Insiders and Outsiders

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

heritage can do a lot to a person. Really more than geography or ancestry heritage, it really marks out the people and the customs that preceded you. So some of you have a, like a mixed heritage. Maybe some of you have a heritage that's totally, you know, like mom's side of the family was totally different from a totally different place. And I'm not even talking about skin color, I just mean like when you have a mom that is from New York City and a dad that is from Abilene, Texas, right? That is a mixed heritage, okay? That is not, you are gonna have to fight about how you're gonna celebrate Christmas for sure.

And we'd really get into it, right? Like so let's just take somebody with an Italian heritage, right? Somebody has an Italian heritage and maybe they're gonna like really lean into that Italian heritage. Maybe they're gonna learn how to make pasta. Maybe they're gonna listen to opera. I know Sutor and Caroline just did opera last night. It was opera, two nights ago. It was Suter's first time and listening to the opera and he loved it, okay? So now I would encourage you all if you really love the opera, take Suter before he leaves because he's about to be gone for a long time. Take Suter the opera.

Maybe somebody with an Italian heritage is going to learn about the Roman Empire, right? Kind of all the big roots. Maybe they're gonna learn about the history of the mafia. Maybe they're going to learn how to speak Italian, okay? And none of these are cliches. None of these are tropes. This is someone truly exploring their heritage. Part of my heritage, so part of my heritage I had a mom from New Orleans and a dad from Stockdale, Texas. So that's kind of a different heritage, but I'm still pretty Southern. And part of the reason that you know that I'm Southern is because I say instinctively the word y'all, okay? I say y'all. I don't try to say y'all. I just say y'all, okay? Any y'alls out here, most of you guys, see just y'all by default, okay? Some of you refusing to hold your hands up, I see you, cowards.

Southern accents are very sneaky. You don't think that you speak in a Southern accent, okay? You don't until you go somewhere else. So my daughter's story is going to the Grand Canyon. She's come back, but she was at the Grand Canyon recently and she said she was speaking to one of her guides and she was kind of talking about whatever, you know, about their school or just kind of talking with the guides. She couldn't do a lot of hiking. She had kind of a broken ankle or a sprained ankle, pretty bad. And she said, you know, Dad, I thought it went fine until I overheard him talking to many of the other kind of kids altogether and he was remarking about how Southern we all sound and brought up things that I said to him. And so I was the one, I was the hick in the crowd, right? Like he knew we were Southern because of how I was talking to him. She's not self-conscious, it's fine.

But if you do see story and you wanna talk to her, and a really thick Southern accent, please feel free. She will enjoy getting teased. In Ephesians so far, we have stayed kind of on this individual level. We have been speaking about ourselves maybe personally. So in Ephesians chapter one, verses three through 14, we looked at a person's identity in Christ, a singular person's identity in Christ. And we talked about how that was your personal identity in Christ. And then we moved into the latter half of chapter one and we talked about how this is kind of a blessing, it's a prayer for the whole church. But really we spoke about it or we applied it in individual terms. There's nothing wrong with this, but it's kind of how it came about. Last two weeks we've been working through Ephesians two, one through 10, and we tend to read as we read Ephesians two, one through 10, we tend to read all the yous

as singular, you were dead. It is by grace you have been saved. And when we see those sentences, we think in terms of singular individual yous, but they're all yalls. I don't know if you know this, there's an actual translation of the Bible that's the yall translation. It cites, I'm not kidding, it cites all the plural yous and it says how in English it's a crime, basically, that the plural yous are the same as the singular yous. So they took, I think, just New American Standard or some kind of normal translation, but any time it was a plural you, it's a yall. And so you can actually look it up, there's a yall translation. I think some websites even like if you're picking your Bible translation to read the verse in, you can choose the yall translation, okay?

But that's where we're leaning today, they're yalls. And so we're gonna be diving in those yalls today. And specifically when you look at verses 11 through 13, we're gonna be in Ephesians two, 11 through 16 today. And when you look at the first couple of verses, in particular, it's speaking directly to people who are not in the right yall, okay? So it's talking about yall, but it's a very specific kind of yall, that these yalls were outsiders in terms of spiritual heritage. They were not insiders, they were outsiders. And in terms of spiritual heritage, really they had none, they had no spiritual heritage. So look with me in Ephesians chapter two verse 11, it's also gonna be up here on the screen. There's also, there should be some Bibles kind of in and around you. There's some on the magic of the internet on your phone. There's a way for you to read the Bible there too.

Ephesians two, 11 it says, 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. Okay, he actually has not completed that thought yet, okay? But he's throwing some stones here and I want you to see it, okay? Because he's about to make his point, but look at what he says. He's talking to specific people in these churches. Remember, Ephesians is written not just to one church, not just the church in Ephesus, but also it's a circular letter. So after the church in Ephesus would read the letter to the Ephesians, then they would pass that on to the church in Laodicea, who would pass it on to the church in Smyrna, who would pass it on to the church in Philadelphia, who would pass it on and so on, so on, so on. So that it would go around, it was a circular letter.

In all of these churches, which is in Asia Minor at the time that was called that, now we call it Turkey or Turkey-A, they wanna be called now, so gonna respect it. There were Gentiles in all of these churches. In fact, most of these churches were mostly Gentiles, okay? The term Gentile, if you don't know, means simply non-Jew, okay? So if you are not Jewish, I'm not gonna make you raise your hand, if you are not ethnically Jewish, then you are Gentile. I'm a Gentile, because I ain't ethnically Jewish, okay? All right, if you're wondering, if your mom's Jewish, that makes you Jewish. If your mom is not Jewish, then you are not Jewish. That's how it's done, okay?

So he's talking to these people, and he's saying, you Gentiles, and he's kind of digging on them here. He's actually, I think, trying to provoke them a little bit. He says, you Gentiles, and he says, you are called the uncircumcision. And what he's doing is, he's saying, this is what insiders think about you. This is what they call you. They call you outsiders. They call you outcasts. I had a buddy that I used to work with way back in '08.

Dave was his name. And Dave, one time we were just talking and laughing, and he told me, he said, look, when we're talking about being called names as a kid, were you ever called names as a kid? Kids can be ruthless, man. Just ruthless. Some of you are starting to cry. I'm sorry, we're gonna pray right now. Just kidding. Get called names as a kid, man. Oh, you know, I got called names. Oh, I didn't like it. And Dave, man, Dave said that whenever his sister wanted to really get his goat, his sister would call him donkey teeth. Mm, oh, like, oh, that's so bad. Like, you can just, oh, man, it's so bad. Just really particularly cruel, okay, to call him donkey teeth, right, just so bad.

That's similar to what he's talking about here. The uncircumcision. You Gentiles. You non-Jews, right? But he's not just throwing those barbs. He's not just saying, like, oh, you're called that. People refer to you as that. He's actually saying something else. He says, in the flesh, twice in this verse. He says, you Gentiles in the flesh. And then he says, what is called the circumcision, what is made in the flesh by hand. So he's talking about the circumcision being in the flesh. And this is at the same time he's bringing up donkey teeth, okay? So he's bringing up the names that hurt him and he's saying at the same time that it's in the flesh. So what does he mean? What he means is that these divisions, these things that kind of mark them out or don't mark them out as outsiders, these divisions are not spiritual at all. They are man-made.

These divisions, these things that make you Gentile. Well, you're just a Gentile in the flesh. You are the uncircumcision, but you are the uncircumcision in the flesh. In other words, it's man-made. And it's almost like he's like planting little seeds for them even as he's bringing up these really harsh names, these really cruel names that they get called, that they get ostracized for, that they feel less than for. These are man-made divisions. And this is human nature. Human nature is to pull on these man-made divisions. It is a persistent problem. We even label ourselves according to these divisions. We label ourselves by how we interact with each other. We are introverts or we are extroverts. I once saw a, there was a coffee shop that had an extroverts line and an introverts line. And the introverts line, you would prepay and you would put your order in, like write it down.

This is like before you could just tap it on your phone. You would write it down. You wouldn't have to talk to anybody. You need to go to this other counter and just get your coffee and not have to say anything to anybody, which I thought was pretty genius. They sold a lot of coffee, bless them. You might not label yourself by that, but you might label yourself by a trauma that you have received or that you've gone through. You might label yourself by the level to which you are marginalized.

You might identify mainly as part of a particular people group or a particular ethnic group or some kind of particular heritage. You might find your place among your own musical interests. You like this band, not that band. You like this kind of music. You don't like that kind of music. Maybe it's politics. Maybe I vote this way. People that vote that way, I don't understand them. I vote that way. People that vote this way are monsters, right? And when we find these things that kind of make us, that we think at least make us who we are, there's always an other side, right? So for example, like I'm Southern. Well then there's non-Southern, there's Northerners. Oh, oh. Oh. Yankees. Oh. Right, so culturally that's a divide. Okay, Larry, we're solid, okay? We're good, we're good. Some Yankees in the room, it's okay. We're good. This is a message of good news for Yankees and Southerners, okay?

When we find out what labels us, we find the other side too, right? When we find out how we vote, we find out how other people vote. When we find out music that we like, we find other people who really hate that kind of music. And these divisions that we find that we kind of sometimes draw in really thick ink, indelible ink. These divisions, more than our heritage, more than our ancestry,

these divisions color our everyday interactions. They color what we see in the mirror. They color how we value ourselves and how we value others. It's wild actually, that we really do consider ourselves kind of built upon all of these platforms of things that we label ourselves by. And some of them are silly and some of them are deep. But what scripture says, what scripture's trying to say here in Ephesians two, 11, and 12, and what scripture will continue to say is that these divisions are significant, they are real, but they are not permanent, and they are surely not determinative. They don't tell us who we are.

Your ethnicity does not tell you who you are. Your upbringing does not tell you who you are. Who you married does not tell you who you are. How much money you make does not tell you who you are. We want it to really badly, very often if we're on the right side of it. We want that. And so maybe what we can look at are the first two verses here or really just the first verse, we're about to get to 12 here. It says you are more than your divisions. You are more than that, but what does that mean? Look at verse 12. We're kind of finishing the thought in verse 12. It says, remember that you were at that 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. Okay, we see here kind of by contrast, we see the commonwealth of Israel, we see the insiders. We see the people that did have it.

We can see what they had right here. We can see this, talks about the covenant of promise. Maybe some of you don't know, we talk about the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Old, the word testament is another word for covenant or promise, right? So our Bible is divided by the old promise and the new promise, okay? And when you look at the old promise, that was a promise that was given to the commonwealth of Israel, God's people. And you can see it in Genesis 12, in Genesis 15, Genesis 17, many other places in the old promise that it was a huge promise. It was God promising to bless the entire world through these people, through Abraham and all his descendants, which we call Israelites. This huge promise, this huge hope that they had, right? That just filled, that filled their entire identity. They were God's chosen people. They were the recipients of these promises.

It was a sign to them, a real substantive sign that God chose them and he loved them. That was a big deal. In fact, many times, whenever Jesus is arguing with the Pharisees in the New Testament, sometimes their only argument against him is, we are children of Abraham, period. That's the only argument. That's the only argument they think they need. Like, hey, we have Abraham as our father. And for them, that's a mic drop. That's their whole identity. Argument over. When, today, when we come to God, we often come as outsiders or insiders. And it's the same as what is happening in the Ephesian church where you have outsiders and insiders, but it just looks a little bit different today, okay? So look, I realize many of you are gonna fall, like, in between these categories. That's fine. I'm not trying to give you a whole lot of categories. I just wanna tell you, there is a religious insider

kind of bit today and a religious outsider feeling today, okay? Religious insiders, you might've had a religious upbringing or you are at least familiar, very familiar with, like, religious things. You can quote scripture. You remember, you know what it means when I say that I walked an isle during a revival singing the fourth stanza of Just As I Am for the 10th Time. Can I get an amen? Okay, you know what I mean? Insiders, if you just said amen, you just marked yourself. Okay, insiders, right? You know what I mean if you're around my age. You know what I mean whenever I say, like, hey, it was cry night at church camp. Like, you know what that is, right? And you don't just know what it is, but, like, you can feel it, right? You were there. You remember it, okay? You were inside of it, okay? And so people that are religious insiders, they grow up, and they're real familiar with things.

And a lot of times, religious insiders, they fall for this common lie. Well, they fall for a few, but this is one in particular. The lie that insiders fall for is that they find a division a way that people are different than them, a way that they are different than other people. And they find that division that they're on the right side of, whatever that is, right, however you define that. But in their heads, they're on the right side of this division. And the enemy, if you are an insider, the enemy tricks you into thinking that that qualifies you as a Christian. That qualifies you as a good person. That qualifies you as somebody who deserves God's love, or whatever, right? It qualifies you, and what you do is you tend to build your life around that division. That's your rallying point. That says like, oh, okay, I'm here, I believe this way, I vote this way, I look this way,

I make this kind of, I live in this neighborhood, and that is who I am, and who I am is good. Because all these things qualify me as a good person. That's the lie that insiders fall for. That's the lie that insiders fall for, because you find the division that you're on the right side of, and you celebrate that. We talk about racism, we talk about classism, we talk about political ideologues, we talk about all these isms that really kind of separate us from other people, and really all that is is just people rallying around a division that they believe they're on the right side of. And you can always tell, because they'll say something like, I wanna be on the right side of history,

I wanna be on the right side of history. How self-righteous is that comment? It's completely insane. You don't know what history's gonna say about you. You wish you did, but you don't, I promise. You think your grandparents knew what you're gonna, what you're thinking about them right now. You think your grandparents knew that? No, can almost guarantee you they didn't. And I'm not trying to look, I'm not trying to pick on anybody in particular or on any side of any division in particular. What I'm saying is though, is that whenever you rally your life around one side of one division, then you're going to grow self-righteousness. You're going to alienate yourself.

This is what racism, classism, political ideologues, this is all the isms, this is what it boils down to, is thinking that you're on the right side of that division. Okay, that's insiders. Here's outsiders. Outsiders tend to be very suspicious of religious things. Okay, and that's either because you didn't grow up in church or because you did, but you are suspicious. Okay, you either grew up in it or you didn't, but you are suspicious nonetheless. Religious people seem a little nutty to you. Just a little nutty. You know, people start talking about personal holiness or discipling people. It just seems like, ah, it seems like code words to you. You're just like, what is going on? You seem to kind of value self-expression or self-authenticity or authenticity of self. You value those things over piety or seeming like you fit in or seeming like you're doing the right thing.

You're suspicious of that kind of on its face. The lie that outsiders fall for is finding a division that they're on the wrong side of. Okay, outsiders, we find the division that we're on the wrong side of, a way that we do not fit in, and we let the enemy trick us into believing that we are disqualified because of that. Right, I'm second class Christian. I don't belong in a church. I can't do these things. I can't leave my family in Bible reading. I can't leave my spouse in prayer. I can't do these things because I am disqualified because I'm on the wrong side of this division. I've done something I'm ashamed of. I've been a part of something I don't like anymore. I used to live that way. However you want to phrase it, whatever story you want to tell yourself, I'm an outsider and I am disqualified. And that is just as destructive. It's just as wrong as what an insider will say

about themselves to qualify themselves. It does just as much harm. Although you might get more pity from people, it's still just as destructive. Because in that state, look, even the slightest, even the slightest sideways glance, even a little word, even me just talking about religious insiders just then, somebody that might have just made you a little tight inside, right, that might have just upset you because any time you sense that there's a division that you're on the wrong side of, you feel slighted. You feel like you're an outsider. You feel like somebody's talking down to you. You feel like you don't belong. And whenever anybody talks about that, like, so whenever I'm talking about crying out at church camp, you're thinking, oh, okay, this isn't me. I'm out, I'm okay. He's not talking about me right now.

I'm a second class Christian, right? You take that on the chin every time. And all that is is the enemy just trying to disqualify you. The difference between outsiders and insiders today and the Ephesian church is that in the Ephesian church, the divisions that they had took on a little bit more weight. They were a little bit more overt, a little bit more heavy because it wasn't just that Gentiles didn't know hymns, okay, it was that Gentiles had to wrestle through the lie that they were indeed second class citizens. Openly they were called second class. You're part of the outsider. You are the uncircumcision, okay? You are not in, you are not a part of the promise. They had to wrestle through that because they were not physically circumcised. They were not ethnically Jewish. And so what verses 11 and 12 are discussing, when it says you were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,

you were strangers to the promise. You had no hope and you were without God in the world. The outsiders in this moment are receiving a small wake up call because in verses 11 and 12, it's saying look, you need to hear a little bit of what you're saying to yourself. Because in verse 11, he's saying like hey, you Gentiles in the flesh, you uncircumcised people, you aliens, you strangers, you people without hope and without God in the world. And what he's trying to do, he's trying to wake him up because he's trying to get him to hear something. He's trying to rouse their attention to hear something. Here's what he wants him to hear in verses 12 and 13, or excuse me, verses 13 and 14. Here's the gospel right here, two verses. It says, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, amen. Amen. 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. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. Jesus himself is our peace by the cross, by sacrificing himself, by willingly being obedient, although he did not deserve death, he took death upon himself willingly on behalf of other people.

We're gonna be looking at this obviously a lot more next week for Easter because there's definitely a part two to that. But right now it's enough to say that the blood, Jesus's death, is exactly what reconciles us to God. The actual blood, right? Jesus's blood itself is exactly what reconciles us to God. And this is the reason, the reason why insiders and outsiders can both be reconciled because it's based on the righteous blood that Jesus shed on our behalf. The reason that the manmade divisions aren't significant while they don't actually have power is because that power was stripped of them when Jesus died on the cross. The reason that we can truly be free is because the blood pays for that freedom. The blood pays for what we have done against God, insider or outsider. It's the reason why we can be a family because in Jesus's blood we are united in a way that goes beyond insider or outsider.

Look, I was raised in church. Sometimes I will say I had a drug problem because my parents drug me to church all the time, right? That's my drug problem. Some of you didn't have that problem. Some of you didn't have any kind of heritage at all. Some of you got totally busted, whatever. You're just, look, man, you're not second class. Yeah, you're not second class. And if you were brought up to church, you're not first class. Hey, big array, man. There you go. There is no first and second class because Jesus's blood levels that. And if anybody steps to you, if anybody says, I don't know, makes you feel like you don't belong here or something like that, man, you don't have to tell me. You don't have to tell anybody. You can tell them straight to their face, like, look, did I need more blood than you? Right, was my bill bigger than yours? No, man. Jesus paid it all.

And that is the groundbreaking truth of the blood of Jesus is not that you can become a religious person or that you can act a certain way or that you can do this thing with your family or anything like, the groundbreaking truth of the cross of Jesus Christ, the blood of Jesus is that you have been united with God in a real significant way, in a way that overrides divisions, in a way that, even though they're still there, it doesn't matter. It doesn't actually hold weight. So, I'm still different than somebody who was raised in Jamaica and is a woman, okay, right? I'm not, obviously, a Jamaican woman, okay? We're still pretty different, okay? She got different hairs in me. She's, hopefully, she's prettier than me. She's, all those differences are there, okay? The only thing we share is a hemisphere, but if she's in Christ, we're brother and sister, right? We got a different background.

We almost have nothing in common except Jesus, and then that's enough to override everything else. I've been in Madagascar before, which is a crazy place to be. If you ever go, it's awesome. I was in Madagascar. I'm speaking, I don't know the language there. Malagasy is the language. And I'm going there and I'm teaching pastors in Madagascar. I have a translator, and some of the coolest things that happen where I would say things, and I'd be like, I don't know how this is gonna go. You just kinda say it, but once you've said it, the translator hears it and he's going, so you're like, ah, you can't take stuff back. You have to really mean what you say when you have a translator. And so, he would be just kinda translated when I'd say, and man, I would have, you know, I don't know, there might have been like 50 pastors there, and a handful would be like, oh, yes, yes.

You know, like, and I was like, yeah, okay, they get it, right, that we're talking about Jesus. They understand it. This is good. I was able to have fellowship with people I don't even share a language with. That's a good thing. We keep seeing this as we keep reading. So we talk about Jesus breaking down the dividing wall of hostility. How does he do it? Verses 15 and 16. How does he break that down? 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. And might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. So look, Jesus pays for everything, for all of us. So he took the insiders and the leaning of hypocrisy or self-righteousness and he paid for that. He took the outsiders and maybe like some indulgent behavior or maybe some feelings of disqualifications

or maybe some selfishness and took that. Took people on the sidelines and all the cowardice and all the, he paid for that. He paid for everybody's sin. None of it was bigger than the other. He paid for it all together, but it doesn't stop there. Because that's enough, but remember, we're not talking about you. We're talking about y'all, right? Talking about y'all, look at verse 16. It says, we just read it, it might reconcile us both to God in one body. That means one family, one people, right?

In verse 16, the reconciliation is not just to God but to each other. And that gets a little bit more uncomfortable for us, right? Because I'm cool with you telling me I'm reconciled to God, but I'm a little less cool with you telling me I'm reconciled to that person who doesn't like me. I'm reconciled to that person who says mean things to me. I'm reconciled to that person that I don't always agree with or that I'm really different than or that vote's different than me. I'm reconciled to that person. And we're guilty of this, we're all guilty of this, right? Whenever we say, whenever people say that they want peace, okay? Often what they mean or it kinda comes out like, you know, if people would stop marginalizing or misrepresenting other people, then we'd have peace. If people would just accept me for who I am, then I would have peace. If more people were educated about the differences

between people, then we'd have peace. If those people who make more money just paid more of their fair share, then we'd have peace. If those people who were poor and didn't take responsibility for their lives and if they would just kind of do what they're supposed to, then we'd have peace. None of that is bringing peace. None. None of it's bringing peace. Why? Why doesn't it work when we educate people? Why doesn't it work whenever we say, like we, I mean, look, you can have like the most compelling YouTube, like, I don't know, right in the sweet spot, like an eight minute YouTube video that explains all the differences and educates everybody on all the problems, right? Why doesn't that work?

It makes me, you know, it makes me wanna buy things that I don't need to buy, but why doesn't it make me want to have peace with everybody? It's because the division that we have is baked in. The divisions that we have go further than awareness. They go further than education. They go further than even suffering the same thing. That the division that we have are always going to be there. People can change, but there's always going to be division and because of sin, people are always going to find ways to ascribe value to those divisions. People are always, you and I even, our temptation will always gravitate toward, this is why we need the gospel, this is why we need to hear preaching all the time, this is why you need to read scripture, because your heart always, always, I mean, if you are a human being, it always goes towards that division and you wanna see what side you're on,

you're on the right side or the wrong side, and you're either gonna feel qualified or feel disqualified. And you will go to that well again and again and again to figure out who you are. But the blood of Jesus tells us something different, because people are always gonna determine who's in, who's out. And those goal posts are always gonna change. When I was 20, I was so in, I'm 47, I am so out. Right, okay. It's always gonna change, it's always gonna be somebody or the other to shun or accept. Peace only comes when we know in our bones that God has killed the hostility between us and him.

God has killed the hostility between us and him, between ourselves and him. This must come first. If we don't have this first, then we will never have peace with the other. This is why churches do things like food drives or like, you know, Harvest House was started out of a church. Why churches wanna do good for the community because it is an expression, it's not to usher in peace to the community. We know we can't do, only God can do that, right? But what we can do as an expression of the peace that we have with God, we are free to serve other people. This next week, we're gonna be giving out Easter invites with Girl Scout cookies because we got a ton of Girl Scout cookies from the Girl Scouts, all for free. We got like eight boxes, I think, seven boxes of 12 each. So we have a lot, 84. We're gonna be targeting 84 houses. We're gonna say, hey, come to Easter services,

here's some Girl Scout cookies. And listen, that's a pretty good bribe. I'm just saying, that's all right. But look, you know, bribing people to come to church, I mean, that's gonna be great for like a week, okay, a day. All right, maybe they feel guilty and come twice. I don't know. It's not exactly a plan to grow our church, I don't think. But what it is, is a way for people to hear the gospel maybe in a way that they haven't heard it before, to experience the gospel in our church family in a way maybe that they haven't experienced it before. It's a way to do that, to display the fact that we have been brought together by the blood of Jesus Christ. I got some of you in here, so you have no business. I have no business being in a church with you. And you have no business being in a church with me. We are different, we are just different, and that's okay.

According to the world, we don't have business being together. But according to Christ, He has united us as a family. That's a good thing. That's something that we can celebrate. Look, this is something that we need reminders of over and over and over again, right? In particular, it's why we celebrate Easter every year. It's to remember the fact that we know, we have a personal relationship with a source of real peace.

This is what we celebrate as a church. And it's only when we have peace with God that we can have peace with others. It's only when we have peace with God that we can stop identifying ourselves by all these labels that we come up with, right? We don't need to find our identity in ourselves. It's not there, right? Our identity is given to us by our Creator, by the one who made us.

I've experienced that personally. My invitation to you is that this week, I hope you're praying. I hope you're praying for people who haven't heard the gospel, to hear the gospel on Easter services. I hope that you are praying for the people that you know, your coworkers, your family members. I hope that you're praying for them to hear the gospel in a new way. I hope that, but what I hope happens, I hope that people find peace, maybe for the first time. I pray that our church can celebrate that peace together. Would you pray with me? Lord, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your peace that you give us.

Thank you for the way that you bring us together as a church family because of your peace. That you bring down the dividing wall of insider and outsider, that you make insider and outsiders one person. And it's people that were bought. Lord, help us to just walk in that, that we are people who were bought. Thank you for the way that you continually love us, call out to us, to walk in that peace.

Help us to do that, Lord, we love you. Amen. Would you please stand and please sing.