Immanuel Sermon Audio
I Am a Church Member: Unifying
We're going to come back and talk about the significance of that here in just a minute. If you have a bulletin, you can take that out. You can find your outline if you'd like to follow along in the outline provided. Our series is called "I am a church member," and we're talking about over these weeks, what is the biblical responsibility of a church member? What does God expect of you or me or any of us as part of his church? We talked a couple of weeks ago about being a functioning member, using the gifts that God has given you for the good of your church and for the glory of God, so we've talked about functioning membership. We've talked about being a praying member. What does it mean to be a praying member? How should you pray? Who should you pray for? Does that just mean you go over the sick list or is there something more to it? And we saw a couple of weeks ago that there is something more to it. We talked last week, very similar to what we're going to talk about this morning, but we talked last week about being a deferring church member. And the idea there is that we refuse to let our preferences on non-biblical issues control our church experience. Instead, the default position that we adopt as members of the church is humble and joyful submission to the other person, deferring joyfully. And so this morning we're going to talk about what does it mean to be a unifying church member? Similar to last week, last week the emphasis is on deferring to one another, not allowing something to control your church experience. This morning is more proactive, something that you ought to make a priority and that you ought to be intentional about. Unity is an important thing. It doesn't matter if you're talking about a family context or a work context or a sports context, unity really, really matters. I want to put a picture up on the screen and somebody tell me who this guy is. Anybody know who that is? T-O, Terrell Owens. Some of you may know him as a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice. That is his most recent claim to fame, but he's really known for being a wide receiver in the NFL. He's retired now. He was a great wide receiver. He holds several records among great people who have played that position in the NFL. No doubt that he was a fantastic football player. He's played for the 49ers, the Eagles, the Cowboys, the Bills, and the Bengals. Here's what everyone remembers him for, not as records. Everyone remembers him for being divisive, one of the most divisive players ever to play in the National Football League. When he was on your team, you knew it was only a matter of time until the division was going to come. He was going to get mad at somebody. Maybe he was going to get mad at the quarterback. Maybe he's going to get mad at the owner. Maybe he's going to get mad at the local media. Somebody was going to feel his ire and when he began to vocalize his grievances, he was extremely divisive. It happened on every team, five teams he played for in the NFL. When owners, different cities, different media, different quarterbacks, every team that he played for, he caused division. Let me put another picture up on the screen. Who's that? Tim Tebow. Most people think of Terrell Owens and they think that guy was a cancer to your team. I don't know that I've ever heard anybody describe Tim Tebow as a cancer. He was polarizing, though, and here's what happened when Tim Tebow found himself in the NFL. He's playing for the Denver Broncos. Quarterback for the Denver Broncos is a guy named Kyle Orton and he wasn't very good. The fans in Denver, third quarter, fourth quarter of these games that they're losing. They start chanting what? Tebow. Tebow. Tebow. Then if the fans are chanting it, you've got to talk about it. You've got to ask the owner, you've got to ask the coach, you've got to ask the guys in the locker room. Who do you want to play? Orton, or do you want Tebow and there you go, division? He played for the New York Jets. He was not the starting quarterback, but their starting quarterback was not very good. Mark Sanchez was struggling. He wasn't winning games. He wasn't coming through in the clutch and so the fans start chanting what? Tebow. They want Tebow in and the exact same thing happens. They ask the coach. They ask the offensive lineman. They ask the wide receivers. They ask Tim Tebow. They ask Mark Sanchez. Who should be playing? Who should be in? In everywhere he found himself, he was a divisive player. Not anything he did intentionally, but extremely divisive. Now, here's the deal. Whether you've got a TO or a Tim Tebow on your team, division on an NFL roster is disaster. It's complete and total distraction from doing what you want to do, which is practice hard and win football games. Instead of focusing on practice, instead of thinking about winning, instead of focusing on the opponent, all you're worried about is who's on whose side on the team? It's disastrous. It's a massive distraction. Listen, a lack of unity in the church is no different. It is a huge distraction for doing what you want to do as the church, for keeping the main thing the main thing, for focusing on the great commandment to love your neighbor as yourself and the great commission to take the gospel to all nations and make disciples. If you're worried about who's on whose side, nobody's paying attention to who's doing what we're supposed to be doing. We're going to talk this morning about the importance of being a unifying church member. We're going to ask three questions. Simple questions. Number one, what does it look like? Number two, why is it important? Number three, how can we find it? Here we go. Question one. What is it look like? This is Ephesians 4. Unity looks like different kinds of people working together in love. This is why I picked the video that I picked earlier. Welcome to church. When you watch this video, you didn't see a bunch of people who looked exactly the same hugging necks in church on Sunday morning. You didn't see a bunch of people who were exactly in the same position and stage and socioeconomic status in life, same skin color, same ethnicity, loving on each other throughout the week. You saw different kinds of people working together in love. And when you think about unity in the church, you've got to understand we're not talking about uniformity where everyone is exactly the same. We're talking about unity, which is different kinds of people working together in love. Here's how Paul talks about it in Ephesians 4, verse 1, 2, and 3. "I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you, the church in Ephesus. I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, with all humility and gentleness and patience bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." If you find a church that is doing those things, you've found a unified church, bearing together with humility and gentleness and patience and love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Here's the thing about the church in Ephesus. You can put these pieces together from what we know about history and what we know from the rest of this letter. There was two main groups in the church. One group was ethnically Jewish. The other was not. You had a Jewish contingent and you had a non-Jewish contingent in the church. And those two cultures had a tendency to just grate on each other. The Gentiles weren't crazy about the Jews and the Jews weren't crazy about the Gentiles. And in this church in Ephesus, there they are all together. Now just to be honest with you, at times there was tension. Can we get along? Can we stay together? Can we work together? Can we agree on things? Here's what a lot of church growth gurus would say today. Look, it's not that you hate each other, but you ought to just amicably part ways. And you guys go over here and you have first Jewish church of Ephesus and you guys come over here and you have first Gentile church in Ephesus. You get together for a potluck once a quarter, but you guys stay over here and do your thing. And you guys stay over here and you do your thing. See exact opposite of what Paul says. Don't split up. Are you kidding me? Just like on the video. There's a thousand things that divide you, but there's one thing that you knight you in it's Jesus Christ. Be eager to maintain that unity. Fight for it. Be humble. Be gentle. Everything. Whatever you do, don't split and go your separate ways, but be united. Now in Odessa, we don't face this issue so much of a Jewish group in the church and a Gentile group in the church. But we do face the temptation to divide 800 different ways into our own little categories. Maybe it's an ethnic issue and you say, well, we have some Anglos and we have some Hispanics and we have some Blacks and we have some Asians. We've got all these different people who have come to Odessa looking for work. In recent years, and here we all all together, can we possibly be together in the same church? Culturally, we're so different. And Paul would say, yes, you can be together in the same church. No, you don't have to go and find a church that is uniform, but you ought to fight for a church that is united. You don't all have to look the same. You don't all have to come from the same place. You don't have to be from the same generation. My goodness, we've talked about generations in recent weeks and we've talked about boomers and the millennials and gen-exers and the greatest generation and all these things. What a temptation for us today to say, look, we just think you do things differently. We have different tastes and preferences. So we love you guys. You go do your thing and we'll do our thing. Paul says, don't do it like that. Be eager to maintain unity. Now let me just brag on our church a little bit. They're not a perfect church, but let me say one encouraging thing to you. Over the past couple of months, we've had six or seven plugged in classes. You can see information about plugged in in your bulletin. It's our new member class. It's where we invite folks to come. We feed them breakfast. We tell them about the church. Tell them who we are, what we believe. It's sort of just an introduction. Gives folks a chance to ask questions about our church and at the end of the class, if you're interested in joining, we give you the chance to do that. So we've had half a dozen of these classes or so and one of the most encouraging things to me as the guy who gets to lead the class is that every time we've offered it, at least so far, could change the next time we have the class. But every time we've offered it so far, we've had groups that did not all look the same. We've had people coming with interest in our church, people coming to join our church who are from different generations, different backgrounds, different socioeconomic levels, different ethnicities. We've had a variety of people coming to join our church. The scary part about that is you bring all these people in and you say we're all really different in a lot of ways. The exciting thing is we get to display unity like some churches can't. Can I tell you why some churches can't, it's because a lot of churches today and again you talk to the church growth gurus and a lot of them will say you need to have a target group. Who are you targeting at your church? Are you going to target millennials? Are you going to target senior citizens? Are you going to target cowboys, have a cowboy church? Are you going to target young professionals? Are you going to target hipsters? Who's going to be your target audience? I hope the answer to manual is lost people. That's who we want. People who need Jesus and people who need a church home, that's who we want here. It's not relevant if you look like us, if you come from the same place as us, if our bank accounts are drastically different in their balances. None of that stuff matters because unity in the Bible is different kinds of people working together in love. Some churches cannot display that and they can't display it because they made an intentional decision to say we are only concerned about this segment of the population. These are the only people that we're concerned about. We're going to cater to their every whim and fancy, they get to rule the roost. I hope at our church we say look, we're going to be deferring church members. Our preferences will not rule the day and instead we will come together as different kinds of people and we will be eager to maintain unity in this church family. That's what it looks like, different kinds of people working together in love. Second question, why is it important? John 17 tells us the answer. Unity is important so the world might know the truth about Jesus. Very simple, unity in a local church body matters so that the world, those outside of our walls might come to know the truth about Jesus. Look at John 17. These are words that Jesus prayed. He was with his disciples, the night that he was betrayed, the night before he was crucified. John 17, these are deep and profound words and you ought to take time this week in your Bible reading to look through Jesus' prayer here, but look at one thing that he prays for in John 17 verse 20. He's just prayed for the disciples, his closest buddies who were with him in the room. He says, I don't ask for these only. I'm not just praying for the fellas in the room with me right now. But also for those who will believe in me through their word, in other words I've prayed for these guys, they're going to go out and preach and now I'm praying for the people who are going to believe on the message that goes out. That includes you and me. Jesus is now praying for us. I don't ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word that they may all be one. Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. This is an amazing passage. Jesus says, look, in the Trinity, in the Godhead, Father, Son and Spirit, we have unity. We're different persons, Father and Son and Spirit are distinct. We're different. But we're one and we're united. And my prayer is that when bodies of believers come together in a church family, that they would be one just like we're one. They're going to be different. They're going to look different. They're going to think different. They're going to act different. They're going to have different backgrounds and different experiences. But my prayer is that when they come together, in my name, that they would be one, that they would have divine God-given, Trinitarian unity in their fellowship. And it matters, the last part of the verse, so that I want them to have this unity so that the world will know that you really sent me. And that goes back to what we talked about earlier. If no one is concerned about unity and everyone is concerned about their own faction, nobody's going to be paying attention to the people who don't know Jesus. All we're going to be concerned with is our group and our side. And Jesus says, look, I don't even want that to be an issue. I want them to have the kind of unity that we have in the Godhead. And when they have that kind of unity, people will know. People will understand that you are the one who has sent me. One last question. How do we get it? Answers in Colossians 3, and the answer is simple. Unity is achieved by living lives of worship, submitting to Christ, and forgiving each other. We're going to preach a whole series of sermons on these verses in Colossians 3. But these are a couple of big ideas that Paul tells the church in Colossae. Living lives of worship. Worship is not just what we do when the band is on the stage, but it's something that characterizes our life by submitting to Christ, not insisting on our own way, not standing up for our own group, our own faction, but submitting, humbly deferring first and foremost to Jesus Christ, and then thirdly forgiving each other. Look at what Paul says in Colossians 3, beginning in verse 12, "Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you. So you must also forgive. Not just in your Bible, in verse 13, circle that word "if" and out in the margin, right a smiley face. If? How about when? Right? When you have this complaint, if it comes up, this is how you handle it, forgiving one another, as the Lord has forgiven you. Verse 14, "Above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, submitting to Christ, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another. This is the life of worship, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God, and whatever you do and word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God, the Father, through him." Again, we could talk about that passage all day long. The big idea is, as you think about unity or this, unity is achieved by living lives of worship, submitting to Christ, and forgiving each other. Now, everything we've talked about is true. Everything we've talked about is nice, and it's good, and it's right, and it's something we're going to commit to in just a minute. Let's take a second to just think about real life. Real life is that as you look around the room and you see the people who are sitting here this morning at a manual Baptist, every person you see is a center, including you. We're all bent towards ourselves. We have a natural inclination to care about ourselves more than other people. And when you put a bunch of people who have that inclination together, there is bound to be conflict, there's bound to be disagreements, there's bound to be things that we just don't quite see eye to eye on. It's the same today as it was 2,000 years ago when the church first started. You can read in the book of Acts, find Acts 6 in your Bible. You can read in the book of Acts, way back in chapter 2, about the day of Pentecost. On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached the first sermon in church history. Several thousand people put their faith in Jesus and joined the church in Jerusalem. They went from a few dozen to several thousand instantly. And they were different types of folks, rich, poor, different backgrounds, different expectations. And you read initially about the unity of the church. They're having things in common and they're supporting each other and they're loving each other and they're doing all of these things to encourage one another. They're all on the same page, submitting to Jesus Christ by submitting to the teaching of the apostles. Everything's going great and you get a couple of chapters in and things start to go not so great. First the attack comes in that Peter and John are arrested for preaching. The two most visible leaders in the church, thrown in jail, threatened with their lives if they don't shut up. Next attack, not too much later than that, is a man named Ananias and his wife Sephira lie in church and die in church. Read in their hearts, Satan exploits it and he fills their hearts to lie to the church, to try to lie to God and there's another problem. Immediately after that, all of the leaders are arrested, all of those preaching, the apostles are all thrown in prison and threatened with their lives. And things are just a little bit rocky, things that started off sailing so smoothly and so easily are not as easy as they once were. And then comes the big problem, division in the church, Acts 6. Look with me at what we read in Acts 6. In these days when the disciples were increasing in number, note that phrase, a complaint by the Hellenists or the Greeks arose against the Hebrews or the Jews because their widows, the Greek widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. In other words, they're helping the widows who need help and one group feels like their widows aren't getting as much as the other widows. A division arose, a complaint arose, so the twelve-summon, the full number of the disciples, they got everybody together and they said it's not right that we should give up preaching the Word of God to serve tables, therefore brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty, but we will devote ourselves to prayer in the ministry of the Word. What they said, please the whole gathering. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith in the Holy Spirit, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanter, Timon, Parmenus, Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles and they prayed and laid their hands on them and verse seven, the Word of God continued to increase and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. Here's what you have going on. Verse one, the disciples are growing in number. People who need to meet Jesus are meeting Him, Satan hates that. We know that he prowls around like a roaring lion seeking people, families and churches to devour and so he uses this issue of the distribution and the natural selfishness that we're all bent towards and a division comes up. This group is mad at this group and it's not just that the two groups are mad at each other, but they're mad at the leadership because they think the leadership is playing favorite with the two groups. This has the potential to split the whole thing wide open, right in half. Why don't you guys just go your way and we'll go our way? And the leaders come together and they gather the whole number, everybody, I say it's time for pow wow, everybody come, sit down. People from this group, people from that group, people who are mad at both groups, everybody come on. And they sit down and the apostles say look, we're going to do something to fix this problem. We're not just going to say you guys go your way and we'll go our way. Some people look at this and say this is the first installation of deacons in the church. Other people don't think it's exactly deacons, but whether you think it is or it's not, it really doesn't matter. Here's what they decided. We are going to do something to fight for the unity of this church. We're not just going to let it fall apart. We're going to stand up and we're going to appoint people who's specific job it is to fight for the unity of this fellowship. Why do you come to church? Maybe you come on a Sunday morning because you like singing along with the praise band. It's a good reason to come. Maybe you come on Sunday mornings and you're a part of things because you like to learn about the Bible. Study God's Word. It's a good reason to come. Maybe you come to church on Sunday mornings because you like to see your friends, people in your small group, in your Sunday school class. You like to see the folks that you care about and who care about you. That's another great reason to come. Here's one reason that ought to be on the list of reasons you come to church. To fight for the unity of a manual Baptist church. To come with the mindset, I am here to fight, not with people, but for people. I'm going to do whatever I need to do. We need to start something new, if we need to change the way we've been doing things. We are going to fight for the unity of this fellowship. That was what they did in Act 6. They said we will not roll over, we'll fight for the unity of our church family. Let's apply it very simply and we'll wrap up. What does it mean to be a unifying member? It means that you make sure your tongue and your heart do not divide your church. Make sure that your tongue and your heart don't divide the church. It'd be really easy to just say, "How do you be a unifying member? You just keep your mouth closed." What's the problem with that? You just stuff it all inside and you just cram it in your old black hard wicked heart. Sooner or later it's coming out. If it doesn't come out, you're leaving, guard your lips, yes, but guard your heart also. That's why in so many of the passages that we read this morning, they talk about being forgiving, forgive one another. God has forgiven you, forgive people. Yes, there's going to be bumps in the road. Yes, there's going to be division in issues that pop up out of nowhere. Yes, Satan is going to attack and try to split us right down the middle. We know all of those things are going to happen. Fight for the unity of your church. Make a commitment this morning that with your lips and with your heart, you will not bring division to our church family. So in your bulletin, there's a slip of paper. Here's the pledge, orange piece of paper this morning, pledge number four. I will seek to be a source of unity in my church. With God's help, I will control my actions, my words, and my thoughts in an attempt to bring unity to my church. I know there's no perfect pastors, staff members, or church members, neither am I. I will not be a source of either gossip or dissension. One of the greatest contributions I can make as a church member, I think some people underestimate this. I think some people think the greatest contribution they could make to their church would be to teach a Bible study. Listen to this. One of the greatest contributions I can make as a church member is to do everything in my power to help maintain the unity of my church for the sake of the gospel. Additionally, I'll support our elders and deacons as they fight for the unity of our church. That's the pledge this morning. I hope that you'll make it. I hope that if you make it, you are sincere in making it. I'm going to ask you to do what I've asked you to do the last couple of weeks. If you want to make that commitment, that pledge, you sign your name at the bottom. You put it in the offering box as you leave this morning, and I will remind you of what I have reminded you every week, signing your name on the bottom of an orange piece of paper and putting it in a wooden box does not make you a unifying church member. This is a concrete commitment that when you sign your name, you're not just giving us your signature, but you're giving a pledge to God and to our church family and saying, "This is important to me. I'm going to make a commitment to do these things." Let me pray for you. Father, what a privilege it is to be a part of your church. And Father, we acknowledge the condition of our hearts this morning. We are bent towards selfishness and ambition and having our own way in criticizing those who disagree with us and being judgmental in speaking about things when we need to be silent and in letting things fester in our heart when we need to forgive. We need your help to be the kind of church members that you want us to be. Father, I pray that as individuals we come together this morning and we make this commitment as we do it together, that we take it seriously, that we make it prayerfully asking for your help. Father, we want to be a church that is focused on the main things, on loving our neighbor, on making disciples, and on bringing glory to you. We don't want to waste time in factions and fights and divisions, but we want to be focused on what you've called us to be focused on. Father, help us to do what you have called us to do. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. We're going to sing together.