Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Divides Christians? | New Testament | Ephesians 2

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

Division in the church is not a new issue. In fact, it dates all the way back to the New Testament. In today's episode, Keith looks at Ephesians 2 to discuss Paul's reaction to division in the church. Find out how Jesus tore down dividing walls. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Ephesians 2

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. A lot of people today love Jesus, but they're not so excited about the church. And that's really not a shocker, or at least it shouldn't be if we just think about it for a few minutes. See, Jesus is love because, well, he's Jesus. He's perfect. And the church, well, the church is far from being perfect.

And then on top of that, we've wrongly made Jesus into someone who meets our needs. He forgives me, he heals me, he affirms me, he encourages me. And we like having our needs met. Now, being a part of a church, that's much harder. It's hard to get excited about making a sacrificial commitment to a bunch of flawed, sinful people. But that's exactly what the church is. The church is an imperfect community made up of imperfect people.

And that means it's easy to find holes in the church. I'm sure many of you have been hurt by the church. and I'm sure all of us have legitimate criticisms of the church. But we can say more. The church is an imperfect community made up of imperfect people, of which I might be the most imperfect of all. In other words, I contribute to the church's problems. Maybe you've heard the old saying that if you ever find the perfect church, don't join

it, because you'll ruin it, because you're not perfect. Well, I want to start today at the end of Ephesians chapter 2, where Paul gives us three images to help us better understand the church and what it's supposed to be. So let's start in verse 20. Consequently, Paul writes, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people, and also members of his household. In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His spirit. So the first, the first image is that of a kingdom or a nation. Christians, we are told, are no longer foreigners and

strangers, but now we are fellow citizens, all part of the same kingdom, the same nation. God is our king, and citizens share a social contract with one another. The second image of the church in the verses we just read is that it is God's family or God's household. And as Christians, we are members of that family. So God is our father and we are brothers and sisters in Christ. Now families share more in common than citizens. We share common genetics and family history with other Christians. And then the third image is that the church is a temple, that Christians are stones being built into God's temple and God dwells in his church. He dwells in his temple. So now we see a little bit more about God's plan for the church. We are citizens of God's kingdom, members of God's family,

and parts of God's temple. Now, all this sounds kumbaya, doesn't it? If the church is God's kingdom and God's family and God's temple, then it must be perfect. Well, if you ever been a part of a church, you know it's not so kumbaya. I mean, just for example, read through the New Testament and just take a look at all the conflicts in churches. The leaders in 1 Corinthians are arguing about who is greater. And also in 1st Corinthians, the Christians are divided by their wealth or lack of it. In Philippians 4, we read about personal squabbles among ministry leaders. In Acts 15, we see leaders arguing over ministry strategy. In Romans 14, we see Christians arguing over holy days and what food is appropriate or not appropriate to eat. In 1 Timothy, it records arguments over genealogies.

and in Acts 6 we see ethnic and racial division. The primary conflict in the New Testament Church is that between Jew and Gentile. See, Jews hated Gentiles. They had been dominated and oppressed by Gentiles for centuries. And Rome was the great Gentile power. All these churches were inside the Roman Empire, and Rome had crucified Jews. Now, for the Gentiles, well, they thought the Jewish laws were weird. Jews to them seemed backward.

they seem unsophisticated and even a bit foolish. So now here's Paul and all the apostles. They're out preaching and teaching about Jesus and Jews and Gentiles are coming to faith in Christ. So what's Paul going to do? Well, what he doesn't do is he doesn't start two different churches for two different ethnicities. I'm sure part of him wanted to. I'm sure part of him thought, look, this would be a lot easier if we just had a Jewish church and a Gentile church. But Paul thinks that Jew and Gentile should be a part of the same church. But of course, that means that people who didn't like each other now have to learn to do church together. Earlier in chapter 2 in verse 11, Paul wrote this. Therefore remember that formerly, you who are Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision.

So you see what Paul's doing. He's getting right here at that which divides them. He's getting at the heart of the division. Because Paul says you can divide the world in two groups. The Jews were the circumcised and the Gentiles the uncircumcised. Circumcision was a marker of the Jewish faith. It's one of the ways they said, this is us. We are the circumcised. The Gentiles were the uncircumcised. They were the outsiders. They were the them. Now we have a lot of them's in our world today. A lot of them are around politics or around class. Paul writes in verse 14, for he himself is a our peace. So he's talking about Jesus here. Jesus is our peace. And then he goes on to say, he has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.

Now, what two groups did Jesus make one? Well, specifically here, he's talking about Jew and Gentile. But I think Paul means almost any two groups you find divided inside the church. Because in Galatians 3, Paul says, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Now that doesn't mean that Jesus erases all the differences between Jew and Gentile or slave or free or male or female. But what it is saying is that those differences don't keep us from oneness or unity. I have two friends who are very different politically, but were a part of the same small group. And when they went to a small group gift exchange at Christmas, it was kind of funny what they'd bought each other.

The more conservative one had bought their more liberal friend, the book by Barack Obama, and the more progressive one had bought her more conservative friend, a pair of socks with Donald Trump's name written on them. A lot of people were offended. They didn't think that these women should be in the same small group, maybe not even inside the same church, that this disagreement over politics should end up in arguing with one another. Instead, they really cared about one another. And isn't that the way it should be? Shouldn't the church welcome conservatives and progressives? Shouldn't the church welcome black and white, Asian, Latino, rich, poor, able, disabled, PhD and GED?

Isn't this the place we're to learn to love one another and celebrate what we have in common in Jesus? This is an excellent opportunity to show our divided world that in Jesus there's a better way. Let's go back to the ethnic and racial divisions, though. Because I've had people tell me that when we discuss racial division inside the church, we are veering off track. We are talking too much about social issues, and those social issues are keeping us away from the gospel. But I say that all division, whether it's racial or political or generational or gender, all those divisions are gospel issues, not just a social issue.

Unfortunately, we've reduced the gospel down to be about individuals getting right with God. And the gospel is about that, but it's about more than that. It addresses the vertical relationship between me and God, but it also addresses the horizontal relationship between me and other people. And that's why the Bible says you cannot love God and hate your brother. Verse 14, for He himself is our peace. So again, it's talking about Jesus. Jesus is our peace, who has made the two groups, one. and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,

by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. God had given Israel laws. They were good. But ironically, it was something good, the law, that also became divisive, because the law became a way to look down on other people, to draw lines between us and them. In my grade school, each grade was split into sections based on academic ability. Now, the teachers didn't tell the students what they had done, but they didn't need to. It was pretty obvious. And in dividing up the students that way, they unintentionally created an us versus them. Because we're always looking for ways to divide the world into us versus them. We especially like to divide the world in a way in which we come out on top, in which we look good. So the law was a good thing that had become divisive. And so Jesus tears down that,

dividing wall. Verse 15. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. So that hostility that needed be put to death is all the things that make us feel superior to others. And Jesus' death says, no one is superior. Everyone is needy. The ground is level. at the foot of the cross. A lot of people have recognized that the American church

is racially segregated. Now, that's not true of every church, but it's largely true, and there are lots of reasons for that. It's a very complicated issue. But I think we have to admit that one reason is that we have created in us versus them.

If we just look at it historically, why do we worship in segregated churches? There's a church that's predominantly black and a church that's predominantly white. Well, you know, it's not because of doctrine. The churches believe the same things. And early Christians, all the way up through the Middle Ages, rejected slavery. The church fathers called it savagery. They said it was rebellion against God, and they spent their own money to buy freedom for slaves. Well, the answer predates America, at least the official

forming of our country. It dates all the way back to 1667 and the slavery statues of the Virginia legislature. Here's what they declared. It is enacted and declared by this grand assembly and the authority thereof that the conferring of baptism does not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom. So in English common law, it was said that no baptized Christian could be a slave. So here we have American slave owners who don't want their slaves to be baptized. They want them to come to faith in Jesus, but they hold back baptism because if they baptize them, then they'll no longer be able to hold them as slaves, which is a pretty weird situation to be saying that you care about someone's soul, you want them to know Jesus, but not really the rest of their life,

like their personal freedom. So what they did is they passed these laws that said, hey, even if a slave comes to faith in Christ, and even if they're baptized, hey, we just want everybody to know, they're still a slave. And if you read American history, you read about churches made up of black and white members. And the white leadership so mistreated the black members that they all just walked out and left and started their own churches. You see, everything could have been different. But what do we do today? We were born into this mess. Is there a model for a way out? I think there is. There's a guy named Daryl Davis who models for us what it looks like to build bridges. Daryl Davis is one of those interesting people that you can find.

In fact, his life is so interesting that playing the piano for Chuck Barry and Jerry Lee Lewis isn't even close to the most interesting thing he's done. Daryl Davis is a black man who leads Klansmen out of the Ku Klux Klan. And he's got the white robes to prove it. Daryl Davis believes in the power of relationships. He shows up at clan rallies and builds relationships with the clansmen. And over time, there have been dozens of clansmen who've left the clan because of their relationship with Daryl Davis. Here's what Davis said.

This is a quote. If you spend five minutes with your arch enemy, you will find that you have something in common with him or her. And of course, the more you find that you have in common, the more you build upon that which you have in common, the more you build upon that which you have common, well, the things that you have in contrast like skin color, well, they matter less and less. Jesus has died to reconcile you to God, but also to reconcile you to other people. He is torn down the dividing wall of hostility. He wants us Christians to be unified, to show our world a better way. What walls still need to be torn down where you live? What can you do to help tear down the walls that are dividing people.

Who can you build a bridge to?