If we are to live faithfully for Jesus we must guard against division and pursue unity as a church. Though we don't often think of unity as a matter of first importance, we'll see how the Gospel leads us to unity and how unity leads others to the Gospel.
If we are to live faithfully for Jesus we must guard against division and pursue unity as a church. Though we don't often think of unity as a matter of first importance, we'll see how the Gospel leads us to unity and how unity leads others to the Gospel.
We're in a sermon series on First Corinthians today, our second week that was started last week on witnesses in a watching world how God's power and wisdom equip us with confidence to live faithfully for Jesus and for his gospel. And what we're going to look at today is we're at First Corinthians, 1, 10 through 17, is how the gospel leads us to unity and how that same unity, which is brought about by God through his gospel, can also lead others to faith in Jesus Christ. You know, unity is something that is incredibly challenging for human beings in general, for all times, as we are sinners and we don't like to unite. But it seems like it's been even more challenging for our society recently, right, I mean, if you just think about four years ago, when COVID was unleashed on the world I'm sorry, I really am trying not to use that word anymore, but when that thing was unleashed in our world, you saw so quickly how divided we are. We became divided over masks and over social distancing and over school. What do we do about school? What do we do about church? And then there was this flare up of racism and then the political tension of that election, and then, after that, vaccines. Should you get the vaccine, should you not? And then people just going at each other over all these different topics.
Speaker 1:It was an incredibly divisive time and I'm sad to say that it did not, that it did also affect the church. I don't think we felt it as much at Westtown, but I have a friend who's a pastor who said that when they wrestle with how to do church and they thought about should we continue meeting inside? Should we meet outside? Should we, if we're meeting inside, should we wear masks? Should we social distance? Should we not All this stuff? And they prayerfully and carefully consider what is the best thing for our church. They had a lot of elderly folks and so they decided you know what we're going to meet in person inside and we're going to require masks. They felt like that was the right thing to do for their congregation, and so he told me that after that decision was made, he received a letter from a church member who told him you are satanic, not kidding. Well, months later I don't know how long, but at some point they dropped their mask requirement. And guess what? After they did that, they got another letter from another church member saying you are satanic, can't win.
Speaker 1:The church was incredibly divided. I know many other pastors who experience lots of division over COVID and over all those different things that came from it. Well, paul in first Corinthians is dealing with divisions, not over a virus, but over something else, and he is incredibly distraught over these divisions that he's heard about in the church. Because here's the deal the gospel of Jesus Christ ought to produce unity in our churches. So let's read first Corinthians, one versus 10 through 17.
Speaker 1:I'm going to read the whole passage and then we'll just refer back to it from time to time throughout the sermon. So he writes I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment, for it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says I follow Paul or I follow Apollos, or I follow Cephas, that's, peter, or I follow Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Christmas and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the household of Stefanus. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else, for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. The first thing we're going to see from this passage is that the church must guard against division over the wrong things. Church must guard against division over the wrong things.
Speaker 1:Paul is in Ephesus when he receives we think he receives a letter. It seems like it's a letter from Chloe's people. We don't know who Chloe is, but she seems like she must have been a very prominent individual in the church because she's got people and she's like I'll have my people right to your people about this. And when they do, they tell Paul that the Corinthian church is divided. It's a mess.
Speaker 1:There are multiple cliques that have formed around these different personalities, different leaders who have come through this church. So if you can pull up that slide, here's the cliques. We got Paul's posse, got Apollos' entourage Cephas' circle remember that's Peter and Christ's crew. So each one of these groups identified with their favorite leader. Maybe they were baptized by Apollos and they're like man, apollos is great, I'm going to do what Apollos says. I'm going to do things the way Apollos wants to do them.
Speaker 1:He's my guy, or maybe they're like. Maybe they're like Peter's preaching the best. He is so dynamic, really uses great movie illustrations and just love it when he preaches. Peter's my guy. And there is even this one group that's like well, no, christ is our guy. In fact, we're so much better than you because Christ is our guy that we think you guys are a bunch of fools. In fact, you read that and you think, oh, christ's crew, they must be doing it right. Except for most commentators think they're really self-righteous about the fact that they're Christ's crew and they're holding others in contempt, so they're not even doing it right. So all these factions, all these cliques, they thought I'm doing things the right way, I'm following my guy and everybody else should follow my guy too. And if you don't follow my guy, you're weird, you shouldn't be in this church. And this is how the church divided. And so Paul, of course, hears about this and he writes to try to correct it. So what about now? What about us? Can this still happen today? Well, of course I mean.
Speaker 1:Oftentimes people come to a church not really to worship Jesus so much as they do to hear a pastor. They like a certain pastor and they like the way he preaches, and when that pastor leaves, they leave too. They don't want to be there if the pastor is not there. That happens all the time and it can even happen with celebrity pastors. So, like right now, you can go on a podcast or on YouTube or something you can watch pretty much any pastor in the world preach a sermon. That's incredible. It's a great resource. I mean I enjoy watching and listening to other pastors. I like Alistair Begg and like to listen to Tim Keller, even though he's past, and Kevin DeYoung and many others and some of you like John MacArthur or John Piper or David Platter, really, really encourage you to stay away from some of the guys on the TV channels with the big smiles.
Speaker 1:You know I won't mention any names, but most of these guys that I just mentioned. They differ slightly on minor things, but they all agree on the core issues of the faith, right, who is Jesus and what is the Bible for, and what is the church and what is the gospel. They agree on these things. But imagine if in our church. There developed factions around these guys. We have like the John MacArthur faction. They have to do everything the way John MacArthur says we should do it, we need to dress like him, everybody should wear a tie like John MacArthur. You know? No, no, no, no. Over here is the. You guys have got the wrong John. Right, we need to do the things the way that John Piper does them. You know, we need to talk like John Piper and think like him and only read his books. And just imagine if each one of those factions insisted that my way is the right way, because this guy's way is the right way.
Speaker 1:What would that do to our church? It would divide our church. It would create the same kind of mess that Paul had in Corinth and Paul would say to us you guys, you need to knock it off, okay? He says in verse 13,. He asks this very simple rhetorical question. He says is Christ divided? And we're supposed to know. The answer is no. Christ is not divided. Christ is one. Christ is one man, one God, one person, two natures. And if Christ is not divided, then neither is his body, neither is the body of Christ, neither is the church. The church must not be divided, especially not over minor preferences. Now, despite this kind of admonition from Paul and from elsewhere in the Bible, the church has dealt with division over minor preferences for 2,000 years. Of course we're human, we're sinners, we're gonna struggle with this.
Speaker 1:We've seen that recently in what's been called the worship wars. For basically hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years the church has used traditional forms of worship right, mostly hymns sung out of a hymn book, something like that. And in the past I don't know 50 years we've developed more of a contemporary worship style that churches prefer. And so in that we've had this war that's taken place between churches who have said no, we're gonna remain traditional, it's the only right thing to do is to sing hymns. And then you got other churches over here that are like no, we need to have a rock concert up here with lasers and smoke machines. And then you got those two polar opposites and everything in between. Right, that's the worship wars. They're always kind of fighting over which way is the right way, but it's all preference.
Speaker 1:I mean, I experienced this the first church that I served at out of college. It was an elderly kind of church, very traditional, and they were shrinking, I mean losing members and they started asking questions. They were doing like a church renewal thing, like why are we shrinking, what's going on? And I made this suggestion that you know we might ought to consider adding some contemporary worship to our worship services. And an elder's wife in the room looked at me and she said if people want toe tapping music, they can hit the road. I was like thank you for that very constructive criticism. I appreciate that. I know where you stand.
Speaker 1:But that was the kind of attitude of I'm holding this preference and it is a preference. Whether you like traditional worship, contemporary worship, that's a preference. Okay, it's not gospel. Worship is absolutely of first importance. We are commanded to worship, but the style of worship that we employ is a preference and it always will be, and so we cannot divide over things like that. That's exactly the opposite of what the Bible calls us to do as a church. If we divide over a preference, then we are making that preference our primary motivation and not the gospel.
Speaker 1:So I'm not saying it's wrong to have preferences by the way, everybody has preferences. It's good to have preferences. I'm saying I think it's pretty rare that these preferences are worth fighting for tooth and nail and they're especially rarely worth dividing for, and I know that because scripture says in 1 Corinthians 13.5, love. This is the love passage which we'll maybe get to at some point. Love does not insist on its own way. There's no wiggle room there, guys. Love does not insist on its own way. If I have the love of Christ in me, then I must not approach relationships with people insisting on my own way. I simply must not. That's what that means.
Speaker 1:So if we are going to pursue unity with one another, we will at some point have to lay down our preferences Not all of them, but definitely some of them. Now, of course, we should fight for essentials the fact that God is triune, the fact that the Bible is God's word, that salvation is in Christ alone, by grace, through faith alone, the fact that Jesus is a man and rose from the dead and that God is the creator of all things, and there's a few others that are essential truths that we absolutely should fight for. And if you're ever in a church and they deny one of those things and you go to the leadership and you say, hey, why are we denying that Jesus rose from the dead? This is heresy to deny that. And they say sorry, we just don't believe it's true. Then you run away, you leave. That's something you divide over, but not preferences. We don't divide over preferences, we hold them loosely for the sake of unity.
Speaker 1:So the church last thing I'll say about this the church, not Burger King can't have it all our way. Okay, the only one who can't have it all his way is the King of Kings, jesus Christ. So how do we achieve unity? Well, the cheeky thing to say here is that we don't achieve it. The truth is that only God can build and achieve unity in the church, because unity is a supernatural effect of the gospel.
Speaker 1:Bouncing around the text here just a little bit In verse 17, I want to paraphrase this for you. He's kind of saying you know, jesus didn't send me to major on the minors. He didn't send me to make mountains out of molehills. Jesus sent me to emphasize the one essential truth, that is, the gospel. That's what Paul was sent to do to preach the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, the words of eternal life. And if we have the gospel as our focus, then we can agree, we can value the same things, we can have unity.
Speaker 1:Now, this unity, of course, is not based on eternal or eternal external. That's a big difference. External commonalities, right, like in high school, you know you click up based on what music you like to listen to, or how you dress, or you know, do you play sports, are you in drama, are you a computer person? All that stuff, those that's how clicks form based on external realities. But in the church we are called to be united, not which has nothing to do with our external realities. We're called to be united based on what's going on inside us, what's going on in our hearts.
Speaker 1:And in particular, paul says that we get unity by having the same mind and the same judgment. The same mind and the same judgment. What I think he's saying there is that we ought to, as believers in Christ, have the same mind, set the same mode of operating, and then out of that to form the same opinions and the same ideas about life and about how to live life and about what we should be doing in this world and what the world is. And basically, what I'm saying is to have a Christian world view, to be to see life in yourself and others around you through the lens of the gospel, through the lens of Jesus Christ, to have gospel, colored glasses on all the time. That's what it means to have the same mindset. It's like Philippians 1.27. He says only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel so that, whether I come and see you or an absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. So having one mind there, he's saying, will cause us to unite and to strive side by side for the faith of the gospel. So I read this and I think about remember the Titans.
Speaker 1:Okay, so true story about a high school football team in the early 70s in Virginia that had to integrate. They were forced to desegregate and come together as a team of black guys and white guys and they had to figure out how to play football together even though they didn't like each other. Right, they had this deep seated racism and they're all skeptical of each other. And the two main characters, julius and Gary one guy a black guy, one guy a white guy. They don't like each other, they don't wanna know each other, but yet somehow, through their football camp, they end up becoming friends. They realize, hey, maybe we don't have as many differences as we think we do. And oh, by the way, we all love to play football and we all wanna win. So let's unite around that mindset of a love for football and a desire to win football games and let's go out. And what do they do? They went undefeated and they won the state title, and that is absolutely a true story. They had the same mindset and the same desire and that created unity and the church in a much greater way.
Speaker 1:When we have one mind and one judgment, what ends up happening is we see that we have the same love for Jesus and the same motivation out of that love for Jesus, which is to seek his kingdom and to glorify him. And who knows what God can do with a church that has that same mindset. Now, you might think this is impossible. People are. We have all kinds of differences and all kinds of different desires, and everybody's entitled to their own opinion, right? I mean, we got that freedom to think freely and be our own individual. And you're right, absolutely, it's impossible With man, but not with God. This is the whole point. Unity in the church is only possible with God. It is only possible when we are united by the gospel. This is, in fact, having the same mind and the same judgment is an effect of the gospel doing its work in us, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:So God makes us new creations in Christ. You know, when he saves us, he changes our hearts. We become new creations. The old has gone, the new has come, and then it says, like in Romans 12, that we are then to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. So we're going on a transformation journey where our minds are becoming different, to the point where, like we'll see in a couple of weeks when Dr Clark preaches on 1 Corinthians2, that we can actually have the mind of Christ. That's what Paul says there. We have the mind of Christ. What does that mean? Well, it means to think like Christ Not exactly like, I mean, none of us is going to be exactly like Christ in this life. I'm saying more and more to learn to think like Christ and then to desire the things that Christ desires. This is what it means to have one mind and one judgment in the church. We desire his truth and we desire his unity, and we see that both of those things are essential to him. He desires both of those things equally, and so when we allow this transformation to take shape in our hearts and we see God working in our hearts, we end up seeing that Jesus and his gospel are the. It's the most important commonality that we can have with another human being. It's the most true thing about us.
Speaker 1:If you're a Christian, if you're a believer in Christ, jesus is the most true thing about you. That's your identity, that's who you are. You were a, as Dr Clark talked about last week. You are in Christ. You belong to that country. Now You're a citizen of that country and so you have that in common with any other Christian in the world. So if next week a Christian comes in, you know from like Nepal or something, and they're look like they just got off Mount Everest, you know dressed like a Sherpa and don't speak English, and you're coming in and you're like what are you drinking? And I was yack smoke. You know it's their morning beverage. You're like I got nothing. I got nothing in common with this guy. Wait a minute. No, you do. If they're a Christian, then you and that that's strange little man from Nepal have the most important commonality in the universe, which is that you're both saved by Jesus, you're both washed clean by his blood, you are both being renewed after the image of Jesus Christ, you're both forgiven, you're both living for the kingdom of God. And so you and that guy from Nepal have the most important thing in common, and that actually means you have more in common with him than your American neighbor down the street who looks just like you but isn't a believer.
Speaker 1:That is the essential truth about us, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and with Jesus being the essential truth about us, we can have unity in a situation where unity might seem impossible, where we have too many differences to overcome, except for God can and will and does overcome them. So all that is to say we don't create unity, god creates unity in the church. So what is our role? Our role is actually to maintain unity. Ephesians 4, 1 through 3, paul says. I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. So being eager to maintain unity, that's kind of an interesting way to think.
Speaker 1:I wonder like how many of us walk into the worship service on a Sunday morning, thinking I am here to be eager to maintain unity. I don't really think that very often. It's not that I don't like unity, it's just that it's not really ever something that's on the top of my mind, and I think it probably ought to be that this is a key, essential goal for any Christian is to think how can I come in here, to this assembly of believers and work at maintaining unity? I think that we ought to consider that far more often than we do. And how do we maintain unity then? What does that look like? Well, I think Paul is saying that we are to walk in a manner worthy of our calling, and if we're walking that way, then we are going to maintain unity. But again, let's get more practical. Let's see what this looks like. So just a couple of suggestions.
Speaker 1:Matthew 633,. He says seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So if we're seeking God first and his kingdom first, then unity is going to be something that we value, that we seek simply because we're seeking God. Colossians 3, 2,. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Again, same thing. If we are setting our minds on what's above, namely heaven and Jesus, then we're going to want the things that Jesus wants. We're going to want earth to be more like heaven.
Speaker 1:Galatians 5, 16,. Walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires the flesh. If we are living by the spirit, depending on him daily, then we have the capability to battle temptation and sin, to say no to our sin, and then say no to our temptation and sin. We then can pursue the things of God. So this is just a few ways that we can learn to maintain unity. There are many other ways.
Speaker 1:I think scripture talks about this throughout. But the key here is that again we learn to look at this church, our church, not as consumers, not thinking what can the church do for me, what can I get from the church? Again, we can think that sometimes, and it's appropriate to ask that sometimes, but if that's all we ever think about the church, then we're looking at it as consumers and instead I think what this is saying is that we ought to look at Westtown Church as a people, an assembly, a group of believers and ask the question how can I serve Westtown? Or, better yet how can I serve Jesus by serving Westtown? What can I do to serve one person or a group of people or the whole assembly? This is the kind of thing that we do when we prioritize Jesus and his kingdom, and of course it's going to cause us again to have to lay down preferences. But I think if we are seeking Jesus first, then laying down our preferences is actually not going to feel like that big of a deal. It might even feel like a privilege, like if I can lay down my preferences and help boost the unity of this church. That's a privilege, absolutely. And the simple fact is it's not too much to ask. Jesus laid down his life for us. We can lay down our preferences for him, and so the last thing we'll see if we're able to then maintain this unity is that unity has an amazing effect or benefit for unbelievers in our community. It attracts unity in the church, attracts others towards Jesus in the gospel. So Paul again, he knew about these divisions because others noticed it. It was noticeable to Chloe's people at least, and we assumed that it might have been noticeable to anybody in Corinth.
Speaker 1:Any unbeliever in Corinth could probably look at this church and think there's something not right there. They're kind of acting weird, very divided. You know, sometimes unbelievers do pay attention to the church. They do wonder what's going on there. What's that all about? What's the church thing all about? Why do people go to church?
Speaker 1:And a lot of times when people you know from the outside look at our community, they're looking to see are we practicing what we preach? Like, is there validity to what they're saying? I'm curious and what we want to say is that we're not going to be able to see what we preach. We're curious and what we want to show them is unity. We don't want them to see division, because if they see division then they're prone to then think that Christ must be kind of a divisive guy. But if they see unity, they see, of course, that Christ is a uniting person. In fact, what we really want them to see is something that seems strange to them, right? Something that's like supernatural. It's not just something that they can create at the gym, you know, or at a sports league or at the Rotary Club or something right, it's supernatural.
Speaker 1:I mean, think about Acts, chapter two, after Jesus ascended into heaven, he promised you know, I'm gonna send the Holy Spirit. And so he ascends into heaven and then he sends the Holy Spirit. And in Acts two he comes and says it sounds like a mighty rushing wind and the apostles are there in this room and they see tongues of fire over each other's heads, and then this attracts a crowd of non-believers. Verses five through eight says now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven, and at this sound the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished saying are not all these who are speaking Galileans, and how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language? It actually goes on to list the different languages that were represented there, and I think it's like 16 different languages, and they're all hearing the apostles speaking to them in their own languages, kind of like the United Nations, but without translators. Right?
Speaker 1:And so what's God doing here? Well, first, god is undoing, in sort of a symbolic way. He's undoing the division of the Tower of Babel. Remember that story from Genesis 12 or whatever, or 11, I think, where God divides people up by language because of their pride? Well, he's undoing that and he's not beginning to create a people for himself, where language is no longer going to be a barrier and ethnicity and race and nations these are not gonna be barriers anymore. It's gonna be one people from every tongue and tribe and nation and eventually we'll be gathered around the throne in heaven and all speak the same language Praise God. So that's what he was beginning there.
Speaker 1:But how did it begin? Well, again the Holy Spirit comes and all these people are gathered and Peter's like what do I do? I'll preach. So he preaches this sermon, and then 3,000 people become believers in Christ at that. One day they all get baptized. It's amazing, a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. God creates unity. It pleases him to do so. It pleases him and it benefits us when we are united.
Speaker 1:You see this in Psalm 133. It says how good and pleasant is it when brothers dwell in unity. It is like the precious oil on the head running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down the collar of his robes. He's talking about the oil that they would use to anoint a priest when he was beginning his ministry, and that this was a good and pleasing aroma to the Lord and that was good and pleasing to the people as well. That's what unity is like, but it's also for the refreshment of an entire community.
Speaker 1:In verse three of Psalm 133, it says it is like the dew of Herman which falls on the mountains of Zion, for there the Lord has commanded the blessing life forevermore. So now you know where Mountain Dew got its name right. Maybe I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there, but Mount Herman is this. Is this about a 9,000 foot mountain into the north of Israel, and it's known for the precipitation and in fact for the dew that falls on it and that it runs down the mountain and it refreshes the communities at its base. That is what the church can do for the unbelieving community around it. We can refresh West Chase and Northwest Tampa with the gospel.
Speaker 1:So before we fight over preferences or before we think I just need to leave this church because I'm not happy with some of the things that are going on there, before we do that, can we first ask have I been eager to maintain unity? Have I considered that our unity or lack thereof will have an effect on the community around us? I know often I don't think about those things and I absolutely. It's commanded of us in scripture to consider these things as an essential. Will non-believers look at West town and see unity and think, wow, that's, I don't ever see that anywhere else. Where can I get that? Or will they look at West town and see you're kind of just like everybody else, they're just divided over all kinds of stuff. I mean, I think West town is in a good place. Actually, I think God has done amazing. Thanks to you, we've had, if you think about it, we've had numerous reasons to divide over the last four years, numerous, more than most churches.
Speaker 1:I praise God that we have not divided, that we've remained a United church in many ways, but I also pray that we will not lose focus, that we will continue to pursue Jesus and to seek first His kingdom and to seek the renewal of our minds and to seek to think like Him and desire like Him, to have His mind, not to let external differences keep us from pursuing and enjoying fellowship together, and to be willing to lay down our preferences if necessary, to pursue and maintain the unity of the Spirit. So let's make people wonder why are they so strangely united? That seems supernatural. Where is that from? And we know the answer it's from Jesus. But a lot of people in our community don't know that answer. They don't know Him, and we want them to, and our unity can make that happen. Let's pray.