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Nov 06, 2022

We are Family

We are Family

Passage: Ephesians 2:11-12

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Song & Dance - The Gospel Melody that Moves in Ephesians

It’s hard to judge which in our current climate is more pervasively or passionately discussed: one’s personal or group identity. Neither sense of identity is foreign to what it means to be a follower of Jesus. But while modern conceptions center identity in inherent characteristics or shared, lived experience, the most fundamental sense of identity for a Christian derives not from what is innate or what is common to our experience, but from what was done for us, apart from u,s and quite in spite of us. Last week Paul focused on what is true of each of us personally. This week: what is true of us corporately. What does it mean that salvation is into a “household”--a family? What is lost if we lose sight of that way of thinking about our union with Christ?

Readings  & Scripture

PREPARATION: Psalm 96:7-10
LEADER: Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength!

PEOPLE: Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
bring an offering, and come into his courts!

LEADER: Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth!

ALL: Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns!
Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.”

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER:) Revelation 7:9-12
LEADER: After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
The Word of the Lord

ALL: Thanks be to God.

CENTRAL TEXT: Ephesians 2:11-22
Eph. 2:11 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— 12 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. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 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, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

BENEDICTION: Revelation 5:9, 10
LEADER: And they sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
ALL: and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”

Related Resources

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Psalm 87
  • Isaiah 57:19
  • Matthew 5:17-20
  • Matthew 18:16
  • Luke 15:11-32
  • Luke 23:45
  • John 14:27
  • Acts 15
  • Acts 20:31
  • Acts 29:29-30
  • Romans 9:4-5
  • Hosea 2:23 / Romans 9:25, 26
  • 1 Corinthians 3:16-17
  • Colossians 2:11
  • Hebrews 2:12
  • 1 Peter 2:10
  • Revelation 7

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Let’s let our hair down for a moment (if you’re willing!). Your family of origin: the good, the bad, the ugly. Go.  Now if you were raised in a church family, same exercise. Go. 
  2. In Paul’s words, what were the Gentiles “missing out” on before they became part of this new family?
  3. Perhaps the most challenging part of the passage to interpret is Paul’s comments about what has happened to the Law. What are several possibilities?
  4. What clues in the text confirm that Paul isn’t implying to Gentile believers, “finally, you’re like Jews now”? 
  5. What is the church? What is it for? What are common ways we can misunderstand or minimize its nature and purpose?
  6. If you deeply grasped what Paul is here saying about the church, how might it affect your current relatedness to it?

ILLUSTRATIONS:

QUOTES: 

  • God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does. Martin Luther
  • It is the greatest privilege in the world to believe in Christ and to belong to his people. Sinclair Ferguson
  • “It’s easy to dismiss the church out of hand. It can break your heart with its sin. It’s broken my heart a few times... It’s much easier to say, as many do, ‘I can be a Christian without the church.’ But this renounces a most basic and fundamental message of Jesus throughout his ministry, one that... shows forth most of all in his death on the cross: He is giving you to me and me to you.” ~ Fleming Rutledge
  • It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community.  I think that we Protestants cannot too often reflect on that fact.  He committed the entire work of salvation to that community.  It was not that a community gathered around an idea, so that the idea was primary and the community secondary.  It was that a community called together by the deliberate choice of the Lord Himself, and re-created in Him, gradually sought–and is seeking–to make explicit who He is and what He has done.  The actual community is primary: the understanding of what it is comes second.  The Church does not depend for its existence upon our understanding of it or faith in it.  It first of all exists as a visible fact called into being by the Lord Himself, and our understanding of that fact is subsequent and secondary. Lesslie Newbigin

BOOKS / DOCS

SERMONS