Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / September 20, 2020 | UNCOMFORTABLE - Unity (Alex Wolfe)

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September 20, 2020 | UNCOMFORTABLE - Unity (Alex Wolfe) · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh well it was 2017, uh, and it was my wife Lindsay and I's first time uh visiting Iowa for Thanksgiving since my mom passed away in 2015.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh so what would normally happen around Thanksgiving is I would uh call my mom and I would say, hey, I'm gonna be back for these days, and we'd show up and magically everything uh was good.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, everybody was together, food was made, we were ready to have good quality, unified family time.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh but this time I showed up, uh we Lindsay and I showed up in 2017, and uh we realized the family was sort of unintentionally divided.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh my mom, she was the glue of our family.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: She was sort of the unifier of the family, and she put in behind the scenes a lot of hard unifying work ahead of time that we really took for granted.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: We didn't, we didn't really know she did it.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh we should have, but we were blind to it.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh and instead, when I showed up, uh, my brother, he, you know, he was working and he only had a specific day that he could get together in Des Moines.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: And my dad, he lives, you know, an hour outside of Des Moines in the country in a little town called Guthrie.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: And he was pouring concrete one day, and so you have to get all that done in a certain time frame.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: So he only had a certain day he could gather together.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: And then Lindsay and I are over here, and we have to split our time between two families, and so we have a specific time we can get together, and we found ourselves bouncing back and forth to my brother, to my dad, uh, doing everything we all could to find a time to get together, uh, just as a family to have unified family time.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: See, we didn't know it, but we were all unintentionally acting as dividers in our family because we didn't put in the hard unifying work ahead of time uh that my mom had so often put in.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: And as I was uh as we were heading back to Dallas, which is where we lived at the time, and I was grieving the disunity at the time in my family, and don't feel too bad for me, it's better now.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh but as I was grieving that disunity, uh I began to realize that this is the same grieving that many Christians and many pastors are having over their churches today.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: And I think if we're all honest with ourselves, most of us have avoided putting in the hard unifying work and have instead found ourselves unintentionally contributing to division in our local church family.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: So for many of us, division and disagreement make us quite uncomfortable, does it not?
2:50
SPEAKER_00: But today my goal is to talk about something far more uncomfortable than division.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: My goal is to talk about being unified with those who we disagree with.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, K U, K State fans, you know, hanging out with each other.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: Right?
3:06
SPEAKER_00: That's uncomfortable.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: So today we're gonna look primarily at Ephesians 2, uh, verses 14 through 16 as our main text and as we discuss unity in the church family, but we're gonna also venture into a few other texts as is necessary for our discussion.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: So I hope you'll uh hang in with me there.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: So first we're gonna look at what the Bible means when it claims that the church is unified.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then we're gonna look at and discuss what it looks like when a church fails to protect that unity, and also what it looks like for a church to then maintain that unity.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna look at both sides of the coin.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: So uh so today my topic is uncomfortable unity.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: So this is the third in a series uh which started with uncomfortable gospel.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: Last week we talked about uncomfortable discipleship, where Jim encouraged us to carry our crosses and suffer with Christ as the path of discipleship.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: And today we're gonna talk about unity in the church and how that can so often be uncomfortable.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: And so as you're flipping to your text, uh my first point I want to make is this that God has declared unity in the church by the work of Christ.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: God has declared unity in the church by the work of Christ.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna look at Ephesians 2, verses 14 through 16, and this passage is very theologically rich, and it's gonna answer three questions for us today.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: What happened, how did it happen, and why did it happen?
4:45
SPEAKER_00: What happened, how did it happen, why did it happen?
4:47
SPEAKER_00: And if you're familiar with the book of Ephesians, what's happening in this book is you have uh Gentiles who are now partaking of and receiving the blessings that were promised to Israel, many of the blessings promised to Israel.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: They're receiving the Holy Spirit, which was promised to Israel as a down payment for their inheritance.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: And so Jews and Gentiles are coming together, and Paul is describing in chapter two the incredible power that it took by Christ to unify Jews and Gentiles, two vastly different cultures, two vastly different worldviews, into one body.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: The two were merged into one body, and this is what he's gonna talk about.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: So uh, as we go to the what question, what is happening in this passage?
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Um Paul says, for he himself, he being Jesus, of course, he himself is our peace.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: And by our, he means us Jews and us Gentiles together.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: He is our peace, who made both groups into one group, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: So Christ has made Jews and Gentiles into one group.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: And it says he broke down the barrier dividing wall.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Some of your translations might say the dividing wall of hostility potentially.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: And the interesting thing about um ancient Jewish culture is in the first century temple that existed, there was actually a wall in the temple complex.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: And it was called the Soreg.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: And it was a wall that separated the outer court of the Gentiles from the inner court of the Jews.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: And so uh Gentiles could come up the stairs onto the Temple Mount, but they were they had to stay pretty far back.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: And they couldn't cross this wall.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh and if you did cross the wall, archaeologists have discovered an inscription that used to be built into this wall.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and and it said something along the lines of uh if you cross this wall as a Gentile, you basically lose the right to your life.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh they kill you as a Gentile if you go past this wall.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: Literally a dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: See, Jews could go through, Gentiles couldn't.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh but but Paul is taking this imagery and he's saying that's no longer the case from what Christ has done.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: He has made Jews and Gentiles into one new body.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: And so the next question is, how did he do it?
7:24
SPEAKER_00: How did you take Jews and Gentiles and make them the same into one body?
7:28
SPEAKER_00: And it says, by abolishing in his flesh the enmity that exists between them, which is the law of commandments contained or expressed in ordinances.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: See, Israel was this interesting uh special nation.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: They were God's chosen nation to represent the character of God and take God to the nations.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: Right?
7:56
SPEAKER_00: And the law was sort of this uh this character system of God.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: This is how you were going to do it.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: This is how you were going to reflect God to the nations.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: And so Israel was supposed to do what?
8:07
SPEAKER_00: They were supposed to love God and they were supposed to love their neighbor.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: Pretty simply, that's how Jesus puts it, at least.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: And instead of living this out, of taking God to the nations, they got inward on themselves and got so focused on self-righteousness that they created all these ordinances to be followed in order that I might get into the kingdom.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and they made it hostility.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: So instead of being a light to the nations and salt to the nations, they lost their saltiness, they put their darkness or their light under a basket, and they became so internally focused with so much hostility between Jews and Gentiles.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: Now, don't get me wrong, Jews were not to intermarry with Gentiles, but they were supposed to take the good news of God to the Gentiles.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: And they didn't do it.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: They used the law as enmity instead of the unifying thing that it was surrounded in God's character.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: So he did that.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus came and he demonstrated what the law was supposed to be.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't supposed to be do this, do this, and you go to heaven or go get into the kingdom.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: It was love God, love your neighbor.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: It was represent God to the nations, and Jesus came and he did that.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: He died for not just Jews, but also Gentiles, and he expressed the true purpose of the law.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: So that's how he did it.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: So the question is, why did he do it?
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Why did he do it?
9:37
SPEAKER_00: It says, so that in himself, Christ, that he might make the two, Jews and Gentiles, into one new man.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: Thus establishing peace.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: And that he might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: So here's the idea.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: He says that there's two reasons for destroying this hostility.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: One, to reconcile Jews and Gentiles to one another into one new man, and then to reconcile that one new man back to God.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: And this was the plan of God all along.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: This isn't anything new.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: God said to Abraham, uh, that in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: All the nations were included in this plan from the get-go.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: But he was going to do it through this nation of Israel.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: And Israel was to be this kingdom of priests, this representative, the ones to take it to them.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: They didn't do it.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: Instead, they were hostile towards one another.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: They became enemies permanently.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: And so, God, so Jesus came and he took away that enmity in order that he would finally bring the two together, so they reconciled to one another, and then together they would both be reconciled back to God.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: This is the plan of God.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: This is how he's going to bless all the nations through the cross.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: And the result is that by the cross, Jesus has put to death the enmity.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: There is no more hostility between the two.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: Now just think about that statement for a minute.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: No hostility between Jews and Gentiles.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: Just because of what Jesus did on the cross.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: Are they still Jewish?
11:22
SPEAKER_00: They still have Jewish background?
11:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
11:25
SPEAKER_00: Those Gentiles still, Gentiles, they still have their Gentile backgrounds and experiences?
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: And yet there's no hostility?
11:33
SPEAKER_00: So that's uncomfortable.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk a little bit more about that, but the thing I want us to focus on is that this is already done.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: It's already been completed.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: We don't create peace and unity.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: It's already been accomplished for us.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus is that glue.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: He's that unifier, the finished work of reconciliation.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: So Christian Democrats and Republicans?
12:01
SPEAKER_00: Unified.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Mask wearers, non-mask wearers?
12:07
SPEAKER_00: Unified.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Christians of all different colors and cultural backgrounds and experiences, unified.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Whether you see it or not, that's the truth.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: That's the reality according to this text.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And so however, just because a church is unified theologically, it doesn't mean that it always practically works out that way, because the reality is it's humans who exist within that unity.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: And the thing we're best at is messing stuff up.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: Right?
12:42
SPEAKER_00: We're selfish.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: It's what we do best.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: It's the easy route, if you will.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: So as a human member of the church family, I want to propose you're doing one of two things.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: You are either contributing to the continued unity that Christ has already established, or you are working against it as a dividing agent.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: And so my uncomfortable question for us this morning, uh for all of us to ask ourselves, is are you acting as a unifier or a divider?
13:22
SPEAKER_00: A unifier or a troublemaker, as Doug said earlier.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's see.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: So we we've we've just established and seen that unity is something Christ has already accomplished on the cross for the church family by being in and of himself the unifying agent, the unifying element.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: But what happens when a church works against that unity?
13:46
SPEAKER_00: And what happens when a church, and what does it look like when a church works towards continuing that unity?
13:52
SPEAKER_00: Those are the questions we're gonna be working with for the rest of this sermon.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so uh there are two points that we're going to be looking at, and one's working against unity, and the other is working with unity.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: So uh second point, let's look at working against unity.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: And let me grab my Bible here.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna venture off into some other texts.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, if you would continue reading in Ephesians in chapter two, you get to the end of chapter two, and Paul is going to say something about this new man, this new unity of Jews and Gentiles.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: And he's gonna say in verse 20, uh, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being uh himself the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: In him, y'all also, Jews and Gentiles, are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh the interesting thing is he calls them a temple of the Holy Spirit.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh Jews and Gentiles together are now, no longer is there a dividing wall, but now together they are a temple of the Holy Spirit, and God's going to fill them together.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: And if you'd follow that uh train of thought with me, this idea of the church being a temple, uh I started asking the question, what does a divided church look like?
15:19
SPEAKER_00: And I immediately thought of the Corinthian church.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh some of you have probably read 1 2 Corinthians, and the problem in 1 2 Corinthians is that it's a divided church.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: Purely.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Some are saying, we follow Paul.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, we we were baptized in the name of Paul, and we follow Apollos, we're baptized in the name of Apollos, and uh, you know, we're we're pretty, we're whatever, and they're divided, they're showing partiality, they're slandering one another.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: It's a terrible situation.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3, 16 and 17, uh building on sort of this Ephesians idea that we just read of them being the temple, he says, Do y'all not know?
16:04
SPEAKER_00: These are y'all, see, uh in Texas we have this second person plural.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh in normal English, we don't have that.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: So uh I was just having a discussion with Jeremiah that you know Texas reigns superior once again, but um.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Do y'all not know uh that y'all are a temple of the Holy Spirit of God?
16:25
SPEAKER_00: This is what he just said in Ephesians, and that the Spirit of God dwells in y'all.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: What?
16:37
SPEAKER_00: For the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: I remember reading that for the first time, thinking, wow, that's intense.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh and then and then as I was sort of reading through the book of 1 Corinthians, uh, this is sort of the argument.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: Is that the church is a unified temple, and you guys are tearing it down, and now God's gonna tear you down if you don't shape up.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: Right?
17:01
SPEAKER_00: And he's carrying this all the way through the book, and I got over to uh 1 Corinthians 11 uh verses 17 through 30, and I'm not gonna read it all, uh, but he basically says in verses 29, let it or 28, let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: Verse 29.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body of Christ is what he's saying, he eats and drinks judgment on himself.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died or some have fallen asleep.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: And I and I remember asking myself when I first came across this, what in the world does that mean?
17:52
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh my gosh.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: They're tearing down the temple of God, and God's tearing them down.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: At one point in time, God would go to such great lengths to protect unity in his body, in this temple, that he was willing to take them out if they were problem causers.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: And I sure I show you this not to scare you or to say that God is gonna strike you down here and now like he did then, uh, but to emphasize how seriously God takes unity in the body of Christ.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: He's willing to go to great lengths to protect the unity that Christ died to accomplish.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: And we ought to be willing to go to great lengths to protect it as well.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what should have the Corinthian church been doing?
18:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh see, they were coming and they were eating uh uh the Lord's Supper and drinking the Lord's Supper.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: There were poor people among them who couldn't feed themselves, and yet some were getting drunk and eating too much of the Lord's Supper.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: They're showing partiality amongst themselves.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: They're divided, they're slandering their brothers, and Paul's saying, you better reconcile this before you take this Lord's Supper.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna eat and drink judgment on yourself.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what they should have been doing, this is a quote from the Didache, which is a late first century, early second century document.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: The tradition is that it's the traditions of the apostles and basically how to do church.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: It's a sort of a commentary, a creed, if you will, on what church was supposed to be like.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: And they commented on the Lord's Supper.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: It said, Next, concerning the broken bread, we thank you, our Father, for the life and knowledge which you made known to us through Jesus, your servant.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: To you be the glory forever.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills and was gathered together and became one, so let your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: To you is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: This is what the Lord's Supper was about.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: It is about unity.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: And the picture the Didok A paints is that it's all these grains that were spread over all of the hills, uh, were harvested, brought together, ground down, uh, put into one loaf, and unified by gluten, actually, if you want to get into stuff.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: So basically the Didaka is comparing gluten to the Holy Spirit.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh so any of you people who are anti-gluten in the room, you might you might want to rethink that.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: Just a thought.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh but but the the individual grains come together and make a single loaf, right?
20:36
SPEAKER_00: This unified body that is then broken as Christ was broken.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: And it's this amazing picture of unity and the fact that the church will suffer with Christ, as Jim talked about last week.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing thing.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: And they were taking it divided.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: How can you partake of a dinner intended for unity, totally divided?
20:56
SPEAKER_00: This is what and so God is going to go to great lengths to protect this thing.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: And my question is, why in the world would God go to such great lengths to stomp out division in Christ's body?
21:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think in order to answer that, we have to think about what the point of the body is.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh Paul describes uh, you know, he uses this body imagery, this metaphor, and I think it's genius because it's it's one of those metaphors that's absolutely perfect.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: And it has so many, so much depth of meaning, and he describes Christ as the head of the church, and the church being Christ's body, and that is uh the body is the thing that carries the head to wherever it wants to go.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: The body is the thing that carries out the desires of its head.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: My hand does this because my head tells it to do so.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: But what happens when a body is divided?
21:49
SPEAKER_00: That's the question.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: What happens when a body is divided?
21:51
SPEAKER_00: What happens when one foot wants to walk in one direction and the other foot wants to walk in the other direction?
21:59
SPEAKER_00: You start turning it.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Circle, right?
22:01
SPEAKER_00: You don't go anywhere.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: Eventually you get dizzy and you'll probably crash out because it would it would be a disaster, is the point.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: Right?
22:10
SPEAKER_00: How could a body ever carry a head to the nations if it can't even walk straight?
22:18
SPEAKER_00: I think that's kind of the idea here.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: A divider in the church, to put it another way, is sort of like a cancer.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: It starts as a good cell that sort of mutates and it turns against the body and it begins recruiting and replicating itself until it eventually just kills the whole thing.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: That's sort of what a divider is in the body of Christ.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: So is it so surprising then that God would go to such great lengths that once upon a time he took out these cancerous cells from his body in order to protect the unity and therefore the effectiveness of his son's body?
23:00
SPEAKER_00: Is that so surprising?
23:02
SPEAKER_00: It shouldn't be.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: It should be just as important to us as it is to him.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: A cancerous cell or a body part that is doing its own thing and not carrying out the head's desires is as good as dead.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: Right?
23:16
SPEAKER_00: It's good for nothing.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: What use is a finger if it's cut off from the body and just laying as dirt?
23:23
SPEAKER_00: It's not helpful for anyone.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: Right?
23:26
SPEAKER_00: So how can we recognize before it's too late if we are unintentionally acting as dividers in the body?
23:35
SPEAKER_00: So we need to ask ourselves this one uncomfortable question.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: Who or what is your Paul or Apollos?
23:42
SPEAKER_00: Remember the Corinthians, I follow Paul, you know, I baptize in his name, follow Apollos, I'm baptize.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: What is your Paul or Apollos?
23:49
SPEAKER_00: In other words, what are the things you count as more important than unity in the body of Christ?
23:55
SPEAKER_00: Where are your allegiances?
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Is my question.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Is it uh worship style?
24:04
SPEAKER_00: So many churches, I've been a part of a few, have been crippled and have eventually split and died over what type of music should be sung in a worship service.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: Can you spot the irony in that, by the way?
24:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh the very thing that is meant to focus our eyes on the source of our unity, the guy who is peace himself, becomes the very thing that divides us simply because it's easier for us to hear songs that we like rather than consider that somebody else's preferences might have value to the body.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: So maybe it's worship style for you, maybe uh it's social issues.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh there's a there's uh I'm a part of a pastor community coming out of seminary uh on Facebook, and there's this article that's been sort of trending in the pastor world this week, and it was intended for pastors to read it.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh but I I thought I wanted to share it with you guys to understand what pastors and churches are going through today.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's this, it's an article, uh, it was on Life Way, and it's called Dear Pastor, Don't Quit on Us Now.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: And the author says this our pastors are in the middle of a battle that most believe they cannot win.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: Leading a church has always been difficult.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: Just read the New Testament.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: We have always known that pastors live in a glass house, every decision is under a microscope.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: Pastors have never believed that they could please everyone.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: However, things have shifted.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: Pastors are being criticized, vilified, and abandoned.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: They know every decision will offend nearly half of their congregation, many leaving to attend another church.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: Politics and social unrest have divided congregations, and social media has intensified the hostilities.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: Who have not gotten emails over various issues.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's mask wearing.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not coming if I have to wear a mask.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: Or I'm not going if all y'all aren't wearing masks.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: Right?
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Sounds familiar.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: I follow Paul.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: I follow Paul.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm a mask wearer, I'm a non-mask wearer.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: Right?
26:45
SPEAKER_00: Some want to preserve their lives, some want to preserve their principles.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: Both want to preserve their pride.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe it's social justice.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: You know, you should have been more vocal after George Floyd's death.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Some reached out and said, You should have stayed out of it, I'm out.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: There's no perfect scenario, but I show you this to say the churches are divided right now.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: And it's uncomfortable, but we have to call these things out.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: So maybe it's social issues, maybe it's political allegiance.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh this is quite relevant today as we approach the elections coming up.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: You know, how could you vote for Biden?
27:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, what a shady character.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, how could you vote for Trump?
27:36
SPEAKER_00: What a shady character, right?
27:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean, it it's it gets crazy.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: If this is your hill to die on, political allegiances, uh, have you not considered, do you not know, do you really think that we are the first generation of the church to welcome politically polarized people into the same body?
28:00
SPEAKER_00: No.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: Think with me to the disciples for a minute, Matthew 10.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you have in the same group of Jesus disciples, Simon the zealot and Matthew the tax collector.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: You ever thought about that?
28:15
SPEAKER_00: You know what a zealot is in Israel?
28:17
SPEAKER_00: They were the extreme nationalists.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: They were willing to go to war and eventually did to fight off Rome because they were so pro-Israel, they didn't want anybody exercising control over the nation.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: And yet Matthew is a tax collector, he is a traitor of Israel, he joined forces with Rome, and now he's oppressing, at least in the zealot's eyes, Israel by enforcing unlawful taxes.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: And they're in the same team.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: They're Jesus.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you think they didn't?
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Imagine the discussions they must have had.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: But yet you don't hear of the disciples splitting down the middle.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: All right?
29:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh Jews and Gentiles in the first century had a lot more to be divided over than we do in America today.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: I promise you that.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: And yet they're coming together in one body.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: In every case, whatever your thing might be, whatever your hill to die on is, the question is what is best and easiest for me?
29:24
SPEAKER_00: Not what is best for the body and therefore the head who is Christ.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: So what is the thing that causes you to hold your brother or sister at arm's length?
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Because it's so much easier just to avoid them than to actually be in fellowship with them.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm with you on that.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: Could you imagine though?
29:46
SPEAKER_00: Just think with it, could you imagine if this is how God treated us?
29:51
SPEAKER_00: If God said to us, you know, I hold you at arm's length until your view perfectly conforms to my view.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: If that were true, we would forever be held at arm's length by God.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: Would we not?
30:05
SPEAKER_00: Because most of even our best ideas are insulting to him.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: But instead of holding us at arm's length, our Ephesians text says that he brought us near to himself.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: Elsewhere, Paul says that even while we were still his enemies, Christ died for us.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: We're still his enemies.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: Just to bring us near, he died.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: And so my encouragement to you is to recognize your allegiances that aren't Christ, recognize them early, and then put in some hard work to try to overcome them.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: If you're not sure if you have any, ask somebody close to you because you may have a blind spot.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: So that's what it looks like to work against unity.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at, you know, now that I've brought the mood of the room down a little bit, let's bring it back up.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about something more happy.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: Uh let's look at uh what does it look like to work for continued unity in the church?
31:01
SPEAKER_00: So we said uh unity is something that has already been established by Christ.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: He's already done the reconciling work.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: We just saw what it looks like when a church doesn't work and works against unity.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: And now we're gonna talk about what happens and what it looks like when a church works with unity.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: So uh let me flip back to our book of Ephesians here.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, okay.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna look at Ephesians 4, because we're gonna kind of follow the argument of the book.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, Ephesians 4, 1 through 6, Paul's gonna argue down through the whole book, you guys are unified, and now it's time you act like it.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: You're unified.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: It's already been done, and so when he gets to chapter 4, he gets to the imperatives, and now he's every one of his imperatives is here's how I want you to live now in light of that unity.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
31:53
SPEAKER_00: And so uh in chapter 4, verse 1, he says, I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, namely unified.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: With all pick out the key words here.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: That's what I want you to focus on, the key words.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: There is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all the body and through all and in all.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: And then at the end of chapter four, he goes on in uh verse twenty-five.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, again, focus on the key words.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: Be angry and do not sin.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: Don't let the sun go down on your anger, give no opportunity to the devil.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it might give grace to those who hear.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: And do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you are sealed for the day of redemption.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: Be kind to one another.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's revolutionary stuff, right?
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: There it is.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh notice Paul does not say go out of your way to make sure everybody agrees with you, you know, before you fellowship with them.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: Or go and create community with everyone.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: No, he doesn't say, no, no, no.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: What he says is we've what he already said is unity is something that has already been accomplished, and you all, with all of your differences, are in the same body.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: You're unified, so act like it.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea here.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh be humble, be patient, show tolerance in love.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: Don't be angry with another brother or sister, don't slander them.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: All of this assumes they are still vastly different people with vastly different opinions and views.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: But Paul's imperative and his key to working with unity is love them anyways.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: Sacrifice for them, show them mercy and grace, and just as Christ has shown you mercy and grace.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: Because what is the body's job, after all?
34:55
SPEAKER_00: It's to carry out the desires of the head, to represent and carry out the character of Christ on the earth until he returns.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're doing.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: And the question then is what is he like?
35:09
SPEAKER_00: What are his desires?
35:11
SPEAKER_00: Well, he shows mercy and grace.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: That's what he does.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: That's who he is.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: He dies for his enemies.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't show partiality.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: Thus, if we are to carry out his desires, that's how we ought to treat one another as well.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: Right?
35:28
SPEAKER_00: So the question is, how do we today work with unity?
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, first we begin by identifying our allegiances that are outside of Christ, and second, we focus on Christ, who is the head.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: We focus on Christ.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: Remember our text in Ephesians 2, he said, He himself is the peace, the reconciliation, the element of commonality.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: We don't create unity.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: We don't change people's opinions.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: We focus on the one thing that has already unified us, and that's Christ.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: A.W.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: Tozer has an illustration, and it didn't make a lot of sense, so I'm going to revise it a little bit.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I think it's a good illustration.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: Think of a symphony orchestra.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: Has anybody ever been to a symphony orchestra?
36:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh did you notice how at the beginning of the symphony the first chair violin stands up and they play the same note over and over again, to which every single instrument in the orchestra tunes itself and conforms to, and it doesn't really matter, if you really think about it, if that first chair violinist is out of tune or not, because in the end, all of the other instruments are going to be tuned to that one note.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: And so even if it's not a perfect A on pitch, you would never notice it unless you have perfect pitch, of course, because all of the instruments, once they start playing, would sound unified.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: But imagine uh, you know, so you have this huge diversity of instruments.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: You have flutes, you have clarinets, you have basses, you have all these things that are now perfectly unified simply because they tuned themselves to this one first chair.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: But what happens if they didn't do that practice?
37:12
SPEAKER_00: They did something else, and let's say they just decided to tune to the person to their right.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: You know, one person would tune to their person to the right, and then they would turn to the next person, and then they'd be out of tune with each other, so they would try to tune it.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: It would be mass chaos.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: Everybody'd be out of tune real fast.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: If even only if two of them were out of tune initially.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: It'd be chaos.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: And if they then tried to play the symphony, it would sound terrible because none of them will be in tune with one another.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, so too is the church far more unified if we each individually focus on and tune ourselves to Christ than if we turned inwardly and tried to change other people to conform to our opinions.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: That would be chaos.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: It would be.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: Imagine if that happened.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: I don't think you have to think too hard about it.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it would create factions, cliques, social groups.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: Some people will be left out and others would be insiders.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that sounds familiar to you, I'm not sure.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: So then we focus on Christ and the unity that he accomplished at the cross.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: He's our first chair.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: And as we focus on him and what he's done for us, the mercy he's shown us, the grace that he's extended to us, we automatically begin to tune ourselves to him.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: And then we start to think something along the lines of I've been shown mercy.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I should show mercy.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: I've been extended grace.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I should extend grace.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: In Paul's words, be kind.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: Don't be angry, sacrifice for one another.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: Tolerate the differences in love because that's what Christ did for you.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: That's what he does for you every day.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: That's how unity is protected and the body is kept moving forward in good health.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: See, most of us think that working towards unity means agreeing on more things.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: However, in the church, the greatest opportunity I want to suggest the greatest opportunity to work towards unity is when you disagree.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: Because that's when you have the chance to reflect Christ's love and to extend grace and mercy.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: How uncomfortable is that.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: So I want to end with one final illustration that I hope will be the thing that sort of sticks with you.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: Tell you a story from my own life.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: Lindsay, my wife, sitting right over here, and I got married eight years ago, just over eight years ago.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: No, just over eight years ago.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: And when we met, when when we meet somebody who we're trying to date or towards marriage, we look for commonality, don't we?
40:12
SPEAKER_00: Look for things that are the same.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: And we think we want people uh who we think are the same as us.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: And uh we we we met each other, we thought we were similar enough, and we started meeting with our pastor for premarital counseling as we got that far.
40:28
SPEAKER_00: And he said to us, in three to five years, uh you're gonna realize your differences.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh and it's there that you get to really work to maintain unity.
40:40
SPEAKER_00: Uh he said to us, you'll either end the marriage citing irreconcilable differences in three to five years, or you'll learn to sacrifice for one another and work towards unity.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: See, at the time we just thought he was being a Karen or a negative Nancy, right?
41:02
SPEAKER_00: We just thought that's terrible that's terrible advice, Bob.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh but it turned out to be the best advice we ever got in our marriage.
41:10
SPEAKER_00: It really did.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: Because as we approached the wedding day, we began to recognize and become more aware of our extreme differences.
41:19
SPEAKER_00: See, I love sugar a lot.
41:23
SPEAKER_00: I really do.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: And my wife loves health and fitness a lot.
41:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, she's like power lifting, she's crazy.
41:29
SPEAKER_00: And I like adventure and a certain amount of risk associated with it.
41:34
SPEAKER_00: And my wife likes to really play it safe, and we're starting to kind of recognize these things.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and we're just like, yikes, what's about to happen?
41:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so as we approached our wedding day, uh, we had to make an important decision.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh you see, we were going to have a unity candle in our wedding to sort of represent our coming together as one flesh, two flames become one flame.
41:57
SPEAKER_00: It was a great illustration.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but our wedding was outside, and we worried that the flames would be blown out and it would ruin the whole thing.
42:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh so we settled on uh unity sand, um, which, you know, we we were kind of excited about, but we were a little bummed because we really wanted a candle.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: Um so but we would take two different colored sands, and I don't have three hands, so I can't lift those up, but uh, we take red and white sand, and they would come in these in these bottles here, and uh we would individually dump the sand contained in each bottle into this one new vessel.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: Right?
42:34
SPEAKER_00: And the the picture was uh two vessels kind of pouring into one.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a perfect illustration, but we were we were somewhat embarrassed on how it played out uh because um as you can sort of see, we had the two different colored sands, uh, and they didn't really mix very well.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: So we poured, and and it's they they kind of stayed pretty rigid.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: You know, you still have the red on one side, and it's not as good as the flame, which actually becomes one flame.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: You have the white on one side and you have red on the other side, and we were like, okay, well, that's a little embarrassing.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh it kind of remained divided.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: And uh so but as our lives progressed and our marriage played out a little bit, uh, it turned out to be a pretty good representation of reality.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh so you go into a marriage thinking we're similar enough, only to be uh met with the startling reality that you're actually nothing alike a few years later.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh hence the two two colors remained quite rigid, as did we.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: Um so that's really what happened to Lindsay and I, if I'm honest with you.
43:45
SPEAKER_00: Just as our pastor told us, about three years into our marriage, uh, we couldn't we really couldn't believe how different we were.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: It was quite uncomfortable, actually.
43:54
SPEAKER_00: Um we we really struggled with it.
43:57
SPEAKER_00: Um I was eating a lot of sugar.
44:02
SPEAKER_00: And my wife was lifting as hard as she ever had.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: We tried so hard to change one another, and the things we wanted to change never change, and the things you don't want to change always change.
44:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, I was pretty skinny when we met, and now I gained 30 pounds and I have a receding hairline, and it's just going crazy.
44:22
SPEAKER_00: But we fought and we slandered one another and we mocked one another.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh until we finally broke down and we saw a counselor.
44:33
SPEAKER_00: And he helped us see that different doesn't mean bad.
44:36
SPEAKER_00: Different doesn't mean bad, it doesn't mean enemy.
44:39
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we were on the same team, and a team full of quarterbacks is not a very good football team at all, is it?
44:46
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not.
44:47
SPEAKER_00: He helped us see that our differences actually helped make us a more complete and well-rounded person as a unity in one flesh.
44:55
SPEAKER_00: That that was powerful to us.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: Right?
44:58
SPEAKER_00: And so we uh whenever we hit hard times in our relationship in the past eight years, we have now begun to say to ourselves, uh or think to ourselves, same team, not bad, just different.
45:13
SPEAKER_00: Same team, not bad, just different.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: And the result uh is that we've learned to extend mercy and grace to one another.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: That's really the extent of it.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: So as we experience hardship, we became more unified, not in that I stopped liking sugar and she stopped working out really hard, but in the sense that we both learn to extend grace and mercy.
45:38
SPEAKER_00: And in that case, in the character where it mattered, we were more unified than we ever will be in all of our individual uniqueness.
45:48
SPEAKER_00: And the sand has, you know, sort of followed the same pattern.
45:52
SPEAKER_00: Right?
45:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh we've moved five times since we got married eight years ago.
45:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh and the interesting thing is, is it this thing has gotten packed into boxes and kicked around and taken on long truck rides, you know, and and shaken up a bit.
46:08
SPEAKER_00: Um and the interesting thing is, as that's happened, as it's gone through these hard times, ever so slowly, as you can maybe see, the red and the white have started to blend together and make pink, uh, which is a pretty cool illustration because it's through the hard times that we had to work to show one another grace and mercy, and it's through those hard times that we then become more unified, more pink, if you will.
46:36
SPEAKER_00: So when it comes to being in a unity with people who are nothing like us, the easy thing is not to compromise, to hold you at arm's length, uh, to stand my ground, to be right.
46:49
SPEAKER_00: The more uncomfortable thing to do is to yield and to become pink, to show mercy and grace.
46:57
SPEAKER_00: But that's what we're called to as the body of Christ, to do that for one another.
47:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh so let's pray.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for the work that you've accomplished on the cross with Christ, that you've taken vastly different people and brought us together.
47:14
SPEAKER_00: Not that we would create unity on our own, but you have unified us once and for all.
47:21
SPEAKER_00: God, we ask that you would help us recognize that unity and value it as you do.
47:27
SPEAKER_00: Help us to be unifiers in our local body and not dividers and fight for the thing that you've established by your son's death on the cross.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: We thank you so much for who you are and that we can partake in your story, Lord.
47:44
SPEAKER_00: We love you and we praise you.
47:45
SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray by the power of the Spirit.
47:47
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
47:49
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.