Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good evening.
[00:00:01] Is that hot?
[00:00:03] Good evening, East Rock Church.
[00:00:06] Can you hear me? Okay?
[00:00:08] Trying to get a. Okay, you said. Oh, yeah.
[00:00:14] All right. So first off, excited to be here. I've been reading this passage for months. Been meditating on it, been looking into it.
[00:00:25] Ephesians is one of my favorite books of the Bible, just as an aside.
[00:00:31] And so I'm honored, privileged, humbled to be able to share with you tonight. So, yeah, let's. I guess let's start by just praying real quick.
[00:00:44] Father, we just ask that you would open up your word to us tonight. And we just ask that your spirit would guide and direct us and lead us into truth. In Jesus name, Amen.
[00:01:01] So there was once a sea captain.
[00:01:05] And he was off.
[00:01:08] Can you guys still hear me? Okay?
[00:01:11] There was once a sea captain. He was off at sea, sailing. And he was in the middle of the ocean, and he looked out and he saw that there was an island.
[00:01:20] And it was a remote, deserted island. He went. As he drew closer, he saw there was a guy jumping up and down, waving his hands on the shore.
[00:01:29] And so the captain drew closer to the island. He lowered his rowboat. Him and his crew went ashore to meet the man.
[00:01:38] They got to meet the man. And the man said, oh, thank God you're here. I've been on this island by myself for years, stranded.
[00:01:45] The captain said, I'm glad I could help you. And as he was talking to the man, he kind of looked. He couldn't help but look past him, and he saw that there were three different buildings on the island.
[00:01:58] And this just puzzled the captain.
[00:02:00] So the captain said, well, son, let me ask you, if you're the only one on this island, can you tell me what these three buildings are?
[00:02:10] And the man says, well, sure.
[00:02:12] That first building in the middle there, that's where I live. That's my house. That's where I eat, I sleep.
[00:02:17] And that building on the right back there, that's where I go to church. That's where I worship and I sing to the Lord. And the captain said, okay, I got it. The middle one is your middle one is your house. The one on the right is your church. But what about the building on the left?
[00:02:33] The man said, oh, that.
[00:02:35] That's where I used to go to church.
[00:02:42] So a friend of mine told me that.
[00:02:47] And. Yeah, and I can't think of a better commentary for how we can. How we tend to view the church in America.
[00:03:00] We have so many choices in America. We've got so many denominations. I think even within Person, county, we've got over 100 churches, and with that comes both blessing and a curse. I think the blessing is the gospel is readily available all over. You know, there's lots of different churches, lots of different flavors. People can go and hear the gospel message and get plugged into churches. That, that is good.
[00:03:27] But I think the curse can come into play when we start to view it as, like, preferences. Like, this church should cater to my every preference of what I think the church should do. Like, the. The preaching style should be this way. They should only preach about happy, uplifting things and never challenging things.
[00:03:51] The music should be a certain way. We shouldn't. We shouldn't have these instruments or we should have these. We should sing those songs, but not these songs on and on.
[00:04:00] And we kind of conclude that the church needs to conform to our individual preferences.
[00:04:06] And we almost create this list of demands.
[00:04:09] And the problem is there's so many churches that it becomes really tempting to just say, oh, well, this church isn't meeting my checklist. Let me just go down the road.
[00:04:22] And worse off, we can do that. And then maybe we don't find any church that we like and we say, okay, well, I'll just start listening to podcasts or I'll just start watching televangelists.
[00:04:38] Just exclusively. I'm talking just exclusively. Not going to church, not being a part of the body.
[00:04:44] And I just want to say, I really think that God has so much more for us in store than that.
[00:04:51] Like, he has so much more for us than that.
[00:04:55] Were created for a community. We're created to be a body, as we're going to read about today in Ephesians.
[00:05:03] And we're not just made to have community with God, but we're made to have community with each other, with the church.
[00:05:13] The problem is, as we all know, the church is full of people, and people are full of sin, and sin is full of pain.
[00:05:25] It's painful. It's painful getting close to people. It's painful putting yourself out there and getting burned.
[00:05:33] The reality is that the church is messy, and preserving unity takes effort.
[00:05:41] So the question I have for you, for everyone here tonight is really simple.
[00:05:47] I want us to really take an honest and open look at this question.
[00:05:51] Is he worth it?
[00:05:56] Is Jesus worthy of all this hardship, the annoyances, the lifetime of overlooking each other's offenses for the sake of the gospel?
[00:06:08] That's the question. I want us all to really be in the forefront of our minds tonight. Is he worth?
[00:06:17] May be a comfort to know that unity has always been a Fight and a struggle for the Church.
[00:06:23] It's not just us here in America in 2025.
[00:06:27] If you were to read the Pauline letters, you'd see that he's often mentioning some scandal in the Church, some misunderstanding in theology, some false teaching that was being propagated that he was trying to speak into.
[00:06:41] There were cultural influences where people were taking what was in culture and mixing that. And there's some weird amalgamation between that and what they had heard in the Gospel. And they were saying, you know, they were combining it and it wasn't right.
[00:06:59] Fast forward some centuries later, and you have arguments against the existence of the Trinity.
[00:07:04] You have the nature of Christ. Was he fully human? Was he fully God?
[00:07:09] Was he both?
[00:07:11] Fast forward more. You have arguments about original sin.
[00:07:14] Could a regular person hypothetically live a perfect life without sinning? Or are we so unholy, just our very nature, that it's impossible to live righteously without God's help?
[00:07:31] The great schism between East Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church, the Spanish Inquisition, the Anabaptists, the Protestant Reformation, the authority of Scripture, predestination, the Eucharist, debates all the way, so and so forth throughout time to get to where we are now.
[00:07:50] So for millennias, now, millenniums, thousands of years, the Church, if you know how to say that correctly, tell me. After church, the Church has been fighting to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.
[00:08:08] And again, my question is, is he worth it?
[00:08:11] Amidst all these arguments today, what is it that makes us unified?
[00:08:17] We're great at pointing out other people's flaws and theology, but what is it that unifies us? What is it that brings us together?
[00:08:27] Where do we draw the line between unity and heresy and between fellowship and separation?
[00:08:34] Will you turn in your Bibles with me to Ephesians, chapter four? And let's read verses four through seven together.
[00:08:42] There's one body and one Spirit, just as you are called to one hope that belongs to your call.
[00:08:49] One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
[00:08:58] But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.
[00:09:03] All right, so let's start to unpack these together, these verses, the very. The very start. There is one body. That one's pretty simple. The Greek there. It's talking about a physical body. It's this idea that we're all interconnected.
[00:09:17] When you take a drink or you take a bite out of a sandwich, it's not just that your mouth or your Teeth, your tooths, it's not just them that get nourished. Your whole body gets nourished when you go outside and it's a million degrees because of our wonderful North Carolina humidity.
[00:09:34] And your whole body gets hot when you go to the movies. You don't leave your legs and your arms at the door at your house and go to the movies. Your whole body goes with you. You know, you move as one unit.
[00:09:52] It's this idea that we're all connected together. And what each of us does directly affects the others, for better or for worse.
[00:10:03] When we're walking in sin, that hurts the body, whether it's public or whether it's private.
[00:10:09] Now you can make the argument and say, if it's private, nobody knows about it but me. How is that hurting anybody else?
[00:10:16] Here's what I think.
[00:10:17] It's hard to be on fire for the Lord when you're just steeped in personal sin.
[00:10:23] It just is. And we are created to be filled with God's spirit.
[00:10:29] And not just to be filled for the sake of us being filled, but we're created to be filled with the spirit so that we could pour, we could serve each other, we could serve our wives and our children and our body.
[00:10:43] So when. When we're steeped in personal sin, we're not being filled with the spirit. So it's almost like we're robbing the church of what we could be giving them.
[00:10:54] I was broken hearted to hear about that newsboy scandal that surfaced a few weeks ago.
[00:11:00] I've never met Michael Tate. He's. He's the lead singer of the band. I've never met him. I've never talked to him.
[00:11:07] But he's claimed for decades to be a Christian, and I believe he is. I believe he's a brother who got caught in addiction and he was leading a double life, and it was dark, and he had gotten to the point where he was hurting other people.
[00:11:20] That stuff affects all of us because we all bear Christ's name together.
[00:11:26] It's not just him. It's not just the newsboys. It's all of us. That affects us all.
[00:11:33] But it's not just the bad news. The opposite is true.
[00:11:37] When we're pursuing the Lord, when we're on fire for the Lord, we are blessing our body. We're preaching to each other, and we're encouraging each other to pursue the Lord, too, to really go after him.
[00:11:52] I like to cook charcoal. I like to cook charcoal. I like to use charcoal grills to cook. There we go.
[00:12:00] And when you're putting charcoal together. When you first heat it up, you have to do this thing where you take all the charcoal out of the bag, you dump it out, but then you kind of build this mound of charcoal. You bring them all together and then you pour your lighter fluid on it and you light it. And the reason why you do that is because the individual coals, they heat each other up, they work to heat each other up and they all get white hot together.
[00:12:26] But if you were to take them separately and try and do it, they would never all get hot at the same time and it would never work.
[00:12:34] And it's the same if you've got a bunch of white hot coals in a fire and you take one of them and you just put it off to the side, before long, that individual coal is going to get cold.
[00:12:46] It's the same principle with us in the church.
[00:12:49] We're designed to be together, to have this fellowship with each other, and we're one body.
[00:12:57] And Satan wants us to be isolated. He wants us to be by ourselves because we're not going to have an impact on other people that we should be having.
[00:13:06] And we're also going to grow cold.
[00:13:09] Like other people aren't going to be able to warm us up and encourage us the way that we're meant to be.
[00:13:17] So it's one body.
[00:13:20] Why should we make this habit of prayer and reading our Bible and fasting?
[00:13:26] I like this idea of setting your sails, you know, like a sailboat.
[00:13:31] You can't control the wind. None of us can control the wind. But what we can do is get ready for the wind, you know, and as Christians, that's why we read the Bible and that's why we pray, and that's why we should practice fasting. I. I need to practice fasting a little more, actually.
[00:13:47] But it's why we do all those things, because we're getting ourselves in position and ready for God's wind to sweep through.
[00:13:59] So one body.
[00:14:02] This body is not denominational.
[00:14:06] This body is not just the members of East Rock. It's not just the Baptist churches in our congregation, in our association. Sure. In our city.
[00:14:19] This body is every blessed saint who's accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior, past, present, future, in any location of the world.
[00:14:28] So it's not denominational, it's not racial, it's not financial, it's not political or geographical.
[00:14:37] And I often wonder for those who have passed, like, it's not just for us who are alive, like the dead in Christ are part of that body too.
[00:14:47] And I wonder if it's sort of like this marathon, you know, where it's like, you know how someone's running a marathon and there's crowds of people that are cheering them on and trying to give them Gatorade and stuff as they're running. I sort of wonder if it's like that in heaven. Like people that have passed, they're cheering us on and they're praying for us. These intercessory prayers.
[00:15:08] I don't know that.
[00:15:10] I don't know that that's biblical, but it's a nice thought if nothing else.
[00:15:16] So Paul continues one Spirit, how much good it would do the church today if we realized that the Holy Spirit we were given as a down payment is the same Holy Spirit that other churches have, that our brothers and sisters in other denominations have.
[00:15:35] I think sometimes we have this arrogance. It can be like a us versus them mentality. And nobody wants to cross the fence and shake hands and build bridges kind of thing, you know?
[00:15:49] But we forget that the only reason we know anything about God is because the Holy Spirit has shown us, like, we don't inherently know anything about God.
[00:15:59] But the Holy Spirit teaches us.
[00:16:03] And other believers and other denominations have that same spirit. They have the exact same spirit. And that Holy Spirit, his job is to do the same thing in them and in us, to sanctify us, to renew our minds, to help us think like God thinks so and see things like God sees them so we can. And then empower us to act like Jesus would act.
[00:16:34] In other words, what we have, they have.
[00:16:37] And I know it's a temptation to be arrogant because the Bible says so. In Corinthians, it says a little knowledge puffs up, but love builds people up.
[00:16:50] So it's almost like we have this choice. We can either puff ourselves up and talk about how smart we are and great we are, or we can love each other and try and build each other up.
[00:17:02] I think that's. That's what we're called to do as Christians, is build up his church, which is made up of people.
[00:17:09] And I'm convinced that's why Steve, Paul says with.
[00:17:17] With humility, with gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.
[00:17:22] It's like Paul is saying, this is. These are the things that you need in order to cultivate unity.
[00:17:30] Don't be cocky, be gentle, respond graciously. And when people act stupid because they will bear with them and cut them some slack anyway, isn't that what we want them to do to us? Isn't that what God does To us all the time.
[00:17:48] It's what he does to me.
[00:17:52] So you might be asking. You mean even when people are completely ridiculous, I have to respond in humility, gentleness, patience, and bear with them.
[00:18:03] Is he worth it?
[00:18:06] Is he worth it?
[00:18:09] Paul continues, just as you were called to one hope, that belongs to your call.
[00:18:16] Can you go to the next slide? Yeah. I could not wait to see Casey.
[00:18:22] Casey Adams face for that Cooper Flag reference.
[00:18:27] I didn't put it in for you, but I'm glad I get to see your face.
[00:18:33] No, but here's the point about that.
[00:18:37] So my wife and I are huge basketball fans, college basketball. We look forward to it every year. When it gets that time, the leafs start changing, we can't wait. We're big Duke fans and last year we had one of the best basketball players I've ever seen. College basketball players, and Cooper Flag was his name.
[00:18:59] And time and time again, our team would get in trouble. They would get in a critical situation and the coach would draw up a play to just get coop the ball.
[00:19:09] And over and over and over again, he would deliver.
[00:19:14] And it was. He didn't deliver. Every time we lost, we didn't win at all. I'll be sour forever for that.
[00:19:22] But the point is, it was so much fun last year or this last season, just watching to put your hope in a player and have them come through over and over and over again, that was so much fun and it's so rare.
[00:19:37] And that is what we have in Jesus as Christians. That. That's what we have.
[00:19:44] We have this.
[00:19:46] But of course, he's way better than Cooper Flag. I know it's a silly illustration.
[00:19:51] I probably divided like the room into all kinds of slices when I even mentioned his name. So.
[00:19:58] But the point is we, we can confidently put our faith in Jesus.
[00:20:04] And he is a sure thing. He is going to deliver every single time.
[00:20:09] And it's funny, this the, the Greek word used for hope in this passage.
[00:20:14] It's sort of akin to wishful thinking. It's like, I sure hope this happens or I sure hope things go turn out this way.
[00:20:24] But when Christians talk about hope, it's. It's not, it's not that flippant.
[00:20:32] I hope this works out. It's a sure thing. It's a guarantee. It's a certainty.
[00:20:39] And Jesus is the one that we can safely and confidently put our hope in.
[00:20:44] He's never going to blow it. And as a matter of fact, he's already won.
[00:20:48] And every day we get a little bit closer to seeing that Victory. We just can't see it yet. But he's already won.
[00:20:55] It's like if you had a DeLorean.
[00:20:57] If anybody even knows what Back to the Future is.
[00:21:02] I'm getting old, so I never know.
[00:21:05] But it's like if you could go back and invest in Nvidia stock. I saw that they're like Trill 4. $4 trillion worth now, which is insane for a company.
[00:21:17] But if you could go back in time and invest in that stock like you would, because, hey, you want those dividends.
[00:21:26] It's sort of like that the end is already set and we're just inching closer to it each and every day.
[00:21:32] Jesus has already won.
[00:21:35] So th. It isn't just this hope, but it's also. It talks about, this is your call, this is your call.
[00:21:46] It's like saying you were created for the purpose of being in God's family.
[00:21:52] There's. There's this cool moment at the end of Top Gun, Maverick. I know all these movie references, but there's this cool. This cool movement. There's cool moment when. When Maverick is getting ready to go into war. It's like the whole movie, they've been training and building for this moment. He's on the platform and he's about to go lifted up to his jet, and one of his commanding officers stops him and says, maverick. And he turns and he says, you're where you belong.
[00:22:25] And what his commanding officer meant was he was meant to be a fighter pilot. His whole life had kind of culminated and led to this moment. His personality, everything.
[00:22:36] And the church, the family of God, that is our calling.
[00:22:46] The church is where you and I belong.
[00:22:50] Paul continues. One Lord, one faith, one baptism.
[00:22:56] I just wanted to pause and say that as Christians, we can't separate Savior and Lord.
[00:23:04] I think, you know, there's this.
[00:23:07] This movement. There's probably always been this movement where people want the salvation of Jesus, but they don't want the lordship of Jesus.
[00:23:18] And it's a package deal.
[00:23:20] James would describe that as dead faith. You know, faith without works.
[00:23:25] And God isn't offering us a salvation apart from his lordship, where we get to do whatever we want all the time, and then we go sailing off into the sunset with Jesus.
[00:23:36] He gives us a lot of freedom. He gives us a lot of space, but he is both our Lord and our Savior. Like it's a package deal.
[00:23:46] If you think of Romans 10, 9, it says, if you believe in your heart and you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, so. So it's not just faith.
[00:23:54] But it's action.
[00:23:57] So he gives us a lot of freedom and space. But He's Lord and Savior.
[00:24:04] And the thing is, he's got good works for us to do.
[00:24:08] He's got good works created for us. And we need to be trying to figure out what those good works are so we can be doing them. That's part of our calling.
[00:24:18] And when we do what peace and joy fills our heart because we're doing what we're made to do, what we're meant to do. We're responding to God.
[00:24:32] And it's hard to submit to the Lord sometimes.
[00:24:38] I know that it is. I feel it all the time.
[00:24:41] There are things that God prompts us to do that we don't want to do.
[00:24:45] And then there are things that we want to do and God tells us we can't do because they're not good for us or they're not good for other people.
[00:24:55] So it's not easy setting our wills aside and trying to continually respond to the Lord.
[00:25:01] But is he worth it?
[00:25:07] One faith, one baptism.
[00:25:10] I, I love the picture of baptism.
[00:25:12] The, the Greek word here is baptisma and it means immersion or dipping.
[00:25:19] So I, I fully believe it's meant to be a symbol of being united in Christ's death. You know, you go down in burial and you're united with his resurrection as well. When you come out, like I fully believe that's the picture, that, that's the intention.
[00:25:36] You could look at John the, the John the Baptist or John the Baptizer, who was just dunking people in, in a river, you know, like, it's very biblical, but I think Paul, just like Paul would mention a circumcision of the heart, or David would say, if you wanted sacrifices, I would give them.
[00:26:02] But you, the sacrifice that you want is a broken and contrite spirit. I think at the end of the day, God wants our heart.
[00:26:12] If someone is sprinkled with holy water and believes in their heart that they're united with Christ in death and will be raised up with Him, I honestly think that's what matters.
[00:26:26] Now, if you want to talk about precedent, if you want to talk about a, a full picture of the gospel, if you want to talk about the imagery that it preaches to the church, then I think going underwater and coming back up is, is much, is more biblical, but it's not a faith breaking issue.
[00:26:46] And the reason why I think that is the thief on the cross.
[00:26:50] So anytime I'm thinking about a salvific or an issue dealing with salvation, I keep Going back to the thief on the cross in Luke 23.
[00:27:00] So you may remember, if you're not familiar with the story, there are two thieves on the cross with Jesus. Which is why if you drive in the mountain sometimes you'll see three crosses.
[00:27:12] It's to represent the two thieves on his side and Jesus in the middle.
[00:27:16] And picking up Luke 23, verse 39, you don't have to go there, but I'm going to read it out loud. One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, are you not the Christ?
[00:27:30] Save yourself and us.
[00:27:33] So that's one criminal or one thief. But the other rebuked him, saying, do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?
[00:27:44] And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds.
[00:27:50] But this man has done nothing wrong.
[00:27:53] And he said, that's the thief Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
[00:27:59] And he said to him, truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.
[00:28:05] Now, why do I bring this up? Because the thief didn't have perfect theology.
[00:28:10] He had no time to be baptized.
[00:28:13] He probably had no concept of what the Trinity was, or the Holy Spirit or the sacraments.
[00:28:19] He didn't know. He probably didn't know about the resurrection of the body.
[00:28:23] He probably didn't know about spiritual gifts or all these issues that we argue about like women pastors or tulip Calvinism.
[00:28:36] But if, if any of you were with me when I was doing the Holy Spirit teaching, I believe the Holy Spirit showed him himself and then showed him Jesus.
[00:28:49] And I believe the thief earnestly asked for mercy and Jesus granted it.
[00:28:56] So we don't have to. We have to get rid of this idea that we have to have perfect theology to be saved.
[00:29:05] You know, there's.
[00:29:07] Theology is super important.
[00:29:09] I'm not saying it's not. It's very important. Doctrine is very important. How we think about God is very important.
[00:29:16] I'm just saying we should also care about unity. And we.
[00:29:20] I feel like sometimes we get so hung up on the disagreements that we lose sight of, like, all this good stuff that unites us.
[00:29:37] So Paul continues, One God, verse six. One God, one Father of all, who is overall and through all and in all.
[00:29:46] A couple things about this verses, about this verse. So firstly, it's written.
[00:29:52] I think it's written kind of strange, kind of confusing if you, you know, you're thinking about, like, God is through all and in all. And, you know, like, what is that? What is. Does that even mean?
[00:30:03] I think A more.
[00:30:05] A better contextual paraphrase of this verse would be like, what you see on the screen, one God and Father of the church, who was overall the church, who was working through all the church and indwelling all the church.
[00:30:21] When you break it down contextually like that, I think it makes a little bit more sense, and I think it just kind of works better with the English. But. So that's the first. The first thing I want to say about that. And the other thing is this verse might seem a little strange, but in Ephesus there was this emphasis. Ephesus emphasis on polytheism, which is like, there are gods all over the place.
[00:30:49] Polytheism was rampant. People believe there were gods for everything, all kinds of stuff.
[00:30:55] Whatever your problem was, hey, there was a God for that, and you needed to go make sacrifices to that God, and then that God was in charge of fixing that specific problem. And then you would mosey on down the road to the next God and you would just kind of go through your laundry list of things that you needed fixed.
[00:31:17] Paul says, remember, there's just one God. There's just one God.
[00:31:22] But he doesn't just say God.
[00:31:25] He says God and Father of all.
[00:31:30] So it's this idea that because of Jesus Christ, we are sons and daughters.
[00:31:38] We've been adopted into God's family forever.
[00:31:43] So I was thinking about this picture as Steve. Actually, as you were preaching last week, I probably should have been listening more, but I started thinking about this idea and it's. It's almost like we're living in the gutter, sort of as orphans, and we're eating trash. You know, we're eating whatever we can find. We're never. We don't have access to baths or showers. We're not brushing our teeth. We're stealing. We're doing just whatever we want, right? We're living in the gutter, doing whatever we want, Oliver Twist style.
[00:32:17] And then we get adopted into this wonderful, beautiful family.
[00:32:22] But the master of the house has set rules.
[00:32:26] We don't get to move into his house and keep eating out of the trash. And we don't get to just never take baths and showers and, you know, have bad hygiene and steal and all that other stuff.
[00:32:36] Because the master of the house, our adoptive father, has higher standards for us. He's got a higher calling, a higher purpose for our lives.
[00:32:47] And what's more, we're his children now, and we represent him when we go out. Like, we would bear his last name.
[00:32:56] So we can no longer live like we used to. Like the Gentiles.
[00:33:02] So we collectively are in God's house now.
[00:33:07] God's house. His house, his rules.
[00:33:10] Is he worth it?
[00:33:15] Verse 7. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.
[00:33:21] I think this is a fancy way of saying Jesus has given each of us gifts to share with the church.
[00:33:30] I would refer everyone to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. We don't have time to cover it tonight, but I immediately. I felt like God immediately brought that to mind.
[00:33:43] But the point is that God's given each of us something, and we all have something to give. And I, I just think that is so cool. Like, sometimes that can really get lost. But do you ever stop and think about that? Like, you have something that Jesus has specifically given you to share with the church, and it's something good. And it might be lots of things, it might be multiple things. And your job is to respond to Jesus and to share that with the body.
[00:34:15] And the Bible says when you do that, it builds the church up. It helps us all, it helps us see God.
[00:34:23] You might be saying, what is it? You know, like, I don't, I don't have any gifts. You know, I don't know what gifts I have that I could. That would fit in, in the context of a church.
[00:34:34] Well, let me just say firstly, that I promise you do have gifts.
[00:34:40] The reason I can promise that is because God says it in Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 7. Like, Jesus has given us all gifts to share.
[00:34:50] So just some of the gifts that I have seen, just witnessed here in our church, just to name a few. Maybe it's prayer. Maybe you're a prayer warrior.
[00:34:59] Maybe it's faith. Maybe it's wisdom.
[00:35:04] Maybe it's patience. Maybe it's mercy. Maybe it's mentorship. Maybe you're a good listener, man. People need people to just listen to them sometimes.
[00:35:14] Like, not speak, not try and fix their problems, just listen.
[00:35:19] Maybe you're humble, maybe you're courageous. Maybe you're a good encourager, or maybe it's a skill like electrical work, or you're really tech savvy, or maybe you're an artist or a writer.
[00:35:32] Maybe it's carpentry or cooking or baking or music or teaching or preaching or acts of service or child care. As Daniel runs off.
[00:35:46] The point is, God's given each of us gifts to share with each other.
[00:35:51] And if.
[00:35:52] If you're at the spot where you don't see, like, how your gifts could fit in here, like, you've tried and tried, and there's just no opportunity.
[00:36:02] Think about my life matters, you know, think about parachurch ministries, where you could try and plug in there, if nothing else. You have time, right? Maybe you have time. You can. You can give.
[00:36:16] But I. I just don't want us to make the mistake of thinking that you're not needed or that you don't have anything to give, because the Bible says you do. You have something to give, and it's going to be a blessing.
[00:36:29] And sometimes I think we can think if it's a small thing or it feels like a small thing, maybe it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't matter.
[00:36:38] So I'm not even going to do it because it's so trivial. It won't even matter. It won't make a difference.
[00:36:46] God is worth it.
[00:36:48] If no one else responds to you about what you give, if no one says thank you your entire life, it's worth it, because he is worth it.
[00:37:00] But the thing is, I don't think we really realize the impact we have on each other.
[00:37:06] And God can do amazing things with just faithfulness.
[00:37:10] Just a. Just a quick story.
[00:37:12] I play basketball with Ben Durand.
[00:37:15] He's just a dear friend, brother, pastor.
[00:37:19] And we were shooting the breeze one day just before games or after games, I don't even remember, but we were talking about, you know, how's life going? How's your week been? Kind of thing.
[00:37:30] And I asked, you know, I just said, you know, how's your week been? And he was like, you know, I just.
[00:37:37] I really feel like God has convicted me of toiling for the gospel.
[00:37:43] And, you know, just asking that question, ben, are you toiling for the gospel? And he said it in passing. Like, he said, it wasn't like this come to Jesus moment where he was, like, speaking directly into my life.
[00:37:57] But I was like, okay, you know, yeah, that makes sense. And then I kind of went about my life and forgot about it for a couple months.
[00:38:04] And then one day, randomly, God just brought it back in my mind.
[00:38:09] And then he started asking me that question, John, are you toiling for the gospel? Are you working? Are you working for the kingdom?
[00:38:18] And that spurred me on and made me, you know, as a kick in the pants, like, man, I need to be doing more. I need to be toiling. I need to be working for the gospel.
[00:38:29] But it was such a trivial conversation.
[00:38:32] Ben had forgotten about it. I brought it up to him, like, a month ago. He just totally forgot we even had that conversation. Or he said that, but God used it and that's my point. We don't know the impact that we. That we have if we would just be faithful.
[00:38:47] So we have all these things that unite us. I see the time worry I'm coming. Coming close to an end.
[00:38:53] We have all these things that unite us.
[00:38:56] What does practical unity look like among other churches, among other denominations?
[00:39:02] Well, CS Lewis described the church as a big house.
[00:39:08] A big house, lots of different rooms. The rooms could look completely different if you were to come to my house today and walk into Addie's room.
[00:39:17] My youngest daughter, if you don't know her room, is bright pink.
[00:39:21] She has a picture of a multicolored lizard with glasses on as one picture. And then she's got a cat in a cup, also with glasses on. And then she's got another picture of a porcupine balancing, like, five donuts on its back, and then just, like, a million stuffed animals.
[00:39:45] And Peyton, on the other hand, has all these photographs and movie posters of, you know, men that she thinks are handsome.
[00:39:57] And, you know, her room is bright purple or dark purple. It's purplish.
[00:40:05] And then.
[00:40:07] And then our room is totally different. You know, Blair in my room is totally different. Our living room is different. Our upstairs, whatever.
[00:40:14] So the point is, like, we're all. These rooms can look different. These. These rooms of different denominations. They can have different flavors. They can be different.
[00:40:23] It's okay for them to be different, but we're all living in the same house at the end of the day, and we just need to remember that.
[00:40:32] So, you know, what are some practical ways that we can reach out?
[00:40:37] I think more events like we had at the men's breakfast at Westwood, that really blessed me. I don't know who organized that, but basically it was, like, just a bunch of guys from different churches all around Roxboro and Person county just coming together and praying. Like, having lunch together, having breakfast together, and getting to know each other, and then just praying about the stuff that we do agree on.
[00:41:00] It doesn't always have to be adversarial, where we're, like, just, you know, combative and saying, I disagree on this verse with you and that verse and this verse, like, there's so much that we do agree on that we can pray together with.
[00:41:17] I hope that we grow to see that more.
[00:41:26] Instead of seeing people as a certain denomination, it would do us good to firstly see them as our brothers and sisters in Christ.
[00:41:35] Like, preeminently before we say, oh, you go to this church? Or, oh, you go to that church, man, are you my Brother or my sister in Christ.
[00:41:45] Like that should be that driving force of that relationship.
[00:41:49] Like, is God your heavenly father? Well, guess what? He's mine too. I guess that makes us brothers and sisters, you know, man, let that drive us.
[00:41:59] We don't have to, we don't have to agree on all theology.
[00:42:03] Again, theology is super important.
[00:42:05] I, I cannot underscore that enough. What we think about God really matters because that's how we respond to God.
[00:42:14] So, yes, theology, doctrine, it all matters.
[00:42:17] But I'm just saying we also need to, we need to cherish unity. We need to care about unity and try and preserve it.
[00:42:29] You know, we.
[00:42:31] Okay, coming to a close, I'll just say we can't sacrifice the truth, we can't sacrifice the gospel, and we can't sacrifice our conscience. If your conscience is telling you no, that's the Holy Spirit, you know, like, you should listen.
[00:42:54] So if, if we're trying to partner with other churches to do things and those three things are being sacrificed, that's a good indication that we should hit the brakes.
[00:43:04] There's this, this popular movement going around about getting new revelations from God, and I think that's really dangerous.
[00:43:14] And I'll just say I don't think we need more revelations. I don't think we need infinite revelations. I just think we need obedience to the ones that we've already been given.
[00:43:27] All right, very last thing. I just want to read the message paraphrase of these verses tonight because it blessed me.
[00:43:37] Verses 4 through 6. You were called to travel on the same road and in the same direction.
[00:43:44] So stay together, both outwardly and inwardly.
[00:43:47] You have one master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all.
[00:43:58] Everything you are and think and do is permeated with oneness.
[00:44:04] But verse seven, that doesn't mean you should all look and speak and act the same.
[00:44:10] Out of the generosity of Christ, each of us is given his own gift.
[00:44:17] Unity is messy, comes at the cost of self sacrifice.
[00:44:23] Like any good relationship, it takes humility, patience, gentleness, grace, mercy.
[00:44:31] Is he worth it?
[00:44:35] Is he worth it? Let's pray.
[00:44:42] Lord, we just ask that you would help unite your church.
[00:44:50] Not for the sake of just pleasantries, but God. You, Genu Gen, genuinely want us to be together.
[00:45:01] You've adopted us all into your family. We just ask that you would help us to see things like you see them. Help us to cherish unity and God. If we, we don't think that you're worth it. If we haven't been convinced of that. I just ask that your spirit would guide and direct us and convince us.
[00:45:21] God, you are worth it. You're worth everything we could ever give you.
[00:45:25] Amen.
