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Well, the message this morning is not on marriage, okay? So everybody's like, okay, ah, good. Uh that's coming in a few weeks, all right? Uh we're actually going to teach a marriage series after Easter. Uh, we're gonna do a few weeks on that and specifically dig into what God uh designed for marriage. But until we get there, we're still in 1 Corinthians. We're working our way through. So if you have your Bible with you, go ahead and pull that out. Uh the text, as always, will be on the screen above me. But we're working through the entire book of 1 Corinthians, hopefully by the end of the summer. Uh, it's an interesting book that I felt uh as I prayed about what God wants us to learn and how do we continue to help us grow and mature as a community of believers, a family of believers. Uh, how do we continue to grow? I felt like God specifically uh pointed me to this book as one we needed to teach. It has a lot of relevance for us today, despite the fact it was written back in the first century. And if you weren't here last week, you can go back and listen to the podcast online uh at pointaustin.org. You can hear a little bit of the background of Corinth, the city itself, and how it relates and even connects with some of the things that are going on in Austin today. Um we talked a little bit about just sort of the introduction of Paul's letter to the church at Corinth. And today we're gonna start in verse 10, and we're gonna work read verse 10 through verse 17. And so if you have your Bible, again, encourage you to read along with me. Uh, you can read on the screen, or if there's even some Bibles underneath the seats around you, and feel free to grab one of those. But let's uh let's read this text together this morning. Now I urge you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree in what you say. Wow. That there will be no divisions among you, and that you be united with the same understanding and the same conviction. For it has been reported to me about you, my brothers, by members of Chloe's household, that there is rivalry among you. What I am saying is this each of you says, I'm with Paul, or I'm with Apollos, or I'm with Cephas, or I'm with Christ. Is Christ divided? Was it Paul who was crucified for you? Or were you baptized in Paul's name? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say you were baptized in my name. I did, in fact, baptize the household of Stephanus. Beyond that, I don't know if I baptized anyone else. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to evangelize, not with clever words, so that the cross of Christ will not be emptied of its effect. Isn't God's word good? I say this every week, and I encourage you to, again, I hope that you know that you can read God's word every single day. You don't have to just read it on Sunday, okay? You can read it every single day, and God can grow you through it. Even if you don't understand all of it, even if you don't know everything that it's trying to say to you, if you come with a humble heart, a teachable spirit, and you say, God, show me, teach me, grow me, he will. He'll meet you in that, okay? And there are some great tools that are out there, especially even as we teach the book of 1 Corinthians. Some great tools. I'd be happy to point you to some of those tools that will help you get insight, but God's Spirit will lead you into truth. And he will help you grow up in maturity as you read his word. Okay? Now, we're teaching through this book, which we don't always do. We don't always start in the beginning of a book and work our way to the end. Sometimes we teach through topics or ideas or themes, but we're teaching through this book, and one of the good things about teaching through a book is you have to deal with every passage that's there. You can't just say, well, it's not there. Um, we can kind of skip that. Uh, and when we get later in this book, you're gonna understand that there's some passages that probably have been skipped in churches because they just didn't want to deal with it. I mean, let's be honest, the Bible messes with us, gets up in our business, and there's sometimes we're just like, tame down, just tell me that you love me, God, and I'm happy, right? But sometimes you call us to obedience, convicts, stirs, makes us have to shift the way we do life. Even this weekend with our marriage retreat, there were some things in the text that we were taught that make us uncomfortable and make us have to make adjustments because we want to honor God and we believe He is wise. Okay, His word is good. If we apply it, He's gonna bring blessing, even if it doesn't make sense at our first read or second read or 15th read, okay? It's gonna make sense in the long term because God is wise and he knows how we should live because he designed us, he's the creator, right? But that being said, you can just read this in one read, and very quickly you can tell that Paul's addressing an issue of disunity, division. Okay, and if you guys in your Bible would probably have a heading uh over this section, but mine says divisions in Corinth. Okay? So Paul is writing this letter to Corinth to address some major issues, and the first issue that he addresses is disunity and divisions. Um, that's pretty significant when you know the bigger picture of the book of Corinthians, because when you start to read the book, you find that he addresses the issue of sexual immorality. He addresses the issue of them not having uh disciplined people that are sinning in the body well, or not uh having a proper view of judgment of those who are believers. He even dis deals with um misuse, abuse of gifts, and people thinking they're more important than each other based on what kind of spiritual gifting that they have. So Paul's gonna he's gonna get into some nitty-gritty, some messy stuff, but notice where he starts. The first thing he instructs them on, after, by the way, this is repeating from last week, he's already addressed their identity in Christ, that their calling is secure, their identity is secure, so he's not just going after behavior here, he's appealing to who they are in Christ, right? Because identity precedes activity. That's always important to understand. That's a gospel identity before it's obedience to Christ in that. But that being said, he starts to deal with the issue of division, which means this is a big deal. It's a big deal. Now, division's everywhere in our world, isn't it? Like, for example, I'm on a neighborhood website where people get on a message board and they talk to each other. Anyone else on those? Okay. If you've ever been on one of those, you know that divisions and factions and divisive disunity, that that stuff happens, right? People feel really emboldened when they're behind a computer screen. And so they are typing stuff. We had we have this thing going on right now. It's the longest, longest thing I've seen running in a long time on our neighborhood, and it's all over this business that's being put in next door. And I mean, people have all these opinions and they're flying and they're just angry about it, and the people are frustrated about this and that and the other. That's just the nature of the human heart, right? The human condition is that we we uh we kind of almost like thrive in this disunity and like getting our stuff out there. And by the way, I'll go ahead and say this on the front end because it might lose some of you in the process. I'm not telling you this morning that you should all see the world through the same lens. Okay? We're not saying that everybody has to see the world exactly the same or have the exact same preferences, the exact same opinions. That's not what we're talking about when we talk about unity. So just go ahead and take that off the table because you're like some of you are checking out. What I'm saying is that we all have these differences of opinions, and sometimes we like, we will go to the hill and we will die on that hill of our opinion, of our preference, and for the sake of unity. And so I see that. We see it out there, we also just came out of an election, right? And we're still dealing with the fact there's much division in our world today over uh our new president, over the political world in which we live. We may be as divided as we've ever been as a country, right? There's a lot of division, a lot of factions, a lot of different um aspects of disunity that are going on. Do you see that out in the world? We don't only see it outside of us, we also see it inside our own homes, right? We see it inside of our own homes. Um, some of you are educators. One of the interesting things about the educators that I speak to today, they talk about how difficult it is to educate a child when they come with so much baggage from their home. They're trying to teach them math and science and history and reading, and all the while this kid is just trying to recover from the arguments and the dysfunction that's been going on in their home. You know what I'm talking about? If you know anything about the education system, the school system, I mean, much of what they're having to do is no longer just teach subjects, but to teach life skills on how to actually deal with conflict. Because there's so much dysfunction on the home front. You've got so many kids trying to recover from divorce and from difficult situations. So disunity is in the home. And here's the thing disunity is also in the church. It's not just in the home, it's not in our families, it's in the church. It was in the church back then, it's still in the church today. Drive around our city, see how many different churches that you see, see how all the different denominations. There's much division, isn't there? And even within different expressions of the church, there's division. Um I grew up Baptist, okay, so don't throw rocks at me, but I grew up Baptist, and I'm very thankful for some of my heritage, but I'm very embarrassed by some of my heritage, if I can just be real blunt. Like there are churches that are Baptist churches in this very state of Texas that divided over some silly things. Let me just give you two examples that I know of that are documented. You ready? First off, there was a church in East Texas that divided over the color of the carpet. They got into a business meeting, and they had one group that wanted this color, and one group that wanted this color, and they just divided the church and decided we're gonna have two different bodies. Another church, if that's not crazy enough, another church documented story, they divided over which side of the hall to put the water fountain on. I mean, it's it's laughable, right? I mean, it's it's almost like, no way, that that cannot be real, okay? That cannot be true. It's true, sadly. And I'm what I'm telling you is that we can really get divided and we can get all uh worked up over things that do not matter. Now, Paul was dealing with some divisions in Corinth. They were a young church, and if you've got people involved with anything, guess what? You're gonna have problems, right? If you people are involved in anything, there's gonna be sin, there's gonna be issues, there's gonna be conflict because that's the nature of human community. That's the nature of the human heart, because we live in a sinful, fallen world where there's blame shifting, where there's accusation, and there's just differences that come up, and instead of lovingly dealing with them, we can tend to divide over them. We can continue to uh we can tend to create these factions. So in these first four verses, Paul starts to address this again, prioritizing division over even some of the immorality that was going on in the church. Because he knows that if they don't deal with the issue of division and disunity, when it comes to these issues of immorality, when it comes to these issues, these other issues, they're not gonna get on the same page. So you've got to be unified so that you can attack the other problems. Are you with me? Let me just make this practical for you, married couples in the room. If you are trying to deal with a marriage issue or a family crisis or a difficult situation in parenting, but you're not on the same page, it's not gonna work, is it? You're going to struggle. You've got to get on the same page. You've got to decide who are we turning to, where is our hope lie? What are we doing here? What is the goal that we're shooting for? And if you don't have that figured out, if you're not unified in that, then you're working two different directions. Really practical, right? Really helpful. And so Paul addresses this. Now, I want to make sure you understand what's going on in the text because it's helpful, it's instructive to us. But he says, I urge you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree in what you say. Now, again, before you check out, he's not saying, everybody in the church, if I say I want this color paint on the outside of the building, that everybody has to say, yeah, we want that color paint too. We're all in this together. Or he's not saying, I want this kind of food to eat. Everybody's got to say, Yeah, I like pizza too. We're all in on pizza. Uh, it's not silly things, it's not the superficial stuff, okay? He's talking about deeper issues here. So don't think that he's just saying we gotta agree on all these preferential superficial issues. He's gonna give us specifically what those core things are in just a minute, but just know that he's he wants them to say, and specifically, if somebody asked a member of the church at Corinth, said to them, Hey, what do you believe about Jesus? That if you asked the youngest member or the oldest member, that you asked the newest believer or the longest standing believer that they would say the same thing about Jesus. Are you with me? And about the gospel. That's really key because he's not just again talking about preferential issues, he's talking about core belief issues. Now, in our home, we laugh about this, but um, we were just having a discussion a couple weeks ago, and it was on how to put others first. And every week we try to have sort of a theme we talk through, and at breakfast we'll talk about it, or Jada will talk about it during school time. And it's interesting, we were talking about this Philippians 2 passage and putting others first and serving one another. And so my wife is always really helpful with getting practical, and she said, Alright, kids, so let's let's take this as a as an example. Uh, we're gonna go out to eat. And they're like, We are? You know, they're all excited. Uh no, let's say we're we're act like we're gonna go out to eat. Where would we go eat? And so our kids all start like saying these different things. And then um one of our uh we're like, well, that that seems like all of you guys are saying different things here. Well, what's going on? And uh, what do we what do we do with that? And my my 10-year-old boy speaks up and he just says, Hey, I don't care where we eat as long as we eat. Right? Now, it'd be great if you could just solve every problem like that. I just want food, right? But not every problem is that easy. It's not it's not that simple. It's not that that the process doesn't always go that way that way. In the church, it's actually very complicated, and Paul's addressing that. He says, in fact, you don't even have the same understanding or the same convictions. He says that I want you to have those, but you don't have them. And what is causing some of that? Well, he says, members from Chloe's household, this is verse 11, they've told me that there's rivalry among you, that there's competition, that you guys instead of working together, you're competing against one another. You're actually saying we're more important, no, we're more important, no, we're more important, or we're more mature, or we've got the right uh teaching. You have the right, we we're you have the wrong teaching. Kind of this idea is it's being propagated here in this church in Corinth. And so he even says in verse 12, what I'm saying is this each of you says, I'm with Paul, or I'm with Apollos, or I'm with Cephas. That's Peter, by the way, in case you didn't know who Cephas was. Uh Peter as one of the apostles, one of the disciples. He says, or I'm with Christ. I mean, first, Paul was the guy who started the church. So it would make a lot of sense. You'd have people there going, hey, Paul came. He started this church. Let's be with him. He established it. The next one he says, I'm with Apollos. So after Paul leaves, Apollos steps up and he starts preaching. And apparently he was like legit, like he was a really gifted preacher. He was able to communicate eloquently. In fact, it's even described that way. So much so that people were like, man, he is such a good communicator. I just love listening to him. I can listen to him all day. That sounds familiar in our culture, doesn't it? And so Apollos is this preacher. And by the way, it didn't help that Paul apparently wasn't a great preacher. Uh he even says this about himself. He wasn't the best communicator, wasn't the best preacher. And in Acts verse chapter 20, you think a funny story, Paul is actually preaching, and he he's so long-winded in his preaching that one of the guys, Eutychus, actually falls out the windows and dies because he falls asleep during Paul's sermon. Okay? So you're not the first one to fall asleep in church service, alright? Hopefully, I'm watching now to see if anybody falls asleep, alright? Here's the deal Paul is not the best communicator, not at least not as eloquent as Apollo's, apparently. And Apollo's is very eloquent, so you've got this whole group of people following him. And then Peter, he's a disciple. So, like, who wouldn't want to follow Peter? He's a guy who was actually with Jesus, who was discipled by Jesus directly. That's pretty legit, too. That's pretty important, that's pretty significant. I'm going to follow Peter. And then there's some people, these it sounds really spiritual of them, but I want to make sure you understand what's going on here. Some people say, Well, we're with Christ. Now, Paul is not saying here that that's the right answer. In fact, what he's he's actually pointing at is that you kind of have these self-righteous people going, Well, we're with Jesus. You know, I don't know what you guys are, but we're just going to be with Jesus. And looking down on everybody else. You see, the truth of the matter is, is that we are with Christ, and we should all be unified with Christ, but we do have earthly leaders, we have human uh authority, right? And so, even within a church context, there's order and there's authority by that's God given. And so you just can't say, well, I'm with Jesus, so I'm gonna do whatever Jesus tells me to do individually. You're still connected to a bigger body, a family of believers, right? So that being said, Paul addresses these things head on. He knows exactly what's happening, and he asks some things to deal with those issues that are there in the church. But I want you to see this. God desires his people to be unified. Number one, God desires his people to be unified. The reason that Paul is so strong in addressing this issue, the reason why he prioritizes it front and center, which I already said, um, it's a real practical issue. If you're not on the same page, you can't fight the problems the same way. You're not on the same team, you're gonna fight it differently, and you're gonna continue to divide. But Paul is following in Jesus' footsteps here. He's just teaching what Jesus has already taught. You say, well, what did Jesus teach? Well, John 17 is what's called the high priestly prayer. And Jesus prays in John 17 a powerful prayer for his disciples and for future believers. And here's what he says in verse 20 of John 17. He says, I pray not only for these, but also for those who believe in me through their message. That's us, by the way, in case you needed a translation. That's us. We're the ones who believe now because the apostles took the gospel message out. But then he goes on to say, May they all be what? One. As you, Father, are in me, and I am in you. May they also be one in us so that the world, this is the kicker, so that the world may believe you sent me. What is the place of unity? The foundation for unity? It's Christ. We're gonna talk about that more in a minute, but what is the purpose of unity? So that the world will what? Know that you sent me. Here's the truth. God wants them to be unified so that the world would know that Jesus is who he says he is. Now, here's the truth. Our unity validates the gospel we proclaim, but our disunity discredits it. So let's go back to those couple examples in those small towns where they were dividing over carpet. What do you think that did to the reputation of Jesus in that small town? Well, I think there were a group of people looking at that church saying, if that's what Jesus is about, I don't want any part of that. Right? And there's a very good possibility that some of you in this room have been in a setting where people got hung up on side issues and divided over them, and it made you want to leave the church. I mean, just the fact you're here today is the grace of God that you even showed back up. And I want to say thank you for not giving up on this thing called the church, the bride of Christ. It's messy, it's brutal sometimes, you get wounded, you get hurt by church leaders, by people. Listen, but thankfully, God's grace, He moves us past some of these issues, but division discredits this gospel we proclaim. Don't you know that the core of the gospel was reconciliation? A restored relationship between God and people, and a restored relationship between people and people. Man and man. And whenever there's disunity, we're just basically saying, yes, we believe this gospel, but we don't work it out practically. Like when we don't get what we want, we leave. When we don't get what we want, or we don't get our preference, then we just say, peace out. I'm rolling. I'm gonna go find someplace over here that's better. Guys, this happens a lot. Here's the thing: this unity reveals immaturity. This unity reveals immaturity in our hearts. And it reveals immaturity in a particular body of believers. It reveals an immaturity in our understanding of who Christ is and what he's done. It reveals an immaturity in how we handle conflict. You remember we tell you a while ago, there are kids who come to school on a daily basis and they're dealing with all this baggage from home life and they're trying to learn, but they can't because they're so overwhelmed by what they've just experienced on the home front. All this disunity. Well, you know what? It's driving more division and more struggle and more difficult, and it's all produced from this immaturity. People who pursue, hey, listen, people who pursue to stir up division, they're immature. I uh I took a job in a church, and when I got there, um I saw some dysfunctions pretty quick on the team that I inherited. So I was supposed to lead this team, there were seven of them, and uh, so you know, it was an interesting experience walking in. I hadn't been there in a while. Um I show, uh you know, they'd been there a while. I hadn't been there but maybe a week, and I started seeing this dysfunction show up. And what I noticed pretty fast is that there were some strong personalities that really just disagreed in how life should work and how ministry should work and what decisions we should make. And so I started kind of observing, I started praying about the issue, and I noticed that again, there were these strong personalities that just did not naturally, you know, like each other, right? It wasn't necessarily a spiritual issue, it was a personality issue that became a spiritual issue. And there was one particular staff member, and she felt like that it was her job, her calling, to go back and forth between those who didn't get along and talk to them and stir. The pot. You know anybody like that? That is straight up immaturity. Okay? It dishonors God, it tears down the body, and it needs to stop. And so I had to have a very hard conversation and say to this person, hey, we love you, but you can't be on this team. Because all you want to do is create strife. Now, you probably can think of family members that do that. You can probably think of coworkers that do that. You can probably think of people in your life that just like to stir up division. And that's immaturity. It's immaturity on their part. In fact, Ephesians chapter 4, verse 11 through 13, it's a passage we come back to fairly often as a church. It says this, and he personally gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers for the training of the saints in the work of ministry to build up the body of Christ. So God's given these leadership giftings to help the body grow up and to be mature. Now, watch what he says next. Until we all reach what? Unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God's Son, growing into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ's fullness. What Ephesians tells us when Paul's writing there and God is inspiring Paul's words here, right? So this is the living, breathing word of God. And he says that maturity looks like unity in the local church. That mature churches are unified. But notice again, what's the foundation for that unity? It's not just, hey, we all have the same skin color, we all speak the same language, we're all from the same socioeconomic class. I mean, look at look at this room, guys. This is crazy. Look around this room and see the diversity in this room. This is what the gospel produces. It produces diversity because we all have the same need. And it's not just oxygen. We all need Jesus. We all need Christ. We all need a rescuer. We all need a savior. We all need to grow up in Christ. And so we don't, it doesn't matter what your background is, it doesn't matter what your what your uh your preferences even are, it matters who Christ is and what we need. It doesn't mean that the diversity of this room is unimportant. It's actually very important. I believe that every church should reflect the community that it's in. It should reflect the community that it sits in. But we don't pursue diversity as like this idol. Well, if we can be diverse, then we'll be healthy. But they see they all need the same thing. Jesus. Are you with me? And so it's this beautiful thing. And Paul says that we are built up in this unity in Christ. And that's what we're shooting for is to grow up in Christ. My job as one of the pastors here is to equip people of the work of ministry so we can grow up in Christ, in unity in our faith. And I can just tell you it's hard work. It's hard work. My hope is that if somebody talked to one of you in this room, in your workplace, in a park, at your house, they were sitting there and they said, Hey, tell us what's the gospel that you could say the same thing as somebody over here would say, and somebody over here would say, and somebody over here would say. Why? Because we need to be clear on what we believe about these issues. And we need to be unified in them. And there was disunity going on in Paul's day. Now, um, Paul gives some specific instructions. He gives some specific instructions, and at least he addresses these things head on. And I want to make sure that you uh can see the significance of them. But number one, Paul does is in verse 13a, he starts asking this list of rhetorical questions. And the first one he asks is he says, Is Jesus divided? Is Jesus divided? Is he one? And of course we know that the answer is no, he's not divided. Jesus is one. And his body, which later in 1 Corinthians he's going to talk about, is one. So Jesus is not divided. His kingdom is not divided. It's one king over the whole thing, right? And so he's saying, if Jesus is not divided, then why should his church be divided? Why should his people be divided? And so he talks about this very issue by initially saying, let's just look at Jesus. This is really practical, guys. Let's fix our eyes back on Jesus and ask the question well, does Jesus have all these many kingdoms under his kingdom? No, it's one kingdom. It's one king. His name is Jesus, and so we're all under him and in him. We're one in him. He's already prayed for it in John 17. The second thing that Paul does is he reminds them of the source of their salvation. He reminds them of the source of their salvation. Now notice in verse 13, again, he asks another rhetorical question. He says, not just is Christ divided, but he says, in verse 13b, was it Paul who was crucified for you? Was it Paul who went to the cross and paid the penalty for your sin? And of course, the Corinthians they were like, no, Paul, you didn't die on the cross. Jesus did. You told us that. You preached the gospel to us. And Paul's like, yeah, exactly. So why are we dividing up? Why are we trying to go to Apollos and Cephas? And why are we playing this game or even me as Paul? No, we're under Christ. Christ is the one who died for my sin. Now, let me make a practical application because I know not everybody in this room lives daily absorbing the world of Christendom of the United States. And what I mean by that, I mean we live in a day and age where we've got Christian radio stations, like all the time going on. We've got Christian websites, we've got Christian conferences, we've got Christian books, we've got all kinds of Christian podcasts. And here's the thing we need to be very, very careful that as we listen to content from all these great sources, we always go back and we worship Jesus. Right? I grew up in a preacher's home, and then uh and so I saw a lot of these different things, and then when I got to college, I went to a Bible study while I was a college student in Abilene, Texas. It was called Grace Bible Study. Okay? It was a great Bible study, it was awesome. It was every Thursday night. It was really a cool time for me personally and my walk with God and what he was teaching me. But there's a guy who lead who led that Bible study, and I got to be friends with him named Matt Chandler. And Matt Chandler, some of you may even know him now because his podcasts are all over the place. He speaks all over the place. He's a phenomenal communicator, just really gifted. And he was always a good communicator. Back in college, when he was very first starting, he was hilariously funny. He'd talk for an hour and a half and you thought it was 10 minutes. I mean, that's just how it was. He didn't have Paul's problem, okay? So basically, I remember going to Grace Bible study, and pretty soon what started to happen is instead of Jesus followers, we had Chandler followers. Instead of Jesus followers, we had everybody, and we walk out the door, and there was more conversation about Matt Chandler. And by the way, he would not like this, right? But he but he there was more conversation about Matt than Jesus. And then that's just one example because there are churches everywhere, and instead of being under the name of Jesus, they exist for a person, a personality, a platform speaker. And I want you to know, listen, people, it's not about the human being. It's about the Jesus who loves us, who saves us, who sacrificed himself to follow us. People will let you down. They are not people we should worship. We worship Jesus. Okay? We had an interesting conversation in our life group. I'm not going to say any names, but we had an interesting conversation in our life group. And one of the people even made the comment that this apostle who wrote this letter was their Bible boyfriend. And uh I thought it was a really funny comment. It was great. It was awesome. But we were talking about how that even in our group, we were having this discussion about how that even Paul was a human being. And as awesome as he was, and as amazed as we are as his teaching, his sacrificing, the fact that he was stoned, shipwrecked, uh, hurt all the time, and he just kept on preaching until ultimately he was killed for it. We know that Paul was a human being. Right? He wasn't Jesus. In fact, he would even say that, and he's making that point here. We even know that Paul, late in his ministry, he goes back to Jerusalem. Kind of a side note to this thing, but he goes back to Jerusalem towards the end of his ministry after he'd written the book of Romans for crying out loud. He writes the book of Romans, which is one of the most amazing books in the whole Bible. God has inspired him to put this text together that has radically changed uh uh, you know, so many theologians through the years, including Martin Luther, who's anyway, huge shift in Christian Christendom because of that. But I want you to know, he goes back to Jerusalem and he tries to fulfill a Nazarite vow, which included sacrifices. Why? Because he wanted to be accepted by the people in Rome, in Jerusalem. What am I saying in that? I'm saying that he was a fallible person just like us. He still had fleshly desires. He wanted to be accepted. Thankfully, by God's grace, he didn't actually fulfill it. But God stopped him on the sixth day, and so he didn't get to finish the seventh-day Nazarite vow and sacrifice, because how bad that would that have been that the same Paul that writes the book of Galatians about you foolish Galatians, you're adding to the gospel, then all of a sudden he's doing sacrifices, right? The point being this we need to worship Jesus alone. So I don't know what podcasts you listen to, I don't know what church websites you go to. I'm not jealous of them, okay, just so you know. But Jesus is. Jesus is jealous for his glory because he knows that if you worship them, you're gonna have issues. Because they're not God, they're not deities. And so Paul's reminding them because that can create division. It can create this eliteness, it can create this self-righteousness, can establish the sense that we're better than other people. Third thing, okay, I'll get lost in that one. Third one, here you go. He clarifies the authority of their baptism. The end of verse 13, he says this, or were you baptized in Paul's name? So this kind of is a similar idea because I'm guessing that if you grew up in church and you were impacted from an early day, or maybe you weren't, maybe you were recently uh converted to Christ and you came to faith in Jesus, and somebody helped you with that decision and helped you with that process and baptized you. I mean, they ought to have a meaningful uh you know position in your life. Like, wow, they they spent time, they really helped me. They spent time uh caring for me. But guess what? Again, they're not Jesus, right? And Paul says, What authority were you baptized in? Well, he makes the point. He only baptized a few of them, Gaius and Crispus and Stephanus, but even though there's this whole group of people saying they're following him. In fact, go on and read the rest of this text. This is huge. Paul says this. He says, uh, verse 13, the very end, or were you baptized in Paul's name? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say you were baptized in my name, and use that to make a division. I did, in fact, baptize the household of Stephanus. Beyond that, I don't know if I baptized anybody else. You know, he had shared the gospel so much and probably baptized so many people, he's kind of like struggling with his memory at this point. I don't even know. I can't, I just know that I know at least these people. Okay? I'm sure when they read it, they were like real proud about that, right? And he says, he goes on to say, for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to evangelize. Not with clever words, so that the cross of Christ will not be emptied of its effect. Couple things. When we baptize, this goes back to Jesus' words when he told his disciples before he left, he gave them a great commission. He said, Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. And then he goes on to say what? Baptizing them in the name of yourself, in the name of Paul, in the name of a church. No, he says in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Baptism is being baptized into the family of God, right? Under the authority of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So this is why baptism is really, really important to understand and it's significant because we know that baptism is this act of obedience that is revealing a converted heart. It's revealing and exposing the fact that we have put our trust in Christ. You know why I can say that even with more confidence is notice what Paul says. He says, Christ did not send me to baptize, but to evangelize. That without Jesus going to the cross, dying for our sins, we are not forgiven by going through a ritual called baptism. Right? We're not. Jesus' blood, not the waters of a baptismal, is what washes away our sin. However, let me caution you here, we need to be very careful not to de-emphasize baptism. I grew up in a context, in a setting where sometimes baptism was used as a way to get people into the church or to identify them with the church, even if somebody had been scripturally baptized before, which by the way, scriptural baptism is a personal decision to follow Jesus and being baptized as an act of obedience coming out of that, right? That's what it should be. And people have been baptized before, but they come to the church, and the church says, you've got to be rebaptized into our church. That's not biblical. Okay, are you with me? It's not biblical. And so we need to understand that we aren't baptized under the name of that church. We're baptized under the name of Jesus. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Okay? And there are people, literally, there are denominations today that exist because of this issue. There are divisions and factions in the church because of this issue. And what I want you to see this morning is that Paul is trying to set the record straight that when he came, he came to share the gospel, and that people then were baptized as an act of obedience to that. And here's the thing: if you're in this room and you have put your trust in Jesus Christ, you have received the gift of salvation, but you've never been baptized, you're walking in disobedience. You're walking in disobedience. I love you, I don't have to tell you that. But baptism is a practical step of obedience. I understand that the implications of that means that it could be like uneasy, I can feel embarrassed, I could feel shame. But listen, here's what I would say. I'd go as far as this anyone who tells me that they are a follower of Jesus but is unwilling to be baptized tells me that they haven't surrendered their heart to God. They're not fully in. They've not fully submitted. So is baptism what saves us? No. But is baptism essential to reveal that our hearts have been changed? Yes. You see, even in the first century church, they knew that being believers were legit. They knew they were legit when they said, I'm not just going to make a declaration, I'm going to be baptized. That's huge. It's really, really important. And so my encouragement to you is if you've never been baptized, and I'm not saying this with like a legalistic tone or this moralistic thing, because if you if you got if you put your trust in Jesus and you were not baptized because either the timing didn't work out, you couldn't get it all the specifics together, and you died, you're going to heaven, okay? You're forgiven. This is not that issue. But if you willingly are choosing not to be baptized, that's a problem. And it's my job as a pastor, and it's our leadership's job as leaders of this church to shepherd you to take that step. And I can guarantee you, I've seen this every time. When people get baptized, man, it's like their spiritual light bulb comes on. Because they've stepped into that one big, I mean, sometimes massive for many of you in this room, big step of obedience that they needed to take that they weren't taking. And it's like, I'll obey you, Jesus, except for that. And Jesus says, No, you need to follow me in all ways. And that's one of the practical, specific ways he gave us. And by the way, baptism's awesome. It's awesome. I mean, were you guys here a couple weeks ago when we baptized Jose over here? How awesome is that to have somebody stand up and say, I'm with Jesus, I'm following Jesus. He has saved me, he has forgiven me, and I am redeemed. And I want everybody to know that. That's awesome to celebrate what Christ has done. And then the picture of the death, burial, and resurrection in that symbol, it's awesome. It doesn't save me, but it is a huge revealer of where my heart is in terms of how I believe I am saved and I am rescued by Jesus. Okay? So this is a big deal that we don't want to just gloss over. So Paul deals with disunity. He deals with division. He wants to fix it because he knows that division will eat the church alive. And he knows that it will be completely dysfunctional and it will be incapable of accomplishing the work that God has for it. Let me go back to personal for just a second. In your marriage, are you pursuing unity or are you pursuing disunity? In your family with your children, are you pursuing unity or are you pursuing disunity? The Bible says, as far as it is up to us, we should pursue peace with all people. Immaturity produces division. Maturity produces unity, right? And so in our hearts, we need Jesus to help us. We need Jesus to rescue us. We need Jesus to save us. And if you haven't heard this before, let me give you one point that is absolutely critical to understanding unity in the church. It's this. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone. Salvation only comes through the grace of God, reaching down to mankind in the person and work of Jesus, him dying on the cross for our sin. That means the only way I get to heaven, the only way I get to be with God forever, the only way I get to deal with my sin and be forgiven of that sin and be redeemed is through the person of Jesus. If you hear anything else, or you hear that plus something else, you need to run, or you need to address that, or you need to interact with that in such a way to point them back to the scripture. Because the scripture says Jesus alone is salvation. That means you can't go to church enough to be a Christian to get into the kingdom of God. You can't be a good enough person, that's the common answer you hear. Well, I'm a good person, I should get in. Where does it say that in the Bible? It says you're not good enough. But Jesus loves you anyway. And he died for you anyway while we were enemies. That's awesome news. It's bad, but then it's good. And so we know that that's where our unity is derived from. Are you pursuing unity? Are you pursuing disunity? Are you fixing your eyes on Jesus? Because division occurs among Christians when we lose sight of the cross, but unity comes when we refocus our hope on it. Division occurs when we lose sight of the cross. You want to know why all the churches have divisions in them and factions and why churches are splitting? Because instead of looking at the cross and what Christ has done and the mission of taking that message to the world, we start thinking, well, what program? We start talking about the hows and the what's rather than the who. There's guys that are on our leadership team that would prefer we sing a lot more hymns on Sundays. It's a preference. Right? Now, by the grace of God, they haven't taken their ball and gone home. I love the fact that when I look in the room, there are people generationally who have different preferences on the way that we, the style of our worship. But it's not an issue for division or faction. It's a preference. There are people probably here who'd like us to do different things in different ways and have different programs and offer more stuff. But you know what? Let's talk about the things that really matter. Jesus. The gospel. We can work through some of these other things. You got preferences, you got desires, you got ideas, bring them to us. That's great. But don't be so immature as to use those to say, I'm walking away from the church because I'm not getting my way. It's like a two-year-old throwing a fit. Jesus deserves better. He died so that we could be in community with one another. We can know how to have conflict, how we can walk in unity. Let's pray. God, thank you so much for your grace and your mercy and your kindness that you, even in this issue of disunity, that you're working in this room today. Thank you that your spirit's taking this message and it's applying it in the different ways that need to be applied, it needs to be applied for the different people in this room. God, I pray for my own heart that I would be soft and tender and gracious and loving and compassionate with my brothers and sisters in Christ, even when I disagree with them. Thank you, God, that you know us and that you know our faults and you know uh the ways that we are selfish and self focused. And thank you that you love us in spite of that. And we just come this morning, submitting to you, surrendering to you, and asking for help. Help us not to be like the people of Corinth. And if there's anything in us that reveals that or reflects that, I pray that this morning we would get that right. We pray that in your strong name, Jesus. Amen.