Association Meeting: Unity

Introduction

Brief introduction about myself.

Grew up at FBC Springfield. Dad is pastor at FBC Ozark.

Surrendered to ministry on mission trip to Southern Seminary in the summer before my senior year of high school. Prior to that I wanted to be a neurosurgeon. God had a different plan, though, and praise God for that!

Attended SBU upon graduating from Ozark in order to pursue a ministry degree. Still did not exactly know what my calling was in ministry, though. Throughout my time at SBU, God began to give me opportunities to preach and the more and more I preached, the more I felt like God was shaping me for pastoral ministry.

While this inner tug of war was taking place, my relationship with my eventual wife continued to grow as well. Lindsey and I knew each other since 3rd grade whenever my dad moved from FBC Springfield to become the children’s and recreation pastor at FBC Ozark. We were in the same grade and the same Sunday school class for much of our young lives. Fast forward to high school and we rarely talked to one another and didn’t know next to anything about each other. All of that changed during our Junior year of high school whenever we began to be on our youth praise team together. As one thing led to another throughout our high school time we realized that we were both going to be attending SBU. We started dating during our senior year and we got engaged during our junior year of college. God has been so gracious in our relationship and He has provided every step of the way.

Upon graduating from SBU I had absolutely no idea what I would be doing. I had a pastoral ministry degree but I had just turned 22 years old, was starting seminary through Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary online and no church that I met with was looking for someone in my situation. It seemed like door after door was being shut and I was feeling discouraged. Flash forward a couple of weeks and Dr. Fuhrman from SBU emails me and asks for my permission to forward my resume to a church in Conway, MO. I thank him for the help, tell Lindsey and we pray about it. Within 48 hours I receive a phone call from John Bohannon while helping out with Upward Basketball at FBC Ozark. John and I have a great conversation and I’m scheduled to come out and preach the next Sunday. As one thing led to another, that was exactly where Lindsey and I were supposed to be at. I am incredibly honored and blessed to be able to pastor at Morgan Baptist and I have been absolutely blown away with the support and friendships that I have been able to forge with many of you all in this room over the year I’ve been in this association. Many of you guys have extended the hand of fellowship and I am so thankful and grateful to be a part of a loving group of brothers and sisters in Christ.

Whenever Steven asked if I would preach for the semi-annual associational meeting I was taken aback. I asked him what the theme was and how long I had to preach - ask people at Morgan, our services typically go 75 minutes and I will gladly take the “blame” for that increase. Steven said that I had 30 minutes and that the message normally centers on unity. Seeing as it’s already been about 5 minutes, we’d better go ahead and dive into our message because I’d hate to have an situation play itself out… If you don’t know what is, read it whenever you get home and you’ll never think that your pastor preaches too long.

AW Tozer once asked, “Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers [meeting] together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.”

As Christians, we are united in Jesus Christ. We have the same Holy Spirit inside our heart and we are more united in Christ than we could ever be apart from Him. The warning for Christians, though, is this: our world cries for unity. Our world wants everyone to be on the same team and to simply be united for the sake of being on the same page because our world hates disunity. In the words of Spurgeon, “Such teaching is false, reckless and dangerous. Truth alone must determine our alignments. Truth comes before unity.  Unity without truth is hazardous.” Truth comes before unity.

It can be easy for us to look at and focus on all of the differences that exist here in this room. Some of you pastor churches here in Lebanon or as some people call, “in town” whereas some of you pastor churches out in the country. Some of you are members of churches with hundreds and hundreds of members whereas others of you are members of churches with 30 members. Some of you have grown up in the church while others of you might be a relatively new believer. Some of you are farmers while others of you have office jobs. We have so many differences and our culture likes to remind us of those differences in order to divide us. As Christians, though, we will have differences. We will have differences in our secondary theological beliefs. We will have differences in the songs we sing during worship (hymns vs contemporary songs). We will have differences in the way our church does things. Differences are not a bad thing, though. We are reminded that we have so much in common, as Paul reminds the Ephesian church in . We have 7 things that we are reminded that we are “one” in: body, spirit, hope, Lord, Faith, baptism, and God. Let’s read this text in .

Ephesians 4:1–6 NASB95

1 Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, 3 being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

United in Calling (1-3)

One of the things that Paul does time after time in his letters is call himself a “slave” or “prisoner” of Christ. Paul was likely in prison whenever he wrote this letter to the church in Ephesus, yet he does not note that he is a slave of Caesar or a slave of Rome, rather he is a slave of Christ! Paul is in chains but he is not upset about where he is because he realizes that this is exactly where God wants him to be. He implores these believers to walk in a manner worthy of their calling. What is Paul getting at in this opening verse? Walk does not simply mean to stand to your feet and begin moving toward a direction or destination, rather to means to conduct your life in a specific way. Paul is calling these people to live a different life than others because they have been called by God.

If we flip back a couple of pages to we see that the death of Christ on the cross made two groups into one! For a long period of time there was a wall that had divided the Jews and Gentiles. In the temple there was a physical barrier that separated these groups as Gentiles could not go into specific parts while Jewish men could. Yet, Christ tore down this wall. Christ broke down this wall completely! What does this mean to us 2000 years later? It means that we are to live our whole life in light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It means that we don’t just “do church” once a week on Sunday mornings. It means that we live our entire lives in light of the Gospel. Whether we are at church, at work, at school, at the grocery store or on the basketball court, we walk in a manner worthy of our calling.

Think of the differences that exist between how a Christian looks at their life circumstances versus how a non-Christian is tempted to look at their circumstances. For someone like Paul who was imprisoned it would have been very easy to be upset with the Lord and not walk in a manner worthy of his calling. It would have been easy to just tone down his message a little bit and be released. Yet, He walked in a manner worthy of his calling. He was not ashamed of the Gospel message and look where it got him… It didn’t get him put on a platform with millions of followers and book contracts. It got him thrown into jail! There are some application points here for us, church. Christianity is not a nice, middle class way to solve your problems and be comfortable. Real, genuine Christianity is risky, unpopular and often dangerous.

From a worldly perspective, persecution and being thrown into prison is terrible. However, Jesus in tells us that we will experience persecution but that it isn’t a bad thing, rather it serves as an opportunity to share our testimony!

Luke 21:12–13 NASB95

12 “But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and will persecute you, delivering you to the synagogues and prisons, bringing you before kings and governors for My name’s sake. 13 “It will lead to an opportunity for your testimony.

We know that our brothers and sisters around the globe are experiencing persecution. Millions would love to be able to gather like we are this evening without the fear of their lives being taken away from them. There is a story of a man named Tahir Iqbal from Pakistan who converted from Islam to Christianity and was imprisoned in 1990. A year and a half later, this paraplegic was hanged for his faith. Before his death, though, he was asked about the punishment before him and said this, “I will kiss my rope but will never deny my faith.”

Friends, this is what it means to walk in a manner worthy of our calling.

Paul continues in verses 2-3 to talk about a couple of Christlike virtues that we are supposed to emulate.

Humility, gentleness, patience, accepting one another in love and diligence.

Humility: We think of humility being a good thing in our society, but back in the 1st century world humility was not necessarily a good thing. In fact, it was thought of as being a coward in many instances while pride was something that was idolized. Paul, though, calls upon Christians to be humble. Humility is an interesting thing to think about because the moment that you think you have arrived at humility, you’ve actually lost it! You can’t ever think that you’re humble enough because that’s not what a humble person would do. We must always strive to be more humble and Christlike, which goes against our culture which preaches to “exalt yourself”. Pride means to be filled with yourself, humility is to be filled with God according to . As Tim Keller puts it, “The essence of Gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself, less.”

Gentleness: Gentleness can be thought of as being scared or weak. That is not what Paul is getting at here, though. Instead, we are not to be bullies but we are to be gentle towards one another. This is a fruit of the Spirit that we are called to use to care for one another and to build one another up in the Word.

Patience: For some here this evening your prayer might be this, “Lord please give me patience and hurry up and give it to me right now!” Do you see the issue with this prayer? We are told that love is patient. We are called to patient as well and to trust and rely on God’s timing rather than our own. This is difficult, is it not? Especially in a world that demands immediate results, yet we know that Christ has been patient with us and we must be patient with others.

Accepting one another in love: One of the great examples of this is in marriage. If my marriage were held together with my perfection as a husband, not only would I not be an “A” student, I would receive a failing grade! Yet, even with my failures, my wife puts up with me and loves me. This is how relationships should work for brothers and sisters in Christ. We might have our differences and we might have our bad days. We might even have some people drive us a little crazy, but we love our brothers and sisters just as Christ has loved us.

Diligently keep the unity: Unity is not a passive thing. It is an active one! For those of you who have close relationships with others, you know this to be true. Sometimes it’s not about “being right” but rather its about preserving the unity in the relationship.

United in the Gospel (4-6)

What we see in the next 3 verses is thought to have been an early Christian creed or formal statement of Christian beliefs. Creeds such as the Nicene Creed help us to understand how the early church understood Scripture. One of the earliest issues facing the church was regarding the Trinity as many people did not believe that Jesus Christ was the eternal Son of God. The Nicene Creed talks about each of the 3 persons of the Trinity. It spends 4 lines on the Father, 8 on the Holy Spirit and 21 lines on the Son of God! There needed to be unity on this essential doctrine and there certainly is unity in Scripture. Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God. Just as there is unity in who Jesus was and is, there is also unity in the 7 things Paul mentions in these verses. There is unity in Christ!

One Body: We are diverse in gifting and in background. Some of us are “feet” while others are “hands” but we are all united in the body of Jesus Christ! Everyone has a role and a function to play and we have unity in Him.

One Spirit: We also share a common helper in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit creates unity between people who were former enemies and He gives us the power to maintain unity. We do not create unity on our own! We acknowledge that the same Holy Spirit that lives inside of us lives inside our brother and sisters in Christ. It was given to us as we see in

Acts 4:32 NASB95

32 And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them.

One hope: We also share a common hope in Jesus Christ. tells us that we were without hope and strangers. tells us that we all are sinners and tells us that we deserve death and destruction for eternity if we got “what we deserve”. A lot of people say that we’re good and our world loves to think that everyone is good and that there is no such thing as hell. Friends, the Bible doesn’t say that at all. But the Bible does give us 2 incredible words that we see over and over: BUT GOD. We were dead in sins and trespasses… But God made us alive with Christ. As Joseph noted in , you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good. God has made us alive in Christ. He has our hope! Regardless of what happens during our life on this planet, our eternal destination is secured because of what Christ did for us on the cross. What a joyful hope we share!

One Lord: Romans were expected to declare that “Caesar is Lord” whenever it was asked of them. Christians did not give into the imperial cult, though. They proclaimed that Jesus is Lord. This was a bold declaration of war. This statement is not a simply chorus on a song, rather this was a statement that could cause you to love your life or end up in chains as Paul was in writing this letter.

One Lord:

One Faith: Our faith is in Jesus, not ourselves, as we will discuss in a couple minutes.

One Baptism: As Baptists we do not believe that the waters in your baptistery or local creek/river are magical and will save you. Rather, baptism is an outward representation of an inward change. This is a great picture of what happens to us whenever we accept Jesus as our Lord. Our old self is buried with Christ in baptism. Our old self dies the millisecond we become a Christian because we are a new creation. We still will be tempted by the desires of our flesh, but whenever you accept Christ it is like whenever a person comes out of the water of a baptism and experiences that first breath of second life. Everything is different because you are literally a new creation! We are united in Christ. We see things differently and we walk in a manner worthy of our calling.

One God: One thing I failed to mention earlier is the fact that I was adopted at nearly 4 months old. I love adoption and adoption is such a wonderful example of how God is in control in literally every aspect of life and He works things together so masterfully. tells us that we are also adopted sons and daughters through Jesus Christ. Whenever you accept Jesus as Lord, you are now an adopted member of the family of God. He is Father of all His children regardless of race, background, age, background. We are an adopted family with the same Father. All of this is possible because of what we find in

Acts 4:12 NASB95

12 “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

United with “Even-If” Faith ()

Just as we are united in all of these areas, we know that this unity is not just something that exists within the walls of the church but it is something that spills over into everyday life. One of the greatest examples of faith in Scripture is found as we see God’s servants, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego stand up against the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar whenever their faith was put to the test. These men were faced with a decision to either bow before a statue (likely of Nebuchadnezzar himself) or be thrown into a fiery furnace. In these 3 short verses we see the importance and unity in “Even-If” faith.

Daniel 3:16–18 NASB95

16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. 17 “If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. 18 “But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”

These 3 men did not need to defend themselves against the king and his advisors. They knew the consequences and they did not compromise by kneeling on the outside and standing firm on the inside. This was not an option to them! These men knew beyond the shadow of a doubt the power of God. There was no doubt that God had the ability to deliver them, they humbly accepted the fact that God does not always choose to intervene miraculously in human circumstances, even on behalf of His faithful servants.

These men knew Scripture. They knew that if they were to perish that it would not be because God could not save them - they knew God was powerful enough to deliver them - but rather because He chose not to do so. In other words, the knew God could save them but not necessarily that He would spare their lives.

Here is our question as we wrap up tonight, friends: Does God have all power? Yes. Is God able to deliver His adopted children from all problems and trials that we will face? Yes. But does God deliver us from all of our trials? No. We might not understand the purpose of trials, but God simply asks us to trust Him along the way.

In times of suffering and trial, our attitude should be like these men. Even if they had to suffer a horrible death in this oven, they refused to forsake their God and worship idols. Either God would intervene or they would be with Him in eternal glory, either way it was for their gain! As Paul notes in , to live is Christ and to die is gain. I’m untouchable! How can we live with this kind of faith?

Having this kind of “Even-If” faith is not a natural human tendency. It’s not natural for us to stand firm and walk through the fire with full confidence that God will provide and work this for our good. We are worriers. We want to know the outcome before the situation even arises. Yet, Scripture shows us that our response should be, “Even if this happens, I will trust in you.”

Even if this health situation claims my life, I will worship you and be a witness for you until I draw my last breath.

Even if standing up for Jesus costs me my reputation or my popularity, I will gladly remain faithful to Christ.

Even if our government outlaws Christianity, I will witness to a lost and dying world until the day I die!

Conclusion

We are united in many things, friends! We are united in the Gospel. We are united in Christ. We are united because we have been adopted into the family of God. We are united in faith and I pray that we all have an “Even-If” faith rather than a conditional faith that says, “I will be faithful to God… if He does this” or, “I will follow God as long as it doesn’t cost me or make me uncomfortable.”

That’s not what we are called to do! We were bought with a price and we are commanded to trust in Him in the good and bad times and know full and well that He works all things together for our good.

So the next time you find yourself in a difficult situation, replace “what if” with “Even if.” Even if the worst case scenario happens, God will still be good, He will never leave nor forsake us. He will be with us through the fire… He never promises to remove the fire.

Habakkuk 3:17–18 NASB95

17 Though the fig tree should not blossom And there be no fruit on the vines, Though the yield of the olive should fail And the fields produce no food, Though the flock should be cut off from the fold And there be no cattle in the stalls, 18 Yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

Even then, I will praise the Lord because He is worthy. Let’s pray.