Followed By Mercy

Remembering Our Peace: The Transformative Power of Christ

• W. Austin Gardner • Season 3 • Episode 27

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summary

  • In this engaging sermon, Austin Gardner delves into Ephesians chapter two, emphasizing the importance of remembering our past and recognizing the transformative power of Christ in our lives. He highlights how Christians often forget their former state of being without Christ, which can lead to a sense of superiority over others. Gardner stresses that salvation is a gift from God, not a result of our own good works, and encourages listeners to reflect on their journey from being lost to being found in Christ. He passionately reminds the congregation that Jesus is our peace, bridging the gap between God and humanity, and calls for unity among believers, regardless of their backgrounds or pasts.


  • Throughout the sermon, Gardner shares personal anecdotes, including the transformation of his father from a troubled past to a life of faith, illustrating the profound change that comes from accepting Christ. He urges the church to embrace a spirit of love and acceptance, rather than judgment, and to remember that all believers are united in their need for grace. Ultimately, the message is one of hope, reconciliation, and the centrality of Jesus in the life of every believer.

keywords

Ephesians, peace, unity, salvation, grace, Jesus, church, transformation, Christian faith, remembrance

takeaways

  • We often forget who we were before Christ.
  • Salvation is a gift from God, not our own doing.
  • Jesus is our peace, bridging the gap between God and us.
  • Unity in the church is essential; we are all one in Christ.
  • Remembering our past helps us to love and accept others.

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Austin Gardner:

Turn with me in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2. We'll read starting in verse 11 in just a minute. Something happens in churches and Christians. We forget who we were. And we forget what we were like. And so we then tend to build an environment that is not so welcoming to others that have yet to meet Christ as their savior. And it forms a kind of separation in the church. It's almost uh we're better than you attitude. It can happen in churches if you're not careful. And the apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 11 wants us to remember. So go with me if you would to Ephesians chapter 2, verse 11. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 11. This is a first imperative in the whole book of Ephesians so far. We've gone through Ephesians chapter 1. We've gone through 10 verses in Ephesians chapter 2. And he hasn't told us one time, do this. You know what an imperative is. An imperative is shut the door. That's imperative. That's a rule. That's something I'm telling you to do. If I say the door is shut, that's not an imperative. That's just an indicative. That's just telling you what's what's there. And now he takes a time to say, remember. And so if you got your Bible open with me and you're looking, I want you to look at the first word, and I'm going to break this up just a little bit. And then we'll kind of give it to you, Tennessee Hillbilly style, because this little passage, the scripture is kind of a hard-reading passage. But he says, wherefore remember. Let me tell you wherefore to remember. Why do we need to remember? Because in Ephesians, I think, I think, Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10, maybe the key, the key. It says, For we are his workmanship created unto good works. Amen. When we get saved, we do good works. Our lives change. How many of you would say, Yeah, I'm different. Say amen. You've learned to live differently. We've learned to honor and respect our marriage. We've learned to honor and respect other people. We've learned to pay our bills because we're saved. We've put us away, a prideful way of living, and we're living new, and we're living in good works. There's a danger with good works. Because the way we measure good works is we kind of like my good works burn your good works. See, there's a danger there that you can get that attitude. There's a danger you can begin to think, I fixed me. I turned over a new leaf. I'm a new man. I became a new person. I think I've told you this before, but I'll repeat it to you. My dad was not saved. And he lived a very rough and hard life. And he told me one time, he said, buddy, you'd have a hard time thinking up a sin I didn't do. And he got saved when he was like 24 or 25. I was born after that. So you know, I never ever knew that man. I never knew him. I never saw him curse my wife, my mother. I never saw him hit my mother. I saw him honor people. I saw him pay his bills. I saw him lead his home. I saw a very good man. Now he didn't do this, but he could have. Because there's a danger there that you and I change. He beat alcoholism. He was a drunkard. My dad. His dad on the bar. He beat drugs. And he told me, I'm sure there were different drugs then than there are now, but he did drugs. He beat sex because he had said he has he had done a rough guy. And he could have easily thought, I changed me. He could have easily said, I met your mother, boy. I married your mother, and I changed. But he I never heard him do that. I heard him remember. And so we're going to read this passage of scripture, and I call on you to remember. Because in Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 10, he said this, you are his workmanship. You know, he sums it all up and says this. I did it all. I'm the one that made you what you are. I'm the one that changed your life. I'm the one that gave you a new life. I am the one who made the difference in your life. You are my workmanship. You are my ministry. You are my poem. You're my architecture. I did it. And so he says in verse 11, read it with me. Wherefore remember that you being in time past. Now stop right there just because he goes into Gentiles and Jews. He goes into this division between religious and non-religious. He said, and you know, there were religious people that were at least trying to find me, but you weren't. You just ignored me completely. The Jewish people followed me, at least tried. You guys didn't do it. Look at verse 12. He says in verse 12, at that time, at that time, back then, the way you were, before you changed to be who you are, you were. Now notice what he says, without Christ. Without Christ. Now, if we've learned anything so far in Ephesians 1 and 2, we're saved because we're in Christ. You understand that? Say amen. And the word Christ means Messiah. It means sent one. It means anointed one. It's the one that God chose to save us. Before we were without Christ. And then he explains it. He said we were aliens in verse 12. We were not a part of Israel. We were strangers. We had nothing to do with the promise. And the the striking words are we had no hope. No hope. And we were without God. That's who we were. I want to remind you to think back. Think back on who you were. Think back. To remember means to go back and get it and relive it and realize God saved you. I'll never forget. May the 6th, 1962, a little seven-year-old boy, just about to turn eight years old, hearing week after week that Jesus died on the cross for him. And that Sunday morning the preacher preached as a little country church, but he preached and he preached hard about how God loved me and he preached about how Jesus died for me. And I had been going week after week. I don't even remember this part. I'd gone week after week to my dad and said, Dad, you want me to go up here and get saved? And my dad said, No, sit down, boy. And I later asked him, I said, Well, what in the world did you do that for? He said, because I figured when you needed to get saved, you'd go on on your own. And you wouldn't need me to tell you. So he said, he said, come get saved that Sunday. And I did. Now look what it says in verse 13. But now, in Christ Jesus, but now, you see, in the past we were without Christ, but now we are in Christ. We're in Christ Jesus. We were far off, but now we're brought nigh. We are brought close. We're brought near. We were a long ways off. Jewish people had access to God. Jewish people had access to God that other people didn't have. And he's saying y'all didn't have access. But he made it through the blood of Jesus. He made it through the blood of Jesus. Now look if you would at verse 14. And he, for he is our peace. I want you to look at those four little words. He is our peace. Do you know who made peace between God and us? Jesus. It was Jesus. I didn't make peace. Fact is, if I know the passage of scripture and I'm reading the passage of scripture and I believe it to be the truth, I didn't even want peace. I just kind of ignored God and did my own thing. I didn't have any. See, I was without Christ. I was without God. I was a long ways off. I was doing my own thing. But God in heaven loved you, and God in heaven loves us, and God in heaven wants to make a difference. And God came and God made peace. I think it's really important for us to get a hold of this. It's never about you trying to get to God. God's trying to get to you. It's never about you finding God. It's God finding you. I probably tell you this story too often, but I remind you that when Adam and Eve sinned, what they did basically was tell God, we don't need you to tell us what's right and wrong. We've eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So now we get to make decisions. We are like God, and that's basically where we live, isn't it? People in this room live in a position where they say, I mean, not I'm talking about humans, not you personally, but we kind of live like, well, you know what, it's I think it's okay. I don't really care what God thinks. I think it's okay. And so they chose that. And when they did, they were separating from God and they were alone and they were hidden. Did they go looking for God? They didn't go looking for God. Did they try to fix things? No. They put on a mask, they knew they were wrong, they were embarrassed, they covered themselves as fig leaves, but it was God who came to make peace. And when he came to make peace, he came and he covered their nakedness with skins of animals that would represent Jesus dying on the cross for us, and he brought them back into fellowship. He is our peace. He is our peace. Even when he said, Where are you, Adam? He wasn't saying that because he didn't know. He was saying that to let Adam know, I love you, buddy, and I've come to get you. He is our peace. I want you to know today, if you do not know Jesus as your personal Savior, I need you to know something. God loves you. He has already done everything for you to be saved. Did you know the Bible, the Bible says some crazy things? Did you know the Bible calls Jesus a Savior of the world? Not just the church. It does say this, Savior of the world, especially those that believe. But he's paid the price for the world. For God so loved the world. You'll hear no one. 2 Corinthians chapter 5. You can check me out later. You can discuss it with me. But in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, he said that he reconciled the world to himself. He did everything for you to be saved. He said, I won't even hold your sins against you. I no longer hold anybody's sins against them. I paid the price. Now listen to what it says. Is our peace. And he calls on you and me to believe him, to trust him, to let that be real in us. Let that be real in us. But I need to, I really, before, as we go through here, I want you to understand, we'll go to verse 15. I want you to understand, man, there was this uh hatred between Jews and Gentiles. In Ephesians chapter 2, he's calling on us for unity. He's calling on us to quit playing the measure you game. You know, you know that game? You know that so many Christians become Pharisees? I don't do those things. I don't. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't have illicit sex. And we and we begin to get, I don't look at Portland, I, I, and we begin to get that attitude. That's kind of like the Jews were. So the Jews walk down the street all the time and saying, You're not a Jew, and we know you're a dirty, wicked sinner. And he said, No, no, no, I want peace. He made peace between us and God, and he wanted peace between Jew and Gentile. It was a really weird relationship between the Jews and the Gentiles. The Jews had been saved in Genesis 12 to be a blessing to the world. But they became a blessing only to themselves. And that's what some religious people do. They get saved and they know God and and they want to keep clean and they want to keep pure and they separate from everybody else and they don't care anymore about anybody but themselves. They want to stay right and they sit in the ivory tower and shoot out and say, Look at them dirty people, look at them people doing that. He said, He said, No, no, no. Peace. I want peace. Peace with God and peace with each other. And look at verse 15. He said, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, the enemy, the fact that you're fighting, uh, he got rid of the law of commandments and ordinances, and he made peace. And he made of two one new man. Now you've got to understand what's going on here. You know, we're we're uh we we study the Bible here. Ephesians is a letter written by the apostle Paul from the Holy Spirit to a local church, a little church in Ephesus. And he writes the letter to the Ephesians. Now, the Ephesian church has a big dichotomy, a big separation, a big difference. You see, in early Christianity, almost everybody was Jewish. I don't know if you ever paid attention to that. All the apostles, Jews, writers of the Bible, mostly Jews. The early, early church Jews. In fact, it's Jerusalem, all Jews. First time we see them, really Samaritans got saved, half Jews. Then Antioch. But now in Ephesus, there's a church full of people that are Jewish and that are Gentile. Now, I want you to picture these Jewish people. They live real, strict, clean, honest, Christian lives, buddy. They married to one woman. Those Gentiles, they might have two or three women. Those Jewish guys, they worship one God. Those Gentile guys, they used to have several gods. Those Jews, they won't eat pork. Those Gentiles are enjoying the bacon and the shrimp. And and in the church, so there's this division. It's like one group sitting on one side of the building, the other group sitting on the other side of the building. And it's like two groups in one place. And he's calling for unity. He said, I want y'all to realize God made peace with him, but he also wants peace between you. He wants you two to be one. He wants you two to be one. And so he has gotten rid of all the rules that separate a Jew from Gentiles. See, a Jew was taught from the time he was a kid. You don't hang around Gentiles, you don't talk to Gentiles, you don't spend time with Gentiles, you don't want to be like a Gentile, you don't look at what Gentile said. You know, we don't like them. It was kind of a racist thing going on way back then. Fact is, if you've read the book of Galatians and you recall, that's kind of what the problem was. In the book of Galatians, Paul was always going out and reaching these Gentiles. Peter went down, Barnabas and Paul were working together. And Peter went down to visit with him. And for Peter, as a real strict Jew, it was more like, I am not like him. But he he lowered his standards and he started eating with them and talking to them and being a part of them. Until some other people came down from Jerusalem that were other Jews. When those other Jews came, he said, I'm not hanging out with y'all. And that's where Peter and Paul had a little fuss in front of the whole church. Because God said, I want it broken down. I want you to be make peace. There ought to be peace in the church. There ought to be peace among us. There ought not be, I keep more rules than you keep rules. Fact is, there ought not be all these. All these denominational baptism, like if you ain't a baptism, we don't want to like you. Well, if the truth is, they're Christians. They're our family. Amen. We're going to live forever. We'll see that as we go on in here. I just want you to look at this. He said, make him peace in verse 15. Verse 16. That he might reconcile both unto God. God's not just interested in saving Jews, God's interested in saving Gentiles. And look how he saves everybody. Look at verse 16. By the cross. It is the cross of Jesus Christ. It is the cross of Jesus Christ that saves. When I've had the privilege to go preach in Africa, when I've had the privilege to go preach in China and Russia, when I've had the chance to preach, I preach the same message. Jesus died to save sinners, all of them. It doesn't matter what race you are, it doesn't matter where you live, it doesn't matter what you've done in the past. Jesus came to save sinners. Look at verse 17. And he came and preached peace. Jesus came and preached peace. He came and he preached peace. Now I'll show you something about that in just a second. But he came and he preached peace. Do you understand how twisted we have it? Sometimes we actually think that God has a bunch of rules. He's kind of tyrannical and he's kind of angry. And we almost picture God being like fed up with you guys. But when he sent Jesus, he sent Jesus to preach peace. He came to say there's peace between God and man. There's peace between God and man. He said, I made the peace. I went to the cross. I died on the cross. I paid the sin debt. That's how there's peace. That's how there's peace. And I want you to notice in verse 17, he did that for those that were afar off Gentiles. He did those that were close Jews. He said, He said, You guys that were religious and had all the rules and were doing all the good stuff and had lots of morality and doing all the great stuff, you couldn't go to heaven no matter how good you were. Nobody goes to heaven because how good they are. No one goes to heaven because how good they are. You don't go to heaven because you Been baptized. You don't go to heaven because how much money you give. You don't go to heaven because you've been married to the same wife and been faithful to her for all these years. You don't go to heaven for that. You go to heaven because Jesus tied on a cross for you. And then the most wicked and vile sinner who's done every atrocious thing we can think of gets saved by the exact same way. They get saved by what Jesus did on the cross of Calvary. The ground's level at the bottom of the cross. No, no. There's not somebody tall and somebody short and somebody big and somebody, somebody not so big. There's none of that going on. All of us come by the grace of Jesus. That's how we got saved. If he's saying anything in Ephesians 1 and 2, he's saying this, I did it all. The church didn't save you. Religion didn't save you. Morality didn't save you. I did it all. Now look at what he says. He came to preach peace in verse 18. For through him, through Jesus, through the Christ, look at it, we have access by one spirit unto the Father. How in the world could I get through to God? How many rules would I have to keep? How many commandments would I have to obey? How faithful would I have to be? How long would it take? And he said, no, no, no. I did the work. And he says, because what Jesus did on the cross, the Holy Spirit comes to us and takes us to the Father. We have access to the Father. If you're saved, if you're born again, you have access to the Father through Jesus. Do you know what that means? You're his child. He loves you. You know what that means? He welcomes you. The door is open for you. You don't have to knock on the door. You can just walk in. You can frankly and boldly say whatever you want to say. If you're hurt and then you're discouraged, God says, I'm your daddy, come talk to me. If you want to come in here and say to me, my life stakes. He says, Come on and tell me, I'm your daddy. You have access, because Jesus paid the price for you. And God feels everything that you're going through. Verse 19, there's no more strangers and foreign foreigners. We're all together in the house of God. That's what Jesus did. Religion separates us. Because it's religion's usually performance-based. It's on what'd you do? How good have you been? Have you been right? Have you done right? Are you a clean liver? Or have you messed up? Have you ever been? And then they start naming a whole list of sins. And it and there's division. So sometimes those that are not saved and not brought up in the they begin to think, I'm not good enough. And he's saying to you, no, you're not. You aren't good enough. I don't care how many robes you kept, you're not good enough. It's through Jesus who died on a cross to save you. Jesus came and took all your sin and put it on him, and he brings us all together as brothers and sisters in his family. We're in that. Verse 20. And he built a church. This is like the most wonderful thing. We're a church. He put us together. And he says, I don't care if you were good or bad, big or small, rich or poor, did it. And we were built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And Jesus is the chief cornerstone. And he put us all together in one. He put us all together in the church. So I want to just remind you quickly, don't forget your salvation. Can I tell you something honest from a boy who was raised in a Christian home who didn't really get out there and do a lot of those things? There were times in my life I honestly thought to myself, you know, I'm pretty good. I really don't need saved like a lot of people need saved. Pretty good guy. Because that's what we do. We measure ourselves. Well, I've never been drunk in my life, except when I was in the hospital and a surgery, and that's them doing it to me. I've never, I'm a good guy. I've married the same woman 52 years. I'm a good guy. And God looks at me and says, You can't fix things with me. You can't be good enough. And I had to realize one day that I was as big a sinner as the worst that ever lived. You know what Apostle Paul said? He said, I'm the chief of sinners. But he had to realize that because earlier in Philippians he actually said, if you could do it right, I did it right. If you could do it right, I did it right. I was born right. And on the eighth day, I was I've just been right all my life. Then he goes, then I met Jesus. I figured it out. He made peace. I didn't make peace. I didn't earn it. I didn't get there. So I call on you this morning to remember. Remember. Remember that it's all the grace of God. Remember that it's God loving you that changed your life. Remember that it's Jesus, God in human flesh, dying on a cross. Remember that. And when you look at the person who's not living right and not doing right, and they're doing despicable things and horrible things, remember this. You're just as bad if it weren't for God saving you. No judging, no being critical, no having a hateful spirit. We welcome them because we have great news. Jesus came and preached peace. You understand that? Say amen if you do. He is our peace. I want you to get this in your heart, get this in your mind. Jesus is our peace. Jesus is our peace. It all revolves around only one purpose. Person, Jesus. It all revolves around one person, Jesus. Now let me just close with this. Ephesians chapter 2 is really about unity. And I think this church has it. I think we do have a sweet spirit. But let me just say this. We don't see how many failures you have. We see Jesus. And Jesus is the solution. Jesus is the answer. Jesus is the one who paid to send it. It's all Jesus. Now I come to you and ask you, Abby, put your faith in Jesus. When you acknowledge I've sinned against the Holy God, I want to be my own boss. I want to make my own decisions. I do what I think is right. Would you just at least admit that? When you realize that, then you can realize I want peace with God. And the peace with God is to realize that God's God, not you. And you turn from your way to his way. You surrender your life to him. Peace. Peace with God. Peace with God if you're not saved. Find today the peace. It's a gift. All you gotta do is receive it. And then as a believer, I challenge you, I think you do, but I challenge you. We're the lovingest people on the planet. Why are you so loving? Because he's our peace. We're not fighting with anybody. Jesus fixes it all. We forgive, we love, we reach out to others because Jesus is our peace. So I'll leave you with the main word. Remember, it's all Jesus. Remember, it is all Jesus.

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Austin Gardner

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