Welcome And The Unity Question

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Let me just say welcome to Coppel Bible this morning. My name is Michael, I'm one of the pastors, and if you're a visitor or a guest, welcome to our church. I really am grateful you're here. I will say, if you have a Bible, physical copy, or one on an app, could you open it to Ephesians chapter 4? That's where we'll be this morning, Ephesians chapter 4. But before we get there, I actually want to start with a question. You ever walked into a room before and you see someone in the room and you feel tension with that person? Maybe it's like a wall has been built up. And I don't mean like a literal wall. I mean there's something inside of you, your heart, your mind, that when it comes to that person, for whatever reason, you have this thing built up between y'all. A wall. I don't know if that's happened to you, but it's happened to me

Christ Breaks The Wall Of Hostility

SPEAKER_00 1:28

before. Now the Apostle Paul knows a thing or two about walls. In fact, uh there is one in Jerusalem at the temple. You see it on the screen here. There is an actual limestone wall that was inside the court of the temple. But it was called the wall of separation. On this wall there's an inscription, and it was to all Gentiles, meaning someone who's not a Jew. It said, if you enter into this area past this wall, then death is coming for you. The wall of separation. So this wall didn't just mark space, though it did, it defined the identity. So you belong here, but you don't. A gentile couldn't enter the courts of that wall, but even if you're outside the temple, a Jewish person wouldn't have entered the threshold of a Gentile's home. There's tension. There were walls built up, there was a great divide, a separation, until Christ died. Paul says this early on in the book of Ephesians, in chapter 2, and verses 14 and 16, and this is in the New Living Translation. For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people, when in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. Now together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death. So he celebrated this last week that when Christ died, you know the classic scripture, the veil was torn. Now there's no separation between us and God, but that is a vertical separation that was there. Paul's not talking about that. He's talking about the horizontal one, that Christ didn't just tell the tear the veil, that now between all people, the wall of separation included, he tore that. Literally, he executed that wall. He knocked it down in his body on the cross. And so now when we get to chapter four, Paul's going to talk about this. He's going to describe how are we to live united? How are we to live in unity? If Christ knocked the wall down, how are we going to make sure we don't build it back up? And so what he's going to describe is the first generation of something the world has never seen. He called it in chapter 2, the one new man or the new humanity, literally his kingdom, his family, that now is offered to all people of all backgrounds, of all ethnicities, of all preferences, of all biases, of all prejudices, of all I like this food and I don't like this food, I speak that language and I don't speak that language. All people are now offered into the opportunity to be in the family. You think that's going to be easy to keep that unity? It's hard enough in your own family with just a few people. Imagine God's family with millions and billions of people. So Paul's going to talk about unity today. Think about the church in Ephesus that he's writing to. This is the church where it was set at a crossroads, really, of the ancient world, because it had a massive port on it. It was a major trade route, really, from uh the west to the east. You cross a sea to get there, and you got to think about everyone who would pass through in this place where this church within one new person now stands. You would have slaves and senators, you would have Jews and Greeks, you would have Roman citizens, you would have foreign merchants all passing through or staying for a time in Ephesus. And now, because of Christ and what he did on the cross, all of them are invited into this new humanity. So, what Paul's going to talk about is how do we keep unity in this new humanity?

Reading Ephesians 4:1-6

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Now, I've still in this from Barkef because I don't really do sermon titles, but he's not here, so I'm going to pick up the slack. I'm going to give a sermon title today. The sermon title is The Responsibility of Unity. We're going to see we're responsible for this. We have a part to play. If you're in Christ, if you're in his family, you have a part to play. There's responsibility of unity. What I'm going to do is I'm actually going to read the text. It's not going to be on the screen. And then we're going to go back through and begin walking through it verse by verse. This is what Paul says. If you have your Bibles, you can read it. Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. Ephesians 4, 1 through 6. It says, I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called and one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all, and in you all.

Walk Worthy And Close The Gap

SPEAKER_00 6:50

So I titled this Responsibility of Unity. The first thing we're going to see we're responsible for is found in verse one. And it's we're responsible to walk worthy. Look at the screen here at what he says. I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. Now we've said this a couple times in the first three chapters. This word, therefore, is important because he said it a couple times. But this one might be the biggest hinge, therefore, in this whole letter. Because in Paul's style of writing, he likes to take the first half of a letter and make it real doctrinal. Does not mean there's nothing practical in there. It means the emphasis is on doctrine. And then when he gets about halfway, he flips and he makes it real practical. But also, that doesn't mean there's no doctrine in there. There's plenty of doctrine. But this is how he writes. He wants you to know who you are, and then he wants you to know how to live it. So what are your beliefs? And then what are your behaviors because of your beliefs? This, therefore, is hinging all of that. He's about to say so many beautiful, applicable things for everyone in Christ in chapters four, five, and six. But all of it stems from this, therefore. Everything he said in chapters one, two, and three. And he starts this out by saying, I'm the prisoner of the Lord and I'm going to beseech you. Now we don't really use this word beseech. We may not even know what it means. We may just think, I don't know, is that like urge you? Some of your translations may say that. So he was like, Hey, you really need to do this? No, this is a highly emotive word. This would have been a word that as he's writing it, he's using every faculty of his being to try to communicate the emotion behind it. He is literally, it's like he's begging with everything that you would do this one thing. What is the one thing for us to walk worthy? Now, when he says walk here, that simply means your lifestyle. The truths from chapters one through three, are you walking them out? This is what he's talking about. But when he says the word worthy, it literally means this illustration a balancing scale. Worthy means I'm gonna bring one side into equilibrium with the other. And that's how we walk worthy. Now, what's on either side of this scale? Well, on one side, you could put the word therefore, chapter four, verse one, one of the first words in this in this sentence. He's talking about everything we know from chapters one through three. Let me highlight some of them. The first thing is found in verse three of chapter one. If you're in Christ, you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. What an unbelievable gift. Put it in there. The next three things are so important, and they're found in verses three through fourteen of chapter one. It's that the Father selected you, He literally has adopted you. You're in His family. That the Son has saved you, redeemed you, forgiven you, that the Holy Spirit has even sealed you. These are all truths that go on one side of this scale. It's your identity. Now let me talk about this for a second. What you can say is this is your positional truth. Meaning, let's just get real practical. Don't show your hands unless you're being really courageous. Did anyone sin yesterday? Okay, let me take a step further because we love categories. Did anyone sin big time? Here's what I want you to know whether you did yesterday or 10 years ago, since you've been in Christ, nothing on this side changes. It's a beautiful truth. This is who we are. This is our positional reality for each of us who have placed our faith in Jesus right now in the heavenly places. What an unbelievable gift. Because we don't deserve it. But that's God's grace and favor given to us. But here's where the other side comes in. How do you live that out on a Tuesday? What's your lifestyle actually look like? Does it replicate this side? What he's saying is a lot of us do this. We have this, I guess we flip it the other way. He has we have these beautiful truths that weigh a lot, and we aren't putting anything on this side. We're not living them out at all. And maybe at best a little bit, right? Look, can I just take a stab? Are you living them out perfectly? Can I take a stab at the answer? No, you're not. None of us are, because we're not perfect. Now, that's not a license to go sin, not at all. We should try. We should be so thankful for this that we want to stack weight in life in this side where it begins to walk worthy, where we literally have equilibrium on both sides. So here's what's interesting. Paul is calling all of all the people in his family, in the family of God, in this one new humanity. The wall separation is down, everyone's invited, and he's asking everyone, urging, begging them to walk worthy, that their practical life would match their positional life. And so I love this because literally, when I was studying this and I bought this and got this the other day, I look at it all the time. And I'm thinking, man, that's not me. I want this to be me right here, where it's pretty even, but that's not me. But it gives me a visual to think about. So hopefully throughout your week, you're thinking, am I walking worthy? This is who I am. Am I gonna match that with my life? This is what Paul's talking about. Now, what's interesting about um what he's going to do is he's gonna realize that for all of us, there's a delta between these two. There's a gap. And he's gonna help us close the gap. He's gonna give us four character traits, a probably even better word is virtues, that we can live out, that actually we need to take on. And if we do that, we are then living worthy. But here's something about these traits you need to know. There's really two items at play with these traits. The first is this he's gonna list some character traits, four of them, and they are for the individual person, so you specifically, to work on and to live out. But there's something underneath it because every trait that he gives us has a relational bent to it, which then means as we work on these, we are also affecting the unity of the body. So, yes, I'm getting better, I'm becoming who he wants me to be, I'm living in my identity, I'm working on these traits. This is about me and who created me to be, and I'm trying to be that person, but there's something broader going on because as you try and you try and you try and I try, we're helping keep the unity that Christ created. And these four traits help do just that. So, what's he saying? Your personal character is what makes walking together in unity possible. So he gives us four traits.

Humility And Gentleness In Practice

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Here they are, verses two and three. With all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. There they are, four virtues. Each one essentially enables the next one to be able to happen. But if you take out this first one, humility or long suffering as it or lowliness as it is in my translation, then the whole chain collapses. Now let's pause for a second. Let's go back to Ephesus. Let's think about these two people now for the first generation ever trying to figure out how to live in unity when just the day before there was wall, there were literal walls built up between them. I mean, how hard would that be? There's a lot of pride that they would have had. The Jews, theological pride, God's chosen people, covenant people. We get the part of the temple you don't get. There's some pride that could come with that. But Christ tore that down. So they're gonna have to figure out how to get rid of it. But then you have the Gentiles. This is the Greco-Roman world. They didn't care about humility, they had cultural pride, and it ran on honor. Their society ran on honor and status, literally, pride. That's what they ran on. And so you have these two groups of people coming together with a lot of issues. Sound like anyone else? Trying to figure out how to do this thing that Christ created. And knowing we're not perfect, but we have a call to do it. And so he gives us these character traits. And the first one he talks about here is humility. Now, your translation may say humility, mine says lowliness. It's kind of the same idea. But here's what's interesting about this word. Paul is the one who coined humility to be a virtue. Humility was a word that they had in the Greek and Roman uh Roman era, but they didn't really have a category for it because it had a negative connotation. It was a word that basically slaves would use, or that you would use towards slaves, I should say. There was nothing beneficial about it. There's nothing good about humility, and there was no virtue that they had that was called humility. Again, because they ran on pride. So who cares about humility? Pride's the end all be all. It was last on their list. But in the kingdom of God, it becomes first on the list. That's how radical the gospel is. It creates categories where there weren't any before. It takes what the culture says and it flips it. And so humility becomes on this list the first one in the kingdom of God. It flips the script. So what does Paul mean by humility here? Well, here it is: Christ is first, others are second, and you're last. That's it in a nutshell. That's what he means by humility. But let me give you a biblical definition because Paul gives us one in Philippians chapter 2, verse 4. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility and humility of your mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves. Philippians 2, 4. He goes right into something else right off that in the in the in verse 5, and he says, So have this mindset in you that was in Christ Jesus. And it lists out this these beautiful truths, and he gets to the end of this little passage, and he closes with this that Jesus humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So Jesus looked out at the world and he said, Y'all are above me. I mean, this is God Himself. This is a wild concept, but that's humility. And that's the first thing on the list that we see we should live out. Christ, others, you. And humility is a load-bearing wall here because if you don't have it, gentleness can easily just become a show. You can act gentle, but it's not coming from a change of heart. Because if humility is the posture of your mind or thinking of yourself less, then gentleness is the outward expression of that. It's the outward expression of this inner reordering of Christ others, me. It comes out in gentleness. Now, I used to do Young Life and we'd have all these high school kids and we'd talk about this stuff. And imagine just some testosterone-ridden males. Okay? And they'd be like, You telling me I have to be soft? Like that was their verbiage. You tell me I gotta be soft? I got these muscles, all these, I gotta be soft, can't use them. I'm like, you have no idea what you're talking about right now. That's not at all what we're talking about. We say gentleness, though there is an aspect, don't be rough, okay? I get that. But gentleness is not softness. Jesus in Matthew called himself gentle and humble in heart. But we also know Jesus went to the temple and flipped the money changer's tables. Not soft, strong. But gentleness is not weakness, it is strength under control. It's actually strength you aren't using for your advantage, you're using it for someone else's. You see how these character traits actually work with unity. They're about other people. You may be strong, but use that for others. You think Christ was pretty strong? He's God Himself, but he let go of all of that for you. And this is the way it works. So we have a thinking that is Christ others than me. And because of that thinking, I can now use any strength I may have, in whatever terms that looks like, and I can now use it to be gentle and for your advantage, not mine. And that leads us to the next one because as we start uh helping people, it can get hard. And so what's the next one? Patience.

Patience With People Who Test You

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Oh boy. Now, this literally means a long fuse. Anybody got a short fuse? Yeah, you've probably been told that before. This is the opposite. He's saying you have to have a long fuse. That's what he means by patience here. So it's the ability to walk through something tiring, exhausting, slow, and not leaving before God's finished. That's hard to do. Because I know me and I want what I want. But waiting on the Lord, that's tough. Now let me make a bold claim. And it's because I'm making this claim because I see it in scripture. Now, this isn't a verse I've read. I just see this principle played out. Here it is. Patience is the virtue that will determine how far you spiritually walk. I think patience is the virtue. Not your Bible knowledge, not your passion, not your spiritual gifting, but patience. Because when I read scripture, every significant work God did, it seemed to take longer than the person wanted it to. This is what I see. And so most of us quit, I think, right at the edge of what God's about to do. We miss out. Sure, we grew some, we learned some, but we didn't get the lesson fully, and we missed out. But go back in scripture and think about it. Abraham and Sarah, before they were Abraham and Sarah, they were called, they were told they were going to have a boy, and that this boy would be the start of this family that was going to bless all the people. They're already old, and then it didn't even come for decades later, past the age of childbearing. It's like, Lord, you gave me the promise, just make it happen now. Why got wait? You could jump ahead in Genesis, you go to Joseph. You can look at Joseph and you could go, okay, Joseph had a dream from the Lord. It didn't come into fruition until over 20 years later. And his story in that time frame is one step forward, two steps back. Lord, you gave him the dream. Why not just let it happen? You could even go King David, anointed as king, but had to wait. You could even make a claim for Jesus Christ Himself that throughout the entire Old Testament there was a promise, not a timeline. A promise of a coming Savior, the Messiah, the one who will take away the sins of the world. And all the Old Testament people knew that, and they're putting their faith in the coming Messiah. But when's he getting here? You've prophesied he's gonna be here. Why not just make it happen? But over time, guess what? Jesus showed up. David became the king. Joseph dream fulfilled. Abraham, Sarah, still a people. Like these promises happen. It just took time. And what it takes in that time and in that season is patience. I heard someone pray one time, Lord, give me patience and give it to me right now. And I feel like that's me. And I think that's all of us. Because I think we go, we know we need it. We know we want it. So I need it right now. And Lord's like, well, let me teach you how to have it. Yeah, but just give it. Well, this is the process to learn it. You've got to wait. But here's what's interesting about patience. He's not just talking about patience for a hard season. He's gonna zero in on something more specific here. He's talking about patience with a person. Anybody ever need patience with a person? Just maybe one time in your life? I don't know. Anybody got kids? Hey yo. Anybody got a spouse? Patience with a person. And look at what he says here that you got to bear with one another in love. Now he's talking to believers here. This is the family of God, brothers and sisters in Christ. So he's talking about having patience. And this is the patience that has a face on it. Okay, you can see these people that you need to have patience and bear with. Okay, so to bear with someone would mean to be deliberately sustained in this. To know that it could cost something, but you're going to make a choice to stay committed to the person no matter how difficult this person may be. And he tells us the type of love we're supposed to give this person. He says, you can do this because of love. And this is a agape love. That's the word he uses here. This is a love that you give out no matter what you get back. That's actually probably the best definition of love. And he's saying, yes, with those prickly pair of people, those ones that are kind of hard to deal with, and the brothers and sisters in Christ and this one new humanity, you want to build walls up? Well, Christ knocked the walls down, and and you need to bear with that person in love. By the way, this is how Christ loves you. This is the same word for love that Paul writes in Romans 5 8, that God demonstrates his agathe, his love toward us in this. While we're still sinners, Christ died for us. In other words, the way you see that difficult person, the person you need patience with to bear with, that's how Christ could rightly see you, but he chooses not to. And that's the call. Doing this will help you walk worthy. See, the difference is we see these people, we begin interacting with them, and we're like, gosh, you're a hard person. And we turn our back on them and we start building up the wall. We start resurrecting what Christ killed. And we do this with all kinds of people. But he's specifically talking about in the family of God. But what Christ does is he never turns his back on you. He never pulls away from you. In fact, the opposite, he keeps going to you because he again loves you, meaning going to you even if you don't love him. Going to you, even if you're not going to show him any affection on your own. He is chasing after you. He is bearing with you in love. And so Paul is saying these are the four qualities. These are the four uh virtues that we should live out. As we work on these, as we live these out, we are going to be better able to live out our identity, to practically live out our positional truth. And at the same time, you're going to be doing this role of keeping the unity between the people. And this is what he talks about next.

Guard Unity Like A Soldier

SPEAKER_00 26:13

He says at the end of that verse, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. Notice he didn't say create unity. He said keep it because you didn't create it. Christ did on the cross. He knocked the wall down on the cross. So it's not that we create it, it's that we keep it. And he uses this great term. This is a military term, endeavoring. It's the word used for the soldiers that were watching the tomb of Christ. Do you think they were passive? They were waiting for people to come take the body. Now, they had no idea the guy was going to come out the tomb, but they had no idea. They thought people were coming this way. They're not sitting back playing cards. They're watching, they're waiting, they're on their toes. Okay, this is the uh the visual Paul's giving us for all believers in this new family. That we're to guard the unity in that way. So guess what? This is where it gets really hard. Because let's just take it to an example. We're probably all, I don't know, we've probably all done this week, maybe in last month. We've gossiped about another brother and sister in Christ. That's not keeping the unity. So if you're in that group and you hear that happening, you step up and say, Look, this isn't keeping the unity. We're not doing this. And that creates awkwardness. Look, that's hard, but that's the call here. We're on guard, all of us. We're all to play a part in this. And this is why he goes on to say that we endeavor to keep the unity that's already there of the spirit in the bond of peace. Bond is the medical term for ligament. So Paul is literally saying that Christ isn't just the one who made peace, he's the one that holds it together. He's the ligament, which means when you damage the unity, you're not just creating awkward social interactions with people at the church. You're actually tearing the body of Christ. He paid for it with his life. It was already torn. We don't need to keep tearing it. And he knocked all that separation down. And now, because of him, he's the bond of all of it together, the unity that we're called to keep. And then we come in and we start saying stuff we don't like, this, that, the other, and literally begin to tear the body apart. This is the picture that Paul is uh proclaiming to us here. Now, there's a biblical precedent for this, um, with a pretty big wig in the Bible. Anybody know about Peter? He was an apostle. Peter in Galatians chapter 2 is living life as he should, in unity with everyone else in God's family. It just so happens he's sitting at a table with Gentiles, eating a meal. We didn't used to do this, the wall's down, this is great. And then he hears oh wait, my Jewish friends are coming from Jerusalem. This is awkward. And he backs away and he starts building up the wall again. And guess who addresses it? The Apostle Paul. He says, Not on my watch. Even though you shrunk back, he calls him out, he opposes them to his face in front of everyone. I started thinking about it in my life. I'm sure this is true of you. I realized the enemy doesn't need much for me to shrink back. Sometimes there's just a little social pressure and we revert back to our instincts, what we grew up with, our biases, the things we were taught as a kid. We do that. That's why this is gonna be hard to do because you have years and years and years of built building this up. But Christ tore it all down, but we still have the effects of it. So we've got to work at this. Sometimes it's just a little bit of unresolved pride, whatever it may be, and that wall just starts getting built back up. We're so easy at maybe not even acknowledging that we're building the wall up, and all of us walk around here. And if you can get a little visual, it's like we have little walls around us between us and other people who are brothers and sisters in Christ. And Paul's gonna say, Don't do that. You gotta work through it, and that's not easy either, but you gotta do it. Because Christ is the one who created the unity and you're called to keep it. And these character traits are gonna help you keep it and do just that. So here's the question: How do you actually do it? Like, why even fight for unity, especially if you have a relationship maybe that feels irreparable, or you've been wounded by someone in the church? Like, why even fight for unity? What's the purpose of it? Well, well, Paul's gonna address that um here in these next couple of verses. Now, before we get there, I actually need to make one remark.

Unity With Wisdom And Safety

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Um, if you're here and you I want you to know I'm not saying to you that if you're in some sort of relationship that is unsafe or abusive, that you're to bear with one another and just stick it out. I'm not saying that. In fact, I don't think you should. I think the first thing you should do is in love, bring it to light, and let the church help you in that situation. So I know that some people in this room have been in places they wish they weren't in. They've experienced things they wish they wouldn't have. And if that's you right now, I would encourage you to come talk to us. So we can be praying for you, but ultimately we can help you in the situation. I think what Paul's talking about when he's talking about bearing with one another, I really think it's more about these uh types of things that seem more normal. They seem, they seem like uh, you know, like I just didn't like the way we interacted one time. This is a little hiccup here. We kind of bump shoulders here, just these little brushes that happen and we go, fine, I'm not talking to you again. And I think that's where he's going. On these bigger issues, we got to talk about that. And that's what we're here to do. And so why fight for unity, even if it's a big issue or not? Well, Paul's gonna address it because he's gonna point to the God who is unity himself. Look at these last couple of verses, uh, verse four through six. He says, There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called and one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, and Father of all, who's above all and through all, and in you all. I love that in you all. Don't forget it, he's in you. So, what is he saying here? Well, seven times he uses the word one in these couple of verses. He's not just being repetitive, though he is. Repetition is the mother of all teachers. What he's doing is he's trying to stack a foundation so high we can't miss it. That our God is a God of unity, that our God is the Father, our God is the Son, our God is the Holy Spirit, that they are three distinct persons, and even though they're different, they have their own role, but they're perfectly one. Now, why that's important is you got to go back to Genesis. Think about Genesis 1, 26 and 27. The writer says that you and I were made in the image of God, he calls it the Imago Day, that every person on the planet is made in God's image. So instantly, if God is a God of unity and we are people made in that image, then there must be something we should do to help unify all the people. We got to be like them. But also, unity does not mean uniformity. So it doesn't mean everyone has to look the same. And that's a problem because it would be great and easy if everyone looked the same. We wouldn't have any, you know, irritations with people. I'm sure we would, but maybe not. But we don't look the same because how God created the beings, He's a creative God. And he put people all over the world, he changed all these things up, and everyone's different. And he says, but you're still made in my image, and you got to figure out how to have unity. And guess what? I gave each of you a spiritual gift. I gave you some unique things to do. And we'll talk about that next week. That's literally in the passage that's coming. But until then, what you got to figure out is how to keep the unity that I've given you. Your image is in me, your image is in all of us. How are you gonna keep this unity? So, this is a call to reflect on the God who made us. And since he's a God of unity and we're called to keep it, then we need to understand there's gonna be differences, but that's okay. We can still be unified. Now, this is hard because I was thinking about this, and part of me is like, should I even bring it up? But I'm gonna bring it

Politics Without Rebuilding Walls

SPEAKER_00 34:48

up. Um I was thinking, how does this play out for us? Like, where is it, Coppel Bible or any church, let's say in America, uh, would have something going on that could divide us. And I think if I gave y'all a thousand chances to think of one thing that could divide anyone in the room, I think we'd probably all hit it. We won't need a thousand chances. It would be politics. I think we'd all be like if I said one, if I said one phrase right now, half of you may scream, half of you may clap. I don't know. It's dividing. So let's use it as an example. Let's talk about this for a second. Let's just hypothetically say you drove by someone who's at this church and you drove by their yard and you saw a political sign supporting someone, or you got on social media and you saw a post supporting something, and in your mind you thought this is what's wrong with the direction of our country. And you begin building walls up about that person. But they come to church here. They're brother and sister in Christ. What do you do with that? Well, you you see them on Sunday, maybe you saw them this morning. You're polite to them, you shook hands, but it was cold because in your mind you've built walls up. Even though Christ resurrected them, you you built it up quietly. And Paul would say, Well, Christ killed all that, so we've got to talk about it. The same cross that saved you saved them. So let's just talk about it. And here's why this is important you don't have to agree on everything outside of this room to bear with one another inside of it. Now, let me take it a step further because there are a lot of important things that we need to talk about outside of this room. But inside this room, there are only a couple things we need to agree on. And if we're in the family of God, we are called to keep the unity. So, what do we do with something like politics? Well, this is why it's important. The new man only means something to a watching world if we can hold together under the current culture. See, the culture would look at this and be like, politics should divide y'all. You you should talk, you should do all these things. And we become to get div, we begin to get divided on these things. But this matters because we look out to a world or they see us and they go, How are this makes no sense? Because I know they live on that side of town, and I know they live on that side. And I saw them post about that person on uh political person, and I saw them post, I saw them at that rally. How are they in one room together? This doesn't make any sense, and we go, because Christ killed the hostility, and we don't have to agree with everything outside of here to care about what happens in here and to keep the unity of what happens in here. Are they important? No doubt. But this is a big one because I think this one hits it in our face. Can I just say I've seen some of y'all's post on social media and I started building a wall up? I started trying to figure out who your story I know how you vote. And it matters, yes. But in the grand scheme of life, it doesn't matter. There are a lot of things our vote matters. But when it comes to life, we're here for a vapor. If you forgot, Paul starts this out by saying he's a prisoner. He's literally a prisoner of Nero, change of Roman guard. But ultimately, while he has physical change to Nero, he has heart change to the Lord. Circumstances around him aside, he has one goal. I'm gonna be a prisoner of and for the Lord. No matter what happens in the culture, no matter what's going on, I'll speak into some of that. But my main goal is keeping the unity, my main goal is walking worthy, my main goal is living out this identity. None of it had anything to do with politics. Jesus in John 17 prayed that we would be one so that the world may believe. That they believe him, that they would see him, that they would see that there's something about this group of people that's united, no walled group of people. There's something about them that makes no sense in the world and in the culture. And because of that, people will believe in him, they'll know him, they'll trust him. Jesus didn't pray that we would be one so that we would be all comfortable. Never came out of Jesus' mouth. He didn't pray we would be one so we would be politically unified. That would be awesome, but do you know that's not the case? That will never be the case. And so a church is supposed to be a collection of people from all backgrounds, all aptitudes, all biases from all over coming together under one thing, the blood of Christ who broke the barrier, and we're here to we're called to keep the unity that Christ created. And it's hard because we're in a politically charged world, we're in a culturally charged world. But the world should be able to look at this room and see something with no natural explanation. And they will if you keep the unity, if you put that as the highest regard. So

Prayer Prompts And Final Charge

SPEAKER_00 40:03

as you leave today, here are two things I want you to do. I want you to pray this prayer. And you can pray right now, you can pray when we're doing worship and pray on drive home. Truly, two things. One, where are you building the wall up? Like, where's the wall built up in you? Holy Spirit, show me, tell me, bring to my mind. If I don't know if I have one, maybe this week, if I interact with someone, man, put it in my mind that, hey, that's me building the wall. Let me know where I'm doing this to other brothers and sisters in Christ. Where's the wall? The next logical question is who is it affecting? Not just the unity, but what about the person on the other side of it? You know, Christ never built a wall in front of you. We're called to be little Christ, Christians. That's what it means. And so what the world is right now is pretty crazy. A lot of categories, a lot of divisions, you fit here, you don't fit here. It's the wall of separation in the temple. But Christ came and abolished all of it. And this group of people are supposed to work together to keep the unity of all different backgrounds. To build the church up, but ultimately to give God glory. So the watching world looks at us and goes, How in the world are they doing this? And we go, it's only through the power of the Holy Spirit. Because if it was me, I would naturally do it. It's only through the power of the Spirit. So, Father, where? Where is it? The wall's going up. And then the last thing I would say, I'm gonna have one more question on that. One more thought is what do you want me to do? Literally, you may need to feel prompted by the spirit to call to go out in the uh lobby and talk to someone. You may need to call them, you may need to text them instead of coffee, you may need to apologize. You may just be someone who's like, hey, when I get on social media and I see this, I need to think. Don't withdraw from them and keep building up. Bear with them in love. Lord, help me do that. Because that's walking worthy. So the question is, what kind of people are we gonna be? The kind that let political division or cultural division come into the church, tear apart what Jesus has united? No. I hope not. I think the call for us is to be people who walk worthy. That we really are the Christians and Christ's followers who keep the unity of the Spirit. We are endeavoring, we are guarding the unity of the Spirit that Christ created, that we're gonna walk in this new humanity for God's glory in our cities and around the world. That's what I hope. But I also know that we are people full of sin and full of pride, and it's easy to revert back to what we've done forever, or what our upbringing was. And so is this gonna come easy? No. Are you gonna have this fixed tomorrow? No. But is this something that we could spend the rest of our life trying to do and get better at? Yes. So it starts right now.