United in Love | Ben Stuart

my kids are going to be jealous man phil wickham is the soundtrack of the steward house so uh thank you brother for leading us can we just say thank you to phil again for leading us and hey i want to say thank you to david too and the team for putting this on uh what an amazing important time for us to gather together so awesome to be here with you and if you've got a copy of your scriptures with you we got to jump right in folks we're in ephesians chapter 2 ephesians chapter 2. i want to read to you a big section of scripture to kind of load it into your mind we'll pray and then jump into what the lord has for us today so ephesians chapter 2 if you don't have a copy of your scriptures uh just just listen i'll read it out loud and um uh then we'll pray and jump in together but ephesians two uh verse one begins like this and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once want following the course of this world following the prince of the power of the air the spirit that's now at work and the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh carrying out the desires of the flesh of the body and the mind and we're by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind but god being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with christ by grace he'd been saved and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in christ jesus so that in the coming age he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in christ jesus for by grace you have been saved through faith this is not of yourselves it is a gift of god not a result of works so that no one may boast for we are his workmanship created in christ jesus for good works which god prepared beforehand that we should walk in them therefore remember that at one time you gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision which is made in the flesh by hands remember that you were at that time separated from christ alienated from the commonwealth of israel strangers to the covenants of promise having no hope and without god in the world but now in christ jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of christ for he himself is our peace who's made us both one and has broken down in this flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two so making peace and might reconcile us both to god and one body through the cross thereby killing the hostility and he came and preached peace to you who were far off peace to those who were near for through him we both have access in one spirit to the father so then you're no longer strangers aliens your fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of god built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets christ jesus himself being the cornerstone and whom this whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the lord in him you were also being built together in the dwelling place for god by the spirit let me read chapter four verse one i therefore a prisoner of the lord urge you walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called with humility and gentleness with patience bearing with one another in love eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of well peace as we take up this subject of what it means to be united in love i just pray at the outset let it be let us know what it is to be loved by you and let's take up the high and challenging call of loving each other not hypothetically propositionally loving people but in a real gritty way love the people to our left and our right the world needs to see it so help us do it and i want to invite you if you're willing to just take a minute and pray and you ask him say god please teach us tonight and then if you would please pray for me that the lord would use me and i'd be helpful to you father we love you and we trust you use this time we pray in jesus name amen well when i was right out of college uh my family decided to take a vacation in colorado where my brother was living at the time so we flew up there and jumped into his car threw all our gear in the back and drove up to this resort and i remember as we were getting out of the car i grabbed my bag and was walking through the parking lot and my mom asked me a question she said ben is that your underwear on the ground and i looked and i was like yes that's odd kind of tucked it in and we walked into this hotel and as soon as we walked into the hotel the bottom of my bag flipped open like a lid and all my clothes fell out i remember i was like what a cheap bag so i kind of had to grab all my possessions and wander through the lobby holding them and we went up to the room and you decided well that was a weird start but we were heading out to dinner and at that moment my brother realized he'd forgotten pants so he asked if he could borrow a pair of pants and i gave him my favorite pair of jeans and we went to dinner and i remember as we were walking back i looked and there was a huge rip in them and not a cool one like an awkward you ruined him ripping my pants and i was like what have you done he's like i don't know like what do you mean you don't know take them off and and we got to the end of what had become a very strange trip but the next morning we're excited we're about to go whitewater rafting together it's very cool and so i remember we got in this boat and it's like three of us guys got in with this guide and it didn't take very long down the river before he looked at me and my brother and his friend and was like hey you guys seem to know what you're doing out here and we're like you know what's up man yeah he was like hey do you want to go on some harder rapids what are you gonna say no we were like of course man give us all you got and then he gets amped he's like dude i never get to do this it's gonna be crazy and then he looks up at me and he was like hey man when we hit that white water i'm looking at you and i'm gonna tell you like stroke two and you gotta dig in deep everyone's gonna be kidding off of you you got this i was like i got you he's like all right so he's getting ready and i remember as soon as we hit these rapids he yells stroke two and as soon as he does it feels like someone's lit a fire in my shorts so he yells stroke too right when i yell it burns and so we hit the rapids i throw my oar down and start scooping water into my lap and he's like what are you doing i'm like make it stop and we went into the rapid sideways it was chaos he was very upset with me no complimentary photo afterwards but i remember as i was changing uh uh i i took the wetsuit off and my shorts were frayed like the incredible hulk i was like man what is going on and and then finally it struck me i looked at my brother and i said hey man will you pop the trunk of your car and he did and sure enough there was an old car battery in the back and battery acid had leaked into my bag now if that's never happened to you before um battery acid doesn't necessarily eat uh all the clothes what it does is is it soaks into every fiber and weakens them so that over the course of the next several days as i would button a shirt a chunk would rip off as i would pull on socks i'd rip the top off because this substance had soaked every fiber and weakened them so that when it was time for them to move they disintegrated now why do i mention that because i think there are forces today that have soaked into our mentality as a culture that have weakened every fiber and we are disintegrating and our relationship with god and our relationship to ourselves and our relationship to other people and it's a problem uh sun tzu wrote the book art of war centuries ago about the seminal book on warfare and what's interesting about the art of war is is there's very little about what happens on the actual battlefield much of the book is about how to defeat your enemy before you even line up at the battle lines and one of the pieces of information he says this man when you're working against a kingdom with superior power what you have to do is one you want to distract them so allure them with sexual activity or with treasure and then you want to send spies among the camp to sow disinformation to breed distrust and so that as there's distrust they will disintegrate within their own kingdom and so they'll be weakened when the time of battle comes they're not ready what's fascinating was he wrote that centuries ago but i was talking with leaders in dc where i live now and that playbook has been run by russia against the united states you know over the last few years they was like yeah that's what we're going to do let's flood the internet with all kinds of disinformation to distort your view of reality and what's interesting is even among russian troll farms they found that they were actually organizing events that took place in america during our election cycle and some of those events were were right-wing events and some of them were left-wing events and what was interesting is the fbi agent who was interviewed by congress said wait a minute they were they were organizing left and right wing events what side were they trying to win and the fbi agent said no they weren't picking aside they just wanted to make us tear each other apart the goal was disinformation to breed distrust so we'll disintegrate why why size up against us if i can get you to destroy yourself now here's the interesting thing is i'm actually not that worried about russia right now i can't solve anything with that i'm not really worried about what they're saying to you politically but what what's interesting to me is before russia ran this play before sun tzu ran this play the devils run this play you look at genesis chapter 3 and what's he doing distrust did god really say eve hey eve just make an observation it seems like the god that you worship is holding out on you it seems like your allegiance to him is costing you some experiences eve i don't know but something about it says that he's trying to steal real life from you and he begins to sow distrust so she will disintegrate from god and then once he separated us from the head what's genesis chapter four god warns cain sin is crouching at your door and wants to devour you but rather than make war on sin cain makes war on his brother and he kills him and i look at our culture today and i think there are forces that are calling us to disintegrate from god and disintegrate from each other why take you head on i don't have to i just get you to tear yourself apart and my concern is for us in the middle of a culture a country a society that distrusts each other and is disintegrating we're ripping apart at the seams my question that i'm burdened with is does the church have an answer what do we say does our message have any bearing on a culture in crisis because i can't fix america and we don't need to pontificate about that but i'm very concerned about who is the church in the middle of a difficult day and what i love about this passage in ephesians is paul is going to show us hey there's the problem and here's the depths underneath our problem but then he's going to lead us to the great physician and to see the answer and the answer is not something you do what paul is going to show us is what christ has done as he's watched the enemy rip apart his people christ comes to act decisively and we're going to get to see the movement of christ how he handled the unraveling individually and how he handled it corporately and then we're going to see how we participate in it sound good so it's a lot of scripture and we won't necessarily get into the details of all of it but i want to fly over what he's done and he starts with how he's helped you individually and you see in ephesians 2 it starts with and you were dead that paul looks at our dislocation from god as human beings and he said we've been so severed from the author of life that when he tries to find a metaphor for it he goes to the morgue you are so distant from god the best description of your spiritual state is a graveyard and he says when we were dead in our trespasses and sins trespass means you went someplace you were never meant to go and sin means you became something you were never meant to be the bible says all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god god made us to be something glorious but there's something wrong with us i'm in spiritual conversations all the time with people and you say how because i'm a pastor people ask what do you do for a living i say i'm a pastor which either destroys the conversation immediately or they start asking questions and you know what's fascinating is i tell all of them though you're beautiful in the image of god you're desperately broken and no one ever disagrees they're not like well ben i don't know i mean let me push back on that i see skies of blue and clouds of white and i think to myself what a wonderful no one says that i say we're all broken they're like right and they start giving me examples and i say and you're broken and no one pushes back on that they say you're right i don't even understand what i do we all know something's wrong with us but we sometimes misdiagnose the need maybe i just need to lose a little weight maybe gain a little weight maybe read a self-help book and paul says no man if you were like got an upset tummy you need tums if you've got a broken leg you need surgery if you're dead you need a miracle and the problem's deeper the disintegration is further you're not alive in which you walked following the course of the world he said there's there's a social element to our sin there's this sense of when you get all sinners together more sin begins to mix into each other and integrate and bump into very ugly ways whenever you look historically at genocides people perpetrate enormous evil exterminating millions of people like in nazi germany afterwards in the interviews of people that were just normal people who in various ways participated they would ask them how could you participate in something you knew was morally wrong and over and over again the reports come back because everyone was doing it you've all read about the ash conformity experiment where they did tests on college students where they would show them pictures which line is the longest a b or c and a was clearly the right answer but the trick on the test was that everyone was in on it in the room except one kid and so everyone in the room would clearly pick a shorter one and you'd watch these kids if you've never watched the videos look around like what no it's hey right guys right right guys nobody and over time as that consistently happened you'd watch them slump in their chair and look down look exhausted until finally 75 of them would give answers they knew were wrong which circle's red oh blue one the push of peer pressure so strong some good self-wisdom you could have is knowing how it gets you we followed the prince of the power of the year there's a spiritual element to it i read two books a few years ago people who came to believe in god not because they contemplated the beauty of the world but because they saw the darkness in it and it was more than just biology to them there's something dehumanizing us that lets us be so inhumane to each other and then there's a personal element among whom we all lived with the passions our flesh carrying out the desires of the body that's the impulse i wanted to see that so i clicked on it i want to touch that so i did it it's the impulse and the desires of the mind i thought about it i knew that would hurt that person's feelings and i posted it anyway some of it's impulsive some of it's deliberate but all of it is death and we are by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind god is furious when he sees what we've done with the world and i don't blame him and you know in centuries in the past or centuries years ago i remember it was kind of awkward to talk about wrath i think people get wrath now it's the proper response to injustice like i remember for me when i was a little kid going with my father to visit my grandma in the hospital and uh in this nursing home rather and and we showed up and we heard screaming when we walked through the door and i remember when we turned the corner we saw the screaming was coming from my grandmother they had tied her to a chair in the hallway and left her and she was slumped down and she was screaming it hurts i'll never forget as a young man looking at my father who was a gentle man never yelled but i looked at his face and i saw his arms and i saw wrath i saw fury in that man because you had one job take care of her and you didn't do it you did the opposite of that and who are you mad at the person who tied her to the chair all the people who walk down the hall in indifference both and god looks down at the earth he gave us can you imagine if you had an estate to hand to people and they abused a third of them and misused the funds you'd be furious and god looked at the world and said man i called you to love each other and look what you've done to each other he's furious at it and we're all children of wrath like the rest of mankind and i know some of us in here say ben i'm not that bad let me tell you something there's three dead people that jesus raised from the dead in the gospels jarius's daughter that had died minutes before jesus arrived the young man who jesus stopped his funeral literally stopped the funeral beer and raised him from the dead and lazarus who jesus waited for days before he raised him from the dead all three of them he raised from the dead the little girl probably looked like she was sleeping probably still warm she had just been dead for minutes young man had probably been dead a day body was probably already stiff lazarus had been in the tomb for days so when jesus showed up he said roll the stone away mary and martin went whoa jesus hey uh he's gonna stink that's the stench of decomposition but here's the interesting thing all three of them very different warm little stiff stench but what did they have in common they're all dead it wasn't that he was all dead and she was mostly dead no they're all dead just the manifestation of that death looked different so homeless may say man i'm not as bad as that guy i don't stink like that person you're right but you're still dead like the rest of humanity we're all in a difficult place and unless god does something about it we can't get out i've told this story a lot in here but it bears repeating when i was a child where my grandmother had a pool in her backyard that years before had been emptied of water emptied of pool water over the course of years it had filled with rain water and trees had fallen in it grass there were snakes in there and frogs and when you're a little kid with a vivid imagination all things evil in the world so if you have a grandma with a pool of evil in the backyard what do you do you play on the edge of it that's what my brother and i would do we just go walk in the edge and we're like i can't even stand it all right walk along until one day i slipped and i fell in and at that moment it dawned on me immediately i have to get out of this situation so i waded over to the shallow end i began to run as fast as i could and i went for the leap to try to get myself out i didn't come close i don't know who dug out that pool but he was motivated i remember i looked up and my brother was just a year older than me and i'm like he's like i'm like ah because i realize i can't get out and he can't help me so i did the only thing that was available to me at the time i saw her crying and i remember as a little five-year-old i'm crying in a pretty terrifying place to me and as i'm doing that i look to the fence and i see a guy that's maybe college h and i see him right as he hears me crying and i watch him drop whatever gardening tool he had and he just started to run i remember when he got to that fence he just left it all in one move it was the coolest thing i'd ever seen and i was like oh okay that was amazing and he dove into that pool with me and he drew me out it's one of my clearest memories as a child i remember being a little kid him leaning over and looking into my face and saying are you okay son and i couldn't answer him i was awestruck by the one who would dive into my chaos to set me free and paul here says you were dead but god being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us not because of what you did but because of what is housed in him because of that great love even when you were dead he made you alive with christ by grace you've been saved and he raised us with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places the bible is not about making bad people good it's about making dead people alive that jesus christ united you in his love he saw the disintegration of our relationship with god and jesus christ reweaved that relationship how did he do it because there's a vertical beam to this cross he took down the thread of love and said i'm binding you with me that's what's so great about the language did you notice three times with him with him with him you were dead dead dead in adam but you are now raised with me and seated with me alive with me knit together with christ you have a future and a hope in him because it's by grace his kindness and compassion you've been rescued not a result of work so that nobody can boast this is our great message this is the hope of the world that we've been rescued by a god who has united us with his love not because of what you've done but because of what he did so that in the ages to come we can be a trophy of his grace the kind of love that could change you from the inside out and make you in verse 10 his workmanship created in christ jesus four good works which god has prepared for you and beforehand that you would walk in him in an anxious and fractured day he has made you something new there's a dignity and a stability to this it's fascinating uh michelangelo's david you know one of the most famous statues in the world uh and uh if you've never gone to see it you'll wait for hours in line with people from around the world to go into a museum that really doesn't have much else except david the whole the whole museum was built for that statue but what most people don't know is that statue was initially a discarded stone many other artists had passed it by and then michelangelo chose it carved it and made one of the greatest masterpieces humanity's ever produced it's insane if you've never looked at it you expect this marble to move it's so lifelike now if stone could think it would be dumb for david to stand up there and think i'm just a discarded stone so many have passed over me because i'm flawed deep inside you'd say yeah all that's true but then the master put his hand on you and he's made you something else but it'd be equally stupid for david to stand there and say i am david drink it in i carved myself out of that stone i chiseled these abs you'd say whoa whoa whoa whoa no you are impressive but you didn't do that you're something beautiful because the master put his hands to you do you see the beauty of the gospel it makes us humble and confident at the same time that you can come and say man i am something great not you're not destined by your flaws they don't have to determine your future you've been made something else why because the master knit you together with him you are something else you've been united with him in love do you see it and he set out your itinerary that we would now step into good works that he's prepared for us now most people when they preach stop here because ten verses is a lot that's a good place to stop paul doesn't and so we don't either paul goes from from what's a really good landing point you're a masterpiece and bring out the band and we sing about how a masterpiece i am paul goes back down and says therefore in light of this remember that at one time you gentiles in the flesh gentiles word ethnos it's it's the non-jewish people in the audience he looks at everyone from the nations that are diverse ethnically and he brings up a source of tension he says therefore remember that one time you gentiles in the flesh and not just a source of tension called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision now that's awkward why does he bring up whether or not you're circumcised that's weird and who would call you that well for the jewish people circumcision was a sign of a covenant with god that god has bound himself with us and they were meant to be a kingdom of priests helping other people know the god who had chosen them by his grace but rather than using that graceful position to love others they were using it to lord over others and he says so they're looking at you and calling you the uncircumcision meaning god doesn't like you as much because of the nature of your ethnicity it's a racial slur and it's got cultural baggage and religious baggage and paul brings up a really awkward subject this this one's great this is getting weird the gospel gets me to heaven but we're ripping each other apart we're not just disintegrated here we're disintegrated here and does the bible have anything to say about how we're culturally ripping each other apart because there's all kinds of issues brought up here and paul keeps pressing on him and keeps making it weird remember that you were separated from christ you had no messianic hope alienated from the commonwealth of israel there's some national issues here strangers to the covenants of promise you didn't even know the words of god and so you have no hope of a future and without god in the world he's bringing up all these tensions that for the jewish people gentile was was an oppressor i mean through their whole life from by from pharaoh to babylon to persia to rome so there were religious implications but political implications social implications religious implications ethnic ones all kinds of barriers i know it's hard to imagine a time in history where people were divided along all these lines just try to imagine by faith do we have a message that has anything to say here but now in christ jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of christ for he himself is our peace this isn't internal peace it's talking about us he's our peace help because he broke down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressing ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two so making peace and might reconcile us both to god in one body through the cross thereby killing the hostility that's the power of the cross i love the way my friend derwin gray says that the cross has a vertical beam that i can be reconciled to god and it has a horizontal beam that i can be reconciled to you the cross is so powerful it can make dead people alive and the cross is so powerful it can turn former hostility into family that's the power of the cross that we can be united with god in love and we can be united with each other in love the cross of jesus christ is sufficient to make the dead alive and to make enemies into family is that powerful how did he do it through the cross thereby killing the hostility that in the old jewish temple there was a wall jews could come towards the holy of holies into the inner sanctum gentiles could not but he says christ didn't just reconcile us to god he broke down that wall made the 2-1 and now we're reconciled together as one body because of his cross there's level ground at the foot of the cross i remember for me when i first started as a pastor right out of college i was involved in a church that did communion where everyone comes down front and and you'd get break off a piece of the bread and you dip it in the juice and then eat it i'd never been a part of a church i wasn't part of the ones that handed out little individual cups of the body of christ and blood of christ and he would sort of not look at anyone else and make eye contact i'm having a moment with my individually wrapped body of christ love christ y'all stay over there and so the first time it was like this communal thing i thought it was weird at first i wasn't sure and i actually i don't know if we'll ever go back to sharing bread again not up in d.c spook people but back there i remember staying up there my job was to hold the bread and say the body of christ was broken for you the body of christ was broken for you that was my job someone else said the blood of christ was shed for you i remember doing that and i remember this this old man coming down front this old man had done a lot of impressive things i knew his story but he still needed this i told him the body of christ had been broken for you brother then when this little girl walked out had to kneel down like in the body of christ was broken for you i watched this sweet old hispanic grandma come up he said the body of christ broke it for you i saw a strong young black man come up why had christ broken for you i stood there and i was getting overwhelmed by them like is there something sufficient to unite us together in a divided day can something re-weave the fabric that's being disintegrated in society yes it's not something new it's something old it worked back then it works now that the cross kills the hostility that we can be united in love with him and united in love with each other that's the possibility open to us for through him we both have access in one spirit to the father which is beautiful but not easy so chapter three paul takes an aside and talks about how god called him to the gentiles and then he gets back on track because he said hey i've been called you to walk in these good works that he called you to walk in and he picks that up in chapter four verse one he says i therefore as a prisoner urge you walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called with all humility and gentleness and patience bearing with one another in love eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace he says man now that god has reconciled you to himself i want you to walk in good works and he says what are they he said well he's taking people who are very different and i want you to walk in a man or worthy of the gospel what is that i want you to bear with each one another and the greek that means put up with each other would she think he would say something more impressive christ bled out of drops of blood so go to the nations now what does he say christ bled out for you so what so so put up with each just put up with each other be gentle be patient bear with each other because you'll misunderstand each other constantly but be eager to maintain the unity of the spear in the bond of peace does that describe you at all if we put your social media up on the screen would it look like eagerness to maintain the unity of the spirit the bond of peace there's a lot of motivations in the world to tear us apart and there's real issues in real division but we have the possibility of being woven together to bear with one another in love why because we have the inexhaustible resource of god's love in us my wife and i love each other and it's pretty amazing that you can love somebody and and you build this family that didn't exist before and that that the outworking of that love can actually produce people don't go too deep into the metaphor but it's pretty fun so but you look and when you bring these humans into the world you're like we built this relationship and you are a product of our love for each other that's so crazy and i remember when my daughter sparrow was born the instant she was born she was ours mine forever loved by me but she was also instantly sister to hannah and one of the greatest hopes as parents that we plead with them is get along let this love transfer here not just here but here i want it to move amongst each other can we do that is it possible to be united with him in love and united with each other bearing with one another in love eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace that what the spirit procured we preserve what christ purchased we preserve we fight for this unity because the world needs to see it and let me tell you something if i can get in your business a little bit today if you're millennial or gen z statistically speaking depending on how the question's asked somewhere between 25 to 35 of your generations say they are unaffiliated with any religion yet interestingly in the same surveys when they're asked how often do you pray and do you believe in heaven hell and miracles the same number roughly as previous generations indicate that they do it's confusing so wait a minute you're you're less religious but you roughly believe the same things and pray about the same amount of time what's the difference well the difference is that word unaffiliated it means not part of a group and what you see happening a lot in the world today is not that i'm less interested in spirituality or less pursuing of spirituality it's just that i'm less interested in the affiliations with other people uh dr jin twangy did a study on it on your generations and has found that where a sense of individualism is high the prioritizing of self religious involvement is low because it involves commitment to a group so you see the rise of this language i'm spiritual but not religious what does it mean it means i want to acknowledge there's a spiritual world i believe there's more than just biology i want to be a part of something out there but i don't want the hassle of you and so you see it's not an anti-spiritual movement in your generation it's anti-social it's i want to love god but i don't want the hassle of you people and listen i'm not giving you a hard time because this is a trend in america you were born up to the number of people that you can call in a crisis has been decreasing in america since the 1950s so you're part of an anti-social movement that's been happening in america for a long time right as our square footage of our homes has grown the square footage of our friendship groups have shrunk and a lot of that is because of these phones and you didn't make them they were putting your hand as babies but the more we're blocked onto this you see a marked decrease in empathy in your generations because i can be rude to you and not have to look at the pain in your face and so there's an anti-social movement in society but it's interesting huffington post which is by no means a conservative or religious publication released a study by ucla which is in no way a religious institution but they study college students your generation over 200 universities and they were looking for what are the major trends in college students over the decades and you know what they found the major trends are college students are less religious not surprising we just said that it says but college students are also more lonely depressed and stressed than any generation previously by a wide margin and so the third trend they're seeing is they need to offer more drug treatment because addiction is an intimacy disorder if i can't find my needs met with another human being then i go to try to regulate my chemicals of the substance and there's an increasing amount of responsibility for colleges to try to police sexual violence that you see among your generation there's been not a lack of interest in spirituality but a weeping weakening of the fabric socially and what's it done you've all seen that study every pastor's quoted it so let me just get it out of the way they did a study recently in barnard right across america throughout the pandemic everyone's mental health went down right except one group those who went to church on a weekly basis not every now and again weekly said i'm gonna prioritize what christ purchased i'm united with him so i'm united with us and what the statistics are showing us is what genesis says is haunting it's not good for a man to be alone and one of the greatest gifts god has given us is us i'm united with him and then he says but i didn't stop there i also united you with us so be eager to maintain this bond of unity and uh bond to the spirit in peace because it's difficult but it's worth it and you need it so let me give you two implications before we close because some of you're like ben why would i bother like why do i want to fight for this why do i want to fight for unity like like i have my friendship group all i need is a couple buddies and some podcasts and some books and i'm good well jesus here's talking about i made strangers and enemies into family why because the unity of diversity brings glory it does give you a simple example if i came to you and said hey man you got to listen to this song and you said why and i was like dude it is a hit among 13 year old white girls they love it you probably don't care i do not want to hear that song but if i said you dude you're gonna hear the song you're like why and i was like because it's the number one song in every country on planet earth across age demographics social economic boundaries this song is the number one song in the minds and hearts of people from all different ethnicities and ages and social and economic backgrounds all across the planet all keying off this song you'd go play me the song what could possibly unite people like that the unity of diversity brings glory i gotta hear it if i say try this restaurant it's a hit with the over 75 set i mean the grandparents love it you're probably not going to go but if i say everyone wants to go there you want to know what they're serving the unity of diversity brings glory it is no great glory for you to love your friends that's what jesus said he said love your enemies pray for those who persecute you he said you love your friends even the sinners do that even hitler probably had friends i love my friends who cares but people see the glory of god when they see people across boundaries when they see love explode past the expected banks it brings glory when they walk into a church building and they see you all here say hey there's old people here and young people here hey there's black white hispanic asian latino everybody's here what could do that there's only two entities in america the department of motor vehicles and there's something to it everyone knows they're guilty yeah we all stand condemned and the church of jesus christ and this one's way more fun that people are meant to walk in among us and say what can do this what could unite a people like this what could do this we say the cross is that powerful that it not only brings the dead to life it makes former enemies it makes some family so we do it for his glory and we do it for his good we do it for our good that we need us it's it's interesting man because you all believe this anyway i mean you look in like the iron man movie made maybe 300 million dollars the avengers made multiple billion would it be billion dollars right why because we want to see people who are formerly desperate come together to solve a problem right how many times have you watched that movie over and over again lord of the rings and the avengers and justice league not as good but you go to those movies all the time i want to see people who have no business getting along and don't really like each other suddenly have a purpose bigger than themselves that they have to unite about and they overcome their differences and found that our unity doesn't actually detract from me actually as i work through our differences it enriches me because i can be a part of biggest something bigger than myself and we go yes that's right that is just stealing a little piece of what jesus is doing right man i don't want to do that because i don't get along with that guy i don't understand him you want this you're built for this it's for god's glory and it's for your good i love it we didn't get a chance to read it but he says when we speak the truth to one another in love we will in all things grow into the head that as we lean into preserving this unity and speak the truth to each other you grow this is for your good it's interesting match.com is it you know an old school dating site and and and you know they developed an algorithm of you punch in the characteristics that you like and uh will spit out your first date and and and you guys should get married you're a match and they found that it like never worked like people barely ever made it out of the first date and so they hired a guy to understand what's wrong with our algorithm why does our algorithm work and what they found was there's nothing wrong with the algorithm the problem is people what they say they want and who they marry are so wildly disparate there's no correlation and it's funny when i talk to people that are like well ben i don't need to go to church i i got my friends my podcast my books that betrays the assumption that you actually know what you want and you don't but the spirit apportions gifts for the common good he scattered them among us and you need an us i had no idea when i was 20 how selfish i was until i got involved at a church and started serving among junior high kids and i would speak and they're not listening and i'm like why are you not listening to this this is good like why are you not the other people want to hear this i don't need this i don't need y'all i just and i realized i'm so selfish i had no idea but i'll never forget the day one of them walked into the church early and asked how you doing man he's like fine but i knew his parents had just divorced and i knew he was helping dad move into his apartment that weekend and i asked how was that he said it was fine i don't normally talk like this to middle school kids but i was like hey man like i know you're gonna be fine but it sucks it's okay to say it sucks and he just started crying and fell into my chest and i was holding this kid and instantly when i was holding him i thought about all the time it cost me to volunteer among these children but i just thought there's nothing else i'd rather do with my life and i sat there and i was like i would have never at 23 knelt down in my bedroom and thought god will you just send me some middle school age boys to make me in your image i would have never asked for that would have never crossed my mind but he wove us together for my good i had no idea i was a dwarf in prayer until i joined a church where there were old ladies that would just easily pray all night for somebody else never experienced that i moved to a church in the inner city of denver and lived in it this wildly diverse church ethnically and so there's all these issues that come up as cultures rub against each other but i watched a church not be scared of that but just like paul be willing to bring it up and listen and care for each other it was the most beautiful picture of look what's possible in this place it was an old grocery store that closed down and left the neighborhood because the store decided it's not worth being in this neighborhood it got robbed too much and so the church moved in and they used to laugh about it several of us that used to rob this church are now ministering to the neighborhood in jesus name in the same building and i remember being in that church and the front desk was manned by two people who were the best of friends like little peas in a pod one was this little bitty old white lady and one was a big tall hispanic man and she was old so she was frail but he was so gentle with her helping her around and he had come out of a rough lifestyle and had some illnesses of his own and she would mother him and remind him to take his pills and all this you would just watch the way they would talk to each other and you were like it's beautiful that god gave them to each other and i promise you she never knelt down in her old folks home or wherever she lived and just said lord i just i need a huge hispanic former gang member this last chapter of my life i guarantee you he was never in his room going like lord i need a white grandma he wasn't asking and let me warn you something if i was the enemy and want to destroy you what would i do i would make you not prioritize being among us that's so disinformation distrust take real problems but exacerbate them take those threads and pick out them and pick out them and pick out them keep you apart from each other so you can't hear each other's hearts you only hear the language throw volleys of hate on a phone get this in between your relationships make it a dividing wall of hostility and disintegrate the church so that when the world is in the darkness we're already powerless before the fight starts and i want to warn you jesus christ is reweaving a connection between heaven and earth through his cross and he's re-weaving a connection between us by his cross and i haven't given you much by the way of application of how to do this but if we bear with one another with gentleness and humility and patience we're not just built into individual davids he said you're being built together into a temple of the holy spirit the world will see something it desperately needs robert woodbury did a study on the missionary roots of liberal democracy published in a scientific journal he wanted to understand the impact of missionaries on developing nations so he did a study over years and he said what he found struck him like an atomic bomb he said that we found that missionaries when they entered economically developing nations he said wherever protestant missionaries had a significant presence those nations are more economically developed have comparatively better health have lower infant mortality have lower corruption have greater literacy have higher educational attainment especially for women and more robust membership and service and he said to be clear there were some racist missionaries and self-centered missionaries but if that was the norm you would expect to see those negative effects be the average but the opposite was in place he said wherever you saw missionaries come you saw a culture elevate but then he makes the important distinction when i say missionary i'm talking about conversionary protestants which is the title he made up but he's trying to explain conversionary means they're people who understand you need to be converted you were dead and need to be made alive and protestant meaning they believe this book is the word of god that tells you about a jesus christ who came for you to re-weave the fabric of a broken society so that you would love god and love each other he said that message when it lands in a culture doesn't just change individuals it actually changes cultures and changes nations and then this is what he wrote in his conclusion he said that these missionaries he said they imposed unjust and destructive practices like opium addiction and slavery and land confiscation but they didn't set out to be political activists all this reform came to the back door all these positive outcomes were somewhat unintended which by saying he completely misreads the gospel because jesus says when you make the tree good the fruit will be good he said it's the weirdest thing people are coming to christ and nations are rising but they didn't set out to change nations they set out to change people isn't that weird we say no not at all robert when we re-weave the broken fabric between god and humanity he says this isn't the only fabric of love i'm weaving i want to weave it across every human boundary too so that when you love each other cities change churches change culture's changed society changes it's possible we're not too far gone i have great hope for america i have great hope for our nation i have great hope for your generation but not because you're so great but because he is so make that decision i'm going to press into us not a hypothetical spirituality but a deep robust community that as we rub up against each other the world sees love they see you at churches they see you in places like this and they say surely god is in their midst because nothing else makes sense and the light of the world will shine in the darkness through us lord let it be so god thank you that while we were a long way off you came for us and god i know there's some people in here that have never put their faith in jesus and i pray that first part of the sermon would would be for them that they would say no i know what i am i know i'm dead and i keep trying to turn over a new leaf but i need to be resurrected and thank you god that you sent christ that he can renovate hearts from the inside out and lord i pray there might be some men and women here even tonight that say i want you if you're rescuing rescue me if you're re-weaving the severed fabric between heaven and earth weave me in you tell him that tonight friend and then please tell one of us and then god for those of us who know you it's not shocking to watch a culture divide of long very common lines all throughout human stories we have divided across cultures decried it on socioeconomic boundaries political boundaries ethnic boundaries we divide but god you have done something about that too the cross is so powerful it not only brings the dead to life it makes enemies into family so i pray god in the midst of a culture that's divided might they see us speak the truth to each other not hide it not bury it but speak it in love with gentleness and humility with patience bearing with one another eager to maintain that unity and i pray god radiating out of our churches and towns all across this country people would see surely god is in their midst what could create a healing like that what kind of balm could heal the wounds of a nation like that god i pray the glory of all that you purchased on the cross would be manifest through the unity we persevere and maintain together knit us together for your glory knit us together for our good and may our cities be different because we exist may this generation be different because we dare to believe this truth i want to invite you just to ask him what would it look like for me god to forgive someone who hurt me to reach out to someone i've avoided to pray for somebody that i secretly just want to see fall what if i prayed and asked god to bless him to not give up when people are to press in with a question rather than attack with a statement ask him to give you a vision of what it might look like to be the church to each other let it be

Channel: The Porch

Views: 48

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: the, porch, dallas, watermark, community, church, christian, christianity, ministry, movement, fort, worth, faith, sermon, dating, truth, bible, advice, biblical, counsel, jonathan pokluda, the porch, watermark community church, young adults, fort worth, david marvin, todd wagner, the bible

Id: yLCN583k49M

Length: 55min 0sec (3300 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021