Coming Together Where It Counts 1974

Every so often, the friends are terribly shocked to learn that a particular couple, who always seem to be the ideal marriage, are throwing in the towel. And they wonder, how can this be? These two beautiful people, who were so much in love and so devoted to each other, are getting a divorce. What nobody understood was, of course, that for years and years, these people were having a hard time.

Countless times they sat down and tried to talk about their problem, and they promised each other that they would do everything in their power to make this thing work, and they really tried. They took a vacation to Florida when they could ill afford it. They started entertaining their friends quite extensively.

When finances improved, they joined a ski club, and then they got a boat. But always when the friends would go home and they were alone, everything would change. When everybody was around, you know, they were entertaining the company, they were just devoted, they were so in love.

And now when the house is empty, they just can't find anything to say to each other. The only thing they have in common is their common hell. And so the resentment inside each heart toward the other builds and builds, and the distance between these two people begins to grow until they're a universe apart, even though they're living in the same house and eating at the same table.

Now you ask, how can this be, that this couple, in love with each other like this, can ever get to that point? Didn't they try to repair this thing when it began to totter? Didn't they try again and again in a thousand ways to come together in unity? Of course they tried. They came together on their Florida trip, and they came together in marvelous harmony when they had to put on the demonstration of a successful marriage to their friends. And they really tried when they joined the ski club, they skied together, and they would boat together, and they did all kinds of things together, and they tried so hard at making love.

See, but they never came together in those places that really count. For instance, they never came together in any kind of unity at the dinner table, with their children at their sides, blessings from God before their very eyes, at such times there was no opening of the heart, no listening, no thoughtfulness, not even enough thoughtfulness to pass the salt and the pepper. Or when the children were in bed and they were alone in the room.

No effort to talk, or to listen, or to even share the silence of a peaceful room together. Or when the crisis would hit the family, as it always does, many times, they never learn how to face that crisis together with their arms around each other, but always they allowed the crisis to split them up some more, blaming each the other for the financial troubles, the loss of a job, the mess their child got into. If a man and woman are going to make it in a marriage, they have to learn to come together in those places in the marriage that really count, not just up on the surface for all the friends to see, but deep down, not just with their bodies, but with their wills and their hearts.

Now, in exactly the same way, brothers and sisters in the body of Christ have a tendency to expend all kinds of effort to achieve superficial unity in the body. We try to stage it, we try to program it and engineer it. We become conscious of the fact, for instance, that there is no unity, not the kind of unity there should be in the body, in our assemblies, or across the city.

And like the couple who think that the Florida vacation is going to heal the marriage, we start using all kinds of naive, superficial cures. Coffee hours, more entertainment, a little bit more recreation. Maybe if we get to know each other better on the tennis court.

And then we look out over the city and we see the disunity and we think we're going to bring the church and the city of Detroit together. And so we gather all the leaders for meetings and then maybe we plan some kind of campaign. And we come to the idea that maybe if we bring in an evangelist and fill Cobo Hall for two weeks, this is going to bring the church in Detroit together.

We go on and on trying all kinds of things, and we find at the end of all this effort we're farther apart than we were when we started out. We have to learn to come together as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, in those places that really matter. And there are three such places.

And if we will come together in these three places, there will be heaven-sent unity in our assemblies and in the church across Detroit. First, we have to learn to come together before the throne of God. See, when we come to the throne, when we come before our Heavenly Father, He always sends His Holy Spirit upon us.

And He always delivers us from ourselves. What's the first thing that hits us when we come into the presence of our Father? The first thing that we're conscious of always is not ourselves, not our differences, not even our similarities, but God. We see the Father high and lifted up, and we see His love, and we see the Lamb seated at the right hand, and we see His blood, and we see the seven torches burning, and the glory of God.

And when we begin to see these things, what can we do but worship God? We're delivered from ourselves into a state of worship of the true and living God. And as we praise Him, and glorify Him, and honor Him, and thank Him, the Spirit of God comes down upon us and welds us together into the mind of Christ. And you see this also in Scripture.

When Mary, carrying the Son of God in her body, meets Elizabeth, her cousin, who's carrying John the Baptist in her body, the moment these two women come together, we see worship. When the disciples go up to the appointed mountain in Galilee to meet the risen Lord, and there He is, they worship Him. When they stand on Olivet and see that cloud of the ascension vanishing from their sight, you can be sure they worship.

They went back to Jerusalem in the temple and in the upper room, constantly worshiping. And on the day of Pentecost, that's what they were doing. And in every circumstance, we see, as we read and study the apostolic church, worship.

We were reading in Sunday school this morning. Peter and John come back from having been arrested, and they share all the things that went on when they healed this man and the things that they were allowed to say. And when they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and elders had said.

And when they heard it, the whole assembly, they lifted up their voices together to God and said, And then goes a tremendous prayer and praise. And as they praise God, the place begins to shake, and they are filled with the Holy Spirit, and they are given new life from God. And surely if we desire to come into the presence of God, He will help us, and we will be delivered from these trivialities that grip our minds as we stand in awe before the glory which never fails.

Now, the second place where we need to come together is where the walls between us still stand. Why is that wall standing? Is it really because of the other person, the man or the woman on the other side of the wall? You know, I'm not going to do anything about it. He put the wall up.

Let him take it down. Now, when's the last time you went over to the wall and called that person by name? When's the last time you reached out your hand to shake it? When's the last time you sat down and wrote a letter or picked up the telephone and made a call? Now, if you are so sure that you are innocent and that you haven't done anything to raise that wall, then what's the problem with going over there and making another try to bring it down? And if you know very well in your heart that you too are to blame for that wall, why don't you admit it and start doing something about it? These things have to, you know, God won't give us peace. God isn't interested in, you know, not nearly so interested in deciding who's right and who's wrong as he is in seeing the wall come down.

See, and that wall is never going to come down so long as we pretend it isn't there and live as far away from it as we can. May God force us to admit where the walls are still up and go to those walls and do the things that he tells us to do to bring them down. Maybe it's a word of forgiveness or maybe it's a plea for forgiveness or a letter that we have to write or just a word of concern.

Sometimes it'll be three or four knock-down, drag-out sessions to clear the air. But we have to make some attempt, we have to take the risk that we're going to get into a fight to go there and get that thing right. Then Peter came up to him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times? And Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.

See, and every time there is forgiveness between a man and a man or a man and a woman, you know what I mean. Every single time the light of the Spirit of God comes down again and cleanses and quickens. Certainly we don't have to dispute the fact.

Who can dispute the fact right here that there is a wall between the black believers and the white believers in the city of Detroit? And can we alleviate ourselves or eliminate the responsibility on our own part by simply ignoring the fact that that wall exists and, you know, living as far away from it as we can, hanging around with our own kind? Or the wall between the charismatics and the non-charismatics, which is getting higher and higher every single day. You mean to say there's no responsibility on our part for that? Or the wall between the Catholic and the Protestant? Or the wall between the Jew and the Gentile? Or the wall between the urbanist and the suburban? You know, you're not going to eliminate it by staying away from the suburbs or away from the city, whichever the case may be. Or the wall between the young and the old? There will not be unity in the body of Christ in the city of Detroit.

There will not be unity in the body until we, never mind anybody else, but until we go to those walls and by the grace of God do the things that He enables us to do, to tear them down, regardless of the embarrassment or the humiliation or the pain that it's going to cost us. Now, if we're not willing to do that, then we're not serious. We're not serious about what the Lord is telling us to do concerning His body in this city at this hour.

Walls don't come down. Even the wall of Jericho that God knocked down, the people of Israel had to do something. They had to work on that thing for seven days.

Now, the third place where we have to come together as brothers and sisters is out there in the harvest field. And see, what we like to do instead of that is go to meetings. You know, these unity meetings in the Hilton Hotel may be lovely, but in the long run they accomplish just about nothing.

They're as helpful, you know, as they are painless. Maybe they're painful. But as the case may be, the question is, when are we going to see brothers and sisters from every side of Detroit fishing together on Woodward Avenue, Northland, Eastland, Westland, Southland, and all the rest? Our little narrow minds will really begin to crack open to the light of the living God when all of us start calming the highways and the hedges and the streets and the lanes.

You know, when some sisters in a particular neighborhood start fitting in with each other to help this woman who needs a trip to the hospital every day to see her sick child or a ride to the welfare office or somebody to talk to when she's coming off a drunk or some groceries for her empty refrigerator, more is accomplished in things like this than in a dozen meetings. And if you have to miss some Bible studies in order to get some of this business done, for goodness sakes, miss. If we spend all our spare time going to meetings and study groups and prayer meetings and worship services and all this, and there is no time to do the things that need to be done out there, we will very soon find ourselves utterly without life.

And we will see the church utterly without unity. Now, there's a place in the harvest for every single one of us, young or old, doesn't matter. And God will show us where this is.

And we will find out there in the harvest, wherever this happens to be, that God sends us, that we will discover brothers and sisters we never knew existed, and we will just have to praise God for what we see Him doing in their lives. And we will have to honor Him for what He's doing in them. And again we see in the heart of our Lord just that concern.

When He saw the crowds, He had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers, laborers into His harvest.

And the laborers into the harvest, if the Lord says, you can be sure, will be one. They're not going to be competing with each other. They're not going to be at each other's throats.

They're not going to be sneaking around each other's backs and criticizing. They're going to be one, and their very unity is going to be evidence to the world of the reality of our Christ. Starting today, may the Lord help us come together in those places where we really must come.

Saved by the death of His Son, and washed in the blood of the Lamb, may He help us this hour come together before the throne in real worship. And then go forth and come together at every wall that still stands and tear it down. May He help us recognize and stick to as a brother or sister every believer we meet out there in the harvest field, no matter where he came from.

And when we start taking these things seriously, we will see power at work in the body such as we never thought could be. Now let's wait upon Him in prayer right now. Father, we know that even to be able to worship You in spirit and in truth has to come from You.

We don't have the power to generate the vision that we need or the spirit of worship that has to well up in our hearts for this. And so right now, O God, our Heavenly Father, we cry out to You to pour down upon this assembly and upon our brothers and sisters assembling all over the world a spirit this day and this hour of true worship. And in that unity, may we begin to find the unity we need to tear down the walls and to work together as we ought to be working out there in the harvest fields of this late hour.

Before we leave this place, O God, we just ask that You'll just pour out worship in Your spirit upon us all. In Jesus' name, Amen.