It's good to be back with you
again. I talk to Brother Kevin pretty
regularly, and he's told me that things are going well here, and
I'm very happy to hear that. He's happy about that. And I
want to speak to you tonight. I don't think this is a problem
here. That's not why I'm preaching
on this. But I do know this. I know that the Lord will He
will teach you through the Gospel and then after some time, the
Lord will send various trials and make you experience what
you've been taught. He'll make you learn by experience
what you've been taught. So maybe that will be useful
down the road. Maybe down the road you can say
to one another, Go back and listen to that message Clay preached
that night. And maybe that will be helpful
down the road somewhere. If you had to name two things
that are most important for a local church, what would it be? What
would be the two things you would say are most important for a
local church? Well, the first thing that is
the most important preeminent above everything else is the
preaching of Christ and Him crucified in truth. That's why the Lord
has fit you together and framed us together to preach Christ.
Whatever God gives us and everything we have, God gives us. He gives
us our jobs. He gives us various gifts and
whatever else He's given. The purpose, primarily, preeminently,
is to be used to support the preaching of Christ crucified
to send it forth into all the world. Because if God saves sinners,
those sinners He saved, this is how He's going to save them.
He's going to save them through the preaching of the Gospel. And
one day, He's going to call the last one. And when He does, this
thing is going to be done, and we're going to go to glory with
Him. So that's great motivation to want to send this gospel out,
to give ourselves to it, because one day the last one is going
to be called. Every time I have the privilege to baptize a new
believer, that's the thought that goes through my mind, what
if this is the last one? So we preach Christ and that's
our message. Now our message is, We preach
divine election. We're not afraid of that word.
We preach divine election. We preach that God sovereignly
chose a people freely. He blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places according as He chose us in Christ
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy
and without blame before Him in love. He chose His people
freely, not merited by anything else. He chose us sovereignly.
He chose whom He would. And God also predestinated His
people. He predestinated us to the adoption
of children by Jesus Christ. That means if we believe the
gospel, it's because before this world was made, God predestinated
the time and the place that we would hear the gospel of Christ
and He would give us a new heart and a new spirit and make us
receive the spirit of adoption. Paul said in Galatians 4, the
whole reason that Christ came into this world and redeemed
His people was so that we might receive, that is, be freely given
the Spirit of adoption, that we might be born of God. And he said, because you are
sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts,
crying, Abba, Father. He predestinated His people to
that. And as Paul told the Thessalonians, Beloved, we're bound to give
thanks for you always to God, because you're beloved of God.
God had from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification
of the Spirit and belief of the truth, whereunto He called you
by our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of Christ Jesus.
He did that. So if we believe, it's because
He predestinated us to that. And He's going to preserve His
people. We preach the preserving grace
of our Lord. God who has begun a good work
in you shall perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. He will
not lose one He everlastingly loved. He will not lose one.
It's because these people that Christ saved, He really saved
us, brethren. He came into this world made
of a woman, made under the law, and He successfully redeemed
all His people from the curse of the law. We were under bondage,
we were guilty, we were under the curse, and we were facing
death. eternal death, the second death,
and God sent forth His only Son, and He came into this world,
and He went to the cross, and He successfully redeemed His
people. He didn't try. He didn't make
an attempt at it. He successfully made His people
the righteousness of God in Him. Justified us from all things
from which we could not be justified by the law of Moses. The Lord
Jesus accomplished that. It's what He meant when He said,
It is finished. He accomplished it. So this is
our gospel. This is what we preach. We preach
Christ and Him crucified every time we stand in the pulpit.
That's what we preach. Even good works, if you do any
good work, those good works came from Christ, through the Spirit
of Christ. That's right, the fruit of the Spirit. That's what
it's called, the fruit of the Spirit. Any good thing a believer
does is because God, where His workmanship created in Christ
Jesus and He ordained before the good works that He shall
cause His people to walk in. He gets the glory. Are you saying
that man doesn't get any glory? That's our message. Man doesn't
get any glory. God gets all the glory. You can't
preach sinners too low and you can't preach God too high. We
don't contribute. We don't contribute. It's all
of Him. The simple way to understand
it, all sin is of us. But He only permits the sin to
come forth that's going to glorify Him and the rest of that He restrains.
But all sins of us and anything that is good, anything that's
salvation, He wrought that. He worked it. So He gets all
the glory. Now, that's the first important
thing. That's the most important preeminent
thing, the preaching of Christ crucified. What would you say
is the second important, most important thing? Unity. Unity. If we don't have unity,
we can't preach the gospel. We've got to have unity. That's
the second most important thing is the unity of brethren in the
bond of the Holy Spirit. Now we're not talking about unity
with folks who preach a lie just for the sake of unity. We're
talking about unity with brethren born of the Spirit of God. You
that's been gathered here to support this gospel and send
this gospel forth, unity among you. That's what I'm talking
about. Unity in God's local church where He's assembled His people.
That's the second most important thing because we've got to have
unity to preach the gospel. Got to have unity. So I want
you to see here in Ephesians, turn with me to Ephesians 4. He says in Ephesians 4, verse
1, Paul had just been speaking about the capability of God,
how God is able. He is able. All things He is
able to do. And He says, "...I therefore,
the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the
vocation wherewith you are called, with all lowliness and meekness,
with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring
to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace." Our subject
is endeavoring for unity. If a local church is going to
fulfill our commission, which is to preach Christ and Him crucified,
If we're going to have the Gospel preached for ourselves and our
families and people in this community and to send it forth into the
world, if we're going to do that, which is the most important thing,
we have to have unity. We have to have unity. Now, first
of all, the reason that we must be exhorted to walk in this spirit
of lowliness and meekness and forbearance and love and all,
the reason we have to be exhorted to this is because each believer
in Christ's church is a sinner. That's why we have to be exhorted
to this. This is not our sin nature to
do this, to walk in lowliness. That's not our sin nature. We
all have, every believer has a nature that's sin, and that's
not our nature to do these things. But not only that, the brethren
God's assembled us with are sinners. I think this is so wise that
He put us together with sinners. Because He gonna force us to
be gracious and teach us what forgiveness and love is all about
by using our brethren and we ourselves who are sinners. Now,
we're exhorted not to sin. We're exhorted not to sin, brethren. And I say to you, don't sin. Just don't sin. I say that. That's what Paul says here. He
looked down at verse 17. He says, This I say therefore,
testifying the Lord that you henceforth, you've been called,
you've been given the gospel, henceforth walk not as other
Gentiles walk. He said don't walk like the unregenerate
world who doesn't know God. He says, they walk in the vanity
of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from
the life of God through the ignorance that's in them because of the
blindness of their heart, who, being past feeling, have given
themselves over to lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with
greediness, and we were no different. That's how we were. We were lost.
We were dead in sin. But for God's grace, He called
us. But now watch. But you've not so learned Christ.
If so be you've heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the
truth is in Jesus, that you put off concerning the former conduct,
the old man. which is corrupt according to
the deceitful love." Put him off, he said, and be renewed
in the Spirit of your mind. Now that means the Spirit of
God is going to get the glory for this because you just can't
be renewed in the Spirit of your mind. He's going to have to do
it. But you can give yourself to hear this gospel. That's how
he's going to do it. Now watch this. He says, "...and put on
the new man which after God is created in righteousness and
true holiness." So you have two natures. You have an old man
and a new man. He says, "...put off the old man with his deeds
and put on the new man." And he gives examples. He goes on
and he gives examples of what it is to walk in sin. You can
read those examples. So you endeavor not to sin. Now you know our old man only
produces sin. That's all that comes from your
sinful nature. So sin's gonna be mixed with
everything you think and everything you do. If you're a believer,
you know that. Sin's mixed with everything you think and everything
you do. But endeavor not to sin. Endeavor not to... He tells us
not to sin inwardly, in spirit, in anger and malice and bitterness
and those spiritual things. He said, don't sin in those things.
And He encourages us to not sin outwardly. That being said, know
this, know this, at some point, at some point, child of God,
you that know God, at some point you will most likely, you will
most likely be a brother or a sister who sins outwardly and greatly
disappoints your brethren. That's going to happen. That's
going to happen. And the exhortation in our text
is to show how we should walk toward each other continually,
but especially when a brother or sister has sinned and it's
known by you or it's known by the whole church. This is how
we're to walk towards that brother who sinned. Now, believer, I
want you to think of you. I want you to think of you. And
I want you to think of you being that brother or that sister who
has sinned. And you've dishonored Christ.
You've brought reproach on the Gospel. You've disappointed yourself. You've disappointed your brethren.
And somebody in the congregation knows it, or the whole congregation
knows it. You're that one. You've done
that. Now, put yourself in that place. How do you want your brethren
to deal with you? How do you want them to deal
with you? When we're the one that's overtaken in the fall,
we want our brethren to deal with us just what our text says,
with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing
us in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace." That's how I want to be treated when I sin. So with you, our Lord said, knowing
that, our Lord said, now you do to others how you want to
be done. You do to them the way you want
to be treated. Now, you're probably thinking
of immoral sin. You're probably thinking of immoral
sin But this also includes the sin of prideful self-righteousness. Now, you consider, you're the
one who's guilty. Now, here's what you're guilty
of. You got a brother or sister who sinned. They got drunk and got a ticket.
And people know about it. Church knows about it. Ought
not to have happened. Shouldn't have happened, but
it happened. And you knew about it. You know about it. And you
know it's wrong. It is. But they've been brought
to repentance. They've asked mercy. And everybody's
willing to forgive it and forget it and be merciful. And you just
can't let it go. You're puffed up. You've got
a haughty spirit about you. You're impatient with them. You've
got anger toward them. You're bitter toward them. You're
condemning them. You're ready to exclude them
from fellowship. Now, when that's the sin you've
fallen into, how do you want your brethren to deal with you?
Because it includes this sin too. How do you want your brethren
to deal with you? There's only one Spirit the Lord will bless.
If a brother comes to you, and this is how to do it. You go
there and you first talk about what Christ has done for us.
Speak about what Christ has done for that brother. Talk about
how He came lowly and what He did for us. And then in light
of Christ, you gently, lovingly reprove the brother for it's
just not right to walk in the Spirit. This is not a good Spirit.
Now that the only Spirit the Lord is going to bless To make
that, when you're puffed up and self-righteous, the only Spirit
the Lord's going to bless to make you hear that is if they come
in lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing you
in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of Spirit. That's the
only way you're going to hear them. I don't know where you're going
to hear them. We recognize outward immoral sin as sin. We recognize that. We understand
that's sin. But every believer has a self-righteous
Pharisee in us. We have a self-righteous Pharisee
in us. And that self-righteous Pharisee in us can be puffed
up in self-righteousness and it manifests itself two ways.
One, You could be the guilty one, guilty of some sin, and
your brother talked to you, and you could be puffed up in self-righteousness
and justify yourself. And not be mournful over it,
not be repentant over it, not be merciful over it, but be justifying
yourself because of it. But it also manifests itself
by being condemning and accusing and exposing and not being forgiving. So both of those are self-righteousness. To justify myself and excuse
myself for my sin is self-righteousness. And to condemn for sin is self-righteousness. Both of them are. Both of them
are. That's what the problem was over
in Corinth when that man had married his father's wife and
Paul said, this man's got to be excluded. That was a cave
where this man had to be put out. Why? Because he was justifying
himself. And so he wasn't repentant over
it. And others were going with him.
And then there were some there that were being condemning and
self-righteous, and they weren't mourning over it either. They
were just angry. And all of that's nothing but a spirit of division.
It's just self-righteousness. Now that was a rare case, but
that's so. But let me ask you this now. It's so easy for us to be in
that self-righteous spirit and to get in that self-righteous
spirit. And God put us together so that we have to be lowly and
meek and long-suffering. You think about that. If you're
going to have to suffer long with somebody, there's something
you're going to be suffering long with. There's some sin involved
that you've got to suffer long with. If you've got to bear another
burden, there's some sin you're having to bear. You know, we
think of these things, I think, as be lowly and meek and long-suffering
when everybody's just getting along so well and everything
just so sweet and everybody... No, if I'm gonna have to bear
a burden, there's a burden to bear. So this is when there's... And the hardest for me is, I'm
sure it's the same with you, It seems easier to be merciful
and forgiving to somebody who's fallen into some kind of immoral
sin of some sort. But that one who's being self-righteous
and judgmental about it, it's hard to be lowly and meek toward
that spirit. That's hard. That's hard to do.
It's hard to do. But what do we need to do? If that's a problem, brother's
puffed up, he's being self-righteous, judgmental, What am I going to
do before I'm going to be used of God to be able to have the
right spirit to speak to Him? What do I need to do? Well, I'm
going to have to think about Christ and how He deals with
me. And you've got to think about how Christ has dealt with you.
And really get in the, you know, Seek to be renewed in your mind. Seek for the Lord to help you
put off the old man and put on the new man so you come in the
right spirit. Look back at our text there.
He says, walk with all lowliness and meekness. Now you look to
the Lord Jesus Christ and you see lowliness and meekness. When
He walked this earth, you see lowliness and meekness. Sinners, that no self-righteous, so-called
holy man would receive. Sinners, harlots and publicans,
sinners that the Pharisees, these self-righteous holy men, wouldn't
have anything to do with them. They wouldn't associate with
them. And those sinners felt comfortable
coming to the Lord Jesus Christ. They were comfortable coming
to Him. That's how lowly and meek He
was. If you'd have seen our Lord Jesus, you wouldn't have been
able to tell Him from anybody else. He didn't put on some air. He wasn't trying to... Those
Pharisees, you'd have spotted them from a mile away. And they
wanted you to. But not our Lord Jesus. He was
lowly and meek. And that's how He dealt with
people. Now you think about this. When the Lord first gave you
the Spirit and He first made you hear this Gospel, it made
you know what a sinner you are. When He made it, it came into
our heart and we just held ourselves as just being, all our lives
we've been proud and arrogant and self-righteous and haughty
and all the works we thought were good works were nothing
but sin. and rebellion against God. We were trying to come to
God by our own works and trying to justify ourselves and trying
to present something to God that was nothing but filth in God's
sight. And God made us see that. God
made us see that what we thought was righteousness was nothing
but sin. What made you, what convinced
you that you could come to Christ and confess your sin and He'd
show you mercy? It wasn't the Lord speaking in
spirit and convincing you in your heart of His wrath and His
judgment and His condemnation. That's not what made you willing
to come to Him. You heard Him speak and say, you're burdened, you're heavy
laden with this sin. Come to Me. And I'll give you
rest because I'm meek and lowly in heart and you'll find rest
to your soul." And that made you know, I can go to my Redeemer
and confess everything to Him and He'll show me mercy. Now,
I don't suggest you ever have this notion that somebody ought
to stand here and confess their sins to this congregation. You
ought never do that. You ought never do that. Because
there's only one that you can confess your sins to that will
hear you and be merciful to you and not treat you any differently,
and that's God. You and I just don't have that
ability. We don't. If somebody starts telling us
their sin, that's going to stick with you. It just is, sadly. But you can tell Him. Think of
how many sins you've confessed to Christ since you've known
Him. Think about that. And He still receives you. He
still has mercy on you. And He doesn't treat you differently. That's our God. He's lowly and
meek and you can come to Him. You can come to Him. Now, if
somebody came and And they have this proud, unloving, hard spirit. If somebody comes with that spirit,
that's generally going to gender the same kind of answer back.
Isn't it? That's part of what our Lord
meant when He said, Judge not that you be not judged. It's
partly because with what judgment you judge somebody, usually that's
the kind of response you're going to get from them. You go hard,
they're going to come back hard. The Scripture says that. It says,
a soft answer turns away wrath, a grievous word stirs up anger. But you think about the Lord.
He's not like us. He's not like us. He says, let
the wicked forsake His way, and let the unrighteous man forsake
his thoughts." That's you and me, the wicked, the unrighteous.
Forsake your way, forsake your thoughts, forsake what you think
about him. He said, and let him return to
me and I'll have mercy on him. Let him come to me, I'll abundantly
pardon. That's not what we expect from
God, because we don't expect that from other men. Because
that's not usually what we get from other men. But after our
Lord said that, He said, here's why I'll do that. My thoughts
are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways. He's
merciful. You come to Him and confess what
you are and He's merciful and He pardons and He forgives. The
reason men don't find mercy and forgiveness and pardon with God
is they don't come to God as sinners. They try to pretend
they're righteous and go on in that and God won't hear that.
But if you come a broken-hearted sinner and confess your sin,
He will receive you and you will find pardon. He never turned
away a true sinner that came to Him asking mercy. Never. Look
at this next thing. Think about God's long-suffering.
He said, walk worthy with the lowliness and meekness with long-suffering. We sinned in Adam. We sinned
in Adam in the garden. And think about this. Why didn't
God just destroy the world right then? Because he had chosen a
people in Christ. And Christ is going to come forth
and manifest His glory. And so what did God do? He was
long-suffering with all of His people. He didn't destroy Adam
because through Adam we were all going to be born. And He
was long-suffering. And think of the ages and ages of sin and
rebellion against God. And I'm talking about from His
people. And yet God continues to be long-suffering, and long-suffering,
and long-suffering. You and I wouldn't have put up
with us that long. We won't put up. You know how we are. But God's been long-suffering,
and long-suffering, and long-suffering. And think about when you were
walking in sin, and you didn't know Him, and you didn't want
to know Him, and God was just long-suffering. And even now
that you know Him, Think how God has suffered with us, the
thoughts we have, the sins we commit, and He continues to be
long-suffering with us. Oh boy. And He says, "...and
forbear one another in love." Think about how Christ, in eternity,
Beforebear, that means to beforebear is what that means. And think
about eternity. Our Lord Jesus beforehand said
to the Father, I will bear them. I'll bear their sin. I'll put
it away. I'll love them freely. He did
that before we knew anything about Him. And then He came here
and you think how He went to the cross. He didn't have to
go to that cross as far as it being an obligation. Now He put
Himself under obligation to do it freely, willingly. But here's a righteous man that
the law has no claim on. It has no claim on Him. But He
willingly went to have all the sin of His people put on Him
to bear our sin. And then to bear God's wrath
and the curse and the second death that we would have had
to bear. He literally bore that for us. and suffered, and bled,
and poured out His life's blood, and I don't even know what separation
from God is, but that's what He bore. That's the second death,
and that's what He bore for His people. And by that, brethren,
He put away all the sin of His people. He brought in righteousness
for us. He made atonement. He reconciled
His people to God so that we're one with God now, and He's going
to We're going to one day stand before God and be received because
of Christ's righteousness. He did that by forbearing us. I wonder how God would bless
it sometime if we would just step in and
say, if there's a disagreement between brethren, And once being
charged with something, if we just stepped in and said, you
know what? Just put it on me. I'll pay for it. I'll bear it. Don't, don't, let them, just
let them go. They owe you, they owe you something, they owe,
I'll pay it. That's what our Lord did for us. You know what
I believe it would do? I know what it would do. If I
was the one charging another brother and somebody stepped
in and did that, you'd see Christ in that so clearly. If you weren't
convicted in your heart and brought to break your heart and think
about what Christ did. If I didn't break my heart, I'd
just have a hard heart. But I believe the Lord would
bless that and just break a man's heart and you couldn't go on
in it anymore. Because you'd remember, that's
what my Lord did for me. That's what He's talking about.
Not, you know, putting up with the sin and bearing with it and
just being merciful. And we're talking about when
somebody's being hard and self-righteous and judgmental, just bear it
because that's what we are most of the time. We got this image
of ourselves, I think, that everybody just loves to be around us, and
we're so loving and so pleasant, and how could anybody not like
us? And if we really knew the truth, we just aren't that lovable,
really, most of the time, you know? But then look at this next thing. Endeavor, he said, endeavor to
keep the unity of the Spirit. I'm on a... and I got some other
things here, but I want to... I thought of this when I was
looking at this. He keeps talking about love throughout Ephesians. And I believe, our Lord told
us in Revelation that the problem at Ephesus was they had left
their first love. We know that from Revelation.
They left their first love. And Paul speaks a lot about love
in this letter to the Ephesians. And you know what is going to
be the cause when brethren have a spirit of division? You know
why that is? A lack of love. Anytime there's
separation, anytime there's division, it's an indication there's not
love there. Because love bears all things. Love seeks unity. Love doesn't want to divide.
Love doesn't want that. That's what we ought to endeavor
for all the time is love. He told them, do the first works.
Whatever it was Remember at the beginning when the Lord first
saved you, you couldn't read the scriptures enough, you couldn't
hear the gospel enough, you was at His throne of grace continually,
and you just were so thankful for that congregation of believers
that the Lord used to bring you the gospel, and for that pastor
the Lord used to preach the gospel to you, that they could have
asked you whatever and you'd have done it for them. That's
the first works He's talking about. Hear this gospel and get
in His Word and remember how that was. That's what He's talking
about. And I think that's what, when
that spirit of accusing and exposing and condemning, I think that's
what we need. We need to do those first works. Hug up to Christ. Hug up to Him. Look down now at verse 31. I'm
going to end. Verse 31, He says, Let all bitterness
and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away
from you with all malice. You see that word evil speaking?
You know what that is? Hey, brother, you busy? No, I'm not
busy. Did you hear about Brother Cass?
What did he do? Oh, it's bad. It's terrible. Did you know that he did such
and such? That's awful. We shouldn't do
that. Oh, I pray the Lord forgives
him and I pray, but he shouldn't have done that. And that one hangs up. He picks
the phone back up. He calls. We just got to call
somebody and tell them, How you doing? I'm doing pretty good.
Did you hear about Cass? Uh-uh. Well, don't tell nobody
now. He don't want you to tell anybody
this. Oh, I won't tell anybody. Well, he did sudden, sudden,
sudden, sudden. That one hangs up. He picks the
phone up. It just keeps going. And here's
the deception of our heart. We will talk about another brother
who sinned and condemn the sin and talk about how bad the sin
is. And what we're doing is sinning. That's evil speaking. That's
what that is. Evil speaking. It's malice. It's all the things he said put
away. That's what it is. And it always comes back to the
brother that we said it about and just heaps a tremendous more
weight of burden on him. All the time. That's not love. Would he do that if it was our
child? Would we do that? No. Why? We love him. But here's what he said, "...be
ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as
God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you." How has He forgiven you? Constantly, continually, every
hour of every day, for the sake of the precious blood of His
Son. He said, now, forgive one another,
just like that. Look, be ye followers of God
as dear children. Remember when he set the little
child? They were arguing over who was going to be the greatest.
And he set the little child and he said, except you be like this
little child, you're not even going to see the kingdom of heaven.
And then he talked about not offending one of these little
children. And then he gave that instruction on how to be so careful
if a brother has sinned and the steps to take. And then Peter
came to him and said, well, what if my brother has sinned and
he asks for forgiveness? How many times should I forgive
him? And the Lord said, without limit. If He comes to you seven
times in a day, forgive Him seven times in a day. And He gave that
parable about the man, the servant, who was forgiven so much, and
he went out and wouldn't forgive his servant so little. That's
what He's talking about. Be as children. Love as children. As children. And walk in love. Now, how am I going to do that?
Sure like I go back to the law and study up on how to love somebody. Walk in love as Christ also hath
loved us. And He tells us He gave Himself
for us. He laid down His life for us.
That's how we love. We lay down our lives for another.
And it was an offering, a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor.
So, I know you don't have a problem with this right now, but if you
ever do, when you're tempted to say the wrong thing or to
answer wrong or whatever, maybe go, I think I remember hearing
a message about you. Let's go listen to that. I pray
the Lord will bless it.