The Heart of a Stranger

Happy feast! Thank you to those who brought that musical offering on our behalf. It was beautiful. The arrangements were beautiful. The piano was beautiful. It was such a joy to be able to be here and to be able to celebrate this day. Sometimes it's fun to imagine yourself in the position of some of the people that we read about in the Bible. Put yourself in their shoes. I do that sometimes. And this day is an interesting day because it's typically associated with Israel passing through the Red Sea. We know they came out. They went through there just before the dawn, and they come out at dawn, and the waters come back, and the Egyptians are buried in the sea. You can imagine the joy in the celebration. We read Miriam's song and Moses' song and the exuberance and the joy that they would have had there in that day. You can imagine, maybe after going through all of that, that day was a little bit of a reset, and maybe they took a little bit of a down day. They just took a second to breathe. And then the next day, you wake up, and you're looking out over the sea where your enemies have been buried. And you turn around, and you look off into a wilderness. It's like, oh, well, this has been great. But now what? We're told in Exodus 15. We're told about some of what came next. Let's go over to Exodus 15, verse 22. We're a little hard on the Israelites sometimes, but I think maybe we can show them a little grace here. God shows them a little grace. We know they complained a lot. We know that. But even in some of their early complaints, God was bearing with them, and he was okay with that. He seems to have understood. Exodus 15, verse 22.

Chapter 16, verse 1.

Then the whole congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

They were having new experiences, let's say. This is not what they were used to. They're saying, what is going on? God's freed us here, and now it's, well, we just don't even know what to do with this. It was freedom. They actually had freedom, but they walked out into freedom, and it was very uncomfortable. It was very uncomfortable.

After the Red Sea, they found themselves as pilgrims, sojourners, strangers. We read in 1 Corinthians 10. You don't have to go over there, but 1 Corinthians 10, verse 2, it says, They were all baptized into Moses under the cloud and in the sea, and they ate the same spiritual bread and drank the same spiritual drink. All of us on Passover, when we come together and we eat the same spiritual bread and the same spiritual drink, all of us who have been baptized, not with the baptism of Moses, but with the baptism into the death of Jesus Christ, all of those things are pointing forward to us, for example. And when they come out the other side, sometimes when we come out the other side, perhaps this is your experience after baptism, you come out the other side and you are into this new life. You're walking in newness of life. Israel was walking in newness of life, and it was very uncomfortable.

Let's go to Genesis 12, because we see that this is just kind of the pattern. This is the story.

This is where, really, I think if we trace our roots back, this is kind of where our story starts in some ways. There's a lot before this, but this narrows into this individual, a brah, and we're later called his descendants. We're later called those who essentially can trace our line back to him through the faith that we have.

But here's the first words, the first recorded words to Abram from God are, Get out of your country from your family and from your father's house to a land that I will show you. He doesn't even tell him where. He just says, Get out of your country. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing. But the first thing he tells him is, Leave what you're comfortable with and go out into something new.

Let's go to verse 10. So, Abram does that, and not only does he do that, and he goes and he's a stranger in this land of Canaan that God tells him, Someday your people will inherit this, but not you, not yet.

He lives there a while, but then, verse 10, there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land. He was a stranger in Egypt, so he's not just a stranger in this place. Maybe he'll live in the future, that his descendants will receive, but he's a stranger in a totally foreign place. He's a stranger there in the land of Egypt. Let's go to Genesis chapter 23.

Genesis 23 and verse 4. Here, we see that Sarah has died. This is later in Abram's life. And he's in Canaan. He's in this land that God has said, it's going to be your land. But he's trying to find a plot of ground to be able to bury his wife. And in verse 4, he says to those that he's buying the field from, he says, I am a foreigner and a visitor among you.

Give me a property for a burial place among you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight. He's trying to buy a piece of ground. The only piece of ground that Abraham ever got was a burial plot. That's it. He was a foreigner. He said, I'm a stranger here. And we see this pattern then. If you look through his descendants, you think about their stories. Think about Isaac. Isaac's a stranger and a foreigner continuing in this land.

He lives in Girar and Beersheba. And he's kind of pushed around by the natives who they keep claiming these wells that he's dug and these plots that he's got. And he keeps moving and moving along. He's a stranger there. Jacob. Jacob grows up in Canaan, but he's pretty quickly run off and he goes back to his mom's homeland. And you would think, oh, he's going back to his ancestral home. No, he's going and he's living as a stranger there. He's a hired servant more than anything. He lives as a stranger in that land. Even in Canaan, go over to chapter 37.

We're going to move through the story here pretty quickly. Genesis 37, it's interesting because he is described here in Genesis 37, verse 1. Now Jacob dwelt in the land where his father was a stranger in the land of Canaan. And you see this term being used here over and over this ger, this is the Hebrew word. He's a stranger living in this place, the same way his father was, the same way his grandfather was.

And then you think about Israel's continued lineage from there. Joseph becomes a stranger in Egypt. Now, it works out pretty well for him, right? He becomes a pretty powerful guy, but he's still a stranger there. It's still not his place. And his people come, his family comes, and they live there, looking to the promised land. If you go to the very end of Genesis, one of the very last verses of Genesis, Genesis 15, verse 24, Joseph knows he's a foreigner and a stranger.

He knows he doesn't belong here. It's not his place. And Joseph said to his brethren, this is Genesis 15, verse 24, I'm dying, but God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land. He says, to the land which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry my bones up from here. He says, we're definitely getting out of here. We're going to get back to this land that God has promised us. I don't belong here.

He makes some promise 400 years later, right? Carry my bones out of this place. I don't want to be here. And they do. We get record of that in the Exodus. It's recorded. They collected the bones of Joseph and they brought him back to Canaan because he lived in a place he didn't belong. But we're told this. Genesis chapter 15, let's go back because in Genesis chapter 15 we see that this was God's plan. This is what he told them all along. Genesis 15 and verse 13. So here we see this is perhaps on the first night to be much observed that's recorded in the Bible.

Here in the thick of this dream and this prophecy that God is telling to Abram, he says, verse 13, Then he said to Abram, Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. He says, They will be strangers. Why would God do that?

It's what he chose to do. It's an interesting part of the story. But we see this pattern with not only with Abram and not only with the Israelites, but with all of his descendants in between. They all live as strangers. They all live as foreigners. They're all out of place. They all don't quite belong where they're at.

I think there's a reason. Let's go over to Exodus chapter 22.

Exodus chapter 22.

So, here in Exodus 22, now they've come—this is maybe the first Pentecost after leaving Egypt. Okay, so they're really just, you know, a few weeks down the road from having left Egypt. They receive the Ten Commandments, and God is giving them some additional commands. We know they are 40 years away from actually being in Canaan. That wasn't the intent. The intent was that they would get there a little sooner than that, but we know they rejected that. But still, they're here. They've just come out of Egypt. God's giving them some laws. And look at the provisions that he makes for people. These are revolutionary. Exodus 22 and verse 21. Here in the midst of some moral and ceremonial principles—it's the subheader in my Bible—verse 21, he says, "'You shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him,' and he tells him why. For you were strangers in the land of Egypt." It's a fascinating study if you look at the laws of the ancient Near East and you look at how they treated people. It varied by class. It varied by usually social class and wealth. Hammurabi's code has different treatments. They sort of had three strata there. And if you're this one and you do something bad, well, you can probably pay it off. And if you're this one, it's a little more severe. But if you're this one and you do something wrong, you probably just get killed. And the Hittites had similar laws. The Syrian laws are the same way. It kind of depends where you stack up in society and there's different laws for you. We're used to, in principle, in theory, that there is one law for the land. But that was not the way that laws worked then. And here God says, no, we're not doing that. He said, you shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. And as you look through the rest of God's law and you look at the way that he commands instruction about strangers, he often says there's one law for the native and the stranger. And he has specific protections that he elaborates for strangers. We'll look at some of those, too. God's law frequently targets the strangers. It targets the disenfranchised. You think about how it talks about widows and orphans, the powerless, those who are marginalized. He protects them. And the stated rationale here is because you were strangers. Because you were those people.

23. Let's go down to 23 in verse 9. So same page in my Bible.

It's a similar command to what we just read, but Exodus 23 in verse 9, he says, also you shall not oppress a stranger. And he adds to this, he says, for you know the heart of a stranger.

And he says, you know the heart of a stranger. You know how it feels because you were strangers. He made them strangers in order for them to understand what that's like. What it's like to be, you know, facing this unknown wilderness, where you're probably a little powerless, where you don't quite have it in you to navigate it. He says, you know the heart of a stranger. You know how it feels. All of us have probably had some experience like that. We've had something that we've gone through where we can connect with that. Right? And we probably live that every day, to some sense. For me in my life, it was, I grew up going to the church school. I went to Imperial schools, for those of you that know what Imperial schools is. It was the school that was funded, created by our church organization. And I went there in the 80s and 90s. I started going there when I was in kindergarten, and I went there until the end of my sophomore year of high school. It was a little school. So I was surrounded by people that I had known for as long as I could remember. And it was people who all, we all believed the same thing. You know, none of us were weird for keeping the Sabbath. We didn't have any Friday night sports conflicts. We, you know, we all did all the same stuff. We were all on the same page, we thought. It was very comfortable. It was very easy, right? And then, you know, there were some changes and things, and the school was shut down at the end of my sophomore year. So come my junior year of high school, I walk into a new school, and it's not, it's not just like I moved and went to a new school in a new place. It wasn't just that I had new teachers and new classes and new whatever. I had people who had no idea how weird I was.

They didn't know that I wasn't gonna eat these foods or that I was gonna, you know, not be around on Fridays, and why can't you come hang out on Friday night, and had to answer all these questions. I mean, I know all of you who are in high school, you already have to deal with all this, so you're like, oh, you're so spoiled. But, but I'm just telling you, for me, when I ended up in that environment, it made me realize just how drastically different I was, and how out of place I was, believing these things that we believe, right? Walking this way, living this way. It was, it was very different. And for me, it really solidified that sense that, oh, I am a stranger here, right? This is, this is just different. And I'm never gonna quite fit in with the flow of things and the way that this world works, as long as I believe this, and as long as I live this. We know the heart of a stranger in that sense. To understand it, you have to live it. And so they lived it. Their history, their whole history, Israel's whole history, was living as strangers somewhere, right? Being oppressed. And then coming out of it, now they continue to live it in their, in their wilderness. But it wasn't even just in their wilderness. Let's go over to Leviticus 25. So the story progresses. We see, we see how God uses this idea of strangeness, of being foreign, of being something different. Leviticus 25-23 is pretty fascinating. God says to them, the land shall not be sold permanently. So we're in the thick of land laws, the most exciting portions of the Bible. No, this is, this is really, it's really something. He says, the land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is mine. He says, well, you know, you've come into this land, but he says the land is mine. And he says, even, even though you're in this land, he says you are strangers. He tells them you're strangers and sojourners with me in the land. The land is God's. And he's making the point they're still strangers. Even in the promised land, God had promised this land to them, and they get to live in it, they get to dwell in it, they get to be there. But he says, you're still strangers.

And it's, you look at it and you say, well, is he like withholding it from them? Is he trying to show them something and make them uncomfortable somehow? No, no, he's, he's, he's, he's telling them the land is his. It's his land, right? It's, it's not their land. Strangers, the aliens, the resident aliens that came and lived among them, they had no land, no inheritance, no rights to any of it. And what he's, what he's showing them here is really that even though he has granted them inheritance and given them land, it's still not really theirs. He doesn't want them becoming self-sufficient. He doesn't want them thinking, oh, well, I've got this, and I can now take care of myself. He made them strangers to show them that they are dependent on him. And so we, we see here that this, this whole idea of being a stranger is about dependence, right? The aliens, the resident aliens that would come in and live, that's what stranger most often means here, that this particular word. It, those people were dependent on the society around them. They were dependent on, often on, on the kindness of the people there. They weren't as well connected, right? If you were an Israelite living in Israel, you were well connected to what was going on in your village, in your society, the priesthood, the Levitical system. You would, you'd be kind of tied in. If something wasn't quite right, you'd be able to reach out and, and say, hey, let's work this out. Let's figure this out. You knew who to talk to. If you're a foreigner and a stranger, and you come in, and you're in this environment, you're really dependent on the people around you to help you through difficult situations, to help make some of those things happen. You are not self-sufficient. You're dependent. And what God is, is really, really emphasizing here to them is, the land is His. You're still dependent on Him. In our lives, this is, and this wasn't just about land, right, this is about life in general. We're still dependent on Him.

In, in this life, we are strangers. Let's go to Deuteronomy 10. Deuteronomy 10, here we see another passage about God that, that really starts to, it starts to, to really make sense, I think, when you, when you think about this strangeness as being connected to dependence and relationship with God. This, that frames this passage. Deuteronomy 10 and verse 17. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome. So here we're, we're in this passage, it's going to, it's praising God, it's extolling God for how awesome and how good He is. And, and it's going to call out, like, His best qualities, right? That's what we're doing.

He shows no partiality nor takes a bribe.

He administers justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. See, it's about dependence. God loves the stranger and provides for the stranger. God provides. Verse 19, therefore love the stranger. Again, He commands it. Therefore love the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. It's praising God's greatness and it says, one of the things that makes God great is that He loves strangers. He loves those who are, in this context, He's talking about widows, orphans, strangers. These are, these are the powerless. These are the people that need God and know it. And that's why He loves them. They know it. They're so dependent on Him. They have a relationship.

And so He provides for them. He loves them.

Let's go over to 1 Chronicles 29. Deuteronomy 28. Let's go over to Deuteronomy 28. There's a passage here, sometimes Deuteronomy 28.43.

Most of the time when you read about strangers in the Old Testament, it's a, it's a very, it has very positive connotations. Here in 28.43, sometimes we read, we read this and it sounds like the alien's the bad guy. It sounds like the stranger's the bad guy. It says, this is in the, now keep in mind, this is in the blessings and cursing section. So here at Deuteronomy, it gets to the place where God is saying, you're going to be blessed if you obey me in the land. You're going to be cursed if you don't. And here in the cursings, one of the cursings is, uh, the alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. And it's easy to look at that and read and say, oh well, see the, they're kind of the bad guys. Right? But that verse is actually really not about the stranger at all. It's about Israel's obedience, right? This is blessings and cursings. He's saying, if you don't obey me, then the natural order of things where the person who is generally the most powerless is, is servant to and dependent on the native in the land, he's saying it's, that's going to, that's going to actually reverse. And those of you who are natives in the land, you're actually going to be more subject to the people that are normally totally on the outs. They're normally powerless. But it's not about the stranger, is it? It's about obedience to God. Sometimes in certain movements in our country, there's this idea that, well, if, you know, because the alien will rise higher and higher above you, like, well, make sure, make sure you keep them out, right? But, but when you think about it, that almost runs contrary to what God is saying, right? If the idea is, well, we certainly don't want to see this fulfilled, so we'll remove the means for God to be able to punish us, right? That's how the logic flows. It's not really about that, right? The principle is, if you're obeying God, if you're obeying God, then there will be strangers in your midst because they want to be in your midst, right? To learn about your God. That's the principle in Israel, right? And you shouldn't have to worry about that. It's really only when you become disobedient to God that you need to worry about the powerless, those who are normally powerless, rising above you.

Let's go over to 1 Chronicles 29. 1 Chronicles 29.

Here we see a statement from David, who clearly understood...

he understood dependence on God. Sometimes you think about David, and you think about the fact that maybe he was the only person in Israel who had the Spirit of God. And you think about how strange that would have been. You're a total stranger in that sense. If you're the only person in your whole circle who is Spirit-led, some of you have had that experience, where most of your day-to-day is among people who are not Spirit-led. And you are the stranger in that sense. David was probably that guy. He was around... there were certainly a lot of people around, many who were God-fearing, who tried to follow God, who loved the law in that same way. But we have no evidence that anybody, except for David himself, had the Spirit of God. So he understood what it was to be a stranger in that way. But here in 1 Chronicles 29, in verse 13, the context here is that David's been told he's not going to build the temple. Solomon, his son, is going to build the temple. But David says, okay, well, if I can't build it, I at least want to collect all the material. I want to get all the stuff together. And when they get all the stuff together, it's a tremendous offering that Israel has brought. And he writes a hymn, it seems, here, and he's overwhelmed by it. Verse 13, Now therefore our God, we thank you, and praise your glorious name. But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly is this? Verse 14. Well, yeah, verse 14. For all things come from you, and of your own we have given you. So see, he understands this dependence relationship. He understands that the land is not his, the land is not theirs, that there are strangers in the land. And he says that, verse 15, for we are aliens and pilgrims before you. As were all our fathers, he knows, he knows the history, and he understands what God has told him. Here it seems he's lifting from, he's quoting Leviticus 25, and he's recalling that and reciting that to God and saying, we are strangers among you. We're strangers here in your land. We have all of this to give to the temple because you have blessed us with what you provide, and we're totally dependent on you. He got all of that, and he connects it back to this fact that they were strangers in the land, they were pilgrims, that they always had been. As were all our fathers, he says.

Let's go to Psalm 39. We see him, we see him echo this idea.

Psalm 39, verse 12.

He understands not only, this is a Psalm of David, it says, verse 12, he says, hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry. So he's crying out. Here he is in a moment not of great thanksgiving and not of abundance, but of powerlessness and of helplessness.

And he says, give ear to my cry. Do not be silent at my tears, for I am a stranger with you, a sojourner, as all my fathers were. Almost the same words, right? So he gets that relationship. He understands, you know, he is a sojourner, he's a pilgrim, he's a stranger, and he's totally dependent on God for help in these sorts of dire situations. That's how he lived. He knew powerlessness. He knew total dependence, which is crazy because he was the king, right? But he understood his real state before God, and he was able to express it here and demonstrate it and what that looks like. All this to say, the people of God, you and me, were not called to be at home in this world. That's not a luxury that we're going to have. So, maybe that's not good news for everybody. Maybe nobody wants to hear, you're going to be uncomfortable your whole life. But that's what we're called to. Matthew 8, verse 20, I'll just remind you of it. It says, there's a disciple that wants to come and follow Jesus Christ, and he says, the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.

That's his way of saying, there's nowhere in this existence, this human existence, where it's really going to be home. It's just never going to quite land that way.

This should shape us in at least a couple of ways that I want to look at here, as we wrap things up. It should shape us in probably a lot of ways, but we'll talk about two.

The first one, let's go back to Leviticus chapter 19.

The first mindset that we have to have, and this is something we've already talked about, but our mindset has to be that we love the stranger. Love the stranger. Leviticus chapter 19, because as we sort of look out and we realize, okay, we're walking through this wilderness, and it's not a hopeless wilderness. That's the other part of the story. We see as Israel goes through that wilderness that God is with them, caring for them constantly. They didn't see it, but we should see it. But we're to love the stranger, because this is their wilderness. If you encounter people who are in that stranger territory, they're in some sort of wilderness themselves, and you and I should understand that because you and I should be living it. But this is their wilderness. Leviticus 19, verse 33, says, I was in 20, it says, And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself.

If you look at verse 18, Leviticus 19, 18, so just a few verses back, You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. This is the second great commandment. And what we read down here in verse 34 is exactly the same words, except it says, love the stranger. You shall love him as yourself. Right? He's saying, it's because this is God's mindset, right? This is what we read in Deuteronomy 10, right? God loves the stranger. This is God's mindset. That's how he thinks. He loves his neighbor as himself. He loves his enemies. He loves strangers. He loves the powerless. He says here, love the stranger. That's got to be our mindset as well. Malachi 3.

Malachi 3.

And verse 5. Because he says, if we don't, there are some consequences that are maybe not so great.

Malachi 3 and verse 5. The beginning of Malachi 3 is where it says, I will send my messenger, and he'll prepare the way before me. It's looking ahead, looking to the future, looking to Jesus Christ coming. And who can endure the day of his coming? Verse 2. But verse 5, it says, I will come near you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against sorcerers, against adulterers, against perjurers. And you're going through this list, and you're like, these are, okay, these are some pretty bad people. Against those who exploit wage earners and widows and orphans, and against those who turn away an alien. It's that same word for stranger.

It's interesting, he lumps all of those in together, right? He groups all of these people as sort of, these are the people that he's coming for judgment with. And we get it sometimes when it's like, okay, yep, sorcerers, yeah, those, we get it. There's a lot about sorcery in the Bible that we understand. Adulterers, okay, perjurers, interesting. Those who exploit wage earners, widows and orphans, right now it's talking about exploitation of the powerless. And he says, and those who turn away an alien. He lumps that in with all of those. And he tells us why. Because they do not fear me. The fear of God and His love in us is going to manifest as love toward all of these groups, right? Including strangers. So what do we mean by strangers? Right? It's a little bit like asking, well then, who is my neighbor? Right? Jesus had a pretty good answer and a story for that. And he actually used, like, the most horrible of strangers to the Israelites as his example in there, right? The Samaritans. But if the fear of God and His love is in us, then it's going to manifest towards strangers. And strangers can be all sorts of people, right? Within our midst, right, sometimes we're going to have visitors. And when we have visitors among us, they're just part of us. That's how it is. Some of you have, we call, non-member spouses or family, right? But they're part of us. That's...

There's really no strangeness in that, right? Sometimes strangers means literal immigrants.

Mostly, though, the way to think about it is strangers means those who are powerless among us. The second thing, right, so the first thing is, love the stranger. But the second thing is, be the stranger, right? That's really... that's not so much a thing we need to try to do as a recognition of what we are. It's a mindset that we have to embrace. We need to be the stranger, because this is our wilderness. Revelation 18, talking about Babylon, God says, come out of her, my people. It's kind of the same thing that he told to Abraham, right? Get out of your country. Get out of it. Come out. Be separate. It's not your home.

Let's go over to Hebrews 11.

Hebrews 11 talks about these, all these people who died in faith.

Hebrews 11 and verse 13.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. You're either at home or you're seeking a homeland, and we need to be those. We need to realize and internalize that we're those who are seeking a homeland. We're not home. Our homes, we are blessed with some of the best homes that humans have ever had the opportunities to live in, right? Even the worst of our homes in this country are better than most homes that most people have ever lived in. We have some amazing homes, and they can be very comfortable, right? But that's where we tabernacle, in a sense. They're not our homes. This is not home.

Verse 15, he says, and truly if they had called to mind, if those people who confess that they were strangers and they're looking for a homeland, it says, and truly, if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. There would have been opportunity. You and I, if we really want it, we have opportunity to return back to what we came out of. Hopefully nobody wants that. Hopefully nobody looks longingly back at that, right? But he says if it had, if they had called it to mind, they would have had opportunity. Do you ever call it to mind? Do we ever call that other way back to mind as something that we want to return to? That's not who we're supposed to be. The world that we're part of is not what we're supposed to be. It's not our home. It's not our environment. Verse 16, But now they desire a better, that is a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. Again, God provides for the strangers. You want to be the stranger. You want to be the stranger because God's creating a place for all of the strangers to eventually dwell in. And he's going to provide it if we're dependent on him, if we have that relationship with him, if we've truly come out of Egypt, if we're truly walking forward into this wilderness, dependent on him, relying on him, recognizing our status as strangers before him. There is, there is, though, well, and it's kind of beautiful to say that he's, he is not ashamed to be called their God.

You know, he's not ashamed of us. Let's go to Ephesians 2.

Ephesians 2 and verse 11.

There is one place, one place where we're not strangers.

In Ephesians 2.11, this whole section is really, it takes this idea and kind of blows it up in New Testament imagery and New Testament terms. Ephesians 2 and verse 11, he says, therefore, remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh, he's writing to this church in Ephesus, church, mostly, mostly a Gentile church. Remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision made in the flesh by hands, that at that time you were without Christ being aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants, having no hope and without God in the world. He says, that's what you were. That's what we all were. Not, he says, you're either strangers to God, right? He calls them strangers from the covenant. They were separated from God. They were cut off. And so, God would see them as total strangers. People who, not strangers in the sense that they knew that they were wanderers, right? Strangers in this world, but they were strangers from God. That's what they were. That's what we all have been.

Verse 19, here he says, now therefore you are no longer strangers. This is, this is it. This is the one context where we're not strangers.

He says, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints. We are, we're called citizens of the kingdom of God. That is home, right? That's where, that's where we're no longer strangers, because we're members of the family. We're members of the household of God. But everywhere else, let's be strangers.