Living As United People

morning shepherd's gate our scripture reading this morning is from the book of Ephesians chapter four verses one through six. Therefore I the prisoner in the Lord urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received with all humility and gentleness with patience bearing with one another in love making every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit just as you were called to one hope at your calling one Lord one faith one baptism one God and father of all who is above all and through all and in all this is the word of the Lord please join me in prayer. Lord thank you for everyone here today God in light of what you have done through us for us through Christ help us to walk in your ways help shepherd's gate to have unity as a church. Lord this morning is John preaches use your word to shape and mold our hearts God that you would be glorified in Jesus name we pray amen. Thank you Jonah. Well in 1971 which I was in alive in 1971 maybe some of you were and that's great news but I was not alive but in 1971 John Lennon saw a world divided and wrote a song dreaming about a world in unity he said this he said imagine there's no countries it isn't hard to do nothing to kill or die for and no religion to imagine all the people living life in peace and he closes the song by saying this you may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one I hope some day you'll join us and the world will be as one and John Lennon was right he was not the only dreamer in fact in the same year Marvin Gay wrote a song about unity as well and he says this he says you know we've got to find a way to bring some loving here today and other artists throughout the years have joined in with their own cries for unity bands like Metallica groups like the Black Eyed Peas rap groups like a tribe called Quest or Kendrick Lamar and many other artists have all written songs longing for some version of unity and peace people really do long to experience unity we long to experience unity but when you dig a little deeper into the kind of unity that many want you find them lacking you find them lacking this is because the basis for their version of unity tends toward a certain kind of tolerance and the means of their unity is usually something that is very sentimental ironically most people if you talk to them when they see disunity they usually see it as a problem caused by other people and they don't take the time to reflect on how they also might have contributed to the problem of disunity themselves we do the same thing right especially when we talk about the church I think every well-intended Christian wants to see the church unified and walking together I think I think any Christian in here would would yes and amen that however well I'll say like Jesus himself in John 17 he actually prayed that the church would be unified that his people would be one right in the upper room discourse Jesus is final words to his disciples he says they the world will know that you are mine by your love for each other so when the church actually does a good job of loving one another we show the world that we actually are Christ's disciples and yet right we all want unity but we don't take time to reflect on how we may have contributed to division in the church and we tend to see that the obstacles in the way of unity are typically other people around us here's the thing when you look at division as a problem that other people are causing you actually paint yourself into a corner where you can no longer become part of the solution the Bible does not let any of us off the hook when it comes to issues of unity and disunity among God's people when Paul calls the church to walk in unity let where he does like he does in this particular passage he does so in a way that causes us to look in the mirror and reflect on how we have failed to make the effort necessary to keep the unity that Jesus purchased by his blood and that's the question we're thinking about this morning right how how have I failed to keep the unity that Jesus has purchased by his blood but not only that how does a church actually work together to maintain unity how do we enjoy unity and stick together as one family that Christ has made us to be it's certainly isn't easy to do that it's not easy to do that but through the power of God's spirit as we see in Ephesians 4 it's possible it's possible in Christ God has brought together people from every nation tribe and tongue we've been going through a series in the book of Ephesians called gospel grammar and one of the keys to the Christian life is to actually understand how the grammar of the gospel works and when I talk about the grammar of the gospel I'm talking about this when we read the scriptures there are really two kinds of things that you see throughout the scriptures you see either who God has made us to be in Christ through the gospel or what God is calling us to do there are either declarations of who you are and who you've been made to be or there's a command that's being given that you are called to and commanded to obey and what tends to happen is there are two kinds of people in the world who get these twisted the first would be the religious person or the legalist right what they do is they tend to look at the commands of the scriptures the things that the Bible tells us we must do and they say if I do these things God will love me if I do these things God will love me but there's also another kind of person and this one is a little harder to spot sometimes this is the the irreligious person this is the kind of person who says things like this well God has made me in this way he's forgiven me he's loved me and so it doesn't really matter if I do what he says doesn't really matter if I pay attention to his commandments it doesn't really matter if I walked in obedience because I'm forgiven I'm I'm made right or maybe even worse I am the I am the maker of my own destiny no one can tell me what to do right because I've discovered who I am and therefore this fulfills me this gives me life therefore no matter how wrong God's word says it is I'm going to do it anyway the irreligious person and we've got to get the grammar of the gospel right which means this right God has made us to be new people in Christ he's forgiven us he's washed us he's cleansed us he loves us he's showered grace upon grace through Christ therefore we obey we live like God's people in God's world and in doing so we bring God glory and not only do we bring God glory but we actually walk in the way the truly blessed life we live in a way that doesn't just please God but it's actually a way of life that is best for us as those who have been made by God and as we've looked at the book of Ephesians the book of Ephesians you can actually split down the middle the first three chapters are all about what God has done for us in Christ if you read the first three chapters of Ephesians you are going to have a hard time finding something to do because most of it is about what God has done for his people but then in chapter four there's this big therefore and chapters four through six are all about who we are in light of what God has done who God is calling us to be in light of what God has done in chapters four through six are are just a score of commands to be cherished obeyed and followed not to earn God's love but so that we might rightly live as God's people and reflect his love to those who need it and so in Christ God has brought together people from every tribe tongue in nation that's really how Paul closes chapters two and chapter three in Ephesians he's united us to himself and united us to one another the cosmic redemption that we enjoy as God's former enemies who have been made right with God establishes a cosmic unity that we now enjoy among one another and we keep that unity for through a variety of ways but we have to see first that when when we are Christians when we are saved when we are redeemed we are not just made right with God we are made right with God right Ephesians 2 says you were dead in your sins but you've been made alive with Christ but we've also been made right with each other we've been brought into a new family and if Christ has brought us together this is my main idea this morning if Christ has brought us together we must make every effort to keep our unity and as we go throughout this passage I want to show you three ways we keep that unity we keep unity by pursuing virtue we keep unity by pursuing one another and we keep unity by pursuing God first we keep unity by pursuing virtue our passage begins with Paul reminding us of his circumstances right he says in verse 1 that he's writing as a prisoner in the Lord right it's a sobering thing to be reminded as you read about Paul's great care for the Ephesian church that he's actually writing them from prison he's writing them from prison there are plenty of things I'm sure that Paul could have chosen to occupy himself with while he was in prison, but instead he chose to do the hard work of laboring and writing for the growth and maturity of God's people. And we know Paul cared for these people because they were on his mind enough for him to pen this letter that you and I are reading. But we also know just how much he cared for the church at Ephesus as we look at verse 1, right? He's writing, urging and pleading with them, the force of his pleading, the force of his urging can't be understated. Sometimes when you actually look at the Greek word that's translated here as urge, in other places in the Bible it's translated with words like begging. Begging. Like when the demons beg Jesus not to banish them in the abyss and instead drive them into a herd of pigs. Now other times this is translated as pleading. Like when Jairus whose daughter was dying of illness went to Jesus and pleaded with him to come to his house so that he could heal his dying daughter. These are cries of desperate people, desperate people. And here we have Paul urging pleading, begging the Ephesians to do something. And that's something that's to walk worthy, to walk worthy of the calling that they've received. The overall context of this passage drives us to see this pleading alongside Paul's command in verse 3 to make every effort to keep unity. So when we hear Paul say, walk worthy of your calling. We also have to be hearing make every effort to keep the unity. In a sense we walk worthy of the calling we've received from God when we become the kind of people who work with all of our might to keep, preserve and guard the unity of the church. But there's an aroma to this kind of person, right? There's a feel about them. They have certain qualities in their character. They are people of moral excellence, moral excellence. Think about the logic of Paul's argument up to this point in the book of Ephesians. I'm going to summarize the first three chapters for you, right? The first three chapters have given an incredible look into the work that God has done for us in Christ. Paul unpacks in Ephesians 1, just how blessed God's people really are. Reminding us that if we're in Jesus, we have received every spiritual blessing in the heavens from God. We are redeemed. We are rescued. We are freed from sin. We are forgiven. We are empowered by the Spirit who causes us to grow into godly men and godly women. We've received a rich inheritance from the Lord and have a hope that is secure because it is rooted in what Jesus has accomplished on our behalf through his death and his resurrection. Ephesians 2 shows us that we were once dead. We're dead in our sins, but through Christ we've now been given new life. By God himself and set free from the power of sin. No longer are we the kind of people who carry out the inclinations of our flesh, those sinful desires that control our actions. We now live to please God because he's made us new by the power of his Spirit and we seek God in everything as his new people. Walking out the good news and the good works that he's prepared for us beforehand. But not only have we now in Jesus been made right with God, we've been made right with each other. Through the gospel, God's made a new people who live for him together. He's united people through Jesus from every tribe, tongue, nation, and people group. This multi-ethnic family is called the church and he has united them together. And in chapter 3, Paul continues to talk about the significance of that new society that he's building through the gospel, which leads him to express in a prayer his desire for them to continue to grow in their understanding of God's love, to grasp the depth, the width, the height, the magnitude of God's love for them in Christ. So they would be filled with all the fullness of God. That's how chapter 3 ends. He wants them to be a community of people who are deeply shaped by God's love, deeply shaped by God's love. And then in chapter 4, which begins with this great therefore, in light of all of this wonderful, beautiful gospel-centered truth about who God is and what He's made you to be in Christ, in light of all the work that God has done. He wants you to live in a way that accords or is fitting with that work, to walk worthy of the calling that we've received as Christians. That calling is the summons to faith, to believe and trust Christ is Lord following Him and living by His gospel. It's the call to believe the good news of what God has done to forgive our sins, the call to turn from those sins and to trust Christ with our lives. We must walk and live worthy of that call, that call that God has placed on the lives of each and every single one of you who hear my voice and hear the good news calling you to come to Christ. Just because you claim to be a Christian, just because you claim to be a Christian does not mean you are walking worthy of the calling that you've received. In fact, the very fact that Paul is riding to a church and telling them that they need to walk worthy should tell us that there is a category for people who are genuinely in Christ, who are genuinely Christian, who really love the Lord, but they are not walking worthy of the calling they've received. So immediately this passage confronts Christians to examine their life. Are you walking worthy of the calling you've received from God Himself? Verse 2 shows us the kind of person who's walking worthy. So Paul says, walk worthy and then he shows you what this person looks like. They are people who are live with all humility and gentleness with patience, bearing with one another in love. Paul is describing a person of virtue. Virtue is not a word that we tend to throw around. One word that is common and kind of gets you close to virtue is character. He's talking about people who have high degrees of character. Character describes the quality of a person. Are they a good person or are they a bad person? That's really a simple way to think about it, but that's really what character is getting after. What quality of an individual is this? Do they have good moral character? Are they upstanding? Do they have integrity? These are all questions of character. Virtue is used to describe someone who has morally excellent character. Another way the Bible talks about such a person is they would say that this is a godly person. A godly person. Paul telling the Ephesians to live with all humility and gentleness to be patient is a plea for the church to embody godly virtue and to pursue godly virtue in their lives. And we keep our unity. This is really important. We keep our unity as a church when we individually pursue virtue in our lives. Your tendency or lack of a tendency to throw off the sin in your life that is hindering you actually affects the unity of the church. Your eager desire to pursue holiness and the things of god to take on a character that reflects the nature and worthiness of Jesus to become the kind of godly person that God is forming and shaping you to be in Christ actually has a direct effect on the unity of the church. Which means this. Your Christian life and the quality of your Christian life is not about you. It's not about you. One, it's about Jesus. But it also has a dramatic effect on the people of Jesus. Which means this. There is no private sin. It's no such thing as a private sin. Your sin, whether you see it or not, has a direct effect on the church that you are a part of. And if that sin is not being a part of a church, which is a sin by the way, that has a direct effect on God's people as well. And it has catastrophic effects for your own life in Christ and your walk with Jesus. We keep our unity as a church when we pursue virtue in our lives. And when we seek to grow as godly people, so when we actually seek to grow as godly people with diligence, with tenacity, with effort, with energy, when we labor so that we might grow in holiness, we are becoming more godly as a people and we are uniting the church. We are keeping the church glued together in unity. But in order to grow in virtue, in order to grow in virtue, you actually have to be able to say that there are certain things in this world that are morally wrong and there are certain things in this world that are morally right. You have to be able to say that. But our world is a world of moral confusion. We are a morally confused age. If you walked on the street and you backed any individual into a corner to try to say if something is good or evil, they might give you something along the lines of, "Ah, well, it depends. It depends." We live in an age where we call evil things good and good things evil. Can I give you some examples of that? You sure? Guys, we live in a world that says it's good to end the life of a child in the womb. That's a problem. It's not a good thing. We live in a culture where it is now seen as virtuous to have children outside of marriage, where it's seen as virtuous to live together as a married couple but not have the covenant commitment of a marriage. That's not just Something that happens, it's a good and virtuous thing. It's celebrated to pursue sexual freedom without the responsibility of marriage, the responsibility of raising a child. There is an entire subculture of men who see it as a badge of honor to have children with multiple women and not be involved in the lives of those children. That is an evil thing. Or love and support the mothers who now have to raise those children on their own. And in case you wonder why I'm bringing that up, guys, we, we, almost 20% of the population in the city of Peoria are single-parent homes. Guys, one in five homes in this city are single-parent homes. It's horrible. Some of those homes are growing up without the nurturing love of a mother. And most of those homes are growing up without the love and care of a dad. It is a virtuous thing when we are rightly able to name evil things as evil things, sinful things. That showcase just how far we are from walking in the truth. And again, guys, the beauty of the gospel is any of these evil things are things that are forgivable, right? These are not like unforgivable sins that fall outside of the realm of the gospel, right? I myself have committed some of the things that I've talked about. And God forgives sinners. He loves to save enemies who are wandering from the truth. But how will people know how good this news is if they're not told that they need to be forgiven? We have to be able to rightly name evil things as evil, sinful things, as sinful things. Peter Krift in his book back to Virtue says, "In an age of anything goes, virtue is a revolutionary thing." In an age where anything goes, where anything can be seen is good. Virtue, real virtue, godly virtue is a revolutionary thing. In an age of self-promotion and self-obsession, just completely energized by social media, humility is a revolutionary thing. In an age of instant gratification where you get what you want when you can get it, patience is a revolutionary thing. In a time where it's seen as good to slander those that you disagree with, publicly gentleness is a revolutionary thing. In a time where it's seen as good to affirm every single thing about a person, even if what they're doing is wrong, bearing with someone in love through their failures so they might be built up in Christ is a revolutionary thing. We preach and teach about the good news of Jesus. When we do that, we are not doing it just to make you more intelligent or savvy with the Bible. We're not even doing it to make you feel better about yourself. That's not why we open the scriptures and talk about the gospel. We're not doing it to make you more intelligent or to make you feel better about yourself. We preach Christ so that we might build people into virtuous people who reflect the truly virtuous one, Jesus himself. As Paul says in Colossians 1, we proclaim him warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom so that we might present everyone mature in Christ. In other words, we want to build up God's people in virtue and as we grow in virtue, we grow together in maturity. And as we grow in virtue, we grow in unity as we pursue Christ together. We keep the unity of the church by pursuing virtue. But we also keep the unity of the church by pursuing one another, right? Paul tells the people to walk in a manner worthy of the calling they've received from God. And as they walk in this way, they will become humble people, gentle people, impatient people. They'll start to embody the very virtues that Christ himself embodied. They'll look and smell more like Jesus. They will be the aroma of Christ to the world around them. They will, when you have a church filled with people like that, you have a church that's united. A church that stands together who divide over petty differences but instead work out those differences in the context of family life. Who don't let their preferences drive their participation in the life of community, but instead let their love for Christ and his people drive them to have a resolved dedication to an ever-increasing health in their local church. This gets me to my second point again. We keep unity by pursuing one another. Look at verse one, "Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you've received with all humility and gentleness with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. All of us should be seeking to cultivate Godly character and all of us should be seeking to cultivate Godly community." Godly community. And when we lean into these things, Godly character and Godly community, trusting in Christ's help to actually build these things in our lives, we actually work to keep the unity of the church. And there are two ways that this passage orients us toward the church. The first is the command for us to bear with one another, to bear with one another. And the second is the command to make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit. A few years ago, Sarah and I had the opportunity to be a part of a community group that was starting a new group, right? So the community group had grown to a certain number. God raised up a couple who was gonna start a new group and our family, along with other families, went with that family to go start a new community group in the city that we were living in. This is something that we want all of our community groups to do, right, to grow so that we might train and equip new community group leaders to go out with families, to start new groups in parts of the city that don't have community groups. And so we had the opportunity to do this with some folks and we really, really learned a ton through the process, but over the first few weeks of that new group, things changed in the group that we were not expecting. One night during our discussion, the leaders opened up an opportunity for us to give feedback on how the group was going. And I've been pretty frustrated at this point with how things had changed. And instead of holding my tongue and talking with the leader about those concerns privately, I decided to call them out in front of the entire group. How do you think that went? I accused them of not holding to the commitments that they made to the group in front of everyone. I disrespected their leadership in front of others. I accused them of hypocrisy. And in my pride, I chose not to listen to them. They listened to what I had to say. They gave a gentle response, articulating where they were at and why they had made the things that they did and they even apologized for some of the things that I pointed out. But later in private, a good brother, a good friend of mine, grabbed me and said, "Hey, man, you sinned against that family. You sinned against them. You did not treat them well." And he was right. He gave me an opportunity to repent, to confess my sin and seek to be reconciled with our community group leaders. And when I came to our community group leaders and confessed what I had done wrong and asked for their forgiveness, you know what they did? They actually forgave me. And they never brought it up again, not once. Except perhaps maybe in a training or two to help other leaders learn how to deal with difficult people like me. Look, this is what it looks like to bear with somebody in love. It's walking with someone in their failure and patiently trusting God to work in them, to lead them to repentance. Instead of taking matters into your own hands, to be the shaping force in someone's life, you recognize that it's actually the spirit of God who is the shaping force in someone's life, and you are called by God to be an instrument in his hands. The spirit uses community to shape us. There are things that I would have never learned unless I sinned in that way. And God used that sin to teach me something about community life, to teach me something about bearing with others in love, by being someone who needed to be loved. The spirit uses community to shape you. And this is why, this is why, while you might say, you are starving for community, you are actually terrified of community. While you might actually say, I just want some community. When you look at the Bible actually says about what community life and what it costs you, it's scary. This is because community, real biblical community, exposes you. It exposes you. The kind of community that God is calling us to is the kind where we actually get close enough to one another to see each other's sins, to see each other's failures. And it also means you getting close enough to others for them to see your sins, and for them to see your failures. You see, Paul wouldn't tell the church at Ephesus to bear with one another in love if there weren't ample opportunities to do so. Clearly, in Ephesians, there were some difficult people that the church needed to walk with. And here's the thing, the church is full. This room is full of failing people, annoying people, needy people, weak people, frustrating people, socially awkward people, and difficult people, like me. You are one of them too. I'm one of them. And God in His wisdom has brought us together. Isn't that fascinating? God in His wisdom choose to bring together a rag-tag group of odd folks for His glory. That's amazing. So that we might learn how to embrace and enjoy the unity that He's already established in Christ and walk in that unity with one another through our failures. Look, some of you this morning need to confess how you have failed to bear with others here. You need to confess how you have failed to bear with others in love here. But others of you need to confess your blindness because you've not seen the way that others have born with you and your failures. You've missed it. I mentioned a few minutes ago that there are two ways that this passage orientates toward the church. First, we bear with one another. But the second is we make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit. To be a Christian is to be filled with the Spirit. This is what the Bible means when it talks about being spiritual people. They're not Christians who have a half measure of the Spirit and Christians who have a full measure of the Spirit. All Christians, if you are in Christ, have received the fullness of the Spirit of God. It is dwelling in you as it dwells in the temple. This is what the Bible means when it talks about us as spiritual people. We are people who are filled with the Spirit, who walk by the Spirit, who depend on the Spirit, who are empowered by the Spirit. But we tend to think about being empowered by the Spirit as gifting, right? I'm empowered by the Spirit to serve or to preach or to pray or to engage with people or to sing or whatever. But here, we actually see that a major aspect of the Spirit's work among the people of God is actually to establish and unite the body of Christ. To establish and unite the body of Christ, think about this. Every single Christian is filled with the same Spirit. The same Spirit. God's Spirit rests in them and animates them for mission. He convicts us of sin, righteousness and judgment. The Spirit illuminates all of us to see the Scriptures so we can understand what God has said and we can actually have the power through the Spirit to put those things into practice. That same Spirit gives us wisdom, points us to our ultimate hope and keeps us together as the church. But notice what Paul says. He tells the church to keep the unity. He does not tell the church to create or establish unity. He doesn't tell the church to manufacture unity. He tells the church to maintain it and he tells them that because Christ is the one who accomplishes the unity of the church, Christ is the one who keeps the church together. For when Jesus rose from the grave and ascended the God's right hand, he sent a helper, the Spirit who would lead us into all truth. That Spirit Himself teaches us that we all share the same Spirit. And through that Spirit, Godly virtue is possible. Through that Spirit, meaningful relationships with other people who know Jesus is possible. Keep connections that transcend our typical vision for relationships are possible. We become family in Christ through that Spirit, a family that endures through all of eternity because Christ is the head and He walked out of the tomb. It's a family that endures. It's a family that sticks every single time. Every single time you come to a community group and express real interest in the lives of others there, you're working to keep the unity of the Spirit. Every time you show up on Sunday mornings with a joy to serve others, you are working to keep the unity of the Spirit. Every time you welcome someone new and invite them into your life to share the good things that God has given you with them, you are keeping the unity of the Spirit. Every time you set aside time to pray with other brothers and sisters in Christ, you are keeping the unity of the Spirit. Every time you confess your sins to other Christians in your church, asking for their help to try to cause you to grow in Christ, you are keeping the unity of the Spirit. Every time you remind someone, tell someone that they have failed and that they need to repent, you are keeping the unity of the Spirit. Every time you contribute to the life of God's community, you are keeping the unity of the Spirit. If this passage shows us anything about the Christian life, it's that no one was created a follow Jesus alone. No one was meant to follow Jesus alone. In fact, because of passages like this, we actually see that the Christian life can't be lived alone. You can't live this life alone. For trying to follow Jesus alone is actually disobedience to the very passages like this that instruct us to live like Christ in the context of community. We can't bear with others if you don't know them, and others cannot bear with you if they don't know you. So keep the unity by pressing into life with those around you. There's a kind of grace and a kind of growth that God provokes in the lives of His people when you dig deep in the lives of others in a local church. There are very few things I can promise you this after getting the opportunity to follow Jesus for over 15 years now. There are fewer things more refreshing than a church that actually welcomes people in a way that helps them see the Savior and grow in their faith. There are a few things more refreshing than that. So we keep the unity by pursuing one another. As Paul opens this kind of second half of Ephesians in the beginning of chapter 4, he calls us to press toward keeping unity, right? This established that unity, he created that unity, and we keep that unity by pursuing virtue. We keep that unity by pursuing one another, but we also keep that unity by pursuing God. Look at verse 4. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope at your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father above all, who is above all and through all and in all. Paul has told the Ephesians what he wants them to do in light of the incredible work that God has done to save and redeem them. He urges them, right? He pleads with them to walk in a way that's worthy of their calling. He tells them that they need to make every effort exerting incredible amounts of energy to keep the unity. And then he tells them, so he tells them in what way he wants, he tells them what to do, then he tells them in what way to do these things, right? Bearing with one another in love, with all humility, gentleness, and patience. But now he's going to tell them how these things are even possible. Because if you're honest, really honest, and you should be honest, by the way. When you look at the commands and the things that Paul is actually calling us to do here, you have to be able to look at those and say, "This is impossible for me to do all my own. I can't do this." And that's the point. That is precisely the point. Because when we see the things that God has called us to do and be in and through the gospel, and we recognize that apart from Christ, we can't do those things, it drives us to dependents on the Lord as we seek to live those things out. Our unity is a direct result of the fact that you and I have been united to Christ. We've been united to God Himself. For those of you who trust Christ, God has made you a part of Christ's body. Next week, we will actually go into how that body works together to further the mission to make Jesus known and call people to turn from their sins and trust in Him, right? You believe that gospel that Christ died for you, for gives you, makes you new and restores you to God. You actually become united to other Christians and united to Jesus Himself. And there is, as Paul says, one body and one church. Some of you might be hearing the fact that I'm talking about how the Bible teaches that there's one body and one church, and you're looking around like, "Yeah, but why are there so many churches?" Why are there so many churches? You got Methodist churches and Baptist churches and Presbyterian churches and Lutheran churches and Catholic churches and Orthodox churches, what's going on with all these churches? Let me be the first to tell you. You may not know this, but every building that has the word church on the side of it doesn't actually mean that it's part of the true church. Now you might think that me saying that's very arrogant, but let me explain what I mean, okay? Let me explain what I mean. Right, every true church has certain marks or qualities, right? There's only really three if you boil it down to its most simple. The first mark of a true church is the right preaching of the gospel, right? Is the church actually proclaiming and teaching the good news about Jesus? The second mark of a church is, are they rightly practicing the sacraments? There are two sacraments in the Bible, baptism and the Lord's Supper, right? The Lord's Supper we do every week, we'll talk about that here in a little bit. Our first baptisms as a church are in two weeks, which is amazing to think about that. We're going to do our first baptisms in here proclaiming the beauty of how people have been brought from death to life in and through the gospel together as a family. We get to celebrate that in baptism. So is it a church that's rightly preaching the good news about Jesus? Is it a church that's rightly practicing the sacraments, baptism and Lord's Supper? And then third, is it a church that is rightly practicing church discipline, which requires two things, a biblical membership and qualified pastors. That those are the marks of a true church. And if you're interested in learning more about those, I would encourage you to attend our gospel class in a couple of weeks. We're going to talk about those marks and how we live out those things as a body here, but theologians throughout the ages have not just talked about the marks of the church, they've also talked about the visible and the invisible church. We're wondering why there are so many different churches if there really is one church. The visible church is the group of people that you see when you look around. It is the church as it is locally expressed in a congregation of people. That is the visible church who gather together weekend and week out to worship Christ. The invisible church is the full number of God's truly redeemed people in every place. That's the invisible church, the one church, right? The cosmic church as God sees the church. They are members of the one body because they are filled with one spirit, right? So our brothers and sisters at Grace Presbyterian Church here in town, we're a part of the same body with them. Our brothers and sisters at Karris Community Church in Bloomington, we're a part of the same body with them, and we have the opportunity to collaborate with other churches for the sake of mission in the city of Peoria because we are all share a citizenship in heaven. We are all part of the invisible church together, though we are a part of different visible churches locally expressed in different places with different points of emphasis. The invisible church is the full measure of God's truly redeemed people in every place, right? This is the means of our unity, right? The work that God has done to secure in Christ is the very thing that God uses to create our unity in the first place. Paul keeps going here to talk about our one hope, our one Lord. When he says one Lord, he's talking about Jesus, our one faith, and our one baptism. Notice how Paul shows how the content of the Christian faith, right? The content of our faith, the things that we say we believe actually serves to establish the unity that God creates when he makes a new people. In other words, theology, or what you believe about what the Bible teaches, it matters. It matters deeply. Thinking deeply about the Christian faith helps us keep the unity. Spending time wrestling with the deep things of God in His Word alongside of their brothers and sisters in Christ keeps the unity. Challenging, teaching, and exhorting one another with the truths of our faith when we wander from them keeps the unity. Rapping our hearts around the immeasurable and multifaceted wisdom of God as He reveals Himself in His Word keeps the unity. We should be the kind of church that is constantly seeking to learn more and more about God together, not by ourselves on YouTube, watching our favorite YouTube preacher, or Googling the thing that we're mad about that this guy said in the church over here to wonder if it's really true. Because honestly friends, like going to Google for your answers, you're going to always find someone who agrees with you. I promise. But we actually seek to learn about these things together in the context of a local church always remaining teachable, submitting to the Word, and holding to the truths that the Bible teaches with confidence, courage, and joy. Not apologizing for the hard things that the Bible has to say, because it has some hard things to say to all of us. And when we do these things, we keep the unity. I have a friend who's been a Christian for a very long time, and I can think of many, many things about this guy that are admirable. I look up to him so much. He's well respected, he serves his church, he loves the community, he leads his family well, and he does not think very highly of himself. I love this guy. But when it comes to biblical truth, he often avoids conversations about many things the Bible teaches, because he just wants to stick with Jesus. This reflex is not new. Since the mid-20th century, scores of Christians have looked at the danger of division and seen all of the factions in the church and decided to fundamentally change the way that they think about certain issues. Subjects that Christians have historically disagreed on are avoided and become unimportant in an effort to create a mere Christianity that finds its lowest common denominator of unity and only talks about that. In other words, they look at all of the things that we disagree with with other Christians and they say, "All right, what are like the 10 things that we all agree on? We're only going to talk about those things. We're only going to emphasize those things. This is actually where the ironic denomination of non-denominational churches started. Being non-denominational church is actually being a part of a denomination. In an effort to be unifying, they just created another sect of Christianity. But the problem goes deeper than that. You see, in an effort to establish a broad basis for unity, a thin Christianity was established that looked very different from the Christianity that we see in the Bible. Here's the thing. If someone says to you that you can take all of your theology, I'm just going to stick with Jesus. Ask them one question. Which Jesus are you talking about? Because if you look at the Bible, Jesus himself commands people to get baptized. Jesus himself taught about not losing your salvation. Jesus spoke often about hell. He taught against divorce. He told people to pay their taxes. He referred to himself as king and explained that the Old Testament scriptures actually talked about him. Not only that, but Jesus engaged in theological debate, taught about the last days, called himself the son, said he was one with the father, and promised to send his spirit. He spoke about prayer, moving God to act, and taught that people were destined to reject the gospel. And he performed miracles. Many of the things Jesus actually said and taught are ignored or dismissed as unimportant. In the thin, stick with Jesus, mere Christianity that my friend falls back off. Why am I talking about this? Because it is a good thing. It is a good thing to seek to try and understand more of who God is and who he says he is. But here's the thing. This reflex to stick with Jesus is a response to a certain kind of person. It's the kind of person who puffs up with pride in their theology. There's a kind of person who takes such a pursuit of knowledge of God and turns it into a endeavor to exalt himself and make himself look impressive to other people by how much he knows about God and knows about Scripture. But the man who exalts himself as he talks about God shows in his heart that he actually knows very little about God. For the one who looks to God as he truly is and reveals himself to be, if you look at that God, you have nothing to do but to be humbled. When you are met by a great God, you begin to see yourself as very, very small. And you wonder how such a great God could even be mindful of such a small creature like you. And you're moved toward awe as you look to the sun who stepped down from glory, took the form of a man, became like us, tempted as we are, suffered more than we could ever bear and dying a death that we deserve. Though innocent, he was treated as a sinner so that sinners might be treated as innocence. When you look at that God, when you gaze at that God, your pride dies, your heart melts and you're moved towards Him. And when you pursue that God, praying to Him, reading of Him, learning from Him and growing in Him, we keep the unity. You see, Paul's little confession about the Christian faith closes with a reminder that all of these unified truths hold together in the fact that we have one God, one Father who is overall, above all, through all and in all. And I don't think it's an accident that Paul in talking about our unity reminds us that there is one Spirit, one Lord Jesus, and one God the Father. He shows us that God is three and one, Father, Son, and Spirit. Each person of the Godhead, each person of the Trinity is truly God, Father, Son, and Spirit. They're not different ways that God appears, right? That God kind of like shapeshifts, one day's the Father, the next day's the Spirit. But they're also not three parts of one God, like the splitting of a pie. God is triune, and that's actually good news for us. Don't you find it interesting that on the first pages of the Bible, we are told that humanity was made in the image of a triune God, that we were made in the image of God as He is. And as we read the Bible, we learn that God is, the Godhead is a divine community of love between Father, Son, and Spirit. It's no wonder that it's not in our nature to be alone. For God is is in and of Himself a community, and we've been made in the image of that community, Father, Son, and Spirit. So it makes sense, then, that in redeeming us, He would make us into a community that reflects the love, wisdom, and nature of who He is. And so let us work diligently, faithfully and joyfully, to keep that unity, that Christ has given us, as we pursue virtue, pursue one another, and pursue the great God, Father, Son, and Spirit. Father, we thank you for your word as we go into the Lord's Supper. God, I pray that we would turn our eyes to Jesus. And God, that you would help us to turn our eyes to one another. That as we come to the table together as one family, we would see that you have not only reconciled us with yourself, but you've also reconciled us with one another. And so help us to walk out that reconciliation together, proclaiming the good news that Christ has brought peace to those who are near and peace to those who are far off. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.