Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / July 23, 2023 | Reconstructing Faith - Christian Division

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July 23, 2023 | Reconstructing Faith - Christian Division · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Morning.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to be with you.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I am a little rusty because Spencer was up here last week and um I was just determined after he spoke that he should just take my job because he did such a great great work.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: So um no, I'm I'm excited to continue this series.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: We've been going through reconstructing faith, which is looking at those who are deconstructing, right?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: That very first week we introduced that vocab word.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is sort of this questioning of traditional modes of authority and um practices within the Christian faith.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh those who are in the process of deconstructing have often um been hurt by the church or had questions of the church that were not able to be answered.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And every one of the five lessons in this series has come from basically the exit interviews.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Those who were walking away from the faith were no longer going to church, and when asked why is that the case, these were the responses that they had given.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh we have this week and the next week, and we'll finish this series.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to think back for a moment to an experience that I've never had because I'm an only child, right?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't tell, but I'm an only child.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who had siblings and grew up with them, I want you to think back to the fights that you used to have with your siblings, particularly when you were very small, right?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And how those fights seem to be like the end of the world, right?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you have children, right, that are fighting each other, the fights seem to be like the end of the world.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then the adult comes in and they just go, Why are you fighting?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's and naturally to the little kid, it's like they cut all the hair off of my Barbie, right?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or they they destroyed this thing, or you don't understand, they hit me, and then the other one is screaming that they hit them first, and it's all sort of a hot mess, but then a juice box sort of solves many evils, right?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're able to get over it or within the next few days.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: But to the parent who's come in, they look at it and they're going, why is there all this fuss?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, to a lot of people who look at the Christian faith, they are asking the question, why can't Christians just all get along with each other?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Christianity is racked with infighting and bitterness and arguments.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they range from the dramatic and sort of denomination shaking, like what's going on in the Methodist Church right now, where they are arguing about who uh is able to be counted as clergy within the denomination, all the way to the more minuscule things about people leaving church because there were too many or too few hymns or something like that.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Christians fight over a lot of different things, and one of the hard parts is that those who are on the outside, right, those who are outside of Christianity or those who have feel like they're on the outside of Christianity, they're looking internally and they're saying, why is there so much argument?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't we all just, we all say that we love Jesus.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it possible for us to just, you know, worship together?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's hard for many people to understand what's going on.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, this criticism is valid because Christians, we like to fight.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: We pick fights all the time with each other.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so this morning, what I want to look at is why can't Christians just all get along, maybe dive a bit deeper into that, investigate that question, and say that the vast majority of the time we need to calm down.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes a fight is worth it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the first things we're going to look at here is a passage in the book of Galatians.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in Galatians chapter 3.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And what Paul is doing is uh explaining to the church in Galatia, which you might remember when we were going through the book of 1 Corinthians last fall, very similar setting in the sense that it is a Gentile community, right?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And Gentile communities in the early church always had similar problems.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them were very unique, but they always had a few common denominators.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And one of them was that the gospel had been brought to a group of people that were exceedingly diverse.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was not just like the uh church in Jerusalem that was almost entirely made up of Jewish folks who had understood, who had uh believed in Jesus as the Messiah.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: But now when we go to Galatia or Corinth or Ephesus or these places, there is a multitude who have heard the gospel and are responding to it.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul is speaking in to some of the identity politics that are happening within the church in Galatia.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, since you are all one in Christ Jesus.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Earlier on in Galatians chapter three, what Paul was sort of breaking up was the understanding between the law and the Old Testament and the New Testament.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And what was going on there is he says, You were previously under the law, and that showed you the depth of your sin, but now you are under Christ, you are this new creation, and you're now under the covenant of grace.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And for those who are under this covenant of grace, he says, it is the great equalizer of all people.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is not that, in this case, there were six different significant groups that outside of the church could very easily be warring with each other.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, take the very first one, for example, the Jew or Greek, and by that we mean Jew or Gentile pagan.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: That was one of the most significant early debates in the early church.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: It happens in Acts chapter 15, where uh those who first received the gospel in Jerusalem, right, who were primarily of a Jewish descent, they just wanted the gospel to remain within the Jewish people.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then, furthermore, once it was told to them that it needed to go to the Gentiles, they wanted to put a whole lot of rules and restrictions from the Old Testament upon those who were going to believe now.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this huge debate ensues.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And these people are gathered from all over.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: All the missionaries, essentially, that had been sent out into the furthest nations were coming back to Jerusalem to convene and basically have this council to say, what does it mean for us to come together and to find unity?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you can imagine how these other organizations, I mean, slave and free being able to worship together, male and female join together in Christ.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so what's happening here is all of the things that normally divide us outside of the church are things which should be sort of subordinate to the fact that we have our identity in Christ.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we talk about unity, when we talk about infighting, the first thing is that many of the fights that are placed because of uh the way we look, how much money we make, where we live, um, who we voted for in the last election, all of those kinds of things should not be dividing within the church, not because they are not a part of our identity, but because Christ is the foremost thing that defines us.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul is working with this, right?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: He says that there is a group of people that should be able to come together to foster relationships within the church that are nigh impossible, at least they were in Galatia outside of the church.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And this is also what we see when we look to the future.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: When the Apostle John was getting his sort of IMAX tour of what heaven was going to be like in the future, he sees an amazing vision in Revelation chapter 5 and chapter 7, and they sang a new song.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slaughtered and you purchased people for God by your own blood from every tribe and language and people and nation.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: After this I looked, John says later on, and there was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to overlook these parts of Revelation because of, you know, all the seal and trumpet and end-of-the-world language that is often so interesting.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: But heaven is a collection of people who have trusted in the gospel throughout all of time, right?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Those that John is looking at right now are most likely those who died during the tribulation period.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, it is still a representative of the whole that the gospel is for everyone.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so, God be praised, heaven is going to be multicultural, not everyone is going to look like you, and that's fantastic.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so, one of the things that we can often lean into, right, is this desire for unity, but part of that is it means that we are setting aside other sorts of differences.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Critically, it is not though like we are on a scavenger hunt and trying to collect them all, right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: That we need to have somebody of every sort of tribe, tongue, and nation that is coming to our church, right?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that we might boast that we are, you know, unified or something like that, but rather join together in Christ when those who are of these different walks of life come together, we say, Welcome, right?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: You love Jesus, I love Jesus.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: We can worship together, even though outside of church, you and I might not have been great friends, but because we are both clothed in Christ, that's possible.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is what heaven is going to look like.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so already we can, I hope, begin to see and understand that there are times when church divides over things like this.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that is unhealthy, and that is ungodly and unholy.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: But it also goes one step deeper, which is it's not just identity items, right?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Again, the the wealth, the status, the job, the way we look, our skin color, um, where our home is at, all of these kinds of things.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it can also just come down to personal preferences.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where I ask you to sort of remember, think back to almost a year ago, we're going to revisit a passage briefly from 1 Corinthians that we talked about that spoke into what was happening at the church in Corinth, where they had already, you know, joined together as Jews and Greeks and slaves and free and men and women, but now they were beginning to divide over even more petty things.
• 11:19
  unknown: Right?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is when Paul says, Is Christ divided?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in Paul's name?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: The groupings within the church were influenced by their sort of cohort groups.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really obnoxious way to say that.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we're in a psychology seminar.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the people that they would normally hang out with, they were just making those same divisions within the church.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what Paul was frustrated by in this context was that they had picked their favorite teachers that had come through, right?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And what Paul is asking them, and this primary question when he says, Is Christ divided?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right, the word for division is literally the same word for tearing someone limb from limb.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And later on in the book of Corinthians, when Paul is talking about how the body of Christ is this beautiful collection of people who have different skills and talents and backgrounds and histories that God has brought together for the purpose of not only being unified, but representing intentionally a diverse body to those around them, right?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is saying, when you try and rip off an arm or rip off a leg because they don't, you know, parent the same way that you do, or they don't like the same worship music that you do, or things of this sort, he says, right, you are causing division.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's easy for us to do that.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: One of when we when I gave this lesson back in September, um, this was when I said that you should go out and you should meet people after the service that you have never met before.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what was so interesting is afterwards I get two very different reactions.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: One was somebody, and I would say charitably that they were sort of being, you know, I don't know, passive aggressive would maybe be the way to put it.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: But they were like, I can't believe that you made me go out and say hi to all these people, right?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know I'm an introvert.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know I shouldn't, this kind of thing.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I'm so glad I told you to go and meet other people because you're the kind of person that really needs to meet other people.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, there were those who might have this be a part of their behavior more often, who said, you know, I met people who've been going to TBC for 20 years that I never knew, and I'm so thankful that I got to draw closer in fellowship to them.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the reason why, and I'm not saying this critically, that there are people within our church that you don't know is because we oftentimes haven't made the effort to get to know them, even though we see them going all around.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm kind of belaboring the point, but what I really want to establish before we move on is the fact that unity in Christ is this beautiful thing.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is supposed to cover over any other sort of identity that we have, and furthermore, it's supposed to draw us deeper into fellowship because we recognize that we're gonna be in eternity with these people, and you better get to know them now.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least I want to.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, back though to the um the memory of your childhood arguments, okay?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know that many of them were foolish and silly, though you might not have thought so at the time, but uh ultimately they didn't amount to much of anything.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: But you also know that there are some fights that you've had, maybe with those same siblings once you became an adult, that were much more significant and were not just something based upon who cut off the doll's hair, but now it was something that could actually change your relationship with them.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And as much as you would like to avoid it or say that, you know, you can get through it if we could just paper over these differences, right?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: There are some things that hurt and run deeply and change the context of that relationship, right?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: See, the the problem with asking this question of why can't Christians all just get along is if we deconstruct so far that we just arrive at this generalized status of being a Christian, saying, hey, somebody knows Jesus and loves Jesus, and so we should be able to worship with them, it papers over the fact that in that case, what somebody, for instance, believes about Jesus to be true changes the context of our worship and how we think about God.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if somebody says, I believe in Jesus, but I don't think he's fully God, I'm gonna have a problem connecting with that person because we are no longer worshiping the same sort of thing.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: See, this is where in this case the question begins to fall apart.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not in the fact that it prioritizes unity, but the fact that it overlooks why diversity might be in place.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not diversity for all of the reasons that we talked about for our identities, but diversity and changes in our theology.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: One of the very interesting things that if you track the early church, one of the things that was happening simultaneously is that the same time that Paul was writing to the Galatians and to other churches about the unity that they should be finding in Christ, at the same time he is writing letters to churches warning them about the dangers of false teaching.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: See, one of the things that happened basically, Jesus went up to heaven and everyone looked around and they go, now what?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: We have been entrusted with the Holy Spirit to go and begin the church, and it's a whole bunch of people who've never done church before saying, Okay, we need to figure out how the gospel can go to everybody, how we can find unity, and how we can preserve the teaching of Jesus Christ that we understood.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is what Paul says to Timothy in chap 1 Timothy chapter 6.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: He says, If anyone teaches false doctrine and does not agree with the sound teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the teaching that promotes godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing, but has an unhealthy interest in disputes and arguments over words.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: From these come envy, quarreling, slander, evil suspicions, and constant disagreement among people whose minds are depraved and deprived of the truth, who imagine that godliness is a way to material gain.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: So there's two kinds of false teaching that the Bible talks about.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: The first kind is the one that is really easy to find, and it's those who just say, right, who are going clearly against the commands of Scripture and saying that God does not exist, they're worshiping a false God, they are not even interested at all in what the Bible has to say, okay?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Or in this case, what the teachings of Christ were or of the law and the prophets.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: But the other kind of false teaching, and the one that is much more difficult to sort of wrap our minds around, is the false teaching that emerges from within the church.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And historically, this has been the false teaching that has been the most difficult thing to sort of grasp hold of and set aside because naturally it is blooming out of the same flower bed, right?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so what has happened is that over time we have allowed sometimes false teaching to become to gain credibility out of a desire to not divide, and because of that, it has led people astray.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so this teaching from within the church is the kind of thing that Paul is warning Timothy about here, right?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it begins with the actions, right?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: How do we define it?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if anyone teaches false doctrine and does not agree with the sound teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the teaching that promotes godliness, right?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is what this is what the action is, right?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is how we define it.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: But then we see that there's an attitude, that they are conceited or they are prideful, they are vain, they are not humble, right?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Unwilling to sometimes um hear the teaching of not even those in authority, but just what the Bible is clearly expressing, and they are going with their own decisions.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: They understand nothing, as Paul says.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: But what is the content?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: They have an unhealthy interest in disputes and arguments over words.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you, just as somebody who, I mean, because I work at a church, encounters false teaching a bit more often than the average bear, is that normally the way it begins is like this: an unhealthy interest in disputes and arguments over words.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is either somebody who does not like what the Bible says and is finding an unorthodox or a brand new way to fit their view into what the Bible, I think, is clearly expressing, or, or as part of that rather, I would say, they are taking words that are in the Bible, and sometimes it goes back to the original languages, and they're saying, they're changing the meaning of those words that they have meant for thousands of years, and then presenting it as new information.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And to those who are not always as um up-to-date, I don't know a great way to say this, I didn't love my Greek class, but nevertheless, for those who don't know some of these things, it sounds like brand new and captivating information because somebody else in authority is saying, you know what?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's this thing that we've never ever recognized before.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And did you know what?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: It changes the way that we look at the Bible.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if you follow this series of information, it can sound captivating until you look deeper.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: What really is the fruit of these things is envy, quarreling, slander, evil suspicions, and constant disagreement among people whose minds are depraved and deprived of the truth.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can never accuse Paul of pulling any punches, right?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's just like the false teachers, they are depraved and deprived of the truth.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: But in essence, though, that's what we're talking about.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're saying that Christianity, and specifically what we teach about it, is not a matter of perspective.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: How we apply it to our lives is relevant, and that does change over time.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it is important to look At the context in which a letter or a book was received, but at the same time, the teachings of God are eternal and have continued to be the same since they were originally taught.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, we have had to guard that truth against those who might like to divert its path and change the course of the river so that it comes alongside their town instead of where it was previously.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the motivation in the case of Paul is he says, those who imagine that godliness is a way to material gain.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: It might not always be that somebody is going to make money off of false teaching, right?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Though that is certainly the case.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: That somebody is gaining something by changing what the Bible is saying.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Either they are getting emotional comfort, right?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or they might have financial gain, or they are fitting, they are removing sort of the Holy Spirit, I would say, in their mind that is telling them that what they are doing is wrong, and now they have convinced themselves that it is right, or maybe they are just able to connect better with other people.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: They feel like if they sort of blunt the edges of what the Bible says, that they might be better accepted or might have more friends or might get a greater following.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the Bible is true, and it's important to safeguard that truth.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so these are the things that we do divide over.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: But the question becomes when do we divide, right?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because we started out, I mean, when we look in the New Testament, we start out with one church.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And now it kind of depends upon sort of where you go with or where you're looking for the numbers.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: But there are enough denominations in America to make a top 100 list.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that goes far beyond just like the heavy hitters, you know, Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, so on and so forth, right?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is that you're familiar with, but divisions within them.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: So when do we decide and how to divide?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to briefly kind of show you something, and it's a chart.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry, the chart can't hurt you.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's you're going to be safe.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: But when we look at divisions within the church over time, they have always divided, particularly the big branches, over very important things.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: See, one of the earliest debates within the church was who is who is Jesus?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to follow Jesus?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk a bit more about him, develop the teaching around who is Jesus.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so, though there are a lot of councils and it's a whole debate about which ones are counted, some of the earliest councils, or the at least the first very large one, was the Council of Nicaea in 325, which was uh the Emperor Constantine brought together all of the bishops, right, who were over the Christian religion that was now the official Roman religion, and actually with an intent, he said, We're fighting too much.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are debating all of this stuff, particularly Arianism, right, which was arguing, and I'm look, for the sake of this, I kind of have to just generalize.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: But Arianism was saying that Jesus was uh created by the Father and was not eternally existent.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you might say, well, that seems like a hair to split.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is a hair worthy to split about whether Jesus was created or whether he is co-eternal with the Father.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: But Constantine brings everybody together and he says, we've got to figure this stuff out.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so the Council of Nicaea, it rejects Arianism and says that Jesus was eternal and is truly God.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then you go to the next one, the Council of Constantinople in 381.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: They reject something called Apollinarianism.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: They were named after the people who believed in them, and he had a really long name, okay?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Apollinarianism, which said that Jesus wasn't fully human now.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: So now we went to the other end of the spectrum.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he isn't fully God, but now he's not fully human.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: We've overemphasized the divine part and neglected the fact that Jesus is fully human, and so we set that aside.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: But then you see the first one there in the uh in the sort of chart, the Council of Ephesus.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: They were rejecting something called Nestorianism, and which said that the human and divine natures of God, okay, now we've established he's fully God and He's fully human, but these natures they they sort of separately exist within the body of one being, and they're not united.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a problem because Jesus is fully God and fully man, and he does not have a separate, holy, and separate human nature.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: So then the Church of the East split.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: They said, We don't agree with that.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to follow Nestorian, and we're going to believe in what he believes.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you have the first large split from mainline, I'm just saying Christianity, is those who said, We can't handle what you're saying about Jesus.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: You keep going, Council of Chalcedon, uh, the Nestorianism hadn't died yet, and they established that Jesus also wasn't a mixture of two natures.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: He had one nature that was fully God and fully man.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: That is where the Oriental Orthodox Church splits.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have the great schism, right?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is where the Eastern and Western churches develop, which, to make a long story short, had to do with um who the Holy Spirit was sent from.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Did he come just from the Father, or did he come from the Father and the Son?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the Filioque controversy.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: And again, all of these things, you're like, why does that sound important?
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, these are the sorts of things that we take for granted because they are the fights that already happened.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that we speak in our faith, as we are those who have continued to sort of ride the top line in this chart, we are those who have benefited from the years-long arguments of those who said, what we believe in this case about Jesus or the Holy Spirit is worthy of fighting about.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they are things that we can't just paper over for the sake of unity because it is dramatically changing what we think about God.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then we have the Protestant Reformation, which is most significant to us, which was characterized, I mean, Martin Luther had like 95 reasons why he wasn't happy, but is sort of summarized into the five solas Scripture alone, faith alone, Christ alone, salvation by grace alone.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: I said grace alone, faith alone, and to the glory of God alone.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: These are the things that were distinguishing us from the Catholic faith now.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get into all of the Protestant denominations, which over time have split for various reasons.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: You have the Anabaptists coming around in the very beginning, not long after the Protestant Reformation, who said, We believe in baptism by immersion, not sprinkling, which was still how a lot of the early Protestant reformers had done it.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the response to them was drowning them.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so people have been fighting for a long time.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have churches like TBC that are non-denominational, and we just sort of stepped back and said, we can't even play the game, right?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: We look like a lot of these different denominations, we share many characteristics with them, but we do not exclusively align with any one of them.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, where does it end?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do we just continue to divide until we have a church that is made up of four people that like the exact same 15 worship songs, that have the same liturgy, that have the, you know, the preacher preaches for only 37 minutes and not 38.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, do we just continue to refine and refine and refine until the church has absolutely no diversity or ability to um exercise unity?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: So our response to why can't all Christians get along is that we value unity in Christ and not division.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: We don't seek out fights.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: We don't desire to divide because it undermines the message of Christ.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: But when the truth of Christ is undermined, as Paul had said, right, when it diverges from the teachings of Jesus Christ and fails to promote godliness, when those things happen, that is when we say, okay, um, well, there's a process that's outlined in the Bible.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: You discuss it and you bring other people along, but eventually, if it's maintained, those are the things that you divide over.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: And those are the things you have to divide over.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are somebody who is deconstructing their faith and you're saying, Why are all these Christians fighting?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't we all just get along?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it not possible that there are just, as one of my, somebody I know very well and love very much, who says that they love Jesus, but would also tell me that there are many ways to God, I would say you and I believe very different things about what it means to know and to love Jesus.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, though their experience with God is something that we can talk about and we can have just genuine fellowship as people who say that we love God, the ability for us to worship together isn't possible.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you worship in the Mulvaine building here, uh, you know that our uh Picketers from Westboro Baptist Church, right?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they would say that Jesus is their Savior.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: And our two churches would not mix very well.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have to understand that unity is valuable, but sometimes we have to divide.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: So what does that process look like?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it means that first and foremost, that we seek to intentionally create unity within the church, that unless it has to do with false teaching, that we are trying to overcome our differences, to meet new people, and to express to the outside world that there are relationships that can happen here that are difficult to happen out there.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know how divided our country is right now, over many things, but over some very specific things.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know how divided it is.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know how you experience that when you go into the workplace or when you meet with your other friends or on social media or wherever.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: The church is not supposed to be that kind of place that is divided about these things.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to be able to show unity to the outside world because Jesus is at the top.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: But then we also take a step back and we say, but there are times when these things tread into the category of false teaching.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: The primary job of myself and the elders is to safeguard the teaching of the church, but it is also your job to be cognizant of the teaching that you're sitting under and the teaching that you are seeking out outside of the boundary of this church.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: And when those people disagree about false teaching, the question becomes: how disruptive is it to our ability to worship together?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: You say that Jesus isn't God or that there's more than one way to heaven, we're gonna have a real hard time.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: You want to disagree about how we should baptize somebody?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: We can hang out together.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh last year, uh, well, rather two springs ago, I should say, I went to a conference in Nashville called Together for the Gospel.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: And Together for the Gospel was a collection, there were 12,000 people there, and it was a group of uh a whole lot of denominations from around the world, different people, it looked like a we are the world a world music video, right?
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we all got together and there were 18 articles of faith that we subscribed to.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: 18 articles of faith that included an affirmation and a denial.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you think 18 is a lot, we need to talk.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because that includes, I mean, when you just start considering who is Jesus, do we agree on the Trinity?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do we agree on the authority of the Bible?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do we agree that Jesus is returning?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can see how 18 is taken up pretty quickly.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: But they said, and the organizers of that group, they said, these are the things that we are going to divine sort of establish, that this is orthodox worship.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: These are uh historical beliefs of the Christian faith.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we are going to align over these things.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: I should say the Protestant faith.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to align over these things, and we can come together.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the organizers, they got up and they kind of threw like pot shots at each other.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: There was a Presbyterian and a Baptist, and they're making fun of each other's like how they're going to dunk people or sprinkle people or all these kinds of things.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: But it was in good nature that you understand that, yeah, but in a second we are going to all worship together and praise the same God that we genuinely believe in.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Unity was found in these things.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why I actually have worn the bracelet that I got from that conference ever since then.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: It says together for the gospel, and it is a reminder to me about the distinctions that we need to make.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: We should not be a faith that is known for division.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: We should be a faith that is known for unity.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's what was so countercultural in those Gentile environments was that they said, hey, Jews and Greeks, slave and free, men and women, come on in.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what was so amazing and captivating part of it.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: But that there are times where we draw a line in the sand and we say, I can't cross this.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: And at those moments, if people are on either side, you say, we're gonna need to divide so that we might protect truth, which is ultimately the thing that brings us unity.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: One more time, right?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: We value unity until it subverts truth, which is the thing that unifies us.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact that we are united in Christ means that we have believed in the truth of Christ.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when false teaching begins to threaten that, we divide.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: So what can you do?
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: What can we all do?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is that we try and uphold these two sort of posts.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: We say that as much as possible, I'm going to try and make TBC a welcoming place to people who are different from me, who look different from from me, who sound different from me, who are, you know, sometimes in a group of people I might not associate with outside of church.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now that behavior should change anyway because you know Jesus Christ.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: But let's just focus on the church right now, right?
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: That you're saying I I want to be a place that is signified by unity, and then also I understand that the truth is part of that unity, and I'm going to uphold that as well.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: And in the messy middle, I don't know, you send me an email?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: You seek out the Holy Spirit, you pray for these things, and you say, Lord, what is it that I'm supposed to do right now?
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: I know that you value unity.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to send the wrong message to the people who are outside of the church or those who are questioning the faith, but I also know that if they are going to ever believe in a faith, it is important that it says the right things about Jesus Christ.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you, and Lord, we say thank you for today.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I thank you for the unity that we can find in Jesus Christ.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: I thank you that you are the God who sets aside all of these differences.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, who says that they are ultimately like squabbles between small children.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: When God, we divide over things that the world wants to divide over.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, that heaven is going to be a space that looks beautiful in its diversity, and is probably going to be shocking to us and how many people don't look like we do.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for these things, that the gospel has been extended to everyone, no matter who they are, so that they might know you and find fellowship in you as they are clothed by you.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: But Lord, we also pray that you would give us wisdom and discernment as you have called us to do in the church, to be able to understand what is true and what is false, Father, because it is not a matter of perspective when it comes to your truth.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: And God, as we know that we are fallible anyhow, that you would lead us on the correct path as a church, Lord, to be able to discern what is right from what is wrong and to be able to guide everyone towards these things, Lord, so that they might have a true faith in Jesus Christ.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: And God, that we might promote and live lives that are honoring to you.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: God, when we are faced with a decision that seems to conflict between these two things, Lord, may your spirit guide us in those moments, and may we treat everything with grace, knowing that you have forgiven us, Lord.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks everyone.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, if you're looking for a challenge, your challenge can be from a year ago, which is that you should meet three people that you haven't met before, and you should say hi to them and ask them how long they've been coming to TBC.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.