Birds of a Feather
Ephesians 2:18-3:10
Pastor Mark Cox, Director of Youth Ministries
Sunday, August 28th, 2005

There's an old saying that I'm sure you've all heard before that goes something like this-"Ornithological specimens of the same or similar plumage tend to habitually congregate in the closest possible proximity." Or more commonly stated: "Birds of a feather flock together". Like it or not, we tend to associate with, hang around, and generally like to be with people who are like us in some way — who share similar values or tastes or in whom we just have a lot in common.

Sadly, this concept that birds of a feather flock together seems to adequately describe most churches in America. Despite our great diversity as a nation, most congregations are not known primarily by any doctrinal unity but rather are distinguished more by socio-economic status, or ethnicity, or (more recently) by age and worship style preference. There's one church in our area where four different congregations—all of them Christian—meet at different times in the same building. All-together separate, I guess you could say! A younger, more contemporary group meets there early on Sunday morning, and when they're done with their service, an older mainline congregation gathers for their own style of worship. In the afternoon, a Hispanic church meets for their worship time, and in the evening a Polynesian church uses the building for their own type of service. Now while I can understand why these type of church distinctions happen, whether for language barriers or as outreach to a particular culture group, I can't help but be a little saddened by this trend.

In John 17 we have recorded one of the most famous prayers of Jesus, known as the High Priestly Prayer, in which He prays for his disciples and for us;

The unity of believers was very much on the heart of Jesus for two reasons: 1. This unity reflects the unity that Jesus the Son shares with God the Father (v.20) and 2. This unity is a witness to the rest of the world (v.21) — people are to see something inexplicably different in the way that Christians relate in oneness that testifies to God's power. Unity is important to Jesus and should be to us as well.

As a youth pastor, I am particularly sensitive to generational splits within a congregation. Many churches today, in a sincere effort to reach out to young people, have taken the route of implementing two distinct worship services of which people can choose to attend depending upon their preferences of worship style. One service tends to be a more traditional liturgy with organ and hymns; the pastor is dressed in a suit or robe and the sermon is delivered from behind a pulpit and is generally geared toward an older audience. The

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other service will be more contemporary with guitars, drums and PowerPoint slides; where the pastor may be dressed in khakis and a sweatshirt while sitting on a barstool to the side of the stage more as a storyteller than a preacher, and the goal is to have a service that will reach out and connect with a younger generation. Now we all have preferences for how we personally like worship to be conducted but many times the tension over these preferences runs so deep that it causes generational splits within a congregation. And rather than seek a common ground, many churches have resigned to having two separate services — one for the old people and one for the young people. It seems that even in the church, birds of a feather flock together and never the twain shall meet.

This morning we're going to look into Paul's letter to the Ephesians to explore some of what the Bible has to say about the unity of the church, and address the questions: Is it important for the young and old to worship together? Is it even possible? And, if so, how would this unity be achieved?

We'll be starting in chapter 2, verse 18 of Ephesians. The Apostle Paul is writing his letter from prison in Rome. Paul has been arrested for bringing Gentiles into the temple in Jerusalem (Acts 21). The temple in Jerusalem had several concentric and segregated courtyards—Gentiles were allowed in the large outer court, inside of this was the court of Jewish women, next came the court of Jewish men, then the holy place where only priests were allowed, and finally the holy of holies—the inner sanctum where the very presence of God dwelled. Paul was arrested and put on trial for escorting Gentiles into the intermediary courts that were only for Jews. At his trial, Paul claims his right as a Roman citizen to have his case heard by Caesar and so he's shipped off to a Roman prison during which time he probably wrote the letter to the church in Ephesus. The church in Ephesus was a combined church of Jewish and Gentile believers which made for a lot of tension both inside and outside the church.

In the first part of the letter, Paul reminds his readers of the vast spiritual blessing we have in Christ and to remember how we were dead in our sins before our conversion; "⁴But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, ⁵even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved" (Ephesians 2:4-5). At this point in chapter two, Paul is specifically addressing his words to the Gentiles—the non-Jewish Christians. Now keep in mind that this is Paul, a Jew, addressing Gentiles about the spiritual blessing they now share in Christ.

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Paul is saying to these Gentiles, 'Be encouraged my brothers, for because of Christ's death and resurrection we both, Jews and Gentiles, now have "access" (v.18) to the very presence of God. Recall that as Christ died on the cross, the Gospels record that Jesus cried out, let out his spirit, and right at that moment the curtain that blocked entrance into the holy of holies, the innermost sanctuary of the temple, was torn in two (Matthew 27:51), signifying that since Christ fulfilled all the requirements of the Law and He transfers His righteousness to us who believe, we now are declared righteous and have unfettered "access" to the very throne room of God. A major change has taken place in which Gentiles are no longer excluded from God's covenant but now have equal citizenship (v.l9) with Jews in one new combined church (v.22), members of the same household of God (v.l9). The circle of God's covenant, because of Christ, is no longer limited to the nation of Israel, but now is open wide to all the nations and to everyone who would come to Christ.

It may be hard for us, nearly 2000 years removed from the scene, to imagine the weight of this change and to get a sense of just how revolutionary and explosive this was to have a combined church of Jews and Gentiles who now called themselves brother and sister and part of the same household in God. The animosity that existed ran deep as Gentiles had generally had nothing but disdain for the Jews and the Jews were taught that Gentiles were created by God merely as the kindling for the flames of hell.

To get a taste of what this might be like, if you have been following the news, you've seen this week where Jews have been ordered to leave their homes in Gaza, and some by military force, as the land is to be handed over to the Palestinians. Some Jews harbor such animosity towards the Palestinians that they even lit their homes on fire so that now Palestinians will not be able to live in them. The hatred between these two groups runs deep and is passed on from generation to generation. Now imagine that somewhere right in the middle of Gaza a group of Jews and Palestinians began coming together and worshipping in the same Spirit of Jesus Christ. Suppose they laid aside their hatred, put down their rocks and weapons, and instead began to worship as one family and calling one another brother and sister. What would happen? It would be a miracle and clearly the world would take notice! Now take this most unlikely scene and consider the fact that it actually happened in Ephesus—two distinct cultures that absolutely hated each other to the core were now worshipping together as one united family. It was a miracle—a miracle being something that cannot be explained by human effort but can only be attributed to the work of God. And the world was taking notice—something different was going on here that was beyond human explanation.

In verse 20-22, Paul compares this new church to a building of which the foundation is the teaching of the apostles and prophets, and Christ is the cornerstone. Because of Christ, we are being built together as a holy temple for God by the Spirit!

Paul goes on in c.3, "For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles—" Because Paul is teaching this concept of a unified church, he has been put in prison. It is not a popular message. Again, try starting a

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Christian church of Jews and Palestinians in Gaza today and see what kind of reception you'd get.

But notice the hyphen in v.2. This dash signifies that Paul is going to go on a little side note here and we need to make sure that we follow his logic.

Paul wants to make sure that the Ephesians have heard about the "dispensation" of grace that God has given to him (v.2). Other translations use the word "administration" or "stewardship" of God's grace, and basically God has revealed to Paul a "mystery" (v.3-4) and commissioned him to the task of making this mystery known to the world (v.7). But what is this "mystery" that Paul is talking about?

My wife and I love watching mysteries and detective stories and particularly we enjoy the British movie productions of the Agatha Christie novels. What's fun about mysteries is that throughout the story little clues or bits of evidence or red herrings are revealed and you try to figure out who did it before the end. Now each of these Agatha Christie stories end pretty much the same way as the detective, whether it's Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple or whomever, gathers up all the suspects into one room and through logical deduction and a systematic retelling of events, the murderer is exposed. Confronted by the irrefutable evidence, the guilty party is stoically escorted off to Scotland Yard and the movie is over because now the mystery is no longer a mystery but has been revealed. Likewise, in the Bible a mystery means something that was hinted at in the Old Testament but is not fully revealed until the New Testament. And what Paul is saying is that this concept of a united church of Jews and Gentiles is something that God has had in mind and has been part of His plan since before Creation (v.5) and He gave hints of His plan throughout the Old Testament, but it was not made known until He reveals to Paul on the Damascus road (v.3, Acts 9). This united church has been part of God's plan from before the beginning of time (v.5-6). The mystery has been revealed!

Now it was Paul's assignment to make known this newly discovered revelation to the Gentiles. He continues in v.8;

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When Paul says he was "the least of all the saints", this is not false modesty on his part, but rather an amazement that God would choose him, of all people, to proclaim the mystery of the church. By human logic, Paul would be the last of all Christians for such a task. Recall that before his conversion, Paul was a Pharisee whose main goal was to eradicate the earth of these Jesus followers. But now, in God's divine wisdom and in a way that can only point to God's power, Paul's heart was transformed and he was appointed by God to build up the very institution he once tried to destroy. Imagine the impact this had on people at the time—the main persecutor of the church had now become its main promoter. The chief adversary of the church was now its chief advocate. And the world took notice.

But why? What is the purpose for why God has created this new church and why is it so important to be united? Unity is hard. Unity requires that I be uncomfortable at times and that I don't always get my preferences. Perhaps it would have been much easier for Paul to start two churches in Ephesus—one for Jewish Christians on one side of town and another one for Gentile Christians in a different part of town. Or maybe he could have split up the congregations and told the Jewish Christians that they can meet in the mornings for worship and the Gentiles are to meet in the afternoons. But that's not what he does. There is one church in Ephesus and it's imperative that they learn to get along and treat one another as family. And why? The answer is in v.10: "to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church". The ESV puts it a bit clearer, "through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known...". Manifold simply means "many-sided". It is through this united church that God says He is going to let His vast wisdom be known. It is through the church that God is going .to reach the world with His power and grace. The church is the vehicle by which God wants to make Himself known—Yes, He reveals Himself in His Word, but it's the church that is the embodiment of that Word which the world will see. And if the church is acting in unity, striving to bridge cultural gaps and break down barriers between groups of people, the world is going to take notice.

As stated previously, the concept of the church was a mystery in the Old Testament and one place we see a hint of this is in the book of Jonah. Most of us are familiar with Jonah—God calls the Jewish prophet to preach to the great city of Nineveh in Assyria and warn them that judgment is coming if they do not repent. In an act of willful disobedience, Jonah hops on a boat going in the complete opposite direction only to be thrown into the sea and saved by means of a whale. The question is why does Jonah run? Why does he willfully disobey God? Why does he not want to go to Nineveh and preach for these people to repent? The reason is that the Assyrians were the sworn enemy of Israel and, simply put, Jonah does not want them to repent—he wants them to die! What bothers Jonah is not just going to Nineveh, but the idea that God somehow has compassion for these brutal people of

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the north. It was inconceivable to Jonah that God was not just the God of Israel, but rather has a deep desire and plan to reach the entire world with His grace. This was a completely foreign concept to Jonah—a mystery he couldn't understand.

So after the whale spits Jonah up on the beach, he reluctantly goes to Nineveh, preaches a one sentence sermon, and amazingly the entire city repents. God spares the Ninevites and you might think Jonah would be happy with how it all turned out, but he's not. In c.4 of Jonah it says,

Notice Jonah's complaint of God--"I knew it! That's just like You, God—gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, relenting from disaster." And he's saying these things as though they are bad things and that it's not fair for God to be showing such compassion to these Ninevites. God's reply to Jonah is amazingly gentle. Twice He asks Jonah the same question (v.4,9), "Jonah, is it right for you to be angry?" And what God means is, "Think about it Jonah. Just a few days ago you willfully disobeyed My command, you tried to run away from Me, you were cast into the ocean and were drowning with no hope of salvation on your own and I mercifully rescued you. Think about it Jonah—is it right for you to be angry? Is it really wrong for Me to be a God of grace, mercy, slow temper, steadfast love, and relenting from disaster? Think about it Jonah—if I weren't these things, you would be dead right now and rightly judged for your sins. If I can have compassion for you, Jonah, surely I can have compassion for Nineveh."

The point in our willingness to reach out to others in love is tied directly to recognizing the way that God has reached out in love towards us. Unity begins with an understanding of the depth of our own sin before a holy God and a realization of the reach of His grace to rescue us from our deserved punishment.

Imagine for a moment, if we can, what it must be like for God in heaven. It's hard to do because I am sure that heaven will be radically different from our lives on earth, but let's just try to imagine how God exists in heaven. Take for example, how does God eat in heaven? Does He eat? Is food needed in heaven? There's no death in heaven and so it seems our new bodies will be sustained by God Himself and at least God does not need to eat food. He is perfectly sufficient and not dependent upon anything. What clothes does God wear in heaven? The Bible says that God is spirit and Revelation speaks of Him robed in majestic celestial light and in heaven there is no sun for God's presence illuminates all of heaven. He has no need of clothes as He has no fleshly body to cover from nakedness or from cold. How does God communicate in heaven? Does He speak in an audible voice like us? For us on earth we have these vocal chords that produce vibrations in the

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air and hit against the ear drums of others and those vibrations are interpreted by our brains as words which carry meaning. It's a very sloppy process and often meaning and intention get lost in the process. But I imagine that God in heaven communicates perfectly, commanding His angels and communing with the saints in perfect harmony and without confusion. So you get the idea. Now consider for a moment that this holy God who lives perfectly in heaven in all harmony beauty and order—He takes the initiative to set all of that aside to come to earth as a human being, to take on a body of flesh that gets dirty and feels pain and gets tired, and He has to wear clothes that get soiled and worn out, and He goes through the awkward stages of childhood and adolescence, and He attempts to talk with people who misunderstand Him and reject Him and slander Him, and He's arrested and beaten and spit on by His own creation, and ultimately killed as a common criminal. God in His love for fallen man, set aside His own comfort to reach out to us. The Incarnation, the story of Christmas, is at its core a call to missions. God has set the precedent of setting aside His own preferences and reaching out of His comfort zone for the sake of drawing others close to Him.

Look back at v.22--we see a complete picture of the Trinity and how it connects with the church: Paul writes, "In Christ we are being built together as a dwelling place for God by the Spirit" —In Christ, for God, by the Spirit. Often I hear people make the statement, "The church is more than a building", which is true but saying the church is more than a building is like saying the sun is more than a light bulb, or the Pacific Ocean is more than a puddle. The church is not just more than a building—it is a lot more! The church is a group of diverse people who because of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit are being built together as a dwelling place for God. The church building is not these four walls around us, but it's you and me and everyone else in our community who comes to Christ, no matter what their background, no matter what the color of their skin, no matter how much or how little money they have, no matter if they speak English, Spanish, or Chinese whether male or female, whether teenagers or the elderly, whether sick or blind or healthy, whether you're a doctor or janitor or housewife or unemployed—it doesn't matter. When you have Jesus Christ as the cornerstone of your faith and the Bible as the foundation, we share something deeper than any human category and something much greater than just being inside the same building. In Christ we come as one family in the household of God to worship together. And it's in the midst of the unity—a unity that is so completely foreign to our world a Spirit-led miracle of oneness — that God looks upon and says, "That is where I am going to live and where I will show my glory because the world is going to take notice that there's something different going on here." It's in the unity of the church that God dwells and reveals His glory! The unity of the church is our greatest apologetic, it is our strongest witness to our community, and it is the most effective means of evangelism to a lost and broken world.

We have a dilemma here at Highlands—each year we lose young people who progress through the high school youth group, who are generally excited and sincere about their faith in God, they graduate from high school, maybe hang around the youth group for another year or so, but then because they

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have developed so few adult connections they feel out of place and not sure how they fit in with the rest of the church body. It's not long after this that they just sort of drift off and lose contact with the church and with their faith. We must strive for unity. We cannot take the easy way out and say, "young people go worship in the back of the church in your style of preference and the older people do it the way we like over here" and be satisfied in that. That's not a compromise, that's a tragedy. Not only do we rob each other of the needs of family, but it's a terrible witness to our community—even in the church it seems that birds of a feather flock together, imagine a family in a home where when it comes to dinner time, the parents prepare a meal and sit down to eat in the dining room while the kids prepare their own preference of food and go off and eat in the back of the house. While that may indeed happen more and more these days, no one could look at that family and say it's acting as a healthy family. We'd agree that there's something wrong going on here. There's a brokenness here that is not right and a lack of order to the home that I would not want to model my family after. A healthy family is one where all generations, from the youngest toddler to the oldest great grandparent, love and respect and grow from one another in unity. Younger generations are starving for wisdom and guidance and mentors they can talk to about the struggles of growing up and role models of how to become an adult. And older generations need youth to maintain a spirit of vitality and usefulness and assurance that my life is helping shape the next generation and my life has real purpose. We all want this in our homes and we should all want this in our church.

So how does this happen? Unity requires a willingness on everyone's part to say that my preferences of worship style are not really that important in the big picture of things. Happiness in life is not found in always getting my way, but rather in showing love to others and reaching out in whatever way I can to help others draw closer to God and experience the same grace He has shown to me. As long as we're united on the same foundation of the Bible with Christ as the cornerstone and God is at the center of our worship, then I don't really care what type of songs we sing or what clothes we wear. I don't have all the answers for how this is going to be achieved here at Highlands, but it starts with asking God to reveal to me people in my own life that I can take the initiative to reach out to in love. Maybe there's reconciliation that needs to happen with someone in the church or within my own family and I need to take the initiative to make it happen? Or maybe there's someone who just seems to be alone that I can reach out to and introduce myself and help them feel welcomed? Maybe there's a group of people, a different generation or with a different skin color than my own, who I don't know all that well and God is calling me to take a risk and take the initiative to build a friendship there? Or maybe God is calling me to open my home for a Bible study or a fellowship group to come over and build relationships in my neighborhood? Let us not settle for compromises in unity, but rather strive and pray together as one family for God to build the unity of His church. He wants to do it and He will do it for His glory!