This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to Daily Drive Time Devotion, we are looking at verses 11
to 16 of Ephesians 2 today, day 4 and I look at this chapter, and we are going
to find as we begin in verse 11 that Paul is repeating a theme, Paul repeats the
theme of death and life twice in this chapter, now the second time isn't any
louder than what we've just studied the last three days, how could it be that
this picture of you were dead in your transgressions and sins but you've been
made alive with Christ, so it's not any louder but it is broader, in Ephesians
chapter 2 Paul begins by telling us what salvation means for the individual and
then beginning in verse 11 he begins to point to what salvation means for us as
a group, a fellowship, a body and he pictures for us here the fact that Christ's
life divides human history, the history of the world changed when Jesus came
into this world and the phrase that he uses that we're going to see when we get
down to verse 13 is that the way the history has changed is we've gone from
being far off to being brought near, let's read what verses 11 and 12 have to
say leading up to that verse, Ephesians 2, "Therefore remember that formerly
you, you who are gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call
themselves the circumcised, that done in the body by the hands of men, remember
that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in
Israel and foreigners to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God
in the world. " He says in these verses I want you to remember we've been
talking about spiritual life history this week and part of my life history is
remembering, remembering who I was before I came to know Christ, that without
Christ I wouldn't have had the opportunity to come to know him and in these
verses Paul talks about two groups of people, both need God, he talks about the
Jews and the Gentiles, he talks about the circumcision and the uncircumcised,
those who were circumcised according to God's command in the Old Testament and
those who are uncircumcised, the Gentiles and he talks about them in terms of
being near and far away, the Jews were God's people but the Gentiles were far
away from God, that's how they saw themselves and so he says in Christ those who
were once far away have now been brought near, far off he talks about the
Gentiles, he's referring to the fact that those who had not been Jews were
socially considered out of the picture, religiously considered out of the
picture where God's love was concerned, they were not part of the chosen few,
they were not the part of the exclusive club of God's blessing and the same is
true of all of us until we come to know Christ, we are we're far off, we're in a
private Siberia of cold hearts and empty lives, now he's talking to the
Ephesians here and he talks to them as if they are all Gentiles, so many people
say is that true? Were all the Ephesians Gentiles?

Well we read in the book of Acts that the Jews rejected the gospel when Paul
went to Ephesus and so Paul took it to the Gentiles, the non-Jews, there were a
few Jewish believers that are mentioned but the vast majority in this church
were not Jews, they were Gentiles and so they knew what it was to be far off,
what does that feel like? How cold is that Siberia that we talked about a moment
ago?