One In Christ - Pastor Daniel Batarseh (Ephesians Series)

Ephesians two eleven. 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 a 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. Father, we thank you for these amazing verses. And, lord, just being in your house is a privilege, and having this word is beyond us.

And, lord, we ask for your help this morning to truly grasp these truths that apply to us. And, Lord, we just pray for a visitation of your spirit that would leave us changed, and we know that your Holy Spirit works with the word of God. And so, Lord, as it is declared, may no man be heard, but may he speak, May he be known. May he be sensed in this place. May every mind and heart be arrested by the authority of your word, brought into a place of total awe of who you are.

Thank you for who you are. Thank you for the truth of the scriptures that have been given to us today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. The Old Testament is deliberately avoided by many Christians today for different reasons.

The Old Testament is deliberately avoided by many Christians today for different reasons. Some are intimidated by the overwhelming details of the content that are found in the various books. Some feel as though a majority of the content is lengthy and dull, so it's unnecessary for us to really explore. And there are others who feel as though there is no relevance to the Old Testament because we're in the new covenant, and so there's no need to focus on those things. And we have to give most of our attention to the latter portion of the Bible.

No matter what the reason is, the fact of the matter is if we do not make the effort to see how God deals with his people and humanity in the Old Testament, we will not, hear me, we will not fully grasp the implications of the gospel for humanity today. In simple terms, if we avoid the Old Testament, if we if we don't want to focus on how God dealt with his people, and how God dealt with the world, and how God had specific covenants, if we don't look at those things, when it comes to the gospel, we won't really know the beauty and its fullness concerning all its implications. And that's true for the verses that we just read. In 11 it says, therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh. If we wanna know what the gospel has done for us, we have to know what it means to be a Gentile.

What does that even mean? What does Gentile have to do with the gospel? What does uncircumcision and circumcision have to do with the gospel? Well, Gentile, for the sake of definition, is very simple. It simply means peoples or nations.

Gentiles simply means a group of people or nations, and that's pretty simple, but there's a different perspective and description that is given by the Hebrews. They had a different understanding of what a gentile was. See, over time the Jews held so much pride in their heritage and history because they were God's chosen people to perform his program on the earth. God called a man named Abram to make a great nation out of him, and this nation would be the direct recipients of the blessings of God and would be the representatives of God to the world. That's what Israel's purpose was.

And that's why in Romans nine four, it says this, they are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. All those things belong to the nation of Israel. They were elected for such things. And since Israel was God's chosen people, the gentile nations were not the direct beneficiaries of those things that we just read of. That was all given to this specific group of people.

The Jews, over time then, saw the Gentiles in a specific way. They saw them as unclean. They saw them as the uncircumcised. As Paul says, you were you were named the uncircumcision by those who were called the circumcision. And even went to the extreme in the New Testament where we see that the the Gentiles are even regarded as dogs.

And the Samaritans are an example of how the Israelites related to the Gentiles because the Samaritans were a mixed breed of Jew and Gentile, and guess what? They hated each other. And this really peaked in the book of Ezra. If you're familiar with the Old Testament, the nation of Israel became so rebellious that it split in two, and there's a Northern Kingdom and a Southern Kingdom. And there's 10 tribes that represent the Northern Kingdom and two specific tribes, Judah and Benjamin, that represent the Southern Kingdom.

And God warns through the book of first and second Kings over and over, stop rebelling. He's speaking to the leaders. Stop teaching the people to live in an idolatrous lifestyle. And the Northern Kingdom was more wicked at one point, and so God says, that's it. I'm sending the Assyrians to come after you and to take you away.

So the Assyrians come in, remove a majority of the people, but what the king of Assyria did was drop off some Gentiles into the Northern Kingdom. And eventually, the Southern Kingdom became just as rebellious and even worse, and so God warns and warns and warns, and he sends the Babylonians to come in, and he removes the people of the Southern Kingdom. And after seventy years, the prophet Jeremiah says, you will come back to your land one day. And so there's this return of the people from Babylon, and there's this complete ruin with the temple, with the wall, with everything. And so in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah, we see that the people are motivated to build the temple again.

They're they're motivated to to see God's glory return. And in Ezra chapter four specifically, as the Southern Kingdom are building this temple, the people of the Northern Kingdom, this mixed breed comes and says, hey. We worship the same god. Let us help you build the temple. And you see the reaction of the people of the Southern Kingdom, the Jews, when they said, you have no part of us.

You have no part of us. And that tension escalated throughout history all the way until Jesus's time. So what's the whole point? It's to understand that in the old covenant, it was a privilege to be a descendant of Abraham. Now mind you, there were Gentiles.

This is important to mention. There were Gentiles in the Old Testament, individuals who were a part of the nation of Israel. There was favor given by God with people like who? Rahab and Ruth that were included amongst the nation. And there were resident aliens that were that were given access to become a part of the people, but they had to become circumcised, and they had to obey the rules and the laws.

But generally speaking, the blessings, the promises, the access to the true and living God was only given to Israel. Was only given to this nation. Let's put it this way. If you were a gentile, you were a second class citizen. But if you were a part of the Hebrews, the Israelites, oh, you had something to be proud of.

They were seen as God's adopted children, and they received specific blessings that were reserved for them. Now you might be wondering, there there's no relation. I don't understand why this has to do with anything. Hold on. Just put yourselves in in their shoes for a moment.

Make make yourself understand that two thousand years ago before the cross, anytime before that moment, this was your standing if you were a Gentile. And if you're not a Jew in this place, you are a Gentile. What does he say in verse 12? Remember that you were at the time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. That it was your standing if you were a Gentile before the cross.

What does he mean by separated from Christ? I believe what he's trying to say here is not that you didn't have salvation, but he's speaking about how the Gentiles did not have a hope for a messiah that was to come. Remember, the Jews only had that kind of an expectation. All the way from Genesis, they knew that there was a savior that was to come, and he would be king through Abraham's seed that would rule in Jerusalem and that would rule the world and would conquer all their enemies. That was the hope that they had.

That was the expectation that they anticipated a mighty king, a warrior that would come and would represent them to the world. Now if you were a gentile, you couldn't relate to that hope. You you didn't have that promise from God. You were you were just outside of that. You were just an observant of that.

So when he says separated from Christ, it's this idea of you having you didn't have this anticipation, this hope for a a savior to come. But it doesn't just say that, it says you were also alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. And Another way of understanding commonwealth is citizen. Citizenship. You did not and you were not regarded as God's chosen.

Remember we talked about this in Ephesians one? You were not regarded as God's elect. You were not the main actors in God's play for the world. You were kind of the background character. You weren't the star, so to speak.

That was just given to Israel. So you weren't a citizen of these people. You were outside of that. You couldn't relate to that. Sure, you would receive the blessings of God, but secondhand, because Israel would be the source of blessing to you.

Remember, Israel was supposed to be a light to the nations. They were supposed to receive things from God, and because of those blessings, they were supposed to extend that to the neighboring people. But as a gentile, you couldn't you couldn't be the immediate recipients of that. He doesn't even end there. He goes on.

He says, you are strangers to the covenants of promise. There are specific promises that were given specifically to Israel. If you look at the book of Deuteronomy, you see those blessings and curses. If you obey, look at these blessings. You will be the head and not the tail.

Your enemy will flee seven ways. All these different blessings that were tailor made for this nation. And so again, if you were a gentile, those were not directly given over to you. And it gets even worse. He says, you have no hope.

There is no sense of hope in life. And you were living in this world without God. Sure, if you were a gentile, you had your own gods. Sure, you had your local deities, depending on which nation you represented. But you did not have immediate access to the true and living God.

Because these nations heard of the God of Israel. That's that's how Rahab heard about this God when she heard that this God fights for Israel, and he splits the Red Sea, and he provides water in the wilderness, and he provides miracles, and he comes like a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, and he he does things for this nation. And so if you were a gentile, you could not really say, that's my God. You could become a part of that people, but generally speaking, you did not have that privilege to say, I am the one who serves the true and living God. But verse 13, everything changes.

Everything changes in verse 13. But now. Two simple words. But now. Paul says, now, in the moment that I'm writing this letter to you, Ephesians, all the way to today in 2017, something changed.

What changed? The gentile people, the unclean, the uncircumcised, those who are regarded as dogs have been brought near. Brought near to what? It's not to a what. It's to a person.

Brought near to the father. How? By the blood of Christ. By the blood of Christ. It's that term we see again here, in Christ Jesus.

That same phrase that we've been seeing throughout this series, in Christ Jesus. And because Christ's body was broken and his blood was shed, the people had access to him. And because they are in him, they have access to the father. Everything changed because of the gospel. Everything changed because that royal blood was spilled.

So many implications come concerning this understanding of Gentile and Jew. And the beauty of this truth, the beauty of this but now moment, this beauty of this shift, is that we actually have the exact moment recorded in our hands when everything changed. We have the day the detail account of what happened when Gentile and Jew mingled into one person. And this is nothing short of a historical thing. This is nothing short of a shift of the way Jew and Gentile would relate to one another.

It was a spark that would change the way the gospel would be preached, and it would forever change the way the disciples would understand the heart of God. And that account is found in the book of Acts chapter 10. So turn your Bibles with me there in Acts chapter 10 with a man named Cornelius. Acts chapter 10, beginning in verse one. At Caesarea, there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian cohort, a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God.

So we have a description of who this man is. He's a Roman centurion. He is a gentile, but he's a he's a gentile that's known among the Jews. He had a certain position that gave him the ability to really help the Jews in their activity and in their religious involvement. And And it says something about him.

He prayed continually. He had this hunger for God. He truly desired to know God, but he just needed to know the gospel. And this angel appears to him in verse four In verse three and verse four, he responds in terror, and he says, what is it, lord? And he said to him, your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God.

Let's just make a side note here. What a precious truth That when man feels fails to see your efforts, when man fails to see your devotion, when you don't receive the recognition or the thanks, there's somebody that's keeping score. God. Every moment of devotion and every act of service, whether in private or in public, has been recorded and has been seen as a memorial before the almighty. What a joyous thought that he actually like, we see this throughout the bible, that he he takes our tears in in his bottle, and he sees our deeds, and he's gonna give us a reward in heaven when we come before him.

I believe you and I will be shocked when we stand at the judgment seat to realize the things that Christ has seen. I believe that he will bring things up that you and I have failed to see for ourselves. You say, you can't how can you say that? Because when Jesus looks at the people, when he divides the sheep and the goats, he goes, you fed me. And they go, when?

When you did this. You visited me. When? When you came to see this person. You and I will be stunned of how the littlest things that we've done in the name of Christ, he actually treasures.

And we see here that Cornelius Cornelius touched the heart of God, and he needed the gospel. And so God now commissions him to send for a man named Peter at Joppa. And this man needs to come to your house, Cornelius. And as he comes to your house, you will hear what you need to hear concerning your salvation. And so now the scene switches over in verse nine to Peter.

And Peter goes up to a house top to pray. He's hungry, and they're making him a meal, and so he prays in the meantime. And as he's praying, this vision appears, and it's this vision of a blanket coming down, descending upon the earth with all these animals filled with different types of animals. And he hears the voice of his savior that says, Peter, rise, kill, and eat. And Peter being this faithful Jew says, no, Lord.

I I can't. I can't eat those things. The law forbids me to eat those things, and this happens three times. And the Lord makes a significant statement in verse 15. What God has made clean, do not call common.

Do not call common. And Peter snaps out of this vision, and right in that moment, here comes the men that were sent by Cornelius asking for Peter. And he's pondering this vision. He doesn't understand. He's perplexed by what it means.

Is God asking me not to look at this food as unclean anymore? Is this about the dietary law? What is this about? And we see later on that Peter actually gets the interpretation eventually. In Acts ten twenty eight, look what he says.

This makes all the difference. As he comes into Cornelius's house, he said, you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone from another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. So now we understand what the vision was. Now what's fascinating, he says that, you and I know that it's unlawful for Jew and Gentile to me, but here's the funny thing, there was no law that prohibited that. There was no law that prohibited Jew and Gentile to sit together and have a meal, unless the meal being offered is of unclean animals.

But it had gone to such a point amongst the Jews and the Gentiles that there was literally no association. Do you know why the Pharisees were the Pharisees? They started with good intentions. The reasons why the Pharisees were so legalistic is because when the people came back to their land after the exile in Babylon, they were so terrified about sinning the same way again, they added laws to the law. They wanted to get away as far as possible from that line so that they would not experience the judgment of God again.

So whatever commands they took, they added to it just to be careful. So we're not gonna eat with them. We're not even gonna be the same room as them. We want nothing to do with the Gentiles, and that mindset was built throughout history. And so now here we find them saying, we're not supposed to be doing this.

So it shows the animosity. It shows this tension. It shows the relationship between Jew and Gentile back in that day. That might be hard for us to understand now, but this is true. But he says, but God showed me something.

That I have no right to call you unclean or common. That's significant. That's very significant because the purpose of this vision for Peter was to realize, and he needed this vision. Do you know how freaked out Peter was when they said that Cornelius is like, he was so freaked out that he brought six men with him as a witness. Because if his boys back in Judea heard that he was with the the Gentiles, it can go down really bad.

So let me bring my six brothers with me just to be a witness that this is not just something in my imagination. God has commissioned me to go. Because when those men came, the spirit said to him, go without reservation. Just go with them. So you can see how this is such a special moment in the history of our faith.

Peter comes and he realizes Jesus sees people differently than I do. And this Peter, a spiritual leader, a preacher of the gospel, a man who has won thousands to Christ, just learned something about his savior, that God loves all nations, and we should too. And we should too. So stay here, but when you go back to Ephesians two fourteen, that's why it says, for he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. And we think that that's between us and God, which is true.

That through Jesus Christ, we have been given peace with the Father, and that is the peace that we can have, that we are on His side, we're on the winning team, we're on God's side. But it's not just talking about vertical. It's talking about horizontal. It's talking about this wall of hostility between the Jew and the Gentile. Now that has been brought down.

That is destroyed. And once again, we say, well, that's great. Jew and Gentile. Awesome. So what does that have to do with us today?

This is what it has to do with you and me today. That in this faith, as Christians, guess what? There's no superior race. There is no racism in the Christian faith. You and I do not look down upon any people group in this faith.

It does not matter what your skin color is, it does not matter what language you speak, every person of every nation is worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Black, white, yellow, red, there is one element that covers the color of your skin and that's the blood of Jesus Christ. Don't get it twisted. Because whether you're a Syrian or Armenian or Arabic or American or Chinese, there is one identity that trumps over your culture, and it's this, Christian, citizen of heaven. That is the beauty of the gospel.

And this is important for us to understand. Just in case, even if there may be one person that might have this idea, if there is any hatred in your heart or any sense of superiority in your heart concerning your nationality, you are putting yourself in great danger. You are literally fighting against the purpose of the gospel based on your attitude. And if you and I think that we're better because of who we represent culturally, guess what you do? You do two things.

Number one, you hinder yourself from being able to be used by God to reach people. Remember in Luke nine, when Jesus wants to go, he sets his face towards Jerusalem. And here are the sons of thunder, you know, the fiery guys. The brothers, James and John. And they passed through Samaria, and they did not receive them because they were headed towards Jerusalem.

There we see it again. And so these fireballs come up to Jesus and say, hey, Jesus. Can we just call down fire from heaven and consume these guys? And I like what the King James says. It says, you do not know what spirit you are of.

And he rebukes them. Because Jesus, in John four, goes to a well and sees a Samaritan woman, and when he sees a Samaritan woman, he asks for a drink. And even the Samaritan woman is stunned, looks at Jesus, says, you're a Jew, and you're asking me, a Samaritan, for a drink of water? Jesus sees people differently. And it was not until the Holy Spirit entered into these men's hearts to soften them and change them where they could go out and preach the gospel.

Think about it. If it had not been for the Holy Spirit changing them and putting the love of God in their hearts, they would have just stayed within the nation of Israel. But that was not God's will. In Acts one, He tells them that the Holy Spirit will come and clothe you with power. For what purpose?

That you may be witnesses in Jerusalem Okay, I like Jerusalem. Judea? Oh, that sounds good. Samaria? Hold on.

Not just Samaria, to the ends of the earth. And if you look at the book of Acts, you see that literally playing out. The Holy Spirit is poured out in Jerusalem. They begin to evangelize in Judea. We see in Acts eight and nine.

We see that what happens. Revival breaks out in Samaria. And now we come to Acts 10, and they're reaching the ends of the earth. Literally exactly what Jesus said. Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, now the ends of the earth.

You wanna you you don't wanna have a heart for a specific people group. You don't wanna have a heart for the nations. You just hinder yourself from God being able to use you to preach. What if God wants to send you somewhere that you're not familiar with? You and I have to develop that heart of love for all people because Jesus does.

Not only do we hinder ourselves from being able to reach people, we actually limit God's design for the local church. What did Jesus tell us to do when we pray? When you pray, pray like this. Not pray this, so we don't repeat it because that's contrary to what he taught about hypocrisy. You don't wanna ramble on, but pray like this.

Let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And John in the book of Revelation gives us a glimpse of heaven. In Revelations chapter seven, verse nine, he says, I saw 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. Let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What's in heaven?

You got a whole lot of people representing different places. And if we want to pray heaven down, you and I better be open to different nations and cultures being a part of this community. Especially because we're in America. We have this wonderful opportunity here in this great nation to have a mirror picture of heaven on earth in the local church. Are we praying for God's will to be done?

Sure. And here in America, we have that chance to see different nations and tribes and languages coming under one common truth, and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this is the scary part because in North America, there are specific churches that represent specific nationalities that are afraid or resistant to the idea of receiving or even reaching out to different types of people. And if that's the case, you are limiting what God wants to do, a snapshot picture of heaven on earth. You and I must be open to what God's designed for his people, a glimpse of heaven.

God's heart is this. When we come back to Acts chapter 10 verse 34 with Cornelius, look what Peter says. So Peter opened his mouth and said, truly I understand that God shows no partiality. Now I get it. God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

Anyone who fears him, anyone who truly wants to know the living God can become a part of his family. God shows no partiality. So Peter is going to teach, but he's being taught himself something. God has a program for every nation, a plan for every tribe to be part of his big family. And when you go down to verse 44 of Acts chapter 10, something amazing happens.

While Peter is preaching, while he's teaching, while he's explaining the gospel, it says, while Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell. The Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. Oh, god. Just a side note.

I would love for that to happen in a service. Don't have to wait for the altar call. Don't have to wait for a response that the Holy Spirit just sovereignly comes and he touches people. Let's just stay in this lane for a little bit. Because what we see here is amazing truths about how the spirit of God works.

Notice that the Holy Spirit fell on those who heard the word. The Holy Spirit does not work apart from his word. When the word is preached, the Holy Spirit comes in assistance. When the word is declared, the Holy Spirit honors the word of God and comes and does what only he can do, and that's change people's lives. Notice that Peter was open to the working of the holy spirit.

I'm sure he prepared his sermon on his way there. I'm sure he was gathering his thoughts. Perhaps it was spontaneous. Regardless, here he is preaching. And as he's preaching, the Holy Spirit says, I like your sermon, but I wanna just get to it right now.

And he begins to come and move and change. And he he moves in such a tangible way that it was obvious to the visible eye. And Peter was open to that. You and I need to be open to the working of the Holy Spirit. If we're asking the Holy Spirit to come, guess what?

He's not bound to our schedules. He's not bound to the fact that you want to eat lunch after this service. He's not bound to the fact that you have plans. God sovereignly wants to move and guess what? We have to be yielded to that.

We have to yearn for that and be open to that. Sometimes we have it all planned and we say, God, do it this way. And God says, you know, I'm God. And he is a God of order and he is a God of organization, but he's also a God of surprises. And we have to be open to what he wants to do.

And so the posture of you and me has to be the same posture as Cornelius. I love Cornelius. He's hungry. He's hungry. When he hears that Peter's coming, it says he grabbed his friends and his family.

He brought them all into the house. And you can just you can just imagine the expectation that they had. The thrill that a man was coming to preach something. An angel has come to declare that there is news to come to them. Why aren't we like that in every service?

God, you can speak to us today. God, you have a word for us today. And he came with that. That's the heart posture that I believe wooed the Holy Spirit. And I believe the Holy Spirit even knew that.

God knew that before and that's why he called Cornelius out of all people. So here's Cornelius. Here's Peter. We see that the Holy Spirit falls on this meeting. We see that Peter was open to the moving of the Holy Spirit, but we have to notice how the Holy Spirit came.

The Holy Spirit fell on them. Fell on them. That's powerful. He didn't just come and say, hey, you wanna let me in? It says he fell on them, and that word fell is exactly what you mean, for somebody to literally fall upon you.

And people say and interpret this text to say, well, the reason why the Holy Spirit did this was because he needed to sovereignly move apart from Peter's participation to show Peter that the Gentiles could receive the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit does this through the preaching of the gospel. We don't see confession of faith, but it must be something of the heart. He responds to the faith in their hearts, and he comes to fall upon them whether Peter believed that it could happen or not. So the Holy Spirit needs to move sovereignly in this specific moment.

I believe it's something even greater than that, though that's a wonderful thing. I believe this speaks of the eagerness and the excitement of the Holy Spirit to be one with these people. I believe the Holy Spirit was so just waiting for the gospel to be preached. And once the gospel was preached and they received it by faith, he would come and fall upon them and be one with them and unite with them and bring them into adoption to the family of God. There's this excitement on the on the side of the Holy Spirit.

And see, that's I believe that's true in every meeting when the gospel is preached. That God is anticipating for you to receive it by faith. And if you were to receive it by faith, watch how God will crash into your life. Watch how God wants to touch your life and reveal Himself to you in your heart. But notice He waited for the preaching of the gospel.

We have to be blood washed by faith. We have to call upon him by faith, and then the Holy Spirit comes in and changes you. And that word fell is more than what you just think, like something falling off of a shelf. When you go to the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, when the prodigal son realizes and snaps out of it that, I can't believe I'm eating this. I can't believe I'm here squandering around lost.

My servants are better off in my house my father's household. So he goes back. And as he walks back, we see the father seeing the son and he runs towards the son and you have to pay attention. In the King James, it says he runs towards him with compassion and fell on him and kissed him. It's the same word.

And the word the the word fell in the ESV is the word embraced. It's the same word in the root. He embraced him with with such desire. He literally threw his weight upon him out of this love and this desire because he has come home. Giving all that he has an expression towards the son, and the Holy Spirit did the same thing with these gentiles.

So this is more than just the Holy Spirit trying to prove some theological truth to Peter. This is the Holy Spirit displaying his desire to be one, displaying his hunger and longing for man to respond by faith to the gospel. And this is the same holy spirit that we have. And that's why when you go back to Ephesians two verse 18, it says, for through him, we both have access in one spirit to the father. For through him, we both have access, Gentile and Jew.

Every person, no matter where you're from, we have the same spirit living in us. That's why you can bump into an Indian, you can bump into a messianic Jew, you can bump into a Chinese person, and if they have the holy spirit, you feel like your siblings. Because there's a new language now, and there's a new identity now, and there's this new family that we are all adopted into, and that's the beauty of the gospel. It breaks down all those barriers. It gives us new eyes to see.

Now can we celebrate cultures? Yes. Can we appreciate the places we're from? Sure. But if you use those things to hinder you from fellowship with other people, you've missed it.

You've totally missed it. We've missed it. We are all one because of the spirit. We have the same spirit. And because of this spirit, we have access to the father.

No holy spirit, no access to the father. It's the holy spirit that allows us and woos us into the presence of God. It's the holy spirit that whispers and teaches us the things of God. It's the holy spirit that brings glory to Christ. And if you wanna know the Holy Spirit and how he works and how he is working as somebody, you'll know based on how that person talks about Jesus because he glorifies Jesus.

He uplifts Jesus. And this Holy Spirit fell on the gentiles. And my desire, and I hope it's your desire as well, is that we would have the heart of God because God eagerly desires to fall upon people. And you and I cannot get comfortable. We have to get uncomfortable and willing to be open because God wants to touch others.

He wants to touch everyone. Gentiles, how should you and I react to all that we just heard concerning these precious verses and truths? Flip back to acts, but go to chapter 11 verse 18. Peter comes back from this amazing moment. I mean, they stood amazed at what they saw because they saw them speaking in tongues and prophesying, glorifying, and magnifying God.

And they said, okay. The Holy Spirit has been given to the Gentiles. We see it. And now they go back to Judea, and guess who heard that Peter had a conference in Rome or amongst Romans? The circumcision party.

And they said, what did you do? Did you miss it, Peter? What's and Peter says, hold on. Hold on. I brought six boys with me just to make sure.

And he begins to explain. And as he explains the beauty of the gospel that Jesus Christ wants to reach all nations, He has a heart for all people. That every nation now stands equal in his sight. That there is a new race, so to speak. There is this new ethnicity, this new culture.

It's called the kingdom of heaven. Look how they reacted in verse 18. When they heard these things, they fell silent. And they glorified God saying, then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life. They worshiped.

They worshiped God. My prayer into this short message was this, Lord, I hope that this would not miss we would not miss what you're trying to say here because we've been two thousand years living in this new covenant. We would not maybe feel it the way the Ephesians would have felt it when this letter was given to them. But you rewind and you place yourself back then, and you understand what we've been separated from and how we are seen in light of the old covenant. And you realize the heart of God like Peter did.

That's my prayer, that we would see it like Peter saw it. That God has a plan for all nations. That God in Christ now, he he creates a new people. That regardless of where they're from, regardless of what they represent, regardless of what language they speak, in the spirit, we have all access to the same father. That's the beauty of the gospel.

The gospel breaks down racism. The gospel shatters this idea that though you're from somewhere else, we can't relate as much. Because there's something deeper than the food that you eat, and the language that you speak, and the culture that you represent. It's the holy spirit of God in you. Maybe that might not hit your heart, but for other people, they do need to hear that.

Because they're just so caught up in who they are concerning their culture that they fail to realize that you're actually a citizen of heaven. So what happens when we go back to Ephesians two? He says in verse 17, he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. Go and preach the gospel to all nations. All nations, go.

In verse 19, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, Gentiles. You're not regarded regarded as the second class, 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. So yes, we do have this citizenship now.

We do have this recognition by the father. We do have this equal standing ground with the people of God that were chosen in the old testament. And that's a wonderful thing. But I did not wanna do the latter part of these verses injustice by squeezing it into this message. Because not only does God, yes, make us equal and change our identity, and make us realize that it doesn't matter where we're from and we have that confidence.

No Jew, no Gentile. He says that a lot in these letters. Not only are we associated in a sense to those people that came to a temple and worshiped the living God, part of the gospel, a major part is now we become the temple of God. And that same spirit that is in us gives us access to the father, it's because he makes his home in us and we become the temple. And that has to give in itself a Sunday alone.

And that's what we're gonna do. But I want us to pray about one thing. I want to ask the Lord this morning to give us a heart, the same heart that he had, a love for all people. God is a missionary and he wants us to be the same. God has a heart for those people and he wants us to have the same.

And the second prayer is this, that the holy spirit would fall upon us and that we would know what that's like and that we would be able, like Peter, being open to the love of God to all things, we'd be able to see that for ourselves, how God wants to touch people, How God wants to he wants us to associate with those that others do not wanna associate with. That's Jesus. Jesus is scandalous in that. That he touches the untouchable, that he sits with the ones that nobody wants to sit with, that he converses with those that the religious elite would say, who do you think you are? Don't you don't you call yourself a prophet?

Aren't you a man of God sent from heaven? But when the Holy Spirit is in you, you can sit on the street with a homeless person with no problem and converse. When the Holy Spirit's in you, you can look at any person regardless of their skin, regardless of their language, regardless of their reputation, their social status, and love them. Because something's vibrating in your heart, the very thing that the Holy Spirit was eager to do, to fall upon them and to show them the love of God. May we have that same attitude, especially in America.

Let's pray.