Godly Unity, Verses Manufactured Unity

We are on the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, and we've come here to the end of this prayer in John chapter 17, and I'm glad you all are here today. The message here is for the body, especially last week was for the body also, and Jesus is praying, and the last half of this prayer he's first of all wanting to pray for the sheep that they would be left in this world, that Father would not take them out of the world, and that they would not be of this world, that they would not be taken downstream by the current of this present world, the evil that is in it. But then they're given a great commission that they would be sent into the world, and we left off with that in verse number 18, as thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.

How many of you can think of in your mind a opportunity or ministry that you have where you're actually obedient to those words, as a child of God, as a sheep, that you have an outreach into the world, that you are actually ministering into the world? So, we ought to have, individually, families, corporately, as a church, an outreach into the world. And so after praying for the church and their ministry to the world, then he is moving here at the end of this prayer to the ministry within the congregation here, and we're going to talk about the need for unity. And these are the important things in the Lord's heart.

I look at the Bible, and I sometimes say, the Lord could have prayed 101 different things. He could have prayed, you talk about a person's last words, I mean, here's the last prayer, and the Lord's going to go up and pray on the Garden of Gethsemane, and he's going to be taken in and betrayed and crucified, and here's what's on his heart. So when you think about the things that are on the Lord's heart, it's my sheep in the world, how should they respond? And my sheep in the church, how should they respond one to another? And so that is the prayers here of the Lord in his high priesthood prayer, and I'm going to read, starting in John chapter 17, verse number 20, and again, this prayer is not for the disciples, but for all those, he says, who are believers, this would be for all of us.

Starting in verse number 20, Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be one. As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me, and the glory which thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me.

You notice this word one here, and the prayer in the heart of God, that they may be one. He says, as the Father is one with me, that we might be one together, Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, and the church, that we all might be one, and they might be one together. So we are going to talk about that this morning, unity, the need for unity, and why unity, and how to accomplish unity, and what the Lord is trying to teach us here, so let's just bow our hearts here and pray, and we'll ask God to help us.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this, this your word, that as we learned this morning, lives and abides forever, and Lord, what we share this morning is an eternal message, and it's something that will go on forever, it will not fade away. So Lord, may you instruct us and help me as I teach, and Lord, these who hear, open our ears so we can hear. May you guide and direct our life through your word as we consider it this morning.

Lord, bless us, help us, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Well the emphasis here is on this word, one, and there's something here I'd like to explain, we've talked about it a little bit here in the past, but I'd like you to look here at verse number 21, before I get into unity, I want to make an explanation here of Jesus' words, he says that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee. And I know sometimes I've had people try to explain this, Jesus says, Father, you are in me, and I am in you, and sometimes we can understand how one can be in the other, but how can the other be in the other? So for example, there's paper in here, in this container, and I know you can understand how I can say that the paper is in the container, and yet when I turn around and say that the container is in the paper, we have a problem with that one.

How can they both be in? And here Jesus says here that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father, and then he's going to go on and talk about how we are in them. And this whole idea of being in, it can be sometimes confusing when we read these scriptures, but actually what it's referring to here, the word in, it's referring to a connection, a union. John 15 talks about the branch is in the vine, and these two are connected, they are in union.

If you go back to John 15, we won't take the time this morning, but John uses the word in often. Abide in the vine. Abide in me, and I in you.

This idea of being connected one to another. The Father is connected to the Son, and the Son is connected to the Father. And also it's the heart of God that through the Holy Spirit of God that you and I would be connected to the Father and the Son.

If you look down here to verse number 23, he says, I in them, that's me in the church, and thou, Father, in me, that they may be perfect in one. And so you have the Father connected to the Son, the Son connected to the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is in the church. And so we are connected, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

It's kind of like this, the Father reached down to the world through the Son. The Son reached down through the world through the Holy Spirit. He gave us the Spirit and sent us out into the world, and so we're all connected.

You ever seen people try to save someone from a river? You know, one guy stands up on the ground and reaches down, another guy takes his hand, they go in further, and a third guy takes a hand and they try to reach, and they hold on to each other. In a sense, the one is in the other, and the other is in the other. They are connected together, and so you have this idea of the vine and the branches.

They are connected, and this connection is only possible because God has given us His Holy Spirit, and that's how we are connected to Him. So if we can see spiritually, and the Bible teaches this, we would see the Father's throne, we would see the grace of God like the river flowing out of the throne through the Lord Jesus Christ, down here through the Holy Spirit into all of us. And so that we're connected, Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And this is spoken of here in verse 22 when Jesus said, and the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one. That glory here is referring to the Holy Spirit of God. It's called in 1 Peter the Spirit of Glory.

It is the favor that God has bestowed. Remember we talked about glory a few weeks ago, the favor that God has bestowed upon Jesus. He has bestowed upon us as children.

He has blessed us. This is my beloved Son, and the Holy Spirit came down as a dove upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you come to Jesus, God says, this is my beloved Son, and the Holy Spirit comes down on you.

And so the glory that the Father gave the Son, Jesus said, I've given you that glory. And so this glory brings us all connected. We're all connected one with another.

And so the Lord goes on here, and what He's trying to say is this, as we are walking under the anointing and blessing and fullness of the Spirit of God, we can walk in union with the Father and with the Son, and praise God with one another. And so there's this horizontal and vertical thing that's going on. As long as I am under the anointing of God's Spirit, I have His Spirit, and I'm walking in His Spirit, I can have fellowship and union with any one of you who are doing the same.

And that's where fellowship comes from. Someone said a few years ago, fellowship is a bunch of fellows on the same ship. They're heading in the same direction.

They have the Spirit of God. They're under the anointing of God's Spirit. And so as you have union and you're connected with the Father and the Son by the Holy Spirit of God vertically, then you can also connect with people horizontally and have fellowship, and have unity, and have oneness.

As a matter of fact, in Ephesians chapter 4 and verse number 3, it's called the unity of the Spirit. The unity of the Spirit. It's not something that we can produce.

The unity that Jesus is praying for here, that they all might be one, is not something that man can do. It's something that only the Spirit of God does. As you and I are yielded to Him.

So maybe I'm standing up here and I'm filled with the Spirit of God, and I'm right with God, and my heart is clear with Him. Doesn't mean I'm living a perfect life, but if I sin, I acknowledge that and humble myself, and the Lord washes me, and He allows His Spirit to continue to flow through me, and I have love, and I have joy, and I have peace, and I have longsuffering, and gentleness, and meekness, and temperance, and faith. And then brother Chris up here, he comes to church, and he is right with God, and his heart is filled with the Holy Spirit, and he has also love, and joy, and peace, and longsuffering, and gentleness, and all these fruits are flowing out of him.

And brother David back there, he comes to church, and he's got love, and joy, and peace, and he's right with God. And I'll tell you what, we can be one. We can have a deep, intimate fellowship.

We can be overflowing with love for each other, and that is created by a yielding ourselves to the Spirit of God, and therefore that Spirit of God yoking us together, one with another. But if I come to church, and I've been living in sin, and doing things that are not good, I've been kicking the dog, and yelling at my wife, and haven't been on my face praying, and seeking God, and finding forgiveness. You know, anybody who's been there before, you know you're just kind of always frustrated.

Things just get you so angry so quick, and you're so short with the kids. And so I come to church, and I'm in that condition, and here brother Chris comes, he's got the same problem I do. And he's walking fleshly, he's carnal, and he's maybe involved in things he shouldn't have been this last week, and he's not in the Word, he's not on his face like he should be praying to the Lord.

And he comes to church too, and brother David, he comes the very same way. So maybe I say something kind of a little strange to brother Chris, it gets him a little upset, maybe he's offended, he gets a little angry and frustrated. Instead of coming to me, he goes and tells David, and David, he gets a little upset, and everybody's so upset, we start fighting with each other, and start bickering, and we start dividing.

Why is that happening? Because we're not right with God, and therefore we cannot have oneness, cannot have unity. And so it's important, as Jesus said, Father, they might be one, connected to us, filled with the Holy Spirit, and one of the beautiful unities I see is the unity found in the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon them. It talks about they were all of one accord.

They had everything in common. They were willing to sell their goods and part them to people who had need. They continued daily in fellowship and in prayer and in breaking of bread, and they were in a beautiful oneness.

You know why that was? It wasn't something they concocted. It wasn't something they read a book about. It's because the Spirit of God was upon their life, and they were clear with the Lord, and they had a beautiful oneness.

And so this is not a man-made unity that Jesus is talking about here. Now I know some have tried to do that, and I know sometimes it gets frustrating that we're trying to keep people together and trying to have unity, and so we sometimes decide we're going to make it. We're going to manufacture it, and some of the ways that people do that are interesting, but we could manufacture a unity right here.

We could have a brother's meeting, and we could pull out 20 or 30 things in the Bible that we can all agree on. Maybe we're comfortable with these 20 or 30 things. We'll write them down, and we'll tell the brothers and the rest of the church, alright, here's the 20 or 30 things we're going to do.

We're going to specialize in, even though there's 200 of them in the Bible. We're going to make these our unity. So we'll just share that with everyone, and if you don't agree with these things, then maybe you shouldn't be here.

You should go on. And so once everybody leaves who doesn't agree with our 20 or 30 things that we've decided on, then we can say that we've got unity now. That's a manufactured unity.

That's not the unity that comes from the Spirit of God. It's something that is man-made. And you go throughout the Bible, there's so many things that man tries to manufacture instead of allowing God's Spirit to manufacture unity.

And it'll work really well if you allow God's Spirit to do it. You know, there's a good example of this, and I've been thinking about this the last few months in many different areas of life. But you remember Sarah and Abraham.

You remember God came to Abraham and Sarah and said, you're going to have a son. And they were all excited about that and waiting for it. Well, they kept waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting, and they passed childbearing age.

They were, I don't know, 75 years old, maybe even older, and still no child had come. And they thought that God had promised them that they were going to have a child. And so what did they do? They decided to do this themselves.

Good intentions? Yes. And so they got together and said, well, maybe the Lord wants us to manufacture this child, and we'll get it done ourselves. And so Abraham and Sarah got together and said, hey, how about Hagar? Abraham, you go in to Hagar and we'll have a son.

Lord willing. And so that happens. And everybody's excited.

You know, we did it! We got God's promise accomplished, and we've had a son, and his name is Ishmael. And you know what? If you'd have met Abraham and Sarah back in those days, they'd have been all excited. Probably introduced Ishmael as God's special son promised to them.

Here he is. He's our son. God promised us a son.

It's just that we kind of manufactured it. Well, I don't know how old Ishmael was, got to go back and read the story, but a number of years later, after Ishmael was born, here comes one day, Abraham's out in front of the tent, and he sees three men walking along, and they're angels, and the Lord is one of them, and he starts to invite them into the house. You know, they sit down there, and the angels, well, they make the angels some food, and while they're sitting there talking, Abraham's cooking, or Sarah's cooking, and God says to Abraham, Abraham, guess what? It's time to have that son.

Oh, yeah, time to have that son. Yeah, you know the one I promised you many years back that you're going to have. It's time for Sarah to give birth and have a son.

Oh, well, they did have a son, didn't they? And his name was Isaac. He was called the son of promise. You know what the Bible says? The Bible says that Abraham told God, oh God, would God that Ishmael could live before you.

You know, Ishmael, Ishmael the one that I concocted, would God that he could be that chosen one, not so much Isaac. Well, you know what happened, the whole story. Isaac, later on, began getting persecuted from Ishmael.

You know, you'll find this in life. Put this in the back of your mind. Whenever in religion man does things and concocts things, it looks good for a while.

Ishmael looked really good. However, as time goes on, and maybe in the next generation even it might take, you'll find that Ishmael will start to persecute Isaac. That which is man's ideas and man's concoctions will ultimately come back and be a thorn in the flesh of God's true children.

And you know the problem with all of this, when man gets involved in it, the problem with all of it, you know what the problem was with Ishmael? Ishmael was the glory of man. Ishmael brought glory to Abraham and Sarah. Great idea, Abraham and Sarah, you have this boy Ishmael.

But Isaac brought glory to God. And that's what we want. You know, we can make a unity, we can force a unity, we can manufacture a unity, and we can feel good in that unity, but ultimately that unity is going to bring glory to us.

It's our unity. But better that we allow God to bring unity here, by the power of His Spirit. And that's something that you and I need to individually search our hearts.

And you know, if all of us come here and we fellowship together and during the week, and our hearts are in a good place before God and we have love and joy and peace and all the fruits of the Spirit coming out of us, we'll have a wonderful unity here. But I guarantee, if you're struggling spiritually and you're having issues and you're frustrated and you're depressed and you're guilty and your conscience is struggling, just like Cain's conscience, you know, Cain had a struggling conscience because when he brought his offering, the Lord didn't accept it. It wasn't a blood offering.

And so when Abel said something to Cain that set him off a little bit, Cain took a knife and killed it. You know, he did that because he had a heart that was not at rest. You know, a lot of troubles in churches are caused because there are people whose hearts are not at rest.

They have guilty consciences, they're troubled, and so when their brother does something that they don't like, they rise up against them and no, they don't take a knife, but maybe they'll use their words and just stab them in the back. You know, why that happens? Because they're not filled with the Holy Spirit of God. And so God's, the Lord's heart is, as He prays here, is for unity.

Unity is not one of the fruits of the Spirit. Just throw this out to you. You know, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, temperance, and faith.

You notice unity is not in there. But if, and by the way, those fruits are coming out of the individual life, my life, your life, they ought to be coming out of our life, but unity requires two or three. And so if you have a few individuals who are filled with the Spirit of God, then those individuals coming together can have what is biblically called unity.

And notice here in verse number 20 of chapter 17, one word here that I don't understand how we as Christians get by this, but it says in verse number 20, neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word, that they all, all these that believe on me through their word, that they all, that word all there, may be one. As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they all may be one. You know, the heart of God is that every believer, I don't care whether they live in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Russia, all of God's children could be in unity together.

That's the heart of God. That they all might be one. All the believers in the world, that is the heart of God.

That is not a reference to all of us here in the church. You know, here we are, and we should work on that. We could be one, but that we could also be one with everybody else who's a child of God.

And so that's the heart, that's the prayer here that the Lord gives for the whole church to be one. And if you keep reading here, there's a reason for that in verse 21. It says that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

Now, there's a reason why that we need to have this oneness, because it's a wonderful testimony to the world, and that the world could believe. You know, sometimes I think, we go out and we preach the gospel, and people say, I don't want it. You know, it's so hard to preach the gospel, especially here in America, and get people to believe.

And we wonder, maybe it's hard hearts, maybe it's sin. You ever thought that it's maybe all this division in the church, and the testimony of all this division, that the world says, I want nothing of it. I mean, it destroys the gospel message.

You talk about this gospel changing lives, but why don't it change you sheep? Why don't you sheep stop acting like goats, and budding each other all the time, and maybe we'd want to join you, this group of sheep. And so, you know, the reason for this oneness, the first thing that comes to the Lord's mind here, he mentions it twice, is for the world to believe. In verse 23, he says, I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfect in one, that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved me, loved them, as thou hast loved me.

And so, this is one of the great testimonies to the world, is to see God's people dwelling together in unity. Let me read to you the example of this in the early church. You don't have to turn there, it's Acts chapter 2, but let me just read to you, listen as I read.

It says, in verse 41, Then they that gladly received his word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. This is a testimony of the early church. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread, and in prayers.

And fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles, and all that believed were together, had all things common. They sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord, unity, in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.

Isn't that a beautiful testimony there? I mean, people were looking at this. And then the next verse says this, And the Lord added to the church daily, and such as should be saved. And so you have a beautiful example of this.

This beautiful unity that God is producing. He is converting people. They are filled with the Spirit of God.

They are living in a perfect unity together. And the world is seeing that and saying, I want to be a part of that. And so the Lord is adding to the church on a day-to-day basis.

And that's the broad church, or that church that was starting there. So maybe we ought to just consider the fact that one of the reasons why we're struggling with evangelism today is just the testimony of bickering and fighting and division amongst God's people, possibly. And so I would encourage all of you to seek after unity.

Amen? We're going to see here in a little bit some verses. I'm going to have you turn to a couple of different places. But seeking to get together with God's children.

And so the Lord's heart is for all to be one. And that is why I've often said that denominationalism is not the will of God. Denominationalism is carnality.

It is from the flesh. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 1. I'm going to ask you to turn to a couple of places here this morning. 1 Corinthians chapter 1, starting in verse number 10.

1 Corinthians 1 verse 10. Here's what it says. Let's read.

Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you. This is the heart of God. There be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.

For it has been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, I've heard this, that there are contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you sayeth, I am of Paul, and I am of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? I want to ask that question here this morning.

Is Christ divided? Now we're said to be the body of Christ, right? The church is the body of Christ. Can you imagine if Jesus were here and His head and His arm were over here, one of His legs and His abdomen was over here, another leg and another arm was back here, and other body parts were in that back corner, you would probably say something like this. Jesus is not going to be very effective as a person with His body parts in different places all divided up.

Not only that, He's not going to live long in that condition. So is Christ divided? That's a good question to ask, and the Holy Spirit asks that question to us as we read the Scriptures. Is Christ divided? You know, one of the goals that the Bible has is to divide the body.

You know, militarily, one of the great military schemes to defeat your enemy is to divide and conquer. Get the enemy divided, and you can defeat an enemy much easier if you divide it, and especially if you divide the enemy and they start fighting each other. Boy, wouldn't you love to fight a war with an enemy who's divided up and fighting each other, shooting their guns at each other? And so it is the work of the devil to divide the body of Christ up and get us to start shooting at each other, and then he can come and make spoil of the place.

And so you and I have experienced and have seen that many years, and we are in a generation here where it's a long way down the road the wrong way. And you know, one of the things I thought about even this morning was the Bible says last week we talked about, be not conformed to this world. You know, one thing our minds have been conformed to being in the world that we live is that, hey, church is just divided all the time.

I mean, we see it everywhere. We see this church, this church, this church, this name, different. Everything is divided, and we get the idea that that's normal.

It conforms our thinking into the idea that this must be the way it's supposed to be. Everything is all divided up. Well, I got news for you.

It's not the way it's supposed to be. It's a perversion. Division is not something that is a good thing.

There's only one place I find in the Bible where division is mentioned as a good thing. The Bible says that Jesus is come to set a man at variance with his father and his mother and to divide a household, and that's through conversion. And yes, we are to be separated from unbelievers, even if it's our parents.

But we're talking about the body of Christ. That's division. It's not a good word.

And so one of the goals of the devil is to scatter and divide the people of God. Smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered. Scattered sheep is not a good thing.

Scattered sheep get killed by wolves. Daniel talks about the Antichrist. Scattering the power of the holy people.

This idea of scattering God's people is not good. Look over here. Well, look at verse number 12.

Verse 12. Now this I say that everyone says, I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I of Cephas, and I of Christ. You know, one of the things that happens is the pride of man, we give labels.

We give labels and we break up the body of Christ. Here there are labels that are used of men. Paul, Apollos, Cephas.

Do you think these guys wanted people to name their groups after them? No, actually Paul who wrote this went on to say in verse 13, he says, was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul? Why in the world are you naming your church Paul or were Paulites? I wasn't on the cross. I wasn't. You weren't baptized in my name.

And so here you have at the very beginning, in the early church, people already dividing up and saying, following men and naming their groups after different men. Haven't we seen that throughout history? I got some examples. How about the Wesleyans? Who are they named after? John Wesley.

How about the Lutherans? Named after Martin Luther. We sang a song this year about Martin Luther. How about the Mennonites? Or the Amish? Those are groups that have taken the names of men.

There are other ways to divide. Groups taking the names of organizations, church organizations. For example, the Presbyterians.

That's an organizational word. Presbyterus is a Greek word. How we organize our church.

Or the Congregationalists. Or the Episcopalians. You can imagine way back at the beginning, we're a better church than you are.

We organize this way, therefore we're going to call ourselves Presbyteria. Right? Oh no, no, no. We organize this way.

We're better than you. We're going to call ourselves Congregationalists. Or Episcopalians.

There's a lot of ways that men divide things up. I thought of different denominational names to exalt their name because of their pet doctrines. Anybody think of any of those? Seventh-day Adventists.

We're the Seventh-day Adventists. Our pet doctrine is the seventh day. How about the Pentecostals? That comes from the idea that we believe in the day of Pentecost and speaking in tongues.

Our pet doctrine is Pentecostalism. How about the Plain Church? Oh, that's an interesting word, isn't it? That's given because we dress a certain way. We're plain people.

We tend to like to use those things to elevate ourselves and give ourselves a label. And you know, all these labels, all they do is divide people. They divide the sheep.

And the Bible tells us here that it's not good. We're going to see here in just a minute, it's carnality. And it actually glorifies humanity.

For example, when you say you're a Lutheran, over and over, we're Lutheran, we're Lutheran, we're Lutheran. Who are you magnifying? A man by the name of Luther. What if I say I'm a Christian? Who am I magnifying there? A magnifying Christ? What if I say I'm a Mennonite? Who am I magnifying there? And so we say these things, we put these things on our church buildings and our church signs and not knowing that we're actually magnifying a man instead of the Lord Himself.

And so I have an illustration here. Let me draw. This is God's heart for the world to be one as far as God's people.

And inside that, you start forming these groups. You've got the Baptists. You've got the Pentecostals.

You've got the Lutherans. You've got the Mennonites. You've got all of these groups that are forming inside this group called the sheep.

And then some of you have experienced this. Inside the Baptists, there's the Southern Baptists and the regular Baptists and the independent Baptists. And then this thing keeps scattering and dividing and dividing.

And this is not the will of God here. Amen? When He's praying that they all might be one. That's not what He had in mind.

Let's keep going here. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 3. I know we've gone over some of these verses before, but our repetition is the key to learning. 1 Corinthians chapter 3, starting in verse 1. Here's what Paul calls this.

And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk and not with meat, for hitherto you were not able to bear it, neither yet now are you able. For you are yet carnal, for where there is among you ending and strife and divisions, are you not carnal and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are you not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believe, even as the Lord gave to every man? So here he talks about carnality.

Carnality. Walking like men, or walking like the world. You probably haven't heard that recently.

This kind of thing is called carnality. The Bible calls it carnality. So when someone says, you know, what denomination are you? I encourage a non-denomination.

We don't believe in dividing the body. You know, if you take on these names, you're actually saying, I'm carnal. I'm walking like people out there in society that divide up between Democrat and Republican and Independent and all these divisions and sports teams and competing back and forth.

That's the spirit of the world. And that spirit is not to be inside the church. Let's keep going.

1 Corinthians chapter 11. Just a verse or two here. In 1 Corinthians chapter 11 verse 17.

I'm reading these verses that deal with division. 1 Corinthians 11 verse 17. Now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you not that you come together, not for the better, but for the worse.

For first of all, when you come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you, and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you, that they which be approved may be made manifest among you. Division.

Division is not a good word. So I would encourage you, I think it's God's heart for you to try to bring people together. God's people.

And we'll talk about some of the details here in just a little bit. Let's look at one more example. 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verse 25.

Here's a word that goes along with division. Verse 25, that there should be no schisms in the body, but that the members should have the same care one for another. No schisms.

These are schisms. It's not God's heart for there to be schisms in the body. But that the body would have the same care one for another.

I've given you this illustration before in this body of mine that God made. Every member of the body gets the same care. You know, the arm does not get special treatment and the legs suffer.

But God made the body that the blood, the nourishment, the care goes through all the body. And every member gets the same care. And so when schisms come in the body you have three families over here and they group together.

It's us. And we're going to fellowship just us three and no one else. And then inside the body you have another group of four families.

Some of you young people know what this is like. Cliques. We have our little group over here and you have your little group over there and we don't get together.

And then you have another up here. There's five families up here and so you have a church which is supposed to have the same care one for another. And I encourage you all if you want to do the will of God that you do not treat people differently here.

Amen? That you have the same care one for another. And I would encourage you to greet everyone. The Bible says greet the brethren with a holy kiss.

It doesn't say greet the special ones that you really like with a holy kiss. It says greet them all with a holy kiss. And so this idea of schisming up.

Some over here we're going to fellowship and we don't fellowship with you and others over here we're going to be our own little group and you're not going to be a part of us. That is schisming the body. It's a good place for an amen there.

But to have the same care one for another. You've heard me say this probably. I think Brother Cleave even said this before.

Maybe it was him. To dwell above with saints we love that will be glory. But to dwell below with saints we know that's a different story.

That's generally the problem isn't it? And so schisms. Now I want to just encourage you. You know one day when the Lord Jesus comes and all his sheep are going to be caught up to meet him in the air.

Do you know all those labels are going to fall off? They're going to fall off. Everything's going to. You say you got on your Baptist hat.

You know it's going to fall off. Those signs out there that give that you know we're different and better than you. That's all going to burn.

It's all going to be left here to burn. The only people that are going up are sheep. And there's no labels on the sheep.

So we ought to live that way now. And not divide the body. Well what chance does an army have if it wars among itself? So we ought not to war among ourselves.

So while Jesus intercedes for oneness and I believe he's still doing that. Many seek to divide and schism the body. Look at Romans 16.

One more verse here. Then I'm going to switch gears. Romans 16 verse.

I'm going to start in verse number 1. I want to go down through this chapter here. Just I'm going to skip through some things. Paul is greeting all these people in the area of Rome.

Probably a large area here. He says in verse 1 of Romans 16. I commend unto you Phoebe.

Look down to verse 5. Likewise greet the church that is in their house. Salute my well beloved. He goes down through all these names.

Verse 6 greet Mary. Verse 7 salute Andronicus and Junia. Verse 8 greet Amphilus.

Verse 9 more names. Verse 10 salute Apellos. Verse 11 Herodian.

These are different people in different places. And all these in verse 12, 13. Jump down to verse 14.

Salute Asyncritus, Philegion, Hermas, Petrobus and another Hermas and the brethren which are with them. There must have been a group of Christians meeting there. In verse 15 salute Philologus and Julia and Nereus and his sister and Olympus and all the saints which are with them.

There's a fellowship there in that area. Salute one another with a holy kiss. The churches of Christ salute you.

In other words, Paul is writing to all these people and he's saluting them. There's no kind of, well, people are special over here and you're not doing that good over here. It's just he's saluting everybody.

And then he goes on in verse 17. Notice what it says. Now I beseech you brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrines which you have been learned and avoid them for they that serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.

For your obedience has come abroad unto all men. I am glad therefore on your behalf, but yet I would have you wise unto that which is good and simple concerning that which is evil. Avoid them, mark them which cause divisions.

This is not the will of God for the churches to be divided. And so the Lord speaks very strongly about this idea of division. Now I want to close and comment on a few things because you have to add this in to the mix to help understand what unity is from a biblical perspective.

But unity has to be around something. And God's Spirit will bring us united around certain things. And so I'd like you to turn with me to Acts chapter 2 and read here about where our unity is centered.

And the example I read to you earlier is the one I want to use here in Acts chapter 2. This is the first example given of new converts coming together in the church in unity. And there are four things here that the Spirit of God encourages us to unify around. And I believe if you have the Spirit of God in you, if you're a sheep, then the Spirit of God is working to unify you with your brothers and sisters in these four areas specifically.

And so let's just look at them briefly here. Acts chapter 2 verse 42 says, and they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine. That's one.

And fellowship, that's two. And in breaking of bread, that's three. And in prayer, that is four.

And I believe if you're filled this morning with the Holy Spirit of God, I believe you're going to love all four of those things. I believe your heart ought to pant for those four things because it's the Spirit of God that drove them to desire these things. And boy, you get people who are filled with the Spirit who desire these four things.

You can have a fellowship that is united. And I believe a fellowship that's powerful. Well, the first thing here he mentions is the apostles' doctrine.

In other words, unity has to be based upon the truth of God's Word. You have to have the truth. You have to pursue the truth.

You know, I can't be united with a church or people who believe that gay marriage is okay. I mean, I want to be united with anyone who claims to be a child of God, but if they're not willing to support the truth, you know, they can say to me, well, just be united with us. I can't unite with them.

And you ought not to either. We only should unite in God's Spirit. We unite with those who are pursuing the truth.

And that's important. The Bible says that in 1 John 4 that the Spirit and the Word are one. You cannot separate the Spirit and the Word of God.

So if you want unity of the Spirit, then you need to be pursuing the truth. I remember going to a minister's prayer meeting up here in Mount Vernon with Joe Thompson. He was an elder back in the late 1990s, early 2000s.

And we had what they had in Mount Vernon was a minister's meeting. A lot of ministers from Mount Vernon would come together and pray, and there was probably a dozen that would come, and I came with Joe. And they had decided to have a get-together and have a tent or something where they would have all the churches come together one summer for a church get-together.

They were trying to bring the churches together. And we were for that. I mean, we wanted to bring the churches together, too.

And so we would go to the meetings. We would have prayer together with the ministers. And many of the ministers were good men.

They had a good heart. And we sat down one time, and we had a discussion about this meeting we were going to have. And they talked about we need to just bear the flag of love and unity.

And that's the flag we need to bear. Just love for one another and unity. And I was sitting there, and I thought, you know, we need to put another flag up there beside that.

And so I opened up my mouth, and I said, well, wait a minute. Maybe we ought to put another flag up there, and that is that flag called truth. Truth.

And you know, that didn't go very well in the meeting. And by the way, Joe and I didn't participate in their event at the end. We as a church.

Many people would like to bring everybody together without this truth being also raised up. And so unity must have, along with it, truth. And so we can't get away from the truth.

Now, I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but I realize that unity here is going to require some purging. You know the vine in John 15? The Bible says the Lord purges. You can't have a healthy, vibrant vine without purging.

And so unity is going to require purging. This is the purging agent. Sanctify them through the truth.

Thy Word is truth. And sometimes we need to take the truth and do church discipline to purge people who are not abiding in the truth, so that the vine can remain healthy. So we go back to Matthew 18, which is something I brought out in the past, but I want to bring it out again just to clarify.

In Matthew 18, this is what's used to purge the church. And here's something that's important. The church, when they purge someone, they do it united.

It's the church that does it. For example, you see someone in the church who's living in sin, living in rebellion. What is your responsibility? Well, your responsibility is to go to them.

It's a beautiful thing. You care for them. You go to them.

You want the church to be united. You want this brother to be in the church. You go to them and say, hey, listen, there's something in your life, a sin in your life.

You need to address it. He says, pah, nothing to it. I don't want to hear you.

Well, that's okay. The Bible says if he doesn't hear you, take another one or two. So you take another brother or two to him, and you three sit down and say, brother, we want you to be a part of the church.

We don't want you to be cast out and purged. We want you to be a member here and be united with us. And he says, pah, nothing to it.

I don't want it. I'm going to keep living the way I want to live. Well, Jesus says next, then bring it before the church.

The united church. And the church then comes to this individual. And the church as a body says, listen, we don't want you to be removed.

We want you here. Would you listen and hearken unto what God is saying in His Word and repent? And he says, pah, nothing to it. Then we grievingly have to purge a branch from the church.

And that person is to be put out. But I want you to notice that it's done by the whole body in unity. The body remains in unity.

We unitedly deal with sin. We don't do it individually. Oh, so-and-so is doing wrong, so I'm going to stay away from them and just avoid them.

And I'm going to disfellowship from them, just me, myself. No, it's something that we do as a church, as a body. And in doing so, we can keep the church purged and cleansed and yet continue in our unity.

So the body as a whole disciplines, not individual members. I just had this thought, it's kind of off-subject, but, and I'm almost done, I have just a couple of comments yet, but the Bible says to confess your faults one to another, doesn't it? Confess your faults. The Bible does not say to confess your brother's faults one to another, does it? You know, if we had more people confess their faults one to another and less people confessing everybody else's faults one to another, we would encourage unity, wouldn't we? And that's something we don't see a lot of.

You know, through the years, hey, I just want to share my faults. I want to confess where I'm at and stay humble before one another. But we tend to like to talk about other people's faults.

Confessing my brother's faults. Isn't it a whole lot easier to confess your brother's faults one to another than it is to confess your own? So unity requires the truth. They continued steadfastly in the Apostles' Doctrine.

We cannot put this Bible away. By the way, in the end, there's going to be a unity, a one-world system. It's probably going to have some religion in it, and everybody's going to want to join together and be united, but it's going to be contrary to the truth.

Well, the next thing here is, it says they continued in the Apostles' Doctrine and in fellowship. Do you know one thing God's Spirit does? It brings us together into fellowship. The Bible says to not forsake the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is.

Do you hear that? Don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together. I believe the Spirit of God got you up this morning and said it's time to go to church. You need, as Brother Eli was saying, you need the strengthening of the brethren.

You need this fellowship. It's a part of this unity I'm building, the Word of God and fellowship. I don't believe God intended us to be a loner.

You know why, children? You know why God doesn't want us to be a loner? It's because I was at a zoo yesterday and saw some of those lions over in Fort Wayne. Ezra came up with Keturah, so we went to a zoo in Fort Wayne. Mean lions.

You know what lions do? The Bible says the devil is a roaring lion walking about, seeking whom he may devour. You know if you watch in the African jungle, those lions, they cannot get one of those wildebeest as long as they're together in their group, because if they try to get in there, they'll get stampeded and crushed. But what they try to do is stir up that group so that some weak one or some disoriented one gets off to the side by themselves.

And that's when they attack, right? You get somebody off by themselves, they have not the group with them, and that's how lions hunt. They draw the weak to the side. They scatter so they can take them down one by one.

So brothers and sisters, this fellowship here is strengthening. The devil is outside the door, he'd love to get at us, but the power and the blessing that is here, he cannot get to us. But he'd love to draw a few of you aside, get you alone, and to devour.

Then he goes on here in Acts chapter 2 and he says, breaking of bread. I don't know whether that's talking about communion, I think it's talking about just eating together. Hospitality.

I would encourage you all, and I believe the Spirit of God should be working in us to be hospitable. Inviting people to your house. Inviting people over.

Break bread together. That's a beautiful thing. Breaking bread together.

It brings a unity in the body. And then the last one here is prayer. And you see that in the early church, they came together to pray.

Wanting to come together to pray. And you know, it's unfortunate that they say that the prayer meeting in churches are the least people. And yet the Spirit of God ought to be encouraging us and promoting us to come together to pray.

Pray. So if the Spirit of the Lord is controlling us as a body and we're filled with the Holy Spirit, there ought to be a beautiful unity here. And that unity ought to lead us into pursuing the truth.

That unity ought to lead us into desiring fellowship. Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves. That unity ought to produce a hospitality to, let's have people over! And it also ought to produce a desire to get together and pray.

That was the early church. Anointed with the Spirit. So when the Lord says to the Father that they might be one, this is what He's desired.

And so let's avoid the carnality of division. Let's handle sin as a church properly. As a body, let's handle it.

Not dividing each other up. United, handling it together. And let's pursue the truth.

Let's pursue fellowship. Let's pursue breaking in bread and let's pursue prayer. And even, He goes on to say that we have all things common.

I believe that the Spirit of God would want us to help each other financially when we have need. And you know, you get people in the world who see a church like this, who love the Word, who love the fellowship, who love to have hospitality, who love to pray together, who share their goods. Maybe the Lord can add to the church.

Such as should be saved. So that's a high calling. But I got good news for you.

Somebody's sitting at the right hand of God praying for this to be accomplished. That they all might be one. So let's close with that and we'll open it up for anyone who'd like to share on this