them, you above all the peoples as you are
this day. And then he says, verse 16,
to the land that your father is possessed, that you may possess it, and he will
make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers, and the Lord your God will
circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the
Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, that you may live.
The circumcision of the flesh was always a sign.
You pull into Little Rock, and there's a sign on the highway that says, welcome to
Little Rock. You could stop there and you could go stand by that sign and say,
it's so good to be here in Little Rock. This sign is so special. I love Little
Rock. Well, it's the sign. It's not the sign that matters. It's what's behind the
sign. It's the city. The sign is just saying, here's where you are. Now explore the
city. Circumcision is saying, this is what God expects, but now explore the reality
of what true circumcision looks like. The prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 4 says,
circumcise yourselves to the Lord, remove the foreskin of your hearts, O men of
Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest my wrath go forth like fire and burn with
none to quench it because of the evil of your deeds. And finally, we can get to
the New testament the apostle paul makes this clear in romans so romans one the
apostle paul is saying to the jews he says look you are sinful people and the jews
are all saying yeah you tell them paul and then it gets to chapter two of romans
he says and you jews you're in no better shape even though you think you are
you're in no better shape you're sinful too and he gets to the end of romans too
he says this no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly.
Nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly,
and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the spirit, not by the letter. His
praise is not from man, but from God. So my point in showing you both the Old and
the New Testament on this is to show you that in Ephesians too, Paul is saying to
the people who have been calling the Gentiles the uncircumcision, these so -called
circumcision, they may be physically circumcised, but they're not spiritually
circumcised. They may think they have special status with God based on their physical
circumcision, but Paul is saying, yours is a circumcision in name only. It's not the
real thing. You Jews who have been called the uncircumcision, been called dogs, been
called unclean by the so -called clean,
they've been following the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law. They
are circumcised in the flesh, but not in the heart.
Being a Jew, being circumcised, did have
in, you were in the place in the world where God was present and was pouring out
blessing, but it didn't confer to you the blessings of the covenant simply because
you kept the law or you had a heritage. That was required for the circumcision of
the heart, or was reserved for the circumcision of the heart. Here's the principle
we need to keep in mind. God wants us to both love him and serve him.
If you love God, but you don't serve God, something's wrong.
The truth is, if you really love God, you are motivated to serve him. If you say
that you love him and you're not motivated to serve him, something's wrong with the
love you profess to have for him. It would be like me saying to my wife, I love
you, but I'm never coming home at the end of the day. I'm never going to do
anything to support our marriage. If you love someone, you serve one another in
love. If we love God, we serve him, not out of duty, sometimes out of duty,
but it ought to be motivated out of delight. But if you seek to serve God without
loving him, that's a problem too. If you think, Okay, what's the requirement?
I'll do my part. I'll play my role. I'll be the good person. I'll hope that God
grades on the curve. That's not what God's looking for. God is not looking at your
life to see if you're good enough to measure up because newsflash, you're not.
Nobody is. So God's not looking around and going, oh, you almost made it. Okay,
I'll just put, no.
No, God is looking and saying all have fallen short of the glory.
So to say, I'm going to try to serve you, God, but I don't really love you.
That's a problem, too. That was the Jewish posture. We're going to try to serve
you, but we don't really love you. God is looking for those who love him first and
then serve him out of the overflow of that love, who are motivated to want to
serve him because of their love for him. That's what it means to be circumcised of
the heart. So look at your own motivations, your own desire to do you love God and
do you serve God? Are both of those things true about you? What does that look
like in your life? How is your love for God expressed? What is your service for
God look like? And are you professing love for him without serving him? Or are you
serving him without really loving him?
God wants both of these to be true. And when the Bible talks about wanting your
heart to be circumcised, it's not just talking about your emotions. You understand
the Bible, when it uses the word heart, it's talking about the control center of
your life. So your heart is what everything flows from. Your mind, your will,
your emotions are all captured in the heart of a man. It's not just your emotions
or your feelings about something.
So when your mind and your will inform, or excuse me, your mind and your emotions
inform your will, that's where choices come from. And if your heart is uncircumcised,
it means that your choices are being made based on your own love for you.
If your heart is circumcised, it's being based on love for God.
So which of those two best describes you? Are you someone who loves and serves God?
Or are you someone who would say, my life is lacking in both of those areas? And
I think all of us would say, yes, I love him and want to serve him, but I can
do better. I can love him more. I want to serve him more. That's the Christian
life. That's the journey we're on. None of us love him perfectly. None of us serve
him perfectly. But is that the direction of your life? Is that what animates your
life?
The interesting thing here is the people that Paul's writing to, the Ephesians, a
generation later, 30 or 40 years, Jesus would have a message for this church.
We read about it when we were in the book of Revelation. In Revelation chapter 2,
Jesus comes and he says, I see your good works, but you've lost your first love.
And what does he tell them to do? Remember,
remember, return, repent.
Do the things you did at first.
We're back full circle. The key here is to remember what God has done for you,
and that should be your motivation. There were a lot of Jews, including Paul
himself, who were trying to keep the rules and had been circumcised in the flesh,
but they'd never been circumcised in the heart. Don't let that be your story.
Okay, we're going to stop here this morning. We're at the end of verse 11. Next
week, as we get into this, we're going to see the description of these Gentiles who
were cut off from God.
Help us, Lord, to be men and women who both love and serve you.
Would you kindle in us today, a fresh love for you? Would you remind us again
today of what's true?
And Lord, I'm thinking this morning of those who might be here today who have never
surrendered to you. They've never turned from their sin, never repented of their sin.
They've never bowed the knee before you and said, I want you to be in control of
my life. Lord, would you, by your spirit, do a work in their hearts to awaken them
to their need, to both love and serve you,
bring them into your family, empower them by your spirit so that they can live
lives that are pleasing to you.
We ask these things in your name. Amen.