Date: May 24, 2009

Lessons: Ephesians 2:11-22

Sermon Title: We Are One

(Back to Study Home Page)  (Back to Sermons 2008-2009)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)  (Back to Shultz Home Page)

INTRODUCTION

Milton Berle on Marriage (1)

In 1947 Milton Berle was one of the biggest names in comedy.

But as his career rose, his marriage failed, leading to a divorce from his wife Joyce Mathews.

Two years later, Berle and Mathews got married for the second time.

Why marry the same woman all over again?

"Because," Berle explained to reporters, "she reminds me of my first wife."

  1. How is your imagination?

    1. This morning let us pretend that we are living in Ephesus.

      1. It is a famous city

      2. It is home to the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

      3. It is a throughly pagan city.

    2. It is here that the Apostle Paul journeyed.

      1. He began there a church.

      2. It was to the Christians at Ephesus that he wrote the letter that we call Ephesians.

  2. He writes to remind them of who they were before they became Christians.

(Top)  (Back to Study Home Page)  (Back to Sermons 2008-2009)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)  (Back to Shultz Home Page)

MAIN BODY:

  1. Paul wants them to remember.

G. K. Chesterton once likened this world to the desert island site of a shipwreck. A sailor awakes from a deep sleep and discovers treasure strewn about, relics from a civilization he can barely remember.

One by one he picks up the relics - gold coins, a compass, fine clothing - and tries to discern their meaning.

According to Chesterton, fallen humanity is in such a state. Good things on earth still bear traces of their original purpose, but each is also subject to misinterpretation or abuse because of fallen, 'amnesiac' human nature. (2)

    1. This may be true of the Ephesians.

    2. Paul wants them to remember where they came from.

  1. Remember that they were the uncircumcized.

    1. They were with out Christ.

      1. They had no knowledge of Jesus.

      2. They had no faith in him.

      3. They had no union with him.

      4. They were without

        1. Pardon for sin.

        2. Life in him.

        3. Grace from God, the Father.

        4. Living hope.

        5. No source of comfort.

      5. They had no experience of the three fold blessing of the Gospel.

        1. Christ for us.

        2. Christ in us.

        3. Christ with us.

    2. The pagan Ephesians were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.

      1. Israel was supposed to inclusive.

      2. Israel became inclusive.

      3. The estrangement of the Ephesians was an immense spiritual loss.

    3. They were strangers to the Covenant.

      1. God made the Covenant with Abraham.

        1. God told Abraham that through him all the blessings would flow to people who were his descendants by faith.

        2. The terms and the purpose of the Covenant were held from the Ephesians.

          1. They had no national covenant with God.

          2. They had no land of promise.

      2. They had nothing except the clothes on their backs and what few goods they were able to gather.

    4. They were without hope.

      1. No hope for a Messiah.

      2. No hope for salvation through him.

      3. No hope of a future state of eternal life.

        1. Someone has written:

"Such as are Christless must be hopeless; such as are without faith must needs be without hope; and such as are without the promise must necessarily be without faith; for the promise is the ground of faith, and faith is the ground of hope."

        1. They are like the characters in Socrates cave who live in the shadows and believe that it is reality.

    1. They are without God in the world.

      1. They were not atheists.

        1. They had thousands of gods that ere no gods.

        2. They were not bold deniers of God.

      2. Many of the people were "feeling after the Lord."

        1. They were without the knowledge of the true God.

        2. They had no faith in him.

        3. They lived without relation to him.

        4. They had no consciousness of his presence.

          1. He could not bless the,.

          2. He could not guide them.

          3. He could not comfort them.

      3. This is the sad truth of the Christians of Ephesus before.

      4. No matter what was before, it matters what came after.

(Top)  (Back to Study Home Page)  (Back to Sermons 2008-2009)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)  (Back to Shultz Home Page)

  1. Those who were far off were brought near through the blood of Jesus Christ.

    1. He is our peace.

    2. He has united humanity in one body.

    3. The dividing wall or walls have been broken down.

      1. We remember the Berlin wall.

The wall separated East Germany from West Germany for more than a quarter-century, from the day construction began on 13 August 1961 until the Wall was opened on 9 November 1989 (3)

      1. This wall is deeper, wider, and stronger that the Berlin Wall.

      2. There is no human resource that could break it down.

      3. It could only be done by God.

  1. Now there are no Ephesians Christian or Jewish Christians, no European Christian or American Christians.

    1. We all one in Christ.

    2. Whether we acknowledge it or not.

    3. Whether we accept it or not.

    4. We are one in the Spirit.

      1. In the church there is no wall between the powerful and the powerless.

      2. In the church there is no wall between the eloquent and the hesitant.

      3. In the church there is no wall between the well-educated and the illiterate.

      4. In the church there is only one humanity, one body, one peace.

We Are One In The Spirit

Lyrics by Jason Upton

We are one in the Spirit
We are one in the Lord
We are one in the Spirit
We are one in the Lord

And we pray that all unity
May one day be restored
And they'll know we are Christians
By our love, By our love
Yes, they'll know we are Christians
By our love

We will walk with each other
We will walk hand in hand
We will walk with each other
We will walk hand in hand
And together we'll spread the news
That God is in our land

We will work with each other
We will work side by side
We will work with each other
We will work side by side
And we'll guard each man's dignity
And save each man's pride

All praise to the Father
From whom all things come
And all praise to Christ Jesus His only son
And all praise to the Spirit
Who makes us one

(Top)  (Back to Study Home Page)  (Back to Sermons 2008-2009)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)  (Back to Shultz Home Page)

CONCLUSION:

  1. With God there are no barriers.

    1. If we have barriers they are our own.

    2. We need to examine them, identify them, and overcome them.

In their book, The Aladdin Factor, authors Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (best-selling authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series), devote their entire book to the importance of asking for what we want in life. They list five barriers to asking: (4)

      1. Ignorance

      2. Limiting and inaccurate beliefs

      3. Fear

        1. Fear of rejection

        2. Fear of looking stupid

        3. Fear of being powerless

        4. Fear of humiliation

        5. Fear of punishment

        6. Fear of abandonment

        7. Fear of endless obligation

      4. Low self-esteem

      5. Pride.

  1. All barriers can be overcome. (5)

Born in Baltimore and orphaned at an early age, Pauli Murray was raised on Cameron Street behind Maplewood Cemetery in Durham, North Carolina, by her maternal grandparents and an aunt, in whose first-grade class she learned to read. Two other aunts also took a keen interest in her upbringing. Having no parents of my own, she wrote in her poignant memoir Proud Shoes, I had in effect three mothers, each trying to impress upon me those traits of character expected of a Fitzgerald - stern devotion to duty, capacity for hard work, industry and thrift, and above all, honor and courage in all things.

She graduated at the top of her class from Hillside High School, and with honors from Hunter College in New York, but was denied admission to law school at the University of North Carolina in 1938 because of her race, and to Harvard University because of her gender. These and other experiences spurred her to a life of activism, working to dismantle barriers of race and gender. From sit-ins to integrate Washington, D.C., lunch counters in the 1940s, through her efforts as a founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the early 1970s, Murray took challenges head-on, while generally avoiding the limelight.

After receiving her law degree at Howard University, she later earned a master's degree in law from the University of California at Berkeley, and was a tutor in law at Yale, where she received her doctorate in 1965. Pauli Murray had a distinguished and varied career as a civil rights lawyer, a professor, a college vice president and deputy attorney general of California. She was named Woman of the Year by Mademoiselle in 1947. ...

At age 62, when many people are planning retirement, Pauli Murray entered the seminary and embarked upon a new career. In 1977, she was the first black woman in the United States to become an Episcopalian priest. In performing her first Holy Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, where her grandmother, a slave, had been baptized, Murray finally believed that All the strands of my life had come together.

    1. We are not Pauli Murray.

    2. We can use her life example to help us deal with our own barriers.

    3. God help us to be successful.

Amen!

1. The Good, Clean Funnies List [gcfl-info@gcfl.net]

2. As quoted in Sins of the Body: Ministry in a Sexual Society,
ed. Terry Muck (Carol Stream, Ill.: Christianity Today; Dallas: Word, 1989), 63.

3. Freedom! - TIME

4. Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, The Aladdin Factor (New York: Berkley Books, 1995).

5. Pauli Murray, 1910-1985, Writer, Poet, Lawyer & Priest, www.ncwriters.org/pmurray.htm.

(Top)  (Back to Study Home Page)  (Back to Sermons 2008-2009)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)  (Back to Shultz Home Page)