Unity

Countdown

Something fun (eg. Game, video, etc.). It is not necessary for this to have a tie in to the lesson, but it can.

Introductions

This is culture/ introduction to the series.

Basic Opening Statement: We are glad that you are here with us at bcsm and we want you to know, more than anything, that you have a community of people here that love and care about you, you have a purpose or a place within this community which means we are better off with you than without you and you have a mission outside of this community. All of that rests on this one foundational truth that we want you to hear and want you to share: God wants to have a relationship with you.

I am _______________ and before we start, let me pray.”

*Pray for God to use what you have to say to move someone further along in their journey towards Jesus.*

We are continuing on in our series today based on a letter that a guy named Paul wrote to a group of people called Philippians, because they lived in Philippi. The letter became a book in our Bible called Philippians. He is writing to them while being under house arrest, probably in Rome, because it seems like they are worried about Paul and his well being, and they are not really getting along with one another. So Paul is writing to them with the solution to all of their problems. We introduced that solution the first week and it all revolves around adopting an upside down mind. And the idea is that their solution is also our solution to the problems we face. It is all about forming your mind around this upside down world that Jesus lays the foundation for with his death, burial and resurrection. A kingdom of heaven kind of world. Where the first shall be last and the last will be first, where death is life, etc. Throughout this series we are exploring this New Mind idea. We said last week it helps when we are not sure what to do to imitate the people we know are forming the new mind in themselves. We found that one result of the new mind is an unquenchable joy.

Today is our last week in this series, which makes me kind of sad because I have really enjoyed this one. It has been a really fruitful one for me and my thinking. I hope it has been for you as well. But we are going to talk about another thing that results from this upside down mind.

Teaching

This is the main point/ story of your lesson. Everything you want your students to Know should be covered here.

“let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ...”

ASK: When you hear that phrase what does it make you think you need to do? Read the Bible. Pray. Be nice to people? Look for what Paul thinks it means.

Philippians 1:27–30 ESV

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.

A life worthy of the gospel of Jesus is this oneness. This overwhelming unity. One spirit. One mind. Striving side by side.

Ok so this is a huge part of this gospel thing, this upside down mindset, and the writers of the New Testament say it over and over again… if we could just get this one thing right, people would be flocking to the church and to Jesus. Because it is easy to say, be united. It is easy to preach unity. It is easy to commit to one another. It is harder to follow through. So if we are able to promote unity within this community, our message will become incredibly compelling.

Even though you were not born yet, you guys have all heard about September 11th right? Have you heard about what happened next? Lots of anger, hurt, pain, but also there was this moment. This split second where it felt like there was this deep worldwide unity. It was just momentary but I remember feeling, even after this terrible tragedy, a really warm hope in humanity. And I wanted more of it.

20 years later. Is there any sign of that unity left? No. Not at all. I can tell you like 20 days later it had evaporated back into some semblance of the same old, same old.

Why? Unity sounds great on paper, but it is hard work. It is not easy. It takes more than shared feelings. It takes more than shared beliefs, even. You can even see this in Philippians. Paul calls out two ladies in the church of Philippi and is like, “Hey, get along. You are both followers of Jesus. Work it out.” They believed the same thing about Jesus, but they were not united.

So what does it take to be united?

Philippians 2:1–5 ESV

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,

Tension

What is the rub? Create some questions and feeling.

Loving one another. Not being selfish or proud. Considering others more significant than yourself. You see how the upside down mind can help us here? It is all about putting yourself underneath other people when we really want to be above them. Making it about them, not ourselves. It’s upside down. But it has always been this way.

Paul wrote another book called Ephesians and he kind of fleshes this idea out a bit more practically. He makes three statements that people of his day would say are right side up. Like any random person you picked off the street would say Paul was right.

So look at this. Paul lives in a patriarchal society, right? So he says, ”Wives submit to your husbands.” and the crowd in his day says, “Yeah. No duh.” He says, Children, honor your father and mother. Again, obvious. Slaves obey your masters.

We hear that and we are like, “Slaves?” Just hold on a second. We are reading this with the original readers in mind. In their society they would have said, “Yeah. Slaves should obey their masters.” Now watch what Paul does.

Right after each one of these statements he follows it up with New Mind kind of stuff. Husbands love your wives. Parents don’t provoke your children. Masters, do the same. These statements, in Paul’s culture and time, were radical, upside down thinking. In their culture, wives were property. Society would say that husbands did not have to love their wives. Kids too. And Masters doing the same thing for their slaves that their slaves were supposed to do for them, sounded ludicrous.

But what Paul is doing here is he is saying, that we have to submit to one another, we have to love one another in a radical, counter cultural way and when we do that even a slave and his master can be united in this crazy weird wonderful Kingdom of God thing. And that kind of unity, requires a sacrifice of whatever position you think you hold. Whatever power you have at your disposal, you use it, not to prop up your position, but someone else’s.

And that is rare. It is compelling. It is hard work.

Unity takes more than shared feelings. It takes us working through the same Spirit with the same upside down mind, submitting to one another for the cause of the gospel.

Response

This is the response portion. Everything you want your students to Do should be touched on here, but you should have at least one immediate action that can be taken.

We say every week. There is a community of people here who love and care about you. You have a purpose within this community. When we first started saying this thing, I think it kind of came across as there are adults in this church that think you are swell. But that is not what we mean.

You are the community. Your purpose is to love and care about the people around you. Both in this place and outside of it. But how about we start right here?

Why don’t you start with the person to your right? The person to your left?

Why don’t you come here on Sunday mornings or Sunday nights and make it your goal to talk to someone new? Or make it your goal to notice when someone is off by themselves, shy, not sure where to go or what to do and then you help them out. Why don’t we start by making this the kind of place where everyone is submitting themselves to everybody else, disagreeing where we disagree but allowing other voices to have validity and importance.

We say this all the time. You belong here. But some of you don’t always act like someone else belongs here.

And, listen, I don’t think we do this on purpose.

That’s the problem.

We don’t come here on purpose, believing in our purpose. submitting ourselves to everyone else.

We come here thinking, I wish my parents did not make me wake up early on Sunday. or I hope we play a fun game today. I hope I get to see such and such. I hope that girl at youth group is into me. Maybe we could date. We come with not a unity/ submission purpose but a ME purpose. What do I get out of this? What will they have for me today as opposed to what will I bring for someone else today?

To mangle a JFK quote, “Ask not what bcsm can do for you, ask what you can do for bcsm.”

I know I might be stepping on your toes. But hear me. I am not saying that these things are all bad or that you are a bad Christian if that is why you came today. It’s normal. I am saying, Paul is saying, normal is not OUR normal. We are not satisfied with one way relationships, “Wives submitting to husbands, etc.” This is a new mind, not the old mind.

The God who created the universe wants to have a relationship with us and everyone else around us. When we can really embrace that truth, when we form our mind around this idea of heaven coming to overlap with earth one day, it turns the world upside down for us and makes us look for opportunities to turn it upside down for others by turning our lives upside down for them.

The first way we can do that is by displaying the upside down world here, within the church. So that when someone walks into this place, they see this crazy upside-down unity they have never experienced anywhere else. But it is not just like, “Oh these people like one another and I am on the outside looking in.” It is like, “These people are united and seem to think I have a part of what is happening here, even though I just showed up for the first time today. Three people introduced themselves to me and said they were excited that I was there. And on and on.” That kind of unity is compelling.

But it all starts with forming this new mind. Think about the things that come from God. Truth, Justice, Honor, Integrity or Purity, Beauty, Goodness, Things that we like and practice them.

So what does truth look like in God space or heaven? How can I put that truth into practice. What is Justice in light of who Jesus is and what he has done? I need to be an agent of that kind of Justice in this broken world.

When we do these things, we get to see a little piece of the world flip over, if just for a second. And the more we see that happen, the more other people will see it happen through us, the more we begin to believe that Jesus, who has a habit of doing the impossible, can do the impossible in and through our lives if we just let him. And that will give us an unsinkable joy and a compelling unity.

Maybe you are here today and are like, I want in. If that is you. Let us know. WE would love to talk to you more about that.

Maybe you are not there yet. That is ok too. You don’t have to believe to belong here. We are better off with you than without you. But obviously, if this is true, if there is truth, justice, peace, unity, beauty, freedom from death through Jesus, we don’t want you to miss out. We want you to experience it too.

Right now I am going to play a song as we go into our time of Communion. This is something we do every week to remember the event that turned the world as we know it upside down. Feel free to move during the song. If you want to take eat the bread and drink the juice to remember Christ’s broken body and spilled blood, just make your way up here to do that. If you need prayer or want to make a decision today, let one of us adults know. If you don’t want to move and just want to listen to the words of the song or pray or read a part of the Bible, you can do that too.

Song

Old Church Basement- Elevation and Maverick City

Discussion

Start with Prayer

Read Philippians 2:1–5 (ESV)

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,

What would it take for bcsm to develop the kind of upside down community Paul talks about in Philippians?

What would it take for YOU to develop the kind of upside down community here that Paul talks about in Philippians?

Eric contends that this kind of unity is only possible when we can form our mind around the reality of the gospel. Do you agree or disagree?

How do we maintain unity without becoming insular or unwelcoming to new people?

What can you do next week to come to bcsm on purpose?