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Nov 13, 2022

We are Family, Get up Everybody and Sing

We are Family, Get up Everybody and Sing

Passage: Ephesians 2:11-22

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

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

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

PREPARATION: Psalm 22:26-28
LEADER: From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will perform before those who fear him.
The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the LORD!
May your hearts live forever!

ALL: All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the LORD,
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before you.
For kingship belongs to the LORD,
and he rules over the nations.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER:) Apostles’ Creed

ALL:
I believe in God the Father Almighty
Maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord;
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
Born of the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, dead, and buried;
He descended into Hell;
The third day he rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
and sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
From there he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost;
the holy catholic Church;
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body;
and the life everlasting. Amen.

GREETING OF THE PEACE:
LEADER: “Because of the gospel and as an act of worship, may the peace of Christ be with you all.

ALL: “And also with you.”

LEADER: “Let’s greet one another with the peace of Christ.”

CENTRAL TEXT: Ephesians 2:11-22
Eph. 2:11 Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— 12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope is and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

BENEDICTION: Revelation 5:9, 10
LEADER: And they sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,

ALL: and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

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

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Let’s take this from the top again! With what other kinds of organizations does the church share similarities with, but which the church can also get confused with? For instance how is the church like a bowling league (what a comparison!), and yet still very different? Now consider other kinds of groups or organizations and do the same exercise.
  2. What risk(s) do we run if we confuse the nature of the church with other organizations of some similarity?
  3. From the sermon we said this family is characterized by two “families of origin” brought under the same roof–one with an impulse toward foolish freedom, the other toward a false faithfulness. If you had to identify with either, which has more of a gravitational pull on you? What does the gospel say uniquely to each mindset?
  4. This kind of family has forgiveness as near its top of priorities, and mainly, though not exclusively, for the honor of God. What are several obstacles to upholding that forgiveness among us? How is the reconciliation Jesus worked between both Jew and Gentile and between both and God meant to help in fulfilling that priority?
  5. Okay, full honesty: what is the vision statement of GMR? (no peeking…ok, now you can peek) Why would our being a true family as a dwelling place for the Lord (v. 22) be essential to having joy in the gospel or loving well the world around us?

QUOTES: 

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

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