Hello and welcome to Monday’s foundations podcast. My name is Liam; I’m part of the team here at STC and it’s a real honour to be able to share with you this week as we dig into God’s word and look to Jesus.

Last week, Alan did a brilliant job kicking us off on our journey through Ephesians – this amazing letter that Paul writes to the church there.  There’s so much we could take from these incredible passages but simply each day this week, we’re going to focus on one verse and we’re going to be considering this word: hope.

The Bible defines hope as a confident expectation or assurance about what is yet to come, about what our future holds. We live in challenging times. We’re on the brink of a general election. There is much division and unrest in our nation, in our politics, and in our communities. And at such a time as this, it seems that now more than ever people need to know that there is hope. That there is one we can trust completely. That there is one who has secured for us an eternal future with Him. That this hope has a name and that his name is Jesus.

As a church, our vision this year is to invite others to join us and grow, to experience and to know this hope that only Jesus can bring. Hope – it’s our theme this Advent and Christmas season. So it seems timely for us this week as we look at these scriptures which beautifully reveal Jesus to us to ask: how does He bring us hope, and how can we share that with others?

REFLECTION:

Today’s passage is Ephesians 2: 11-16. Here’s our focus verse for today:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Ephesians is a letter written primarily to the Gentiles, the non Jews.  In the Old Testament these were people groups who were outside of the covenant God had made with his people. Paul describes how these were a  people who at one time were called the ‘uncircumcised’, were ‘separated’, were  ‘alienated’, were considered  as ‘strangers’, as outsiders to the people of God and the promises He made to them. Paul writes that these were a people ‘without hope’.

Does that sound familiar today?

The Ephesians here represent the entire non Jewish population of that time. In essence the vast majority of the world’s population who were at one time seemingly far off from God. And whilst that was true then, and the Christian faith has since grown rapidly and is indeed flourishing in certain parts of the world, we still of course know that there are many parts of the world, and for us personally many places, many people who whether it’s through their own choices or through circumstances appear ‘far off’ from God.

‘But now…’ Paul begins our focus verse we these two words and in doing so he reveals to us why we have hope in Jesus.

Something has fundamentally changed. The old way has passed, Paul is saying. And something new is here. And that something is Jesus coming to the world which we await again throughout Advent and celebrate this Christmas. That through Jesus, through God himself coming to live amongst us and through his subsequent death and resurrection, those who were ‘once far off have been brought near’. Those who were once outsiders now have access to Him through the ‘blood of Christ’, through what Jesus did and won for us on the cross.

Why do we have hope? Because the ‘far offs’ were us. That was a reality for us until we met Jesus. For me, it was on an Alpha course, 7 and a half years ago. How about you? Can you point to the time when you realised that you were no longer an outsider and that through Jesus, God loves you and he welcomes you in. Let’s take some time to reflect on that today and let’s give thanks.

But let’s also reflect, particularly in these challenging and seemingly uncertain times, that there are so many people who we know who appear ‘far off‘. The ones who say they don’t need God.