Ephesians 4, verses 1-6, Therefore,
a prisoner for the Lord, I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge
you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have
been called, with all humility and gentleness and patience,
bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of
the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit,
just as you were called to one hope, that belongs to your call.
One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who
is over all and through all and in all. For those of you who
were not here two weeks ago, I would encourage you, if you
have the opportunity, to go back to Sundays and listen to the
first portion of this text as I look at verses 1 through 3
in great detail. Today I'm going to focus mainly
on verses 4 and 5 and 6. And so as we look at this, ask
yourself, what are the consequences if we are not unified? What happens
when disunity becomes the norm in the church? Well, I'll tell
you. When the church is disjointed,
the Scripture says in Ephesians 3, verse 10, that we are to display
the glory of God to the powers and principalities of the heavenly
realm. So in other words, our existence shows Satan he's done. We talked about the courage in
evangelism yesterday. We talked about the providence
of God and the divine sovereignty of God in evangelism and that
faithful evangelism is measured by that faithfulness. Are we
sharing our faith, not fruitfulness and people coming to faith? Because
people coming to faith is the work of God alone and nothing
that we do can bring them to faith. So if we try to urge and
coerce people into doing things that God has not brought in them
naturally or supernaturally, but rather they are coming to
a natural end, then we are not trusting in what God is doing,
but rather we are manipulating what we can. When we are disunified,
the church doesn't display the supernatural power of God or
His manifold wisdom. What she does is she displays
a false glory. So if the church's purpose is
to display the glory of God and the wisdom of God, and we are
disunified, we are not in unity, then what happens is we're not
just messing up what God has commanded us to do. We're actually
proving that God hasn't done it. So what we're doing is we're
giving a false image of what God is and who God is and how
God has worked. So we stand in danger, as we
see in Ezekiel 36, for the nation of Israel who defamed the name
of God. Now, the glorious, amazing grace
of God is that even when we defame His name, He saves us. When Israel
failed, He said, for My name's sake that I save you, that I
restore you, not for your own. For you have defamed My name
among the nations, and you've lived with pagans, you've worshipped
idols, but I am going to give you a new heart. I'm going to
save you in spite of your desire to follow Me. We also display
a lie about God's divine power. When we're unable to forgive,
when we're unable to walk in unity in doctrine and in worship,
we actually are saying to the world, see, God's power isn't
powerful. We talked about God's power back
in chapter 3 of Ephesians. And when we aren't living unified
as a church, as the body of Christ, we are displaying that God's
power, and actually these are lies, of course, We are saying,
in essence, that God's power is not enough, that we must do
something else. Friends, God's power is plenty.
Another thing that happens when we do not display. unity and
we're disjointed as a people is that we've become man centered
and man focused. We become the church of me rather
than the church of Jesus Christ. And when we become the church
of me, then what happens when what you like in the church of
you becomes a problem with the church of me? Then we have really
big problems because me or you or we have to go because we can't
live together. That's why divorce is so high
among the church. We also see the consequences
of disunity in the church, especially when it comes to doctrine and
method and mission. We see disunity that results
in false conversions. Well, what's a false conversion?
Someone who says, Lord, Lord, but they'll never enter the kingdom
of heaven. Someone who says, well, I know
I'm saved because I have followed the rule of salvation. And they
are not indeed a child of God. They have not been born again.
And then false converts bring into the church false Christians
who then are members who are not regenerate. So we have unregenerate
members in churches and what they want is the church of me.
I want God to do what was right for me. I want me to be happy.
I want me to be cool. I want me to do this. I want
me to do that. I want to find an air conditioned
church next week. I thought I'd throw that in there.
So if nobody's here, if some of you leave next week, I'm going
to call you. I'm going to find a church where the toilet's not
stopped up. I'm going to find the perfect church, just as the
Puritans, as they landed in Plymouth, began to think, we're going to
start a city on a hill. We're going to not only have
the perfect church, but we're going to be the perfect people
and the perfect community. Folks, it will not happen. It will not
happen. But the people of God ought to
understand that when we are not unified, that false Christians
come under the ranks. They'll always be there. But
brothers and sisters, I'll be honest with you, I believe it's
a epidemic of false conversions in the churches today that have
then be put on committees to bring pastors who are unregenerate.
And I believe there are more unregenerate pastors in pulpits
than there are saved people in churches. Look at verse four. There's one
body and one spirit. Just as you were called to the
one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one
baptism, one God and father of all who is over all and through
all and in all. Well, in Ephesians chapter two,
as we learned many, many months ago, We hear these words, for
He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has
broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility by
abolishing the law of commandments, expressed in ordinances, that
He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two,
so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through
the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And He came and preached
peace to you who are far off and peace to those who are near.
For through Him we both have access to one Spirit, to the
Father. So then you are no longer strangers
and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and
members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the
apostles and prophets. Christ Jesus Himself being the
cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together,
grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him you are also being
built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. And so what I want to do in our
time we have together is I want to take these terms, I want to
take these words, and what I want us to look at is that we are
one body, with one spirit called to one hope that belongs to our
call with one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father
of all who is over all and through all and at all. So I'm going
to sort of cut those into little slices and peel them back for
us to see what they look like. Let's begin. What is it to say
that we're one body because we've already seen in the first part
of this text, in chapter 4, verses 1 through 3, that we ought to
be striving, urging. I urge you, therefore, to walk
in a manner worthy of your calling, to which you've been called,
with making, what does he say? Eager to maintain the unity of
the Spirit in the bond of peace. So there's no real English word,
and I've been trying to look at this in the last few weeks,
there's no real English word to actually Translate what Paul
is saying there because the point I Greek is so expressive. There's
no way you'd actually have to to actually fuse together a bunch
of English phrases and it would make no sense whatsoever. So
when Paul says, I urge you to be eager to maintain that is
such a that is such an expressive thing that we cannot fathom it
in our language or vernacular. It is not possible. And so it's
far above any urging that you've ever had. And the way I look
at it is if someone were to come in to your home and threaten
your safety or your life, You would have an urge to maintain
the sanctity of your home. You would have an urge to survive. And let me tell you this, that
is nothing compared to what Paul is trying to express to us through
the Scripture. We need to urge beyond the ideal and the desire
to live. We need to urge to maintain the
unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. So, it is a matter
that is graver and heavier and weightier than death. Why? What's at stake? The glory of
God is at stake. So, we don't want to put American
English on the text of the scripture. And just go, well, yeah, okay,
cool. I'm just going to work toward that. No, we're not working
toward that. We are dying toward that. We are pushing all that
we are into a meat grinder of submission to the Spirit of God
and in His power and destroying anything that gets in our way
of our hearts and minds being tuned to fighting for that unity.
So what do we do? We're one church, we're one bride.
Denominationalism in America is probably one of the craziest
things in the world. Of all the things, I hear two. When people
say, well, I'm not interested in coming to church. Two reasons.
One, it's full of hypocrites. And two, because I don't really
know why you people want to want to try to get me to come when
all y'all do is fight and divide. Well, there's not a whole lot
of dividing. The Baptists are good at dividing. They've divided
more than anybody, especially in the 20th century. They've
divided more than any people have ever divided. But now in
the last 20, 30 years, there's not been a whole lot of division
when it comes to denominations, but it's still there. But why
did these things happen? We'll come to you tonight. We'll
talk about that. But what we do know is that we're
not a bunch of different bodies. East Side Baptist Church is not
a different body than Grace Truth Church and not a different body
than Rehoboth Church and not a different body than United
First United Methodist. We're not different churches. That's
that's ridiculous. It's absurd. We're one body.
And Christ is our head. So where is the unity there?
There is no unity. I'll be honest with you. There
is no unity among churches, even in the same denomination. OK,
you can have my money and you can have my time if it's not
on my campus. But if you start to come in here
on where we are and what we do, you might take some of our what?
People. Oh, so now they're your people.
I thought they were Jesus' people. I thought Jesus was the one who
bled and died to save his bride. I thought he paid for the saints
with his own blood. I didn't realize that the pastors
did that, or that the leaders did that, or that Grandma Grace
did that, or that Uncle Bob did that, or whoever built the church
in 1920. Oh, I didn't realize that was his church. I thought
that was the church of Jesus Christ. You see the point? We
have this possessiveness, and we want to be unified. Yeah,
we all believe the same thing, but we really don't. But we are
separate. See, this is the united we stand.
But we're still separate. Don't encroach on us. Well, friends,
not even denominations are going to stand the test of the Holy
Spirit. Not even denominations are going
to stand the day of judgment. If we're building our work on
anything but the foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, it
will be a waste. And as I said yesterday to the class in evangelism,
We need to stop thinking about our work as things that we do
and start looking at it for what it really is. The work of the
ministry is a human being that you are investing in. And when
you put people into your programs in your church, and you take
a cavalier attitude toward that and go, you know, it may be burned
up, but at least we're doing something, right? Well, you're
throwing people out. You're throwing people into hell.
You're throwing people into the proverbial street. Out. Well, you know, it's just
our ministry. No, it's not your ministry. It's
people. People. There is no ministry without
people. We have a good ministry. What is it? Well, we do this.
We have a men's ministry. Have you heard this? We've got
a great men's ministry. We get together every Saturday.
Nothing wrong with this now. I'm not making fun of what we
do, but we're calling it ministry. We get together every Saturday
and we cook bacon and bratwurst and sausage and ham. And for
those guys that don't want to eat all that garbage, we cook
them pork chops. And so we're going to get together. But we're
really fellowshipping. It's a ministry, because before
we eat, we pray. And we thank God for that. And
then we're going to go on this camping trip. And then we're
going to do this. Good! Go do it. Fellowship, man. That's
great. Women, you do the same thing. You do whatever you're
going to do. Fellowship. But don't call it ministry. And don't make that
ministry itself more important than the people that comprise
it. Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Steve. I know you're
having trouble at home, but you know what? We got a program to
put on here. Why don't you go over there and cry by yourself? That's really what
we say. And so we're disunified in all
this. I don't mean to get off on that, but we are one body. We are one creation in Christ. The church's one foundation is
Jesus Christ, her Lord. She is a new creation through
the water and the blood. I love that hymn. God has saved
us through Christ, and we are one body. So what does that mean? We're not going to fix that by
sitting here and talking about it. We're not going to fix it
anyway. Only God's going to fix that. But we need to have in
our mind what being unified really means. Can we even do that? If
we are one body, that means that we need to be unified, of course,
in Christ. His blood. His life. But how
do we know that we're unified in Christ? Who is Christ? Well,
that means we must be unified in several ways. Number one is
doctrine. We must be unified in doctrine. If we're one body,
then doctrine is teaching that teaches us theological truths
which come straight from the Bible. Now, what's this? This
sounds like seminary. It's not. It's called Scripture. It's called
being the body. It's called being the church
of Jesus Christ. It's like buying a new device, and you don't even
know what it is. Well, there's a new device, and it does something
amazing. I don't know what it does, and I've never even heard
of it, and I've never even seen one, but I just ordered it. And
it's going to come tomorrow, and I'm going to take it out
of the box, and I'm going to put the box on the mantel, and I'm going to throw
the thing in the trash. Why? Because I didn't read the directions, and I wasn't
really interested in doing so. But I have one. So how are we going to be the
body if we're not investing in learning who Christ is? If we're
His body and He's our head? We want to know how we are to
work. We want to know how we are to
operate. We want to know what we are to believe. And so unity
in doctrine is so we know who God is. If I were to pass around
a card and everybody was to say who God is in ten words or less,
we'd probably get as many answers or many variations of answers
as there are people in the room. And friends, that should not
be. Because the one way you don't
answer doctrine that says, well, God to me is. That's wrong. God
to you. God doesn't care what He is to
you. He is what He is. He is that which He is. He is
the great I am. I am what? It doesn't matter.
I am. And so we cannot impose who God is in our opinion. Our
opinion isn't important to God. Because He is truth. He is the
Creator of all things. He is the God who is holy and
righteous and just. He is the God who is always perfect
and always right and always loving. And even in that love, in His
justice, He will lovingly and righteously judge wickedness
and He will put people into hell who have not come to faith in
Jesus Christ. That's what God will do. And
I don't care how bad that sounds, or how unpolitically correct
that might be, or how culturally polarizing that is, or how many
seekers that we're going to run off because they don't want to
hear that kind of word. Well, if they don't want to hear about
that God, they don't want to see the true God. And so we don't
want to bring them to a place where they start to learn a false
God, which is no God at all, to get a false hope and a false
gospel and a false eternity. And then they stand before the
Lord and they say, hey, I'm here. And he says, get away from me,
you workers of iniquity. I never knew you. And I said,
well, we knew you. And he said, well, I don't know
you because you knew another God. So we've got to be unified
in doctrine. And I'm not one of these people
that believe, and I know this is dogmatic, but I'm not one
of these people that believe in secondary doctrines. I'm not
one of these people that believe in non-essential doctrine. That's
not saying there's non-essential organs in my body. Well, that's
the non-essential part of my heart. That's the non-essential
part of my brain. I mean, I do have a lot of non-essential
parts of my brain, I'm sure. But I don't want to start slicing
it out to see. That's absurd. There are no non-essential doctrines.
Now, there may be doctrines or things that the Bible is very
vague on in our philosophy and in our rhetoric and in our interpretation
that we get really excited about coming up with some new ideas.
But man, we're just going to enjoy that around coffee and
leave it at the table because it's not important. But there's
no doctrine of the Bible explicitly teaches that is secondary or
non-essential. That's a joke. And so if we are
not knowing who God is and how God judges and how God loves
us. I saw a pastor just the other day. And he wrote on Twitter. He said, I'm so glad that God
loved me so much with all the O's that He gave His only Son.
But John 3,16 does not say that. The word so is in the manner
in which God loves. God loved in this way that He
gave His only Son. God loved the world in this manner
that He gave His only Son. That whoever believes in Him
should have eternal life and not perish. For God did not send
His Son into the world that the world might perish, but that
through Him the world might be saved. See, that's what it teaches. And so we're not going to say
that we're just going to impose. We've got to be unified in doctrine.
That's one of the hardest things that I had to deal with in California
is when I was teaching through John and I spent eight weeks
in John 3. And I started in John 3, 16, excuse me, just eight
weeks on that verse and dealing with the love of God. It was
a tidal wave of emotions that flew over some of these people
because they'd never heard it that way before. They'd never
read the full counsel of the gospel to see that God is a loving
God, but that His affection for His own glory is so much greater
than His affection for me. It must be. God is worthy of glory. He's
worthy of honor. He's worthy of praise because
they are His alone to command. They belong to Him. I use the
example often as if we have four children and somebody came in
and says, I need a baby, and they just snatch one of our children.
And we look at them and go, what are you doing? You're crazy.
Well, you've got four. You can afford to lose one. I'm sorry,
that's my child. You walk out of this door with
my child, it's going to be a bad day. You're not taking him. It's mine.
Jesse Gidding. That's what we do. God's glory and the worth and
the honor and the praise is His. When we take it and we put it
on something else, we put it in our own minds, we start to
transform Him into something that He's not or something that
Scripture doesn't teach. We have become idolaters and
adulterers, according to James. And so we commit spiritual adultery.
We become a spiritual idol worshipper. We worship the God that we've
created, not the God of the Bible. And so the Word of God is our
foundation. It's not to be used as a guide
to tell us how we ought to walk and talk and how we ought to
go. Do I need to buy groceries today? Let me see what John says
about that. Let me see what Paul says about that. No, it is a
revelation of God and His redemption of man to see His glory in the
pages of Scripture, who then came to life in the person of
Jesus Christ. The Word became flesh and tabernacled
with us, and He shows the fullness of the glory of God, and we have
seen His glory. Glory as the only Son of the
Father, full of grace and truth. And John says that from that
fullness, we all receive grace upon grace. Do you know that?
If you're unified in that as a body, then you know that because
of the Word. So we ought to be unified in
doctrine. We ought to also be unified in mission. Now you hear
mission. We've got a mission statement. We've got a mission
purpose. We've got a mission whatever, impossible. And so we hear this
all the time, but basically our mission is what we do and why
we do, if you will. What do we do? Well, what is
the church supposed to do? Foundational. The church is not
here for benevolence. The church is not here for social
action. The church is not here for country clubbism. The church
is not here for alternate Christian activities apart from the world.
The church is not here to make people feel good about themselves
and to build up their self-esteem and to help people in college
and all this kind of stuff. The church exists only foundationally
for the glory of God, that God may look down and see a reflection
of Himself and go, yes, I'm satisfied with me. That's it. To display
it into the world, God is pleased with Himself. Well, that sounds
egocentric. It is, and God is worthy of egocentrism,
for He is God and we are not. And see, we are to unite as one
body in the power and the purpose of our Creator, Jesus Christ,
who gave birth to the church through His blood and through
His flesh. So then we ought to be unified
in purpose. So that's our mission. That's what we do. What's the
purpose of the church? To the praise of His glorious
grace. We are to worship the church. We ought to worship as
the church, the Father. We ought to worship the Son.
We ought to worship the Spirit. We are to worship God. to the
praise of His glorious grace. You know, one of the worst things
that happens in American church right now is that people just
say, praise God. I think that's a terrible thing.
What do you mean that's a terrible thing? I think it's a terrible
thing because I hear people say, praise God, about everything.
Man, this guy's got cheese grits. Praise God. Are you really praising
God about cheese grits? You may be, and if you are, praise
God. But we just use it, you see?
We just play with it. Purpose. Our purpose is to the praise
of His glory. We ought to be raising up as
a family, our own families, to the praise of His glory. In affection
to holiness and to God and to the Word, we ought to be raising
our children to walk in obedience. Parents, we are to train our
children in the admonition of the Lord. You know what that
means? Fear. They ought to fear God first and then learn to love
Him because He first loved them. You have a pet rattlesnake, you
first learn to fear it. You learn how to approach it.
You learn how to feed it. I don't know if anybody has had
one, but if you did, you need to know how to fear it first.
What an awful illustration. I'm glad I didn't write that
one down. I know, let's get a snake. But our purpose is to praise
His glory. We need to quit making excuses,
church. Fathers, mothers, we need to quit making excuses while
we have given our children over to Caesar and while we've given
our children over to somebody else to train them in righteousness.
We got to stop, we got to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and
just do it. And we do it together as a church. We ought to be unified
in doctrine, in mission and in purpose, and we ought to be unified
in method. Our mission and the message, if you will, the doctrine,
I try not to make them all ends, is we'll actually produce the
methods. What methods? The methods of
our worship, the methods of our evangelism, the methods of all
that we do. Our message, the gospel, will produce the methods.
What is Paul saying in 2 Corinthians chapter 4? He says we have renounced
underhanded and disgraceful ways and we do not tamper with the
truth, with the word of God. We do not tamper with the word
of God, but by direct statement of the truth, we entrust our
consciousness to you, our consciousness to you and to God. And if the
gospel is veiled, it is only veiled to those who are perishing.
For the God of this world has blinded the eyes of unbelievers
to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel and the glory
of the gospel in the face of Jesus Christ. And there is nothing
we can do about it. Our methods need to be biblical.
We are not unified. We need to be unified in worship.
I don't believe we're unified in worship. What is worship?
I have an entire 35 to 40 hours of talking about what worship
is. But worship is not what we do when we stand up and sing.
We didn't sing the last two weeks. Did we still worship? Absolutely. What is worship? We need to worship
the God of Scripture, not the God of man. We need to be unified
in our fellowship. We need to understand that fellowship
doesn't always include a casserole. But the fellowship is true life
together, and that means we ought to learn together. We ought to
teach each other as I'm sharpens iron. We ought to give oversight
to one another. It's not just the elders and
the pastors jobs to give oversight to the whole of the church. And
as we grow, it's going to be more impossible to do that. We
are responsible not only for the congregation in which we
live, but also for the congregation, which is not a part of us. that
we might actually begin to understand that we are responsible for our
brothers and sisters of other churches and other denominations.
When we are with them and in their lives and we see sin in
their life or we see failure or we see pain, we are to minister. We need to be unified in that.
We ought to give correction. We ought to give encouragement.
We ought to be everywhere. It is our business to be in other
people's business. I never understood it, how parents
would say, what's none of my business? I didn't know my 12-year-old
was into that stuff. I just don't go into their room.
They always keep it locked. Blah, blah, blah. Doors come down,
folks. We ought to be unified in our
care and concern for each other. We ought to be unified in our
mind and our attitude and in the Spirit. In Philippians 2,
Paul says these words, so if there's any encouragement in
Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit,
any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind,
having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.
Do nothing, he gives us some ideas, do nothing out of rivalry
or conceit. or conceit, but in humility count
others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look
not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of
others. Have this mind among you." See, that's a command.
Which is yours in Christ Jesus? Which tells us that it's already
ours. Who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality
with God a thing to be grasped and made Himself nothing. taking
the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men and being
found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has
highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above
every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow
in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the God the Father."
So how do we do this? We can look at it. How do we
stay in unity like this? Well, what are some things we
do relationally in unity real quick as we go on? Philippians
2, what does he say? Do everything without grumbling
and questioning, that you may be blameless and
innocent children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked
and twisted generation among whom you shine as lights of the
world, holding fast to the word of life so that in the day of
Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.
See, we ought to have humility real quickly here. We need to
have humility. We don't need to complain and
take personal everything that goes on in our lives. We need
to be humble. We need to think of others above ourselves and
not think of ourselves first all the time. Wouldn't it be
very easy to just turn all these other conditions on me? God bless
you all. We need to be holy. We need to
walk in righteousness and practice righteousness. We are to be blameless
and innocent. We ought to hold fast to the Word of Life, who
is Jesus Christ, the living Word of God. And we ought to be worshiping
and thanking Him even in the midst of the most miserable circumstances. And then we ought to be obedient,
to walk in the good works that He prepared beforehand for us.
You see, this is all from Ephesians. We've learned it already. We
are not to try to change people's behaviors. We are not to try
to change people's lives for the better. We are not supposed
to be proclaiming that they can have a better life if they come
to Jesus Christ. We are to be proclaiming that Christ will
save them from the judgment of the Father, and that He loves
them in the sense that He gave Jesus for their sake. To take their sin, and their
sin is paid. Your sin is paid, church. Your
sin debt has been paid. by Jesus Christ. And when you
realize, and when you come to faith, and when you are born
again, your life does not get better in this world. But the
world begins to oppress you and persecute you and hate you. And
the calamity that can come on the children of God is oftentimes
greater than those who live in the world, for they are living
in the best times that they'll ever know. They are living their
best life now. But we aren't. The Scripture
promises that the world will hate us because it hated Him.
The Scripture promises we will suffer because Christ suffered.
So let's stop complaining. Paul teaches us all these things
in Ephesians. In Ephesians 1, he says, even
as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and blameless before Him. We need to walk in righteousness
which is ours in Christ Jesus. Not perfection, but fight sin. Don't embrace it. Jesus Christ
has killed, as we've already read, the wall of hostility through
the destruction of His own flesh. Then why do we sit and stew?
See, unity is not just the big picture. But unity, here's where
it hits the road for us in closing. It's the road for us when in
the small things, disunity begins to breed. You know, it's easy
when somebody goes, oh, they're teaching a false doctrine. And
you know what? We have to separate when people teach a false gospel.
We have to separate when people have unregenerate pastors. We
have to separate when people are teaching a different method
that is actually not biblical. We have to separate when people
come to a place where they're actually leading people to a
false conversion. We have to separate when our church is Ichabod,
the glory of God has departed. But we don't do it with our thumbs
up and going, look at here, our nose is up. Y'all are just so
ridiculous. No. We try, we do, we invest,
we see if we aren't able to talk and to encourage and to help
train and teach people. And when they say, I don't want
to hear that, then we just have to part ways. But in the body,
are we unified? How about the small things? The
unspoken resentment? Can't stand that person. You
know how that works? That's selfishness. That's bitter.
That's a prison. Internal assumption. Yeah, I
know what they're thinking. I know what they do. I know how
they are. You do not. We do not know how each other
are. No matter how long you've lived with her. I mean, does
your spouse not surprise you every few days? Not much. The longer you live with somebody,
you sort of know them, but to say that they'll always be like that
or every time they say something, it's not always the case. Be
surprised. Internal assumption. And even
if we are assuming, then we die. We let in our lives. Prideful
judgments. Not prideful judgments. Well, they're always like that.
I'm glad I'm not like them. Prideful judgments. Comparisons, jealousy,
strife. See, James warns about such things,
all this disunity. And I'll be honest with you,
we are either one in Christ and the bond of peace, or we are
a broken and shattered pot that should be thrown out. In this
doctrine, we must be unified. And if we're not unified, we're
divided. But though we are united, we
are unique, as Paul teaches in Romans 12, so we, though many,
are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. But Christ
is our head. Now, see, this is the good part.
Christ is the head. We do not have to worry about how we are
to function like a chicken with its head cut off. We are functioning
because Christ has turned His head to where we ought to walk.
And how do we know the head of Christ? Here, the Word of God.
And we do it together. And we don't learn behavior modification.
We don't say, OK, you need to act like Jesus. Well, we can't,
although it wouldn't be a bad thing. That's not what the Scripture
teaches us to do, to act like Jesus. The Scripture teaches us to repent
and believe in Jesus. And then Jesus will act through
us. Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God, the Holy Spirit, will act through
us. Our unity comes first through the one Spirit. Look at that.
One Spirit that indwells us and keeps us as an inheritance. In
1 Peter, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has caused us, according to His great mercy, He has caused
us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable,
undefiled, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being
guarded through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last
time. See, God in His mercy has given Jesus Christ and the Holy
Spirit of God to save us and to bring us into unity. The Father
has qualified us through Christ to be in His presence. He has
declared us just on the back of Jesus. He's taken our sin
and put it on the sinless one that we might become the righteousness
of God. So then we get what cannot be obtained, which is the righteousness
of God's divine Son, Jesus Christ. It is ours. And we stand in it
justified before God, holy and blameless. Though we fight against
sin until that day, we will be made whole and we'll look at
him and see him face to face and be just like him. Not God's,
but we will be holy and righteous. We will be apart from sin and
the corrupt flesh and the nature of our father, Adam. And so what
do we do? What is our one hope? This is
our hope. The doctrine of Jesus Christ, the Gospel, the Good
News, the Evangelist. This is our hope. Our hope is
that we have been qualified in the Father. One Father, one Lord,
one Spirit. We are qualified. Colossians
1.12, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share
in the inheritance of the saints in life. This is the work of
one Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God. And this
one Spirit. We've got one Spirit, one hope,
one Lord, and in closing, Bundle all these together for you. One
spirit. 1 Corinthians 12, for in one
Spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews and Greeks, slaves
and free, and were all made to drink of the one Spirit. Romans
8 and 9, you, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit,
if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does
not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. See,
the Holy Spirit is the one who produces faith and produces repentance
and then produces new life made certain by the rebirth. The Spirit
fills us with one hope. So the Holy Spirit gives us new
life. And then we have new hope. We have one hope, not two hopes,
not three hopes, not many hopes, one hope. So if there's a million
of us in the church and we're all unique in our giftedness
and our personalities and our abilities, and nobody's better
than anybody else, nobody's greater than anybody else, nobody has
a better responsibility in the sense of prestige, we're all
just slaves to righteousness and we've been saved by grace,
and here we are now filled with one hope. One hope, we all have
the exact same hope, the exact same doctrine, the exact same
truth, the exact same heart for worship. And so where is that
in the body? It's not there because the Word
of God has come to the wayside. It has fallen into the basket.
It has gone and been pushed away. to go to the study, when they
think of quick ways of actually developing a message to teach
the church, to give them something they can put on the refrigerator
and check off and say, I've accomplished what the pastor told me I needed
to do this week. And then they go to the Bible to find something
that fits with what they think ought to be taught. And that's
an abomination. And not only that, but it's robbing
you, church. It robs you of your hope. Because then your hope comes
into what you can do instead of what God has already done
for you. This hope is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which includes
God's holiness, His Lordship over all things, because He created
all things, He owns all things. Therefore, He does with all things
what He desires and what He purposes and what He decrees. And nothing
He has made has the right to call Him out for His actions,
because they are always right and just. This gospel It's good
news. It is gospel because man is wicked
and God is holy and God is just to punish sin. And God is merciful
and He sent Jesus Christ and He came from the womb that He
created and He became a man and He lived wholly before God among
men. And then He willingly and passively
obeyed. by being hanged on a cross and
subjected himself to the hands of man that he might be destroyed.
But it was truly the judgment of the father and experienced
judgment for sins that were not his iniquity of us all. Us who believe was laid on him
by stripes. We are healed. And so without
the same gospel, we have different hopes and if we have different
hopes, we are not unified at all. What is a different hope?
Well, the man centered gospel. The social gospel, the feel-good
gospel, the seeker gospel, the tradition gospel, all these things,
the hope of culture, the hope of a better society, the hope
of a better life, the hope of a good retirement, the hope of
a government change, the hope of the world becoming better,
the hope of feeding starving children, all these things that
are just hopeless hope. They're worthless hopes. They're
awful hopes. They're not going to help you.
Go feed 50 million orphans, please. But at the end of the day, when
you face the Lord, that's not going to count for anything.
It's not going to give you hope. The hope of anything apart from
God's saving and merciless grace is a worthless hope. It's a hopeless
hope. So we have one Lord. And basically the way this text
reads is that we have one Lord in whom all we believe and all
have been baptized in Christ Jesus. That's sort of the crux
of it, if I were to summarize it. So we have one Lord. Jesus is Lord. Do you understand
what the title is? See, Jesus is the Lord. It is
His alone. No other person holds that title.
No other person holds that place. No other thing can take that
place. And if we are seeing that He
is Lord of our lives, that's great. We didn't make Him Lord.
He made us His. And we are His, and He is our
Lord. But even if we don't make Him
Lord, like the world likes to say, even if He's not our Lord,
He's still our Lord. Whether we submit to him or whether
we agree with him or whether we subject ourselves to him,
whether we believe in him or not, he is the Lord of all and
he will put judgment on those who reject him and he will give
mercy to those who are his. If we die on our sins, we remain
dead, and the Lord's judgment remains on us. If we repent and
believe in Christ, then He gives new life and His Lordship molds
us into His own image. We see that all in Ephesians
1 as well. So we have one faith and one baptism. These hopes,
these truths, this Lord produces one faith through one spirit.
This one faith, not many faiths, not different views of faith,
but one faith. We are not unified if we do not
have one faith. And if we're not unified in one
faith, then someone is going to be terribly surprised to hear
the words of Jesus. Depart from me. I never knew
you. And that one baptism means that
we are in the body of Christ. This isn't about water baptism.
It's about being brought into the body of Christ. We are now
the family of God. We've been adopted and predestined
to be adopted as sons before the foundation of the world.
We are in Christ. We're not the social aspect of
the relational bliss of life today. Isn't this great? It is
that sometimes when things are good, but it's more important,
it's more intimate, it's more divine than just this earthly
time, which we ought to be very joyful about looking forward
to the day when we can actually enjoy fellowship with Christ
in the face, in the flesh. But it's the supernatural perfection
of becoming justified by decree of the master of it all, the
Lord of it all. We will become like Christ and that we will
be without sin to the praise of his glory for all of eternity.
And we see that we all have one God and the father of all. And
this all there is not just specifically talking about the church, but
it's talking about everything that has ever been created in
the world. God is that God. In Ephesians, three, nine, we
see what Paul has said about this. And to bring to light for
everyone, what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in
God who created all things? See, God is the father of all
and most certainly the father of the church through his great
mercy toward us. Do you see the great love that
the father has given to you? Do you see the call to unity
and the power thereof? My prayer for you is that if
you see it, you would just walk in it, believe. If you see here
today. Unresponsive to the call of God,
would you repent, believe the gospel? I pray God would give
you that gift of faith. Let's pray. Lord, we are grateful. Above all things, we are grateful
for Your mercy and Your love toward us. Lord, thank You for
applying Your love and providing Your love and giving an effectual
call to us that we have believed and that we have been saved and
that we fight sin. Father, help us to prepare for
that day, trusting completely in your power to save us and
to bring us to sinlessness and immutability and to the resurrection.
But Lord, until that time, let us walk unified. Let us walk
unified as your people with supernatural affection for one another as
we grow, as we deal with doctrine, as we grow into our knowledge
of grace. As we grow into worshipers, as we grow intimate with each
other, as we minister to one another, as we encourage each
other, as we put our faith and our hope in Christ alone every
day. Lord, grow us as a body, as the
body. Help us to pray for our fellow
brothers and sisters of other congregations and other denominations
that we all might be unified in spirit and in flesh. And Lord,
the bond of our peace is our love. For the world will know we are
your disciples if we have love for one another. Let us love. Divinely. And in unity in Jesus
name we pray. Amen. I'll take the next 30 or
40 minutes to just I'm just playing.