Be Diligent to Preserve the Unity of the Spirit

So this morning, we're going to be going away from the Gospel of Luke for one week. And there's a couple of reasons for that, which I think will become more obvious as we go on. And this morning, I'm going to be preaching from Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. And this passage is about unity. And so, it's palatable for me to say, I'm going to preach about unity. But really what I'm going to preach about is divisiveness. Because that's the danger. When unity is broken, it's because there are divisions, because there's divisiveness. And so we're going to talk about divisiveness this morning. Divisiveness is a sin with too many manifestations to count. You can look in all kinds of places and you can go, that's divisive, or they're divisive, or this thing is divisive. And you couldn't explain it to its fullest extent.

There are so many ways that divisiveness shows up. One of the things that we need to know from the very beginning, before we even come to our text, is that divisiveness doesn't even take concerted effort to occur. You don't even have to try to be divisive. Time going by without an active opposition to divisiveness or a pursuit of unity is all that's needed to move from unity to division. Now, if you add to that... that much of the time someone's sin, yours, mine, someone else's. When you add sin into the mix, divisiveness is something that must always be on our radar. You always have to be aware of it. You're always being tempted to divide from people. Now this is something that's been on my mind for a couple of weeks now. There's a number of reasons for that that we'll open up as we get further into the sermon. But I want to start out by saying that we men, the race of man, are cliquish by nature.

We look around at our society and you go, well, white people and black people should get along. And men and women should get along. And poor people and rich people, they should get along. And you have to realize that if you're honest with yourself, you like people that are like you. And you're uncomfortable around people who aren't like you. Well, you all agree to that from the beginning. You're comfortable, whatever you are, you're comfortable with people like you. You're cliquish. And it's not just us. This is just the state of man. Our heart's desire is to surround ourselves with people that we easily get along with. And that is divisive. That desire breeds divisiveness. Because what happens when someone who's not like you in some way shows up? Well, you're not necessarily inclined to just welcome them in. You might say, no, no, no. I do that and I do reach out and I make a concerted effort.

to be friends with people who aren't like me. And if you do that, God bless you and good. But you need to realize that's contrary to your nature. That's a gift from God. That's not something that's natural. Divisiveness is, you know, have you ever talked to someone or been in an argument and you find out, well, they haven't talked to someone in their family for five years. And you find out about it and you go, well, why haven't you talked to them in five years? And then when you actually hear what the problem was, you just kind of look at it and you go, seriously? You haven't spoken to them in five years because of that? Because they offended you? Because they said this thing and you took it this way and that was it and you divided with them? We will divide over the most arbitrary, minuscule little things. If we get offended, we hold on to it, we nurture it, and we go, I don't want to be around you or with you or near you.

because you said this or did this or are that. Sometimes that division can be external. You know, if you haven't talked to someone in five years, that's pretty obvious. That's external, that's obvious. But divisiveness can also be internal. You can be physically around people and not be unified with them. And that's much more the temptation that Christians will face, because they have some base level of knowledge that you're not supposed to be divisive, that you're not supposed to break up with people. How many of you have heard of pastors leaving churches and they leave all of a sudden? It seemed like everything was fine. I was just talking to a friend this last week and he was talking about this very thing. And he said, I love this pastor and we got along with him and he was really great. And then bang, all of a sudden he was gone and no one knew why. Well, what was going on? There were things shifting beneath the surface that wasn't apparent to everybody. And finally it broke out and it was obvious and he was gone. Like in two weeks he was gone.

And no explanation was ever given. And that's the way divisiveness looks amongst Christians most of the time. It all happens behind the scenes and it happens behind closed doors and where people can't see and in private until it boils over. And by then it's so awful because it's been festering for so long. The reason I'm preaching about this is actually for us particularly, our church. This isn't just a general like, tell all your friends to listen to this great sermon about, Unity and divisiveness. This is about you and it's about me. It's about us. One of the things that God's given to our church that's been very sweet is intimate fellowship and community. If you were to ask a stranger who walked into our church, what did you notice about our church? There's a couple of things they would note. And one of the things that always shows up is our love for one another, our care for them, or the intimacy of the group. Now to some people that's intimidating and they go, I don't want that.

And to other people, they go, wow, I've never seen that. That's kind of crazy, but that's cool. And some people go, man, where's this been my whole life? And that's God's kindness to us that he's given us that level of love and care for one another. And we should praise God for his kindness to us in this regard. But we also need to realize that as the church grows, as it diversifies, and as we all get more comfortable with one another, the divisions can easily arise. When they do, and they will, when they do, Suppression cannot be our response. Suppression meaning, well, I just won't talk about that. I'm just going to keep my mouth shut about that. So that's suppression, and that will cause division. That is not how you answer the temptation of divisiveness. You don't just keep quiet about it. Suppression leads to division, and I'm not willing to see the fellowship that God's given to us in this church be weakened by unspoken divisions.

And so by now you're all going, are there unspoken divisions here? And I say, mm-hmm, there are. That's why I'm up here talking about it. And so this morning we're going to be studying God's word from Ephesians 4, and I want us to see that fighting against division, divisiveness, is proactive. We don't wait until the problem is in full bloom before we address it. And secondly, I want us to see that only Jesus Christ brings true unity. There's all kinds of... People who talk about unity and pursue unity and diversity and all these sorts of things. But the only way that sinners can live in unity with one another is by the blood of Jesus Christ. There's no other way. No counterfeit will produce what Jesus' blood accomplished. That's what we're going to be studying this morning. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word from Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Therefore I...

The prisoner of the Lord implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So the first thing I said we were going to study was the fact that fighting divisiveness is proactive. Another way of stating this is to say that unity amongst the brethren, amongst the people of God, is very important. It's very important.

Paul begins this chapter by imploring the Ephesians to walk worthily, to walk in a manner worthy of their calling. Now, what does implore mean? Implore means like beg, but like earnestly beg, grovel, demand as you beg. It's not just like, well, would you please do this? It's like on your knees, crawling towards them, begging them, crying, please, please, please. This is the only thing that matters right now. Would you please do this? It will not take no for an answer. So Paul implores the Ephesians to walk worthy of the calling with which they have been called. He begs them earnestly to live in unity. This is what it means to walk in a manner worthy of their calling, that they would live as brothers and sisters together. Now the thing he's asking for is not miraculous. He's not asking them to do something that they're going, that's so far beyond the pale, that's so strange, that's so difficult. He's simply asking them to love one another.

Please, please, I beg you, love one another. Live with each other. Be unified with one another. It's not this crazy request. It's so simple, and yet it's very difficult. It's very difficult to live with other people, with sinners, and be unified with them. You can live with people and not be unified to them. You know husbands and wives that function more like roommates? They're not unified. Don't have their bank accounts together? They're not unified. Don't keep a calendar together or know what the other person's doing. They're not unified. They only communicate about it. Well, can you watch the kids so I can go do this? Okay, well, I can do it until now, but then can you watch the kids so I can go do this? And really all that's going on is they're trading off babysitting. This is not a family that's unified. Does that mean a family can't be busy and go do things? No, that's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying if all they do is play hot potato with the responsibilities of the home, this is not unity.

They don't move through life together. They go and do their own things. And so Paul implores the Ephesians to walk in a manner worthy of their calling. He begs them to be unified. And he describes this worthiness in these ways. He says, with all humility. Now, when you get close enough to someone, whether that be in your family or in your workplace or in church, You know, think of when you first start your job. Everyone's on their best behavior, right? You're on your best behavior when you start their job. So you don't talk the way you normally would. You don't dress the way you normally would. And you make sure you're to work on time every day. And you mind all your P's and Q's. And you dot all your I's and cross all your T's. Which is to say, for most of us, you're not being yourself. And that's your disposition towards a new job. Well, what are your co-workers' disposition towards you? Do they talk freely around you? Nope.

Do they talk to you about the boss and about what's wrong with the boss and their gripes and their complaints about this, that, or the other thing with work? Nope, they don't talk to you about that initially. Because you're not close enough yet. You're not unified. You haven't proven that you're one of them yet. But eventually, you get close enough that you start to talk. This is the sort of thing that when couples are, to change the situation, when couples are dating, The thing is, if I'm talking with them or getting to know them or want to know how their relationship is going, one of the things that you ask them is, have you guys gotten in any fights yet? Because married couples fight. They have disagreements. Every single one of them does. We fight, right? You fight, right, Abram? They have strenuous disagreements. Well, normal people, we call those fights. So the thing is, dating couples, they don't fight. They don't want to fight. They think it's bad to fight.

You're not supposed to fight. And I say, you guys don't know each other yet. If you guys haven't gotten close enough to where you've disagreed, you're certainly not ready to get engaged because you don't know each other. And you can't be unified. You're not working towards unity. You're working towards putting up a facade and putting on airs and trying to impress the other person. But all of that goes away after you get married, after the honeymoon's over. All of a sudden, real life begins. And so I ask dating couples, what do you guys fight about? Do you fight? Oh, we don't fight. No, he's so wonderful and he's such a good leader and all of this stuff. And I say, that's so wonderful. You know, he's better than I am. What about her? She's so sweet and gentle and quiet and she's submissive and she's deferential and she's modest. That's so wonderful. It won't always be that way. The married people say, oh, that's right. It won't always be that way. And the single people are going, really?

Yes, really. Yes, really. Another question I ask them is, what is their sin? What are their sins? What do they struggle with? Because you don't have unity until you know that sort of stuff. Until you smell their breath and you know just how nasty it is. Until you see them fail and you go, oh, you're not my knight in shining armor. You're not my supermodel girlfriend. You have these problems. You're a sinner. The reason I ask these questions is because I want to see these relationships succeed. I want to see their marriages be strong. And I want to see them grow to understand what it means to be unified. And until they get into the difficulties that threaten their unity, they haven't begun to do the work. So once you get to that point where you're talking to a couple and they say, well, what, you know, man, what's her sin? And he says, well, you know what? She's kind of stubborn and mouthy.

She likes to fight and I can't get a word in edgewise sometimes. And when I try to, she starts crying and tells me that I don't love her. Oh, you guys are normal now. Now you're telling that this is normal. It's like, they're like, oh no, I don't know if I can tell you this. And I say, no, this is just normal. This is the substance of a man and a woman trying to live together in peace. They struggle in these ways. And I say, okay, what'd you do? He says, well, I told her to get herself under control and that I'd talk to her once she got it all straightened out. And I said, you failed.

You failed. You weren't seeking unity with her. You weren't caring for her. And so once you get close enough to someone that you smell their breath and you see their sins, then Paul's saying, walk in a manner worthy of your calling with all humility begins to take on some flesh. What does it mean to live with someone who's a sinner and you're actually aware of their sin, you experience their sin, you endure their sin? Now you have to engage with them with humility. What does that look like? Well, in arguments, it looks like you not always being right. This is especially difficult for men. Men have to be right. When arguing, you got to be right. Women want to be understood. Men want to be right. And we'll fight till three o'clock in the morning to be understood on the one hand and to be right on the other hand. So what does humility look like? Well, what I said recently to a man is I said, listen, you guys are in a mess. You have this fight. You're up late. You're tired.

The alarm clock's still going to go off at the same time in the morning. It doesn't matter that you missed half the night's rest. What are you going to do to fix the problem? And what I'm asking him is, are you humble enough to love this woman? Will you do it? Or are you so fixated on being right that you'll fight like cats and dogs until the sun comes up? Will you walk in a manner worthy of your calling with all humility? Humility requires you to say, you know, and so if we could take that man And say later, a couple weeks later, so were you right? You know what we find out? He wasn't always right. Sometimes he was wrong. And he was fighting and arguing and doing all this stuff, but he was wrong. And it takes humility for him to realize that and to admit it. It's such a sweet thing when a husband will go to his family and say, I sinned and I was wrong. Would you please forgive me?

And it's the mark of a proud, arrogant man who's never wrong and never has to admit that he failed. So what happens to the man who won't ever admit he fails? He's divided from his family. He's divided from his wife. He's distant from his children because everything he does, by definition, his actions are right. And when the people in his family start to realize that's not true every time, there comes division. We can't trust him. We can't be close to him. We can't be vulnerable with him. It's his way or no way. And so Paul tells us that if we're to avoid divisiveness, if we're to pursue unity, we are to do it with all humility. And then he adds, with gentleness. So go back into the argument. Go back into the conflict in your mind. Do you want to be gentle in a conflict? Do any of you want to be gentle when someone's attacking you? Husbands, you come home from work and your wife's on you about your shoes or your...

or the dirt, or the car, or the kids, or the something. And I mean, it meets you at the door. Here's the problem. You are the problem. What's gentleness? Does that situation require gentleness? Yes. Are you inclined to be gentle? No. No, no, no. Jesus says, you know, if someone strikes you on the cheek, turn your other also. And you hit the door, and it's like, bang! And you're like, you're not like, oh, please may I have another? You're fighting. You're doing the opposite of being gentle. So gentleness requires that you interact with other people and that you don't be harsh as you do it. That you be gentle with them. That you be kind with them. I want to tell you that holding your tongue is not being gentle. Remember how I said divisions can be external or they can be internal? You guys familiar with the silent treatment? That's holding your tongue, isn't it? So does the silent treatment, does being silent, refusing to speak, does that resolve the problem? Does that bring unity? No.

It does not. And so holding your tongue is not being gentle. Holding your tongue is not being unified with someone. Being gentle with someone is engaging with them and not engaging in a way that says, you need to just get over that. You know what? It's not that bad. You know what? You're just doing this to get attention. That's not gentle. Now, am I making up these sorts of things? Am I the only one who thinks and says these sorts of things? Do any of you guys struggle and say these sorts of things? Yes, some of you do. Yes, thank you. I'm glad you're like me. I'm like you. And Paul calls us here to walk in a manner worthy of our calling with all humility and gentleness. You have to engage with those people, with those sinners. You have to seek unity. You husbands, you answer me this. You wives, have you ever felt this? You come home and you think everything's fine. Husband thinks everything's fine, but the wife doesn't feel like everything's fine.

She feels like you've been distant. You've been busy. You've been distracted. And the two ships have drifted apart, and this is how she feels. And then when the husband wants to hug his wife or kiss his wife, she's cold, and she's like, I don't know. I don't want that. I want you to talk to me. I have talked to you. We've been talking about all these logistics and all these plans and all this other stuff, and she's going, well, that's not what I'm talking about. Not what I'm talking about. I want to relate. And the husbands get frustrated. If you're like me, he's like, but we have been talking, and I've been trying, and I've been making effort. And I thought we were unified. I think we're unified. Vanessa says, I don't think we're unified. I don't feel close to you. I want to feel close to you, but I don't. So then, as a husband, I'm to walk in a manner worthy of my calling. I'm to be gentle. I'm to be humble. And I'm also to be patient, with patience. I don't get to just declare.

to Vanessa or to someone I'm counseling or whatever, you know what? You need to be done with that struggle now. That's what impatience says. Impatience says, I'm done dealing with your problem and so I demand that you be done having it. Think of a sick child. You got a sick child. What do you want your sick child to do? You want them to get better. You don't want them to scream. You don't want them to snot all over stuff. You don't want them to be throwing up. You don't want them to be running a fever. You want it to be done. Now, part of the reason you want that to be done is for their sake. But a big part of the reason you want that to be done is for your own sake. And the temptation that parents will face when they have a child who's enduring, bearing all of these sorts of problems, just go, I'm done. You're just going to have to cry it out. That's a parent deciding, I'm done being patient with you. I'm done bearing with your weakness. You're just going to have to handle that on your own. We do that with our children. We do that with our spouses. We do that with all kinds of people. I'm done with your problem. Sorry that you have it.

Let me know when it's better. That's what impatience looks like in relationships. You don't get to decide when someone else needs to be done with their struggle. You also don't get to disengage with them because you're irritated or frustrated with them. You're to walk in a manner worthy of your calling with all humility and gentleness, with patience. And then he goes on and he says, showing tolerance for one another in love. So if it was just showing tolerance for one another, you could just say, well, whatever. You can do that, think that, be that. It's okay. I'll tolerate it. I'll endure it. But no, he says you have to show tolerance for one another in love. That means you have to be engaged with them. You can't just let them do their thing. You have to actively and lovingly tolerate, bear their hardship, their difficulty. You know, in marriage, You have a lot of compromises. It's sort of like politics. To be married is to learn the art of negotiation and priorities. But really what a husband and a wife ought to seek and what's more important than the decision that's being made is that they're unified about it. That's really what's important. And so when Vanessa and I were earlier in our marriage, when we were first married, one of the things that she wanted was my input.

Actually, the better example is when she was planning our wedding. And she planned our wedding. I didn't plan our wedding. Now, she wanted me to help. She wanted my input. And I didn't want to give any input. I didn't want to look at 15 different flower arrangements. I didn't want to try to put together a color scheme. There's a bazillion colors. And so what I said to her was, honey, you can bring me two choices. you narrow it down, you can have all the room in the world to choose whatever you want, and when you get it winnowed down to just two or maybe at most three options, then I'll tell you what I think. Sounds like a good plan, doesn't it? Saves me trouble, saves us arguments, gets the wedding planned at a reasonable amount of time, but Vanessa wasn't satisfied with it, and I think that the women in this room would agree that they wouldn't like that, that they actually want the man's input.

They want to know what he thinks because they want him to enjoy the day, to be happy with the day and the details of all that stuff. And what I was doing was willing to, I was tolerating Vanessa's choices, but I wasn't doing it in love. I was completely disengaged. We weren't unified. And whenever we talked about, she finally would, she would do the work. She'd get it down to two or three things. And then she'd come to me and you know what we would do? We'd fight about it. We'd fight about it. And I'd say, well, why not this? And why not that? And why not the other?

And I'd be outside of her suggestions. Well, what about this thing over here? And she'd get mad. Why'd she get mad? Because I told her she could make that decision. And now that she's made that decision and come, I say, no, I want this over here. So showing tolerance for one another in love doesn't mean you go do your thing over there and if you really need help, come ask me what I think and then I'll engage. That's not tolerance. That's not unity. If I wanted to say to Vanessa in that example, honey, go ahead and you, I trust you. I love you. I like your taste. I'm happy to look at the things that you're working through. But I want you to come to me with these three or four options. What tolerance and love and unity looks like in that is me honoring what I've said to her already and saying, okay, well, if these are the things you want, these are what we're going to choose from. And you know what? If I had to do the work, I might have chose something different.

actually, right? Because you wouldn't always choose what your wife chose or you wouldn't always choose what your husband chooses. You have different tastes, you have different preferences, different priorities. And so tolerance for one another in love looks like there being real room, actual real room for other people to do things in ways that we would not do ourselves. You know, I hear about problems in marriage and I hear about husbands and wives fighting about how to squeeze the toothpaste. This is how they fight about it. Get angry about it. Stay up till past midnight arguing about toothpaste. This is the substance of marriage. The married people are going, yeah, that was stupid too. And we still don't agree. And we have two separate toothpaste tubes now. You don't wash the dishes the way I wash the dishes. I'd wash the dishes like this. I mean, we could go through. I mean, I could tell you the things that go on in my house and you'd just laugh at the absurdity of it. That we would divide. Vanessa and I would actually cause...

a division with my wife over how she washes dishes and specifically how she puts the soap on the sponge. I would do it differently than her. And I spent years, she's like, could you not be looking over my shoulder? She knows I don't approve and I'm an idiot for making her feel that way. I've caused division because my wife worries about how she puts, you know, she doesn't so much, doesn't anymore. We've worked through this. That's why we can all laugh about it now. But she felt tension for years about washing dishes because she wasn't doing it the way her husband wanted her to. And I was a jerk enough to think that it was my place to tell her how to do it. Showing tolerance for one another in love looks like me being glad for my wife to do things differently than I would. As long as she's not doing it sinfully, and you can't really put soap on a sponge sinfully, you know? As long as she's not sinning in the way she's doing the thing, I love her.

And I support her and I encourage her in it. And I'm thankful for it. So we're to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which we've been called. We're to do it with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another. Now, to this point, you remember at the beginning of the sermon, I said we've got divisions here in the church. And then all the examples thus far have not been about the church, but they've been about the home. Well, now we're going to bring it into the church. In the home, you feel... you're more acutely aware of the reality that you have to live with these people and you actually have to get along with them because they live in your house. And so there's some motivation to work together, to seek unity because you don't want to just live in this miserable tension of disunity and divisiveness. But the same is true in the church. The difference is in the home, you get comfortable more quickly because you're around these people all the time. And so your true colors, your true...

preferences and inclinations and thoughts are more likely to show their head. Where at church, you come here once a week, here on Sundays, you're in small groups, you come to midweek programs, but you're really only around each other for, what, four or five, maybe six hours a week. And even then, you get to pick which people in this room you want to spend time with. People that you aren't inclined towards, that don't fit in your clique, that are dissimilar. You just kind of talk to the other people. But as it goes in the home, so it goes in the church. You actually have to live with the people of the church with all of the same parameters that you have to live with the people in your home. The reason I talked about the home is because we can all laugh about the problems that go on in homes because they're very common. But when I talk about problems going on in the church, you're like, is he talking about me? And the answer is, yeah, maybe. I'm talking about me too. But all that stuff you do at home with your family, you do here.

And so if we're to show tolerance to one another with love, that means, remember how we all laugh about the soap on the sponge and how that's funny and how that's just so absurd? You actually have to live with that same tolerance for other people in love with people in the church when they do things that are different than what you would do. And the reason this is a problem is because every one of us thinks that the way we do things is the right way to do things. We think that our preferences are principles. We treat them as principles. I do it this way. I like this thing.

I think it should be handled like that. And therefore, I think you should do it that way too. And what we end up doing in the church, because here it's about righteousness and holiness and sin and all that kind of stuff, what we end up doing is adopting a disposition towards other people as though when they don't do things the way we would do them, they're sinning. Now, we would not say, I think it's sinful for you to do this or that or the other thing, but we act like it. We act like what they're doing is sinful. We define sin as whatever we wouldn't do. So I'm going to give you a couple of examples in case you don't have, you know, what's he talking about in your head in case you don't know. Okay, here's an example. How people spend their money, okay? If you look at how other people spend their money and you think that's not right or that's not good or they should be doing this or that or something different. How about how we maintain our vehicles? We've talked about it, haven't we, Luis? Way there in the back. Uh-huh.

And we had to tell Luis at one point, it's not sinful to not do with our vehicles what you do with yours. It's not sinful. And I love Luis, and I only say it because I know he won't mind it, but we literally said to him, Luis, it is not sinful to not do what you do. Because he was saying it was, weren't you? He was like, it's sinful not to be a good steward of this stuff. Literally, I don't know, was it three years, four years ago? It was a while ago. You're sinful now? Oh, so now you do like we do? Huh? This car's a mess. We know what they'll be arguing about. All right. So how about how we discipline our children? Whether we discipline our children. How many children should you have? Can you have? Ought you to have? How about health? We handle health problems this way. Well, we handle health problems that way. How about birth? You have babies at home? You have babies in the hospital? You have medicine? What kind of medicine? How much medicine?

No, we have no medicine. About breastfeeding. Not one of these examples have I pulled from outside of this room. Every one of these things has been discussed. I spend time hearing and talking and working through these sorts of things with you guys. The reason that all of these things are divisive is because we tend to act as though our decisions, whatever we would do, that our decisions are normative. Meaning that what we do is what everyone else should do. So what happens when someone does something that we wouldn't do? Well, they're doing something wrong. That's what our heart says. They're doing something wrong. And we don't agree about that. And so what needs to happen? Well, we need to distance ourselves a little bit because we don't agree about this thing. If you'll admit what I've said thus far is true about the divisiveness, both in your homes and in church, if you'll admit that those things exist, then you realize that you have to engage these temptations proactively. You can't wait until it busts out, until it breaks out, until there's a huge dispute about this or that or the other thing. Paul tells the Ephesians to be diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. This does not just mean how we think about it. It doesn't mean be diligent to think the right thoughts. No, it's be diligent to love those people, to be unified with them, to live life together with them. Be diligent to pursue it.

Don't wait until it's so broken that you're like, oh, it's broken. Be diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. Be proactive to do this work. Diligence means knowing ourselves and seeing when our unity with other people is threatened. You ever have a conversation with someone and it just kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth and you're like, I don't know about that. No, that's not. And it's never about anything that's salvific. I mean, people divide over... and stuff like that. But that's not what Paul's talking about here. He's talking about living together, life together, living with other people. You get that taste in your mouth. I didn't really like that. I didn't like what they had to say. They were a little too flippant. Oh, they were a little too serious. Oh, they were a little too legalistic. Oh, they're a little too fly by the seat of their pants. I can't be like them. Need a little distance. Need a little breathing room to be me. And in comes division into our hearts first.

So what's it look like to be diligent? Well, it looks like pursuing the people that you're inclined to be separate from. You know, there are some people in the church that you more naturally get along with than others, right? It's easier for you to talk to them. You have common interests. All these things that can be divisive, you agree about them. Or at least you agree about some of them. And then those are the things you talk about. Well, we agree about this thing. We have this common interest. So that becomes the defining feature of your relationship. We talk about this. We're close. We're unified. Being diligent to preserve the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace means working with the people that you aren't naturally inclined to, you don't naturally find unity with. For me, it's been work. If I were to compare Dan and Daniel, who am I more like? I'm more like Dan. And Dan knows that. And Dan, you know that, right? And so what's the natural inclination? Well, that Dan and I would get buddy-buddy.

and that Daniel be the awkward third wheel. Do you feel that, right? And so one of the things that I do, and actually Daniel has to do as well, it's not just me, because Daniel would say, well, I'm more similar to Abram than I am to Dave. And so one of the things that we have to work to do is Daniel and I have to work to be unified and to love each other and to understand each other and to work together. And it's harder for us to do it than it is for Dan and I because of how God made us. And so I'm more similar to Dan than I am to Daniel or Abram. And so I have to put more effort into getting along with them. And I'm just picking the elders right now. Because my work is to make sure that if the church is to be unified, the session has to be unified. And so my job as the moderator is to make sure that we all get along. And some of them I get along with better than others, naturally. And so my work is to make sure that we as a body can get along together and make decisions together and lead.

and to be unified as we handle the affairs of the church. That's my job, to make sure that we are unified. These sort of artificial barriers that we set up, that we feel, that we live according to, Jesus came to destroy those. A few chapters earlier in Ephesians 2, verses 13 and 14, Paul writes, Now Jesus Christ, but now in Jesus Christ, you who were formerly far off and have been brought near by the blood of Christ, He's talking about the Gentiles. He's saying, you who are far off, you've been brought near by the blood of Jesus Christ. For he himself is our peace. Jesus Christ is our peace. Our text says that we're to diligently, I've missed it now. It's on the wrong page. Diligently preserve the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. Earlier he says, Jesus Christ is our peace. And then he goes on and he says, that he made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall. Well, who was divided? It was the Jews and the Gentiles. They were divided. They didn't want to get along. They were oil and water. Culturally, they were different. One of them was the people of God and had the law of God, and the other ones were idol worshipers. And they all come together and are supposed to be a family now. They're supposed to be a church. And Paul says to them, Jesus Christ came and he broke down the barriers.

And he made the two into one. And so he makes Daniel and I to get along and to love each other and to have real love for each other, not just like, oh, I'll put up with your quirkiness and you can put up with my jerkishness or whatever. I don't know how you'd describe me, but however you'd describe me, you have to put up with that. Peculiarities, yeah. It's funny, I think he's peculiar too. So Jesus Christ is our peace. He's what unifies us. He's the only thing that will bring unity. In verses 4 through 6, Paul goes on to this declaration. There is only one. And one this, one that, one the other thing. There's one body. There's one spirit. There's one hope of our calling. There's one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father. There's one for you and for me. This is what unifies us. Not whether we have home births or whether we homeschool or whether we do this or that or whatever. That's not what unifies us.

It's not. The blood of Jesus Christ given for the forgiveness of your sins and mine, that's what unifies us. That's what makes us able to relate, us able to get along, us able to live together. One of the things I tell my kids about our family, there's one Abusar family, and I tell my kids, you don't get to pick your siblings. You didn't get to, did you? No, of course not, right? And I say, you don't get to pick who's in the church, and you don't get to pick who you like in the church. Your job is to love the people, to love the church, to care for them. The way it is in the family, it's the same in the church. You think, well, I don't get along with them and I don't like them because we're different. Because they do this thing and I do this other thing and it's different and how can we live in the tension? And I say, you live in the tensions by focusing on what actually unifies you. What's more important? The fact that you sing this kind of music or you like that kind of music or you have babies in a hospital, you have babies in your home or whatever you do?

Or that Jesus died to forgive you. What's more important? What's more important? Well, clearly it's because it's Jesus' death and his resurrection, but we don't act like it. It takes work to remember that. That's why Paul's exhorting the Ephesians to remember this. You, we, are one. So what's the application? We've got a couple of applications. The first is, I'll say something and then I'll explain it. The first application is that the church is not a marketplace. The church is not a marketplace. This is not a place for you to build your business, build your clientele, build your friends. Jesus came into the temple with a whip and said, my house is to be a house of prayer and you've turned it into a robber's den. This place is not a marketplace. It's not a place for you to sell your stuff. Now, you can say, well, oh, well, I don't like that. That's really uncomfortable. That's really difficult. Now, I'm going to follow up and say,

Families share things with one another. Families help one another. Families live with one another, right? Hey, I got this thing. Do you need this thing? Oh, you've got that problem. Let me help with that. This is what families do. They live together. They help one another. They share with one another. That's good. What you may not do is build whatever it is in your kingdom and whatever it is that's important to you here at church. And you can do that in any number of ways. You can do that with multi-level marketing or Abram can do it with his dental practice. Can you imagine the divisions that could be happening if you don't go to Abram as your dentist? You've thought about it. Some of you feel pressures like, oh, he's a dentist. Some of us are like, that's awesome. Abram's a dentist. That's so, it's great. And there he is and wonderful. And some of us are like, but I got a dentist. I mean, he hasn't always been a dentist and I got a dentist. And now do I have to quit my other dentist and go to Abram? Because if I don't, well.

Will he care about me as my elder? So should you go to Abram to be your dentist? Sure. Fine. Should Abram be here trying to build his clientele? He may not. And I'm saying it because Abram knows that. There are plenty of other things that we want to share, we want to teach or give to other people, educate them about, that subvert the cause of the gospel. The church is not a marketplace. You want to share things? You want to teach with each other? You want to live helping each other? That's great. And I actually see that going on, but you have to realize that when that happens, it comes with the temptation to find unity around that thing instead of the gospel. So the first application is the church is not a marketplace. We're unified by the blood of Jesus Christ, not by our own little things that we do or that we're about. The second application, and more specifically is regarding health and how to handle difficulties with regarding health. Is it Western medicine? Is it Eastern medicine? Is it essential oils? Is it food and diet? What is it? Every one of those things is represented by us, various ones of us. Some of us think, well, when you get sick, you just go to the doctor. You go to the doctors because doctors have been educated and they know what's going on and they understand the body way better than I do. And so I go to them and I ask them,

What's wrong with me and how do I get better? And they say, here you go. Here's a prescription or here's a, you know, for therapy or medicine or whatever. They say, here you go. And we say, good, thank you. Now, some of us go, they don't know what they're doing. And they don't understand this or that or the other thing. And they're causing trouble and they're causing harm. Now, will that cause division? Oh, yeah, that causes division. At least it presents the temptation for division. And the reason it presents temptation for division is because, Whatever kind of health thing you do, you think of the other thing as sinful. Do you ever have people talk, think about food. Do you ever have people feel bad about eating McDonald's? Why? It's bad for you. It's unhealthy. Does anyone disagree that McDonald's is unhealthy? Okay. Ian disagrees. It's good for me. Now, the switch that happens in your head is you switch from unhealthy to sinful.

Because it's unhealthy, it's therefore sinful. And you feel guilty like you sinned because you wanted chicken nuggets or a shamrock shake, okay? And you feel it in yourself. That's no good. And then there's other people who are going like, but if you eat that, it's going to do all this to your body and it's going to cause all these problems and then you're going to have all these health. And it's this whole big thing that must be avoided because McDonald's is sinful. Eating McDonald's is sinful. And these are the sorts of things. Now, have any of you ever been in an argument about this with someone in the church? To my knowledge, okay, outside, other than your spouse. Because remember, we do talk about these things at home. You have to, if unity is to be maintained, there has to be room. You have to have very clear in your mind what's sinful and what's not sinful. What's a matter of liberty? What's a matter of conscience? And you have to make room for other people in your heart.

That's what it means to be diligent, to preserve the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. You have to work hard. And every one of us thinks that the decisions that we make are the wise decisions, the right decisions. And you know what? They may well be, they probably are fine in meaning that they're not sinful. This issue of health is something that cuts both ways. There's like the mainstream how to be healthy. And then there's like a bunch of different alternative ways to be healthy. And so where do you fit? You know, you think, where am I at? I've got my general practitioner and I've got my health insurance and I go do this thing? Or are you like, man, I don't want to go to Western medicine at all. I want to go get acupuncture and I want to get massage and I want to change my diet and I want to use these oils and I want to do all this stuff. Where's the sin in it? Where's the sin in it? Now, I want to tell you, the sin could be anywhere. You can go to a medical doctor and get a pill and not be doing it by faith and have it be sinful.

But that doesn't mean going to the doctor is sinful. It means that you're not doing it by faith. Or you could refuse to do that and do something completely out of the ordinary and be sinning by doing it because you're not doing it by faith. And it's very easy to judge other people and say, well, you're doing that because of fear. You're doing that because you just want a quick fix, because you don't want to suffer, because you don't trust God with whatever difficulties you're having. This is very real in our church, and it's the men, it's the women, it's young, it's old, and nobody talks about it directly. And so I'm hearing, you can all get mad at me, okay? You guys may not fight about health. You may not fight about it. You can love each other. You can work to understand one another and where they're coming from. You can process whether there is something that needs to change.

But you may not divide from one another just because someone does something different health-wise than you do. You may not think in your heart and with your mouth shut that what they're doing is sinful, especially if you haven't talked to them about it. It may be that it's sinful, and it may be that it's not. And it may be that they just make different choices. And if two people get cancer, one of them wants to go get chemotherapy and radiation and that sort of stuff, and God uses those means to cure them. And other people decide to go do some other thing if they're using juice and diet and all this other stuff. And both people, you realize both people in those camps look at the other one and say, you are an idiot. They actually do. The chemo, chemo, medical, look at, look at that stuff. And they go, that's wrong. And you're, you're letting people die. You're not getting them the treatment that they need. We're saving lives. People are living over here. You come over on the other side and they look over there and they say, you're killing people and you're destroying their quality of life.

And they're dying anyway. But over here, look, there's people who've done this and their cancer is gone. And what do you have? You have a division. And you have a division that has divided Christians, that surpassed the blood of Jesus Christ and become the ordering principle of your life. And that may not happen here. I'm not willing to have us, quiet to ourselves, divide over this kind of stuff. There are things about wherever I'm at on the spectrum, there are things in both directions that I do not understand. I'm not trained medically. I've never had to be in a hospital and have to deal with doctors. You can count on one hand how many times I've ever been to the doctor for something other than a normal checkup. I don't know what they do or how they do it. I'm not involved in it. Some of you are. Some of you are trained in medicine. You know a lot about it. Some of us are the other direction. And what I'm saying is those differences may not divide us, will not divide us.

You have to be diligent to preserve the unity that God's given us through his spirit. Which means you may not remain silent if you feel like someone's crazy or doing something foolish. Whether that has to do with health, or that has to do with their children, or that has to do with their marriage, or that has to do with their money, or that has to do with whatever. You need to talk to them. Understand where they're coming from and what's going on. If you were in Sunday school, What I'm saying is if you want to be unified, you have to do what we talked about in Sunday school. You have to engage with one another. You have to talk to them. You have to understand them. And you have to not feel pressure to do what they do just because you listened to them. And that's hard work. And the only thing that makes room for you to do that is living by faith and looking to the blood of Jesus Christ to unify you with them. Paul dealt with these kinds of issues in Corinthians where people were, can't eat meat, sacrifice to idols.

Some people say it's fine. Some people say we can't. Some people can't drink alcohol. Some people can. He says, okay, live with each other. What, are you just going to divide over it? No, you live with each other in an understanding way. You care for one another. You make room for other people's consciences. And you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus Christ who brings unity. Those other things don't bring unity. Those other things aren't going to be in heaven. But Jesus will be. And that's where our hope is. And that's who our faith is in, and so that's what unifies us. And all of a sudden, there's room to talk to people and to understand what they have going on and to not be divisive or to feel like we have to ignore the differences. You can accept them. Daniel and I laugh about it, about food at small group. I'll be done. Daniel and I, we laugh about it. The sorts of foods that I like and Daniel likes are just categorically different. And I think he's silly for not liking.

Spicy food. And he, I don't know what you think about me for liking that sort of stuff. But you know what the Myers did? They bought hot sauce. And you know what? No one in their family, to my knowledge, touches it. But it comes out at small group. Now that's a funny example. But the same sort of thing happens with weightier issues. There has to be room. There has to be room. I could not want to be in Daniel's small group because... You know, they don't like the same kind of food we do. And sometimes they make the main dish. And they could say the same thing about us because sometimes we make the main dish. We live with each other, being diligent to preserve unity. And so he buys hot sauce. And we're aware, you know, with food, we're aware that we don't make some spicy Indian curry dish and bring it there because we know that that's going to be difficult for them. Right? Let's pray. Father, we stumble in many ways.

need your help and your guidance. Father, would you fix in our hearts and in our minds the blood of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of each of our sins and help us to seek you and to seek unity in you in his name. I pray, Father, that you would continue to bless us with honesty and humility and understanding for one another. And I pray, Father, that as this church grows, we would not be known for any of these secondary issues. but that we would be known for our love for you and for your Son and for his redeeming work on the cross. Add to your number, Father, daily those who are being saved. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.