1 Corinthians 1:10-17
Amen. Please take out your copy
of the scriptures and turn to 1 Corinthians 1 verses 10 through
17. Remember the apostle Paul wrote
four letters to the Corinthian church. He wrote one that we
don’t have, but he refers to it in this letter. It’s generally
called Corinthians A, something like that. And then in our Bibles,
we have 1 Corinthians and he wrote another letter often referred
to as Corinthian B. don’t have that one. And then
we have second Corinthians. Uh, these are long letters along
with Paul’s letter to the Rome, uh, Romans. And these give us
all kinds of insight, not only into the early church, but gives
us our doctrine, what we believe and our practice, what we, what
we do. And so today we get a theology
of the Lordship of Jesus Christ into the unity of the church.
So let’s hear God’s word together. This is 1 Corinthians 1, 10 through
17. And let’s do pray together before
we read. Lord, we ask that your word would
speak clearly into our minds, our hearts, and our lives so
that we can live for you and not for ourselves. With this,
we pray in Christ’s name. Amen. So the apostle Paul says
to the Corinthians, I appeal by the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ to you, brethren, that all of you agree and that there
be no dissensions among you, but that you be united in the
same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been reported to me
by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brethren. What I mean is that each one
of you says, I belong to Paul. I belong to Apollos. I belong
to Cephas or Peter. I belong to Christ. Is Christ
divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or
were you baptized in the name of Paul? I am thankful that I
baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, lest anyone should
say that you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the
house of Stephanos. 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 eloquent wisdom,
lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. Amen. God’s word. Probably back 20, 25 years or
so ago, there was a little church outside the town where we lived,
where We lived during seminary and it was a little church, I
believe called Faith, and used to go preach there on Sunday
nights, little bunch of folks, a quiet little service. And over
a couple of visits and hearing the scuttlebutt in the community,
I began to realize this church had broken off from another church
just two miles up the road. It was an old Presbyterian congregation
from the 1700s, maybe early 1800s. And the reason for the split,
believe it or not, was not over the doctrine of the Trinity.
The split was not over should they sing psalms or hymns or,
you know, over something biblical. The split was not over, you know,
real wine or Welch’s grape juice. No, the split was over who they
should have hired to tend to the air conditioning units. That
is not a joke. They split over the HVAC vendor.
Can you imagine it? Y’all laugh, but too often this
is the case. Churches get disunified over
the wisdom issues, the color of the carpet, who’s going to
tune up the air conditioner. Sat through all kinds of meetings.
We need to get the air conditioning fixed. Well, I know a boy who
can do it. Well, I know a boy who can do it. Well, we’re going
to use my guy. We’re going to use my guy. And before you know it,
there’s factions. And we sort of chuckle. We sort of laugh. Many of you
have probably experienced it. Now, in the life of the church
at Corinth, the situation was far worse. Thank the Lord they
didn’t have a building they met in someone’s home. Thank the
Lord there was no air conditioning in those days so they couldn’t
fight over whether to call Morris Jenkins or you know dad or whoever
you hear on the radio. Their situation was their divisions
in the church were over theological issues, but also social issues. And these social issues divided
the people of God. These social issues divided them
into rich and poor and into Jew and Greek and slave and free.
And these divisions brought schisms in the church. Maybe you learned
some important dates over the years from church history. Maybe you’ve been thinking about
the Catholic church lately because of you know, one Pope dying,
one Pope getting selected. Then we find out he’s a Chicago
White Sox fan and all the rest, all these interesting tidbits.
But some of you will know the year 1092. I believe I’ve got
that date right. That’s the year that sticks out
in my mind is the great schism, right? Between the Roman church
and the Orthodox church. And so you had the split into
the Roman Catholics carried on and then the Eastern Orthodox
church carried on. And then of course, Comes a few
hundred years later, Martin Luther to nail something on a door.
And we now have the Protestant church. Well, these divisions,
these schisms are tearing the Corinthian church apart. They
have a different mind about things. They have differing judgments
about things. Some follow Paul, some like Apollos,
some follow Peter, and some say no creed but Jesus. And so the
body of Christ at Corinth is divided, just as that can happen
to us. Now, a good fuss over air conditioning
units can certainly divide a church, but fusses over theology and
doctrine and Christ can also divide the church. Now I mentioned
there’s been all these Letters exchanged, Paul sent four by
the end to the Corinthians. They sent him a few. But in this
case, he has a firsthand report from Chloe’s people. Now, we
don’t know if Chloe is a guy or a girl. I know all of y’all
been to the soccer field and watched a bunch of three-year-olds,
and there’s about 9,000 parents hollering out Chloe, right? That’s
a typical girl name, Chloe and Zoe. Now, in this case, we don’t
know. Could be a guy, could be a girl,
but it’s Chloe’s people. Some from Chloe’s household have
been sent across the ocean or across the Little Sea to Ephesus,
where Paul is ministering and said, please, please, please
help. The church is flying apart. And so the people of God are
divided. So the question comes, how do
you mend a congregation? How do you mend or patch or repair
a fractured congregation, one that is tearing apart? Well,
Paul gives us a great example here. You appeal to them by the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ. You appeal to them as an apostle,
as a sent one, as an emissary. You appeal to them as a minister,
that they agree. You appeal to them that they
mend their differences and they come to a same mind and a same
judgment. I want to think about this passage
from a handful of perspectives. The first, is that a church ought
to sing off the same song sheet. Can you imagine a choir getting
up to sing five different songs? Wouldn’t make a lick of sense.
But very often in a church, you will find factions. And one group
will tell you the church is about this. Another group will tell
you the church is about that. And this group’s wrong. A church
will have this group that does this and that. But could you
imagine a choir singing five different songs? Trying to sing
is one. Sounds like an Andy Griffith
episode or something of the sort. Well, verse 10 tells us what
Paul says to this congregation. He says, I appeal to you by the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to you brethren, that all of
you agree. Now this is not a get along and
go along. This is not just, you know, everybody
be nice today and we’ll get ice cream. Right? That’s, that’s
how we like to do it. All of you, everybody get along,
you know, let’s just have some peace and we’ll get ice cream.
Well, that, that doesn’t work. Verse 10, when he says, all of
you agree, he gives a speaking word. It’s, it’s a word that
says we all ought to say the same thing. Now as Christians,
We got one thing to say, and that’s what the scripture teaches.
As Christians, we have something important to say, and it is the
gospel. As Christians, we can speak the
same thing because the same thing has been revealed to us all. Now, what are they saying? Well,
one is saying, I’m a Paul man. The other saying, I’d rather
be an Apollos follower, or I’d rather be a Peter person or no
creed, but Jesus. And we hear that kind of stuff
all the time in the church of Jesus. One of the blessings that
we have is that we are what we call our term, a confessional
church. You look at a lot of church websites,
you look at a lot of churches doctrines, and it’s very thin.
It’s very shallow. And maybe they say we follow
the apostle’s creed. That’s great. But the apostle’s
creed really touches just on the basics. There is a God, there
is sin, there is Jesus, there’s the spirit and there’s church
and there’s everlasting life. Those are all wonderful things.
And I’m not saying those are a mile wide and an inch deep.
I’m just saying that’s a great creed, but it is not a full on
confession. And our congregation subscribes. We happen to subscribe to the
Westminster Confession of Faith in the 1600s. Parliament trying
to bring uniformity to The post-Reformation churches on the British Isles,
Parliament said, let’s get a bunch of preachers in the room, Westminster
divines. And in God’s providence, they
were really bright men and they met for about 10 years and they
produced the confession and the larger and shorter catechisms.
Now, Parliament never adopted it. The Episcopal Church, maybe,
you know, in history adopted the 39 articles. Not terrible,
kind of Arminian, but much more brief. But we as Presbyterians
on the island of Scotland and carried on into America, we’ve
adopted the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. ordained
ministers and elders, we ask, do you subscribe to these articles,
these your own confession? And it spells out in 30 some
chapters what we believe about scripture, what we believe about
God, what we believe about man and sin and free will. what we
believe about Jesus, his person and his work. It spells out what
we believe about the spirit, what we believe about the church,
the government, all kinds of topics. Some of you have been
over the years in our confession of faith studies and found it
to be very helpful. In fact, this past week, In our
confession of faith study on Wednesday, one person said, it
is so nice to be in a church. This was after being in a just
kind of a broad evangelical church. It’s nice to be in a church that
has a confession. We know what we believe. You go to some broader
churches and some groups believe this, some groups believe that,
and it can be messy. And some will say, well, we need
lowest common denominator so we can get more people in the
door. Well, you go lowest common denominator and get a bunch of
people in the door. You get a Corinthian church if you’re not careful.
Because you’re going to have the people, oh, I’m listening
to John MacArthur. You’re not listening to John MacArthur,
but we are. You’re going to have some people say, oh, I’m listening
to R.C. Sproul, but you people aren’t. I am. So we’re the better
ones. And then it’s, you know, just name your public theologian.
And back in the day when they were the cassette tapes, you
know, I brought you a cassette because I really think this would
do you some good. And it’s basically, you know, so you’ll agree with
me because you’ve been listening to Sproul and not McCartney,
you know, and it gets that way in a church. And so when you
join a church that has a confession of faith, it’s really highest
common denominator. We stand on the shoulders of
giants who have studied the scriptures and pulled out the doctrines.
And so far as we believe they’re from the Bible, we hold them
dear. People will say, well, doctrine
divides. I actually think no doctrine
divides. Doctrine unites. We are one in
Christ and we speak with one voice. And so as Christian believers,
as the Corinthian believers needed, we should sing off the same song
sheet. We should be singing the Bible. We should be singing our
doctrine. We should speak with one voice.
Paul is writing from Ephesus and they’ve got their own problems.
So later when Paul is in prison, He’s going to write Ephesians,
Philippians, Colossians and Philemon. Those are his prison epistles.
And he’s going to write from jail to the Ephesian church. And he’s going to remind them
that they are one body in Christ Jesus. And he’s going to say
that famous phrase, one body, one spirit, one hope, one future,
one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God and father. And if
you listen to the church, whether it’s in the Corinthian day or
even in today, we seem to have not one, but many. And maybe
over coffee or at the water cooler, you get into a discussion with
somebody and it unravels rather quickly. So we should sing off
the same song sheet in our local congregations. The second thing
that comes up in this passage also in verse 10 is that we should
be united. So in addition to singing off
the same song sheet, We have in verse 10 an appeal, no dissensions,
be united, be perfectly joined together is the idea behind united,
perfectly joined together. This is a word that has to do
with mending fishing nets in the old Greek and Roman world.
It’s a word that has to do with mending broken bones. It’s a
word that has to do with fixing what is torn apart. And the church
can get torn apart. The church does get torn apart.
That’s why it’s helpful to know 2 Timothy chapter 3, 16 and 17,
where Paul says to Timothy in your ministry, which incidentally
is at Ephesus, where they needed to know about unity, one Lord,
one faith, one hope, one baptism, all the rest. He says, all scripture
is breathed out by God and is useful for teaching or for doctrine. It’s useful for correcting. It’s
useful for putting up what has been knocked over. And it’s useful
for equipping their furnishing the man of God so that they can
do every good work. And so scripture is what will
mend a church. You can imagine fishermen mending
nets. You can imagine masons repairing a broken wall. You
can imagine ancient doctoring fixing a broken bone. And now
you have the apostle fixing or attempting to fix a broken church. No quarreling, no dissensions,
but be united, be perfectly joined together. And he gives two sort
of subsets of their being perfectly joined together. Same mind and
same judgment, same thoughts, same actions. And you might be
saying, how can a church be so cookie cutter? Well, we have
different churches, different denominations. We have different
iterations of the faith. We talk about first order issues,
like a church that doesn’t believe in the doctrine of the Trinity
is no church at all. You can’t believe in the Trinity
and say you’re still a church. But that would be a first order
thing. That’s something that you’d fight about. You know,
that’s why St. Nicholas punched Darius, right?
Back at the Council of Nicaea. That was a worthy punch, right? Secondary issues. Who should
get baptized? Now we got that one all worked
out and everybody else is wrong, but it’s still a secondary issue.
Maybe third level issues. What do we do in this situation
or that? And then you got wisdom issues.
What time do you have church? What color carpet do you get? Who
do you pick to fix the heating and air? Those are just wisdom
issues. Figure it out. You live in the
world, you pay money, somebody fixes stuff. Those really aren’t
that big a deal. But our principles and our actions,
our minds and our judgments, or we like to say our faith,
what we believe, and our practice, what we do, ought to be in a
local congregation, They ought to be one. You know, from time
to time it’ll come up, you know, we need to put some booze in
the offering plate. I mean, not the offering plate. These things. And, you know, we just do the
Welch’s thing. You know, we’re in the South
and, you know, teetotaler world. We’re just not going to fuss
with it. We’ll get people come in and say, well, you know, the
Bible says wine and, you know, we’re just not going to argue
there. You know, you could, you could get into it, all the rest.
But, but just to have a separate circle, what does that say? As you pass the tray of unity
through the room? Ever thought about that? Well, we’re the wine
drinkers. You know, well, you’re the Welch’s
people and all of a sudden you’ve created division. And so we want
to do everything as far as possible to be united in mind and united
in judgment. Now, you can’t get down to every
minute degree. Some of you have come in today
with an English Standard Version of the Bible. Good for you. I
know we got a few King James folks. Yay. You can read better
than the rest of us, right? Some of you have the not inspired
version, right? The NIV. Others, maybe have a
living Bible. And if you have a message, don’t
tell anybody, right? But we can split off really quick. And we can, you know, look down
noses. Oh, I see you read our daily bread. I read table talk,
right? You know, it can get that very
quickly. But we want to be people with
a common faith. and a common practice. And so
that boils down to discipleship. It boils down to teaching. It
boils down to being servants of Jesus Christ. And it boils
down to desiring very hard, very strongly to say we are one body
with one set of beliefs and we want our practice to be as common
as possible. Yes, there’ll be some tweaks.
and some differences, but as far as possible, we want the
same faith and we want the same practice. So we ought to sing
off the same song sheet, yes. But we also ought to be united
or mended. Where there are divisions, we
ought to work at mending those. Now it is perfectly right, it
is perfectly appropriate for there to be denominations, for
there to be different groups who maybe on second and third
level issues have separated. We’re obviously not Baptist.
We put water on babies. We’re obviously not Pentecostal. You know, we keep our arms down.
We’re obviously not, I mean, you, you, you, you, you name
it. You can see the differences and
that’s great in the kingdom of God. We’ll all figure it out
in heaven. We see darkly, we see dimly now, but we’ll see
clearly, we’ll see face to face then. So sing off the same song
sheet. That’s good. Be united, mend
the fences where we can. The third thing is we should
be loyal to the Lord. Now, this ought to be obvious.
This ought to be the clearest thing. It’s one thing to sing
off the same song sheet. We’ve got the same Bible. It’s
one thing to say we’re united. We mend fences and all the rest.
But be loyal to the Lord. That’s obvious. That’s a no brainer.
That’s a duh. Oh, but I follow Apollos. I follow
Paul. I followed Peter. I’ve got no
creed but Jesus. And so the appeal Paul gives
in verse 10, it jumps out at you in verse 12. And then again,
in verse 17 is to be loyal to the Lord. He says in verse 10,
I appeal to you by the name of the Lord Jesus. That’s a pretty big appeal, isn’t
it? He’s not a, you know, swearing on his mother’s grave or triple
dog daring. It’s an appeal by the name of the Lord Jesus. Can’t
get any better. Can’t get any higher. Swearing
by name, calling attention by name is a big deal. Can’t get
better than Jesus. So there you go. And then in
verse 12, he says, you know, you say, I belong, I say, I belong. He says, we need to belong to
Jesus. Christ isn’t divided. And then
in verse 17, he speaks of Jesus who sent him. And he says, I
was sent to preach the gospel. I wasn’t sent to baptize. Well,
yes, he was, but he wasn’t sent to baptize into his name. He
was sent to preach Jesus. And we got to be careful not
to empty the cross of its power. So loyal to the Lord. You’ve
got these factions. I follow, and you got Paul, you
got Apollos, you got Cephas or Peter, and then you got, I’m
a Jesus follower. Well, Paul was the founding pastor,
and you know how that goes. You know, you walk down the hallway
at a lot of churches and they got the oil paintings of the
preachers. Oh, this is Dr. So-and-so. You
know, we remember when he came. He could do no wrong, right? Except back then, everybody had
him for lunch on Sundays, complaining about what he did. But it’s,
oh, I’m a Dr. So-and-so guy. He came and he,
boy, you know, whatever, he had a golden tongue. He could just
speak and Paul original pastor came and founded, you know, he
brought him to the Lord. You could see how that would
be something. So I follow Paul. Nope, no preacher, but Paul,
13 epistles, you know, he’s, he’s the good guy. And then there’s
Apollos. Now Apollos is an interesting guy. He was from Alexandria.
You know, a lot of folks say Christianity is a white man’s
religion. Christianity first did its thriving
on the continent of Africa. Alexandria in Egypt was a big
center. St. Augustine was nearby, a big
place where Christianity did well. And Alexander was a really
gifted guy. You read of him in the Acts.
He was at Ephesus. Priscilla and Aquila straightened
him out on a few theological points, speak the same mind,
speak the same judgment, preach the same stuff. And he shows
up at Corinth and he was really gifted, very gifted. And so some people said, I follow
Apollos. And then there’s Peter. I mean,
who wouldn’t want Peter? And we’re living in some Pope
days, aren’t we? Somebody’s telling me today, the Pope wears a ring
with Peter’s picture on it. I don’t know where they got the
picture of Peter from. Probably the same place they got a picture
of Jesus from. And maybe he’s blonde-haired and blue-eyed too.
But, you know, we’ve been hearing a lot of Pope stuff lately. He
is the direct descendant of Peter. And can’t you imagine, oh, Paul,
who is he? He came later. I mean, yeah,
Jesus met him on the road to Damascus, supposedly. But he
wasn’t one of the 12. He wasn’t mending the fishermen
nets. When Jesus said, come, I’ll teach you to be fishers
of men. So, you know, Peter, he’s the
rock, right? Matthew 16, you’re Peter Petra
on this rock. I will build my church. Pope
Peter. How did these influences come?
And then there’s the, always the good one. I got no creed,
but Jesus. You know, people sometimes will
come, you know, what do you do for a living? I’m a preacher.
Oh, what do you believe? Well, maybe the confession of faith I’ll
tell them. I got no creed but Jesus. Well, good for you. And
they act like my creed is a bad creed. No creed but Jesus. And
those are the most obnoxious people. Because what are they
saying? You filled your mind with other
stuff that’s not biblical. Well, I don’t know about that.
But they just say, I got it this simple. Well, OK, getting Jesus
figured out is pretty doggone important. But there’s a lot
of stuff in those 66 books that tell us about God and man and
sin and salvation and church. life in this world and dealing
with sin and grace and getting safely home to heaven, all that.
There’s a lot more than just Jesus, though. Jesus is everything.
And so you’ve got these people. I belong to this guy. I belong
to that guy. You belong to this. I belong to that. I’m better,
whatever. And the big underlying thing is here is it’s social
structures. It’s not necessarily about Apollos
and Peter and Cephas and Jesus. It’s about social structures
in the Roman world You’ve got this melting pot of a church
where you’ve got Corinthians you’ve got Jews and you’ve got
the Roman Empire scattering people from all over the world and They’re
coming to this one fellowship this one congregation They haven’t
divided up and you know got this and that other sect down the
road or next door, they’re all in one place. And some of them
are name droppers. Well, you know, I was converted
under Apollos and he’s a little more superior than Paul. And
so when he put the water of baptism on me, it was the best baptism
one could have gotten. And maybe they think of Psalm
133. It was like the dew of Mount Hermon coming on me or something.
It just got quarrelsome. And so they were loyal to their
favorite people. There was a set of metrics. There
was a system of measurement that was going throughout the congregation.
And instead of being one in Jesus and one in a body and mind and
spirit and doctrine and unity, they were divided. They were
quarreling over being impressed by whose stamp was on them. or
by who they know or maybe how much money they give. Or, you
know, as you get on through the Corinthians, some were eating
and drinking at the Lord’s supper because they had plenty and the
poor people were sitting there with nothing. And so there’s
all kinds of reasons there was disunity. And what does Paul
say? Christ is not divided. One thing that will fix this
is, yes, mending relationships through having the same mind,
the same judgment and speaking the same things, but they need
to be loyal to Jesus. They need to be loyal to Him
who was crucified for them. They need to be loyal to Him
whose baptism is the only one that is powerful and effective
and represents entrance into the covenant of grace. It doesn’t
matter of the preacher’s eloquence. It doesn’t matter of their theatrical
skills or abilities. It doesn’t matter about all the
ornamental trappings that get put on church. Those things aren’t
impressive, Paul says. What matters is that you’re loyal
to the one who is Jesus. And Paul says, I am loyal to
the one who sent me. That’s the apostle word, isn’t
it? Apostle is the sent one. Jesus called him to be a minister
to the Gentiles. He didn’t call him to divide,
but to unite. And so you’ve got to sing off
the same song sheet. You’ve got to be united or mended
together. You’ve got to be loyal to the
Lord. The fourth thing though, is maybe a bit of a warning.
And it comes up in verse 17, where it says, I want us to lastly
think of this word emptied. You might, in a good Southern
sense, think of the word dwindle. Something dwindles down. Something
is emptied of itself. We very often use the word of
churches. That church dwindled down to
nothing. We say that. What would make
a church dwindle down to nothing? Well, we get older and maybe
the children go off to other cities and so the generations
don’t stay. That could cause a church to
dwindle. But disunity. lack of faith, lack of doctrine,
lack of adherence to the scripture, lack of loyalty to the Lord,
not singing off the same song sheet, preaching a gospel, but
not the gospel that could cause a church to dwindle. And so one
of the things we must be careful to do, and it’s what Paul is
saying here is we do not need to let the cross of Christ be
emptied. You know, we talk about going
to empty churches, maybe not necessarily empty with people,
But it’s empty of doctrine. It’s empty of faithful practices. It’s empty of anything that God
has commanded in the scriptures. And if you want to kill a church,
just empty it of the gospel of Jesus. Empty it of the one Lord,
one faith, one hope, one baptism. Empty it of all the essentials. You know, churches are very cluttered
up these days. They’re very cluttered up with
all kinds of things and good Bible, good doctrine, good worship
is obscured. People say, stop with the word.
That’s old fashioned. Stop with the doctrine. It’s
too much. Let’s be a mile wide and an inch deep. Let’s go to
the lowest common denominator and we’ll get as many people
in the door as possible. You will dwindle. because you
empty the cross of its power. And so what do you need to be?
You need to be a church on steroids. You know, big Jesus, big God,
big Bible, big doctrine. So how do you mend a fractured
congregation? Well, you sing off the same song
sheet. You work at being united or mending fractures. You’re loyal to Jesus. And you
don’t empty the message of the gospel lest you dwindle. About 10 years ago, y’all see
the little doors here on the side? You can close this off
as a room. 10 years ago, the elders sat
in this room, probably for three months. Gonna bring up horrible
memories to a couple of y’all. But we sat in here with different
groups or factions in the church to see if we could mend things.
And I kid you not about this. I think we had three to five
factions, depending on how you looked at it. But we had one
group, they brought a list of people. Now remember this list
of people, if you’ll just get rid of these people, pastor,
we’ll have us a church. Well, the second group comes
in this room and we’re sitting down at the table. Preacher, if you get
rid of these people, another list, you’ll have us a church.
Well, it was interesting. Both groups had the opposite
on their list. It was really, really interesting.
And here’s what we did. This was the method to our madness.
We’re going to believe the Bible. We’re going to believe our Westminster
faith and catechisms. We’re going to do worship according
to our denominations worship book. We’re going to sort things
out when we get in fusses by the book of discipline, and we’re
going to follow church order. And so we’re just going to keep
doing that for a really long time. And, and eventually what
that did is it let people say, there’s a standard. This is the
one voice. This is the one thing. And you’re
welcome to stay and abide by these standards, but you’re also
welcome to choose to go elsewhere where they have no standard or
they have one that’s to your liking. But we can’t have five
song sheets, right? We can’t have a choir trying
to sing five different songs. It’s a poor witness to the watching
world, but it’s also just plain no fun. And so over time, it’s
been good to see the scriptures and doctrine and practice come
to the same mind, come to the same heart. You know, you can
fake unity. You can have it outwardly. You
can put on appearances. You know, you can fix up your
sanctuary. You can get your shrubs blooming. You can come in here
all buttoned up and people look and say, oh, what a neat place,
whatever. That’s all outward. What it takes, though, to bring
unity is the prayers of Jesus, like in his high priestly prayer.
Lord, I pray that like you and I and the Spirit are one, that
the church would be one. It’s an inward grace of God that
in the unity of the Godhead, the unity of the church also
can exist and experience. And so sinners under the grace
of God who experience the goodness of God gather under a banner. Okay, we’re Presbyterian, we’re
Reformed, we’re confessional, we’re biblical. We’re not those
things, they’re fine for others, but this is what we are. And
by the power of God, remember the psalm, unless the Lord builds
the house, the laborers labor in vain. We can grow in grace. Now you look around the room
and think, we’re a bunch of oddballs. Maybe this is like the Star Wars
bar room scene where there’s just a bunch of different people
in here. And yes, that’s true. Different backgrounds, different
socioeconomic, levels, different work experiences. Some of us
live in big houses. Some of us live in little ones.
Some of us have had these experiences or this education. But the one
thing that is in common is that we all come under the lordship
of Jesus Christ. And that’s what makes a church,
though diverse and many, it makes it one. And so we put away the
earthly distinctions. That’s what’s plaguing the Corinthian
church. And we put on display the heavenly
realities. Now we do it very imperfectly
and we do it very poorly. But instead of all the differences,
when people come to an outpost of heaven, they should see lots
of unifying things, lots of blessed things. Paul’s going to tell
the Ephesian church, strive after unity. It’s not something you
just get. It’s not something that happens
on accident. And so dear brothers and sisters,
we should strive after the unity of God, our heavenly father,
through the Lord, our savior, Jesus, and in the power of the
spirit. Let’s go to him now and ask for
that help and blessing. Lord, we thank you for the chance
to think about what makes a church one, what makes a church unified.
Thank you for the scriptures, the common faith. Thank you for
the Holy Spirit. We think of how the Holy Spirit
hovered over the chaos of creation. We think of how the spirit hovered
over the waters of the flood and they subsided. We think of
how the spirit hovers over the chaos, the craziness of our own
unsaved lives. And you speak, and what was dead
is alive. What was out of order is brought
to order. Lord, that is our only hope.
So help us to think of the unity that is in you, Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, and may it May it be poured out and manifest
in us, in our lives and in our church. We pray in Christ’s name.
Amen.