(text and audio)
Title: Therefore, Remember (Part One)
Intro: As we begin this morning I want to take you back to a magical time. The date was February 23rd, 2020…it was the last day we studied Ephesians together at Heritage.
…does that not seem like a lifetime ago? For most of us, Coronavirus was not even on our radar, kids were in school, adults were at work, there was plenty of toilet paper and hand sanitizer to go around, the lovely escape and distraction of sports were all around us, and we took for granted the gift of being able to congregate in each other’s homes, eat meals together in public, and attend church, mere inches from each other each Sunday morning.
Honestly, it was a different world, and, honestly, we were different people. It’s hard to believe that this was all less than two months ago, and it can be hard to remember what “normal” used to be for all of us.
And that, I am hoping, will serve as perfect segue into Paul’s challenge to us today to remember who we were before we knew Christ:
11 Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands— 12 that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from 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.
(Pray)
v. 11 “Therefore” begs us to go back and see what Paul writes in 2:10
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Remember that no one who Paul is talking to grew up a Christian, Christianity was too new, they were only one generation in, and a young generation at that, Paul wrote Ephesians in A.D. 60, so no one to whom Paul was writing had been a believer for more than 30 years at this point.
Today, we have people in our church who have been believers longer than that, so, on a the surface level, it may be hard for some of us to relate to the challenge Paul is giving.
(Kid’s pictures)
When I think of our church, I think of my children, Nevaeh and Silas, I think of Josh, Sam, and Lucy Ronk, I think of Sadie Mills and Bella Dravenstott, and Elyssa and Gladys Dyess…I think of Elliot and Maddie, and Annie Shenberger, and, Mason and Declan Logan and their sister Lofton, and Eva Clark, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some to my shame, but I mention all of those names for one beautiful reason: They all have always, and are currently, growing up in homes that honor Christ, homes that make sacrifices daily to walk that straight and narrow path.
And some of you grew up in a similar fashion, with parents who were real, living examples of picking up one’s cross daily…so for you, you have this wonderful problem: on a personal level, you can’t remember what it was like to not be a Christian, and Paul’s words here can be hard to relate to.
Now for others, like myself, you can vividly remember what you were like before Christ: what motivated you, what gave you joy, what gave you peace, what gave you comfort, and then you were changed.
And now you are motivated by Christ, you are given Joy by Christ, you are given peace by Christ, you are given comfort by Christ, and you would not go back to those false securities for anything in the world.
Another way to look at it:
But, and this is huge: I want to stress that there is another lens with which to view what Paul is telling his Ephesian audience that absolutely resonates with every single one of believers today, regardless of when we became believers. And to help us see it a bit more clearly I want to look a the verse 11 using the NASB translation:
Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision” by the so-called “Circumcision,” which is performed in the flesh by human hand…
Paul draws a comparison here between two camps, but, in his writing we see that Paul is not using comparison to say “One side was right and the other side was wrong” Rather, Paul is saying something much more damning.
Paul is saying both sides were wrong.
First Group: The “Uncircumcision”
These were the Gentiles who did not follow the one true God of Israel. The customs of Israel were foreign to them. The food laws seemed strange, the holidays celebrated were bizarre, the fact that they served only one God seemed silly, and, perhaps most of all, the act of circumcision was a completely foreign concept.
If I were to ask us all today “How often do you think about circumcision?” The most common answer might be “as little as humanly possible.”
But have you ever thought about the point, the reason for, of all things, circumcision being the right and marker of a Jewish boy?
Now, I don’t want to get too riske this morning, but let me speak to this in respectful way this morning. Circumcision was a mark indeed, but, unlike the ritual scaring of other nations, and unlike most of our tattoos of today, circumcision was not a mark that was on public display. At least, it was not intended to be. It was private.
And it could have a private marking and been a lot of places, one’s backside, for example. But the law of Moses commanded that circumcision be in a very certain place, on the male reproductive organ.
Circumcision was a sign, not to the public but the family that the lineage of the worship of Yahweh would be continued from generation to generation, with families being raised with these truths, these teachings, these covenant expectations. It didn’t matter to Yahweh that there was not a visible sign to mark a Jew, it mattered to Yahweh that the Jews marked themselves as belonging to God.
And make no mistake, this was a sign that you were not born with, it was given to you, usually on the 8th day of a male’s life, without consent!
And that brings us to the second group Paul identifies:
Second Group: The So-Called “Circumcision”
Right of the bat we notice Paul’s use of the dismissive phrase “so-called.” Paul makes it very clear that this group thought of themselves as “the circumcised” but Paul doesn’t to be so sure that they are what they thought they were.
And why not?
Because of what Paul points out next, that this circumcision was”
“performed by human hand”(NASB)
or
“made in the flesh by hands” (NKJV)
Yes, they had the traditional physical mark of being part of God’s family, they had checked all the boxes, but how much of Jesus’s ministry is spent rebuking the Jews for the “righteousness” of their outward appearances while their hearts are like serpents and evil-doers?”
I don’t want to get off track here, but here is some cross-referencing you can do later in your own study:
The Woes of the Pharisees is a list of criticisms by Jesus against scribes and Pharisees recorded in the Gospels of Luke 11:37–54 and Matthew 23:1–39. Mark 12:35–40 and Luke 20:45–47 also include warnings about scribes.
The woes are all woes of hypocrisy and illustrate the differences between inner and outer moral states. Jesus portrays the Pharisees as impatient with outward, ritual observance of minutiae which made them look acceptable and virtuous outwardly but left the inner person unreformed.
In other words, Paul, like Jesus before him, is unimpressed by the physical sign alone. He is much more concerned with the content of the heart.
So Why Are Both Sides Wrong?
The first group “the uncircumcised” are wrong because they don’t know the one true God, they have not had the advantage of growing up hearing the truth. This group has some definite disadvantages (which we will discuss in detail next week).
The second group, “the so-called circumcised” are wrong because they DID grow up with the Truth, and have no idea what it means to follow it. They look the part, but are frauds and hypocrites.
Another way to think of it is to say the first group the ignorant of the Truth, the second group is in rebellion against it.
And the reason this message, and what Paul will say in a few verses, relates to anyone who is a believer, is because we ALL were part of one of these two camps. Every. Single. One. Of. Us.
Before we surrendered out lives to Christ…
We were either raised with the truth and rebelled (PB).
Or we were totally ignorant of the truth to begin with.
Also, most of us are from a Gentile lineage, so this passage had immense appeal for us to understand what it means to have a people adopted into the line of salvation. If Jesus doesn’t come and make the Gentiles adopted, if The Church does not become the new Israel, there is no hope for us.
Thank God, that God intervened. Thank Jesus that Jesus obeyed perfectly.
Amen?