WEBVTT

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In Jesus name.

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Amen.

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Our devotion for this morning comes from Paul's epistle to the

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Ephesians chapter 2 and specifically verses 14 through 16. For he

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himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in

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his flesh.

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The dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of Commandments,

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expressed in ordinances. That he might create in himself

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one new man in the place of two, so making peace.

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And by reconcile is supposed to God and one body to the Cross, thereby

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killing the hostility.

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Ephesians chapter 1, Paul speaks to us about our eternal destiny and

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purpose. The inheritance for us

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won by Christ on the cross.

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Paul then is not talking to us about the new thing that Jesus is doing

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for us.

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Something evolutionary.

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That God's promises, go beyond what could ever been imagined under the

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old Covenant and is found in the new person in Jesus Christ.

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And in this new person is now the seasation of all distinctions between

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Jew and Gentile.

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And while this was surprising to hear by Paul hears. Prophetic witness bears, witness

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about the coming of the Christ.

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And that this plan, which was planned before the foundation of the whole

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world was witnessed by the prophet, Isaiah in chapter 43 regarding the

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university of salvation for all people.

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Isaiah writes,

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Remember, not the former things nor consider the things of old. A few

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verses

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after it. Behold, I am doing a new thing.

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Now it Springs forth.

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Do you not perceive it?

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I'll make away in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

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God's people perceive the new thing which he was planning for since the

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foundation of the world. The old hostilities and divisions would seize

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as the wild branch of the Gentiles

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would be grafted into God's vineyard as God, the master vinedresser

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had always planned for the inclusion of the Gentiles in his salvation

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plan.

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But in the fullness of time to take place.

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Paul knew the fullness of time had taken place because now the

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Christ has come.

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And so now to the ministry to the Gentiles.

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And again Isaiah bears witness of this newness of God in Isaiah 65. For

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behold

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I am make a new heavens and a new Earth and the former things do not

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be remembered or come into mind.

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Paul

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this is a new heavens and a new Earth is now and not yet reality. But

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it is fully expressed

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now in the church. As God's divine plan through his son

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Jesus Christ has come to make all things new. Christ himself speaks

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about this

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in the gospel of Matthew. In the parable of the wineskins.

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Neither is the new wine put into Old wineskins

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if it is the skin's bursts of the one is spilt in the skins are

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destroyed.

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But new wine is to is to be put into fresh wine skins so that both are

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preserved.

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The old Covenant, the law itself was the problem for God's people.

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The purpose of the law was to divide.

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It was to divide God between humanity and between two different groups

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of sinful people, Jew and Gentile. This wall of hostility that brought sin and death.

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But that this law divided, one group of men, the Jews and one simple

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group of men Gentiles is now abolished. Jew and Gentile, now being

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brought together into one body of the new man, Jesus Christ.

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You often look

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to the old

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for familiarity and for comfort.

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For the Greeks and the Gentiles

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they look to the old things of their civilization, their past

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accomplishments, and past glories. They saw time a cyclical as going

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through cycles.

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And yet, nothing could surpass what they had accomplished by their

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cultural inheritance to pride in what was old. For the Jew too they

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took pride in what was old. In a pride that God himself had worked among them and

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that he let them out of Egypt and did mighty works and signs, it was a

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point of pride.

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And yet God abolished all of what was old to bring in the new. Jesus

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says in revelation: Behold, I am making all things new.

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So God abolished the distinction between Jew and Gentile and made

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something new through his son Jesus Christ. In Christ

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the law is abolished for Christ fulfilled the law and its demands

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perfectly.

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The problem of the division caused by the law is no more.

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As all things are united in Christ. Not only

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does God call us to repent in trusting and past glories and

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accomplishments they cause us to look forward to new things to put on

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our new self.

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As Paul says in Ephesians chapter 4, put on the new self created after

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the righteousness of God and true righteousness and holiness

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God abolished the old order of things. It put the death all

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divisions and hostilities through himself.

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And in him and in Christ, our sins are no more, he remembers them

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no more.

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He sees your new self-created in the waters of Holy Baptism, washed and

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cleaned and righteous

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in his site. This is you in Jesus Christ, a new creation.

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And when you have the old, why do you seek after. When

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you have the new

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why would you seek after the old?

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And maybe the modern version of the parable should be this?

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Why would he who has a Nintendo switch

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decide to go back to the Super Nintendo?

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The point being what God has given you in Jesus Christ, which is new

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is surpassing of anything that is old. Christ has visited you and he has

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given you salvation he speaks to you new mercies every morning.

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And God's word is not still not dusty is not to be put away on a shelf

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and forgotten as old testimony.

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But it is a living active witness of the prophets and apostles given

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to you

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and the present to remind you of your ultimate destiny of your eternal

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citizenship found not in the old heavens, and in the old Earth, but in

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the new heavens, and in the new Earth. A new body in the resurrection

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of the dead.

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Behold Christ has come to make all things new in Jesus name. Amen.