Sermon for Pentecost, May 23, 2021
Ephesians 2:17-22 17He
also came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who
were near. 18For through
him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. 19So then, you are no longer
foreigners and strangers, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and
members of God’s household. 20You
have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ
Jesus himself as the Cornerstone. 21In
him the whole building is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the
Lord. 22In him you too are
being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (EHV)
God
made peace with you all in Christ Jesus.
Dear friends in Christ Jesus,
As you
read through the letter to the Ephesians and consider Paul’s farewell address
to that congregation in the book of Acts, you see that there is a necessary
tension in the life of the Christian Church.
On the one hand, Christian congregations must be ever vigilant against
false doctrine and false teachers. At
the same time, we must recognize that we have a real fellowship with all other
members of the true Christian Church, what we Lutherans would call Christ’s
“invisible Church.”
As St. Paul bid his farewell with tears, he
warned the elders in Ephesus, “Always keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock
in which the Holy Spirit has placed you as overseers, … I know that after my
departure savage wolves, who will not spare the flock, will come in among
you. Even from your own group men will
rise up, twisting the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. Therefore be always on the alert!” (Acts 20:28-31)
Many people wonder why there are so many
divisions in the Christian Church today, and the answer is simply that so many
teachers have run after ideas that are not in line with God’s Word as given
through His chosen apostles and prophets.
It is, therefore, both mandatory and spiritually necessary that we keep
ourselves separate from those who betray Christ by teaching things other then
what God has said in His Word. To do less
would mean putting the eternal lives of ourselves and our fellow believers in
serious jeopardy, because those who seek salvation through any other means than
complete trust in Christ have separated themselves from Christ. (Galatians 5:4)
The other side of this necessary tension is
that even though we are required to separate from any group that teaches false
doctrine and refuses to be corrected, we look forward to the day that we will
have real fellowship with all Christians, for our sermon text makes it clear
that we have true peace in that Invisible Church, because God made peace
with you all in Christ Jesus.
The “savage wolves” Paul had warned about were
now swarming around the Ephesian congregation.
Those teachers may or may not have had bad intentions, but they were
also leading people to believe that to be saved in Christ one must also follow
all the requirements that necessarily burdened the Children of Israel. Those Old Testaments laws were intended to
separate God’s people from the unbelieving world. However, by His perfect life and death,
Christ had fulfilled the law and set His people free from those
requirements. All the dietary
restrictions, sacrifices, and circumcision were no longer warranted, for none
of those things did anything to save.
That brings us to our sermon text: “He also
came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were
near.” Jesus didn’t come into the
world to be a new Moses who would demand more obedience to laws. Instead, Jesus came to be the peace with God
we needed. What Jesus preached as He
walked the earth was forgiveness and peace through faith in Him. More than that, this is the same message
Jesus had His apostles, His representatives on earth, preach to peoples far and
near. The apostles preached that Good
News first to the Jews and then Paul, especially, carried that wonderful
message of freeing forgiveness to the gentiles who formerly knew nothing about
Jesus. The Jews had been a people close
to God by His decision and work. Now, this
is true also for all who hear the message of forgiveness and salvation through
faith in Christ Jesus.
Paul wrote, “For through him we both have
access to the Father by one Spirit. So
then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but you are fellow citizens
with the saints and members of God’s household.” Someone was teaching the Ephesians that they
had to become Jews to be saved. However,
no one is saved by obedience to law—not the Jews and certainly not anyone else.
However, through Christ’s obedience to His
Father’s will, and His fulfillment of every requirement the law had laid down,
we all are granted access to God the Father by faith in Jesus. Better than simply the permission to pray to
God, we were welcomed into God’s own household.
He made every person who believes in Jesus as Savior and Redeemer to be
welcome citizens in His heavenly kingdom.
As the apostle wrote, “There is now no condemnation for those who are
in Christ Jesus. For in Christ Jesus,
the law of the Spirit of life set me [us] free from the law of sin and death. Indeed, what the law was unable to do, because
it was weakened by the flesh, God did, when he sent his own Son in the likeness
of sinful flesh to deal with sin.” (Romans 8:1-3)
Because this is most certainly true, we rejoice
for every believer in Christ, even those currently afflicted in false teaching
churches. Those who truly trust in Jesus
will be saved, and they are part of the fellowship of believers. At the same time, we pray for them, because
they are being tormented by those who teach misleading and corrupting things,
and the souls who remain in those churches are in grave danger. That is why Paul pointed the Ephesians back
to the source of their joy and salvation.
Paul wrote, “You have been built on the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the
Cornerstone. In him the whole building
is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord.” Paul uses the metaphor of a great temple
being built up for God, by God Himself.
A temple built not of stone, or wood, or precious metal, but being built
up of all those precious souls who have been brought to believe and trust in
Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior. Our
backgrounds, nationalities, skin color, language—none of that matters—what
matters is faith in Christ Jesus, given to us individually by the work of the
Holy Spirit through Word and Sacrament.
Everything centers on Christ Jesus. Apart from Jesus, there is no salvation. Apart from His message of grace as laid out
in the Bible, there is no part in this great temple. Those who trust in themselves, in their own
works, or in any other false or misleading message are nothing more than rubble
and firewood that will be cast out into the flames of destruction come
Judgement Day.
Paul reminded his readers, “You have been
built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself
as the Cornerstone.” His point is
that no one should abandon the grace of God when salvation has been given to
him or her through this building process.
Through faith in Jesus, God has made us His own holy temple to glorify
His name forever, so don’t ever turn away from His loving grace.
All of this brings us to the message of
Pentecost. Today, we celebrate the
giving of the Holy Spirit to Christ’s Church.
We, of course, remember the impressive display of the Spirit’s power on
that long ago day when the apostles were anointed with the fire of the
Spirit. However, every believer in Jesus
became so by the same Spirit’s power and work.
The message Peter preached to the crowds that first Pentecost remains
true for us, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus
Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the
Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38) The real
gift of the Holy Spirit, as Paul reiterates here, is faith in Christ Jesus.
Paul wrote, “In him [that is in Christ]
the whole building is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the
Lord. In him you too are being built
together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” By the Holy Spirit’s working through Word and
Sacrament, God is building you and me, piece by piece, into exactly the Church
He has planned to fill His heaven. There
is no obedience of law, no work of sinful people, no monetary contribution, no anything
of earth that can bring us into God’s presence.
Only the Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised to send to His disciples can do
it.
Dear friends, this message is our great joy,
and our sure confidence. There is
nothing we can do to be saved, but the Lord has done everything needed to save
us. We cannot believe in Jesus on our
own, but the Holy Spirit provided the message that transformed us from dead
unbelief to living faith. We could not
satisfy God’s justice, but Jesus did. We
could not find God, but the Holy Spirit found us through the proclamation of
the Good News of all that God has done to reconcile Himself with you and me. We could not achieve peace with God, but
Jesus has won our forgiveness and has given to us peace everlasting in His
high, holy kingdom.
Another part of our great joy is that, in
heaven, there will never be any divisions among faithful people. In heaven, there won’t be one church for this
kind of believer and something else for others, for we will all be one in Christ
Jesus. To that end, and with the help of
the Holy Spirit, we maintain the tension that is needed in God’s Church,
holding firmly and unwavering to all that the Lord has told us by the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We hold
firmly and unashamedly to the clear message of salvation by grace alone,
through faith alone, in Christ Jesus only, as written in the Bible.
Furthermore, we look forward to that day when
we will be united again with our Lord and Savior, in company with all our
fellow believers, for we trust the Spirit’s promise, that “In fact, you are
all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
Indeed, as many of you as were baptized into Christ have been clothed
with Christ. There is not Jew or Greek,
slave or free, male or female, for you are all one and the same in Christ
Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then
you are Abraham’s descendants and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians
3:26-29)
Rejoice and give
thanks, dear friends, God made peace with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen.
The peace of God which
passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life
everlasting. Amen.
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