Sermons Archive - Grace Bible Church of Phoenix

Member and I just look forward to November I look forward to November every year and it goes by so fast right I wish I could just push pause and just kind of have it be November for and it really extended amount of time but I just I love the fall here in Arizona I love the beautiful sunsets aren't they just amazing the purple and the pink just all around the horizon and I think of all the weeks of the year this is probably my favorite the week of Thanksgiving because it's still a little chilly in the morning but it can it's nice and warm in the afternoon we got the beautiful sunsets and then this week of Thanksgiving we got a short we can then you got Thanksgiving to really enjoy and then there's a really big football game coming up this weekend that I won't talk about anyway so I'm looking forward to that and then we have and then right after Thanksgiving then we have Christmas season and it just I just I love this time of year and so what we're going to do today we're going to spend time focusing on things that we should be thankful for. Usually I'm preaching a series and this year I'm not I'm kind of in between series and so I'm going to do an actual Thanksgiving sermon and I'm trying to get to my slide there we go there we go I'm saying for that that works.

Earlier this week I was looking online and there was an article that I thought was very interesting very appropriate for this time of year but the article said that there is a single word that you and I can say and if it comes out of our mouth it will increase our happiness by at least 25 percent I have no idea how they calculated that but can anyone here guess what that one word or phrase is. Thank you that's right it's thing sir thank you that is the word and so I want to see how happy we can all get so on the count of 3 I want you all to say thanks Ready 123 here welcome.

Now you have your guy look at all your smiling your sleeve where Buster Were you must of work well the article said this is that it turns out that saying thank you or simply thinks or expressing gratitude by any other means can provide an immediate gratifying an even sustained boost of happiness I think that's true a lot of times I think that's true the article goes on let me just read a little bit of it says the research comes from Martin Seligman Ph D. the director of the positive cycle cycle Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of a coming book he says that he and his team asked 411 participants to perform a variety of so-called happiness interventions I've never heard that phrase before but I'm going to use it we need more happiness interventions are alive don't we or tasks believe to boost happiness levels and this is really interesting in one intervention participants were asked to write and write thank you letters to people from their past and then hand deliver them and when was the last time you wrote a handwritten letter to somebody let alone deliver it you know we just don't do this anymore and he said the folks who completed this task continued to float on a happier altitude and entire months later kind of amazing right I think you should put that to the test right Henri no delivered to somebody but you know I read this and I believe this 100 percent I absolutely think that this is true this will work what we think about is going to a factor attitude I for instance what happens when you think about the things that upset you. Well then you get upset right and then you're constantly assessing about them and then you're all in a really bad mood and the opposite is true what happens when you think about things that you are thankful for the new you are in a much better mood in fact I don't think this should surprise us this is a pop psychology this is actually something that the Bible teaches us and one verse that tells us about the power of being thankful is 1st Thessalonians 516318 that verse it says Rejoice always pray without ceasing give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you and you notice how it says give thanks in all circumstances I know that's can be very difficult but this means that we need to take time and look for something positive or something that we can be thankful in every single situation that we're in and even if you're going through a very very difficult time where you're carrying a heavy burden there are still going to be things that you and I can be thankful for and so this passage is telling us to look for them and to give thanks to God in those situations well this morning we're going to be doing a Thanksgiving sermon and we're going to be reading through Psalm 136 so please open your Bibles right now to Psalm 136 and we'll all put the the slides up on the the screen as well what does the nice thing about Psalm 136 King David wrote this. And I don't think that King David was thinking that Psalm 136 was going to make for a perfect Thanksgiving 4 point sermon outline some day but it does it work really really well so what we're going to do is we're going to look at 4 things about God that we can be thankful for and then we're going to do something that I've never done before in all 20 years of preaching I've never done this before but we're going to do it today and hopefully goes well so instead of just talking about things that we should be thankful about God after each point what we're going to do is take about 30 or 45 seconds and we're just going to have a time of silent prayer were all of us can literally thank God for these things that David is thankful for OK so we're going through this what I want to be doing is thinking what am I going to be thinking God when it comes to this subject in just a few minutes so here in Psalm 136 there are 4 things about God that we can be thankful for and so as David begins this psalm by expressing his think fullness for who God is and so the 1st thing we can be think will about God is for his person his person.

Let's read the 1st 3 verses of Psalm 130 things that go up on the screen as well. King David writes Give same to the Lord for He is good for his steadfast love endures forever give thanks to the God of gods for his steadfast love endures forever give thanks to the Lord of Lords for his steadfast love endures forever and so we can give thanks to God for who he is and this passage says that he is good he is the God of gods and he is the lord of all lords so ultimately God is number one he is the preeminent in the universe. One thing I really like to do and I'm a pastor and I like theology and so I like to study the attributes of God and I've done like a sermon series on that a while ago but if you were to think about all of the attributes all the characteristics about God which one would be your favorite and maybe kind of hard to pinpoint one and say well I like this about God more than the others and maybe depending on your mood in the situation that you're in in life you might appreciate one of God's actually buttes more than another but I find myself at least at this stage of my life the one attribute that I appreciate the most is really the attribute that kind of holds all the other attributes together I really appreciate God's immutability. Besides it's just a fun word to say all right his immutability and immutability just simply means something that is immutable it does not change over time and it's not able to change so to say that God is immutable means that he and his character has other attributes they do not change over time and they cannot change over time and this is something that definitely differentiates God from us because we change we change all the time we change physically when was the last time you looked in the mirror and on Hayward the young person go see in the mirror or you know this is this is the holiday season we all know how we're going to change right we're going to gain a few pounds probably over the next couple months we also change emotionally I mean how many different emotions have you had today I give your 2 year old you had 500 different emotions you know motions were always changing there are many people in the world that we live in who think that things that can't be changed can be changed just by wanting them to be changed right and so this is something I think a very important attribute about God and the reason reason why I appreciate God's immutability is that means that God is always going to be certain things God is always going to be holy

he will always be holy he will always be just God will always be righteous and so what that means for you and for me is when we wake up in the morning we do not have to wonder if God is more or less holy than he was yesterday and we don't have to wonder. Are all of God's moral qualities and moral commands and he's given to us or all of those the same today or as God changed his mind when he said that something was wrong a 1000 years ago or 5000 years ago is still wrong today dealing with moral issues OK because God is immutable he doesn't change and so we don't have to wake up every day and wonder now what kind of god are we dealing with today he's immutable he doesn't change he's always holy he's always just and he is always righteous and on the softer side of God's attributes it also means that God is always merciful and that he's always loving and that he's always gracious

and that he's always faithful to us he's always going to be faithful to you he's always going to be faithful even when we are not faithful to him.

Passage and 1st US alone eons so wonderful passage 1st US alone eons 523 and 24 it says Now May the God of Peace him selfe same to fire you completely and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ that's something we really need to have happen we need to be when Christ returns we need to be kept blameless and holy and in verse 24 it says He who calls you is faithful he will surely do this. So God is faithful to us he is the one who starts our salvation he's the one who completes our salvation he is faithful to us and that will never change so during this week of Thanksgiving from the depths of our souls we can thank god for show Yes And so what I want to do just right now after talking about who God is and hopefully giving you just a few minutes to think about things about who God is I want you to just take 30 seconds 45 seconds and just pray to God and thank him right now for who is head bowed in for in silent prayer right now.

Your father is the same as in your words there is there is no one like you you are the God of Gods your THE KING OF KINGS you are the board of Lords You are all powerful. All Knowing you are all loving and that's such a blessing to know that you will never change and will always be merciful to us always be righteous and holy and you will always be faithful to us even when you're not faithful to you you alone are truly worthy to be praised and so heavenly father this morning we praise you and thank you for who you are.

Well thankfully there is more that we can be thankful to God than just who he is as David continues in Psalm $136.00 He also says that we can be thankful for God's power we need thankful for God's power and will read verses 4 through 9 so 136 verses 4 through 9

King David continues and he says. To him who alone and does great wonders for his steadfast love endures forever to him by who by understanding made the heavens for a steadfast love endures forever to him who spread out the earth above the waters for a steadfast love endures forever to him who made the great lights for a steadfast love endures forever the sun to rule over the day for his steadfast love endures forever in the moon in the stars to rule over the night for his steadfast love endures forever you know these are talking about his acts of creation and His power and it's great to read those things but I think one of those verses verse 5 can probably sum up all the rest of these things that we just read in verse 5 it says to him who by understanding made the heavens

now personally speaking some of you might be able to relate to this I am not a very creative person and so when I see creative people doing their thing I'm very impressed with them I really admire and respect them like people who are able to paint pictures they don't have this idea of this mental image in their mind actually take a pen or a paintbrush and actually make it create something I'm very impressed with that or inventors who realize there is there is a problem and I want to create something invent something like an engineer to to fix that problem I'm really impressed with those people because I'm not wired that way I'm just happy that I can make coffee in the morning right and they can make breakfast so I'm really appreciative of those people but I really enjoy learning about creation because God's fingerprints are on everything so I love learning about creation I love learning about physics and the universe and the more that we learn I think the more we realize we really don't know that much at all. But we also learn that as we see everything in all of creation there is an incredible amount of intelligence needed in necessary to create things

I want to. I looked this up because obviously I don't know these things off the top of my head but I was just thinking you know what kind of wisdom was needed to make just the human body this is this machine this human machine that we live in that the sustains life some of you probably know this if you took biology or or things like that but there are 11 different systems in our body that need to work in order for us to live in function properly and these systems are also dependent upon each other and if one of the systems breaks down then you know depends on the system you know we might die and so here are the systems that God in His wisdom created just 2 of them the human machine these bodies 1st we have the circulatory system gets blood all around the body the 2nd is the digestive system so we can pull out the nutrients from all the food that we eat the 3rd is the endocrine system and this is the system that provides chemical communications within the body then we also have and I'm probably gonna mispronounce this and I was probably asleep on this day in science class when I talk about this but is it is the interview Metairie system and the X. occurrences Yeah go ahead laugh but you'd mispronounced it too but this is the skin the hair the nails the sweat the glands that's that system we also have the lymphatic system in the immune system and this kind of helps protect us from diseases we also have the muscular system which allows us to get stuff done we have the nervous system All right we also have the renal system of the year in every system in the excretory system this basically gets all the waste out of our bodies we have the reproductive system so mankind keeps going we also have the respiratory system and we also have the skeletal system.

God knew everything that these human body machines and needed in order for us to survive we see an incredible amount of wisdom in creation and that's just us think of all the other systems that exist in the world the ecosystem the solar system all of these things all of it shows us the wisdom of God and His power and they all have to work perfectly so in verse 5 of Psalm $136.00 it says to him who by understanding made the heavens we have we have no idea we can't even grasp how much wisdom God has and when God created everything he didn't just create the materials but also the systems that hold it all together and make it work and so this is evidence of God's power God is so powerful and we can thank GOD for HIS POWER So let's take a moment just right now and you all together let's all think God and praise him for his power of prayer.

Dear God thank you so much for yourself to us in creation. Your wisdom is just so evident it is amazing how the universe it holds together and you see the delicate balance of all life all around us the Father on a more personal I thank you for exercising your power over sin and death by sending your son to die for ours is truly there is none like him so thank you for using your power to display your goodness to.

Christ for.

Well the next thing that we can be thankful for thankful about God is what kind of education is power to the next step you know God did not just create the universe because he was bored that he didn't create the universe because he wanted to show off he created the universe with a purpose there is a purpose for everything and so we can be thankful for God's purpose.

Or read verses 2010 through 22 in just a 2nd but as we see God fulfilling his purpose we see that as he's directing human history I don't know about you but if I'm doing an activity I always have to know you know what is the point of this otherwise. I'm going to just be incredibly bored and frustrated you probably are the same way like for instance when it comes to church and what is the purpose of church why are we here we have a mission statement as a church developing committed followers of Jesus Christ of the teaching encouraging to God's word that's the purpose for us coming together what's the purpose of football right to score touchdowns kick field goals what is the purpose of politicians to drive us crazy right now no actually there's a good purpose to create laws and really make life better and we have there are some good politicians out there but children when they're really young they're hardwired to want to know purpose behind everything and so what is the one question that kids are always asking their parents why why because they want to know the reason they want to know the purpose and so we need to know purpose so we ask the question why did God create the universe why did he create you and me and in His Word He tells us He created us so that he could share his love with us so that we can worship Him we have an eternal purpose that goes beyond this life and so King David writes down how God used Israel during a brief part of human history of redemptive history and he talks about the purpose that God brought about by using Israel as his servant so let's read verses 10 through 22

so modern 36 verses 10 to 22 King David is talking about God's purpose here he says verse 10. To him who struck down the 1st born of Egypt for a steadfast love endures forever and brought Israel out from among them for a steadfast love endures forever with a strong hand and an outstretched arm for a steadfast love endures forever to him who divided the Red Sea into for his steadfast love endures forever and made Israel pass through the midst of it for a steadfast love endures forever but overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea for a steadfast love endures forever to him who led his people through the wilderness for a steadfast love endures forever to him who struck down great kings for a steadfast love endures forever and killed my kings for a steadfast love endures forever see Han king of the Amorites for a steadfast love endures forever and August king of Bashan for a steadfast love endures forever and gave their land as a heritage for a steadfast love endures forever a heritage to Israel his servants for his steadfast love endures forever and so in these few verses here King David is remembering Israel's past and how God brought them brought them up out of Egypt and David writes just a very small sampling of what God has done in the world to bring about his purpose and if you continue reading in the Bible it tells us how God sent His Son Jesus Christ into the world to die on the cross for our sins so that we could live forever and then if you keep reading your realize that some day Jesus Christ is coming back so that we can be with Him forever and so we see in God's word God's purpose for us that is God's purpose and a couple of verses that teach us about God's purpose and they specifically state will God's purposes one is 2nd term of the 19.

A 2nd Timothy 19 This verse says who saved us and called us to a holy calling not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began and so this is telling us that our salvation is God's purpose this was his plan another passage which is very well known so many probably have some of this memorized maybe make McFadden's class he's going to be having us memorize this Romans 828 and 29. Romans 82829 but this passage says and we know that for those who love God all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose for those who are me for new he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that he might be the 1st born among many brothers. This is our purpose this is God's purpose God's purpose is for you and for me to be saved through our face in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and that someday we will be in the image of Jesus Christ Himself that is our purpose and so as we go through this life sometimes we don't remember this purpose is not at the forefront of our minds and we go through very difficult situations and that's when we can just stop and remember this life is not the point there is a greater purpose that God has for us and when we think about him we do well on God's ultimate purpose for us it can get us through any situation in this life and so right now let's take a moment and let's thank God for not only having an eternal purpose for us but also for revealing to us as well let's pray.

Your father we thank you. First for creating us but then also revealing to us your eternal purpose father we all look forward to the day when we will see our Savior face to face and in that moment all of our questions will start to be answered and are facing you is going to be rewarded but until that time lord we wait we wait patiently and we work to spread the message of your Grace to the world around us but father than this moment as we reflect on what you have written to us in your holy word we thank you for revealing to us your purpose in Christ and we pray men well finally there's one more thing now we can be thankful to God for as we see here in Psalm 136 and having an eternal purpose it should be enough knowing that there's something beyond this life however it's not like we have to wait until the afterlife eternal life for us to enjoy life God also gives us good things in this life that we can be thankful for and so the last thing that we can be thankful for is for God's provision God provides all good things for us let's read these last few verses here and Psalm 136. First 2313 says. It is he who remembered us in our low a state for a steadfast love endures forever and he rescued us from our foes for a steadfast love endures forever he who gives food to all flesh for a steadfast love endures forever give thanks to the God of heaven for his steadfast love endures forever God provides and so hopefully this week I don't know if you how I guess specific tradition if maybe around the Thanksgiving table if you just go around and have everyone talk about things that you're thankful for but this is one thing that we should always be thinking about what has God provided for us individually and even collectively that we need to thank God for and I realize that everyone in this room we're all going to have a different situation there are some people in this room who are thinking you know my life has been pretty easy so far everything in my life seems to go pretty well I have good relationships have a great relationship with my with my spouse with my parents with my children or whatever it is I'm doing well at my job or I'm doing really well in school or in elementary school or in some of your like yeah that's that has not been my life I've had some significant burdens to carry but for L. of us no matter what kind of life you've had all of us are here and it is obvious that God provides for us on a daily basis he provides us with everything that we need not in just the afterlife the life to come but in this life right now verse 25 says He who gives food to all flesh for a steadfast love endures forever so God doesn't just provide for us he provides for every living creature. I think we're very fortunate to live in this day in this age and also that we live in America where we have more than enough food to get by right absolutely more than enough and this week in particular all of us are probably going to eat 2 weeks worth of food right and if you do that's you know we're not going to judge you this is a no judgment zone on things giving weaker you can be as much as you want but God's provision goes so much further than just the food that we're going to eat because ultimately everything good in this life has been given to us by God It begins with life itself it talks about the food in the shelter that God gives us but ultimately God provides us with our salvation God is our great provider so I hope that you take time this week throughout this week to seriously think about and spend time thanking God for the things that he has provided for you but I want to do that right now so let's take one last prayer and let's spend some time thinking about and thanking God for the things that he has provided for us the square and pray.

Enjoyed studying it myself and looking at all the different passages and trying to kind of put these messages together so far we've looked at a variety of ways that we are supposed to one another one another I did 3 sermons on unity and those sermons were what we're supposed to do what we're not supposed to do and what we're supposed to be we did one on humility and that's when all the ladies were gone out of the women's retreat so the guys here are expense specially humble these days because of the humility we did one on love and then I did 3 on the random passages there's 25 percent of them are just kind of random passages 2 weeks ago we talked about the importance of telling the truth and for the final 2 what I wanted to do was kind of kind of do a wrap up of this entire one another series by kind of imagining that these are given to us who are in this race that Hebrews 121 talks about and so we looked at this last week I want to look at this again I'm going to use this theme especially today throughout the message and so hubris 121 the passage says. Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses and those witnesses are former one and others they also want another each other in previous times let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endure in the race that is before us and so this passage teaches us that you and I we are in life and it's described very similar to a race we are running a race and it says that we are to run with and Durrance this race that is before us and so last week in this week I want to talk about the ways in which you and I can encourage one another as we run the race last week it was about how not to trip up your fellow racers and talking about don't judge each other especially specifically undisputable matters there's different ways that you and I can can live out our face depending on our cultures and our backgrounds and as long as it's not violating God's moral or ethics we have the freedom to do those things and some not judging each other is one way that we can not trip each other up as we are in this race and today we're going to talk about this how we help each other cross the finish line how we help each other become alongside each other to really get to the end of the race. Now I have mentioned this several times and I'm not going to mention it today other than to mention that I'm not going to mention it but I found a new sport I love doing crossword I've been doing that for the last couple of years but for a few years before that I really got into running I never thought when I was a little kid that I was going to enjoy running but I got into running and I did a handful of races and I was as I was going through my my running phase I found out several things about running I found out that every person based on their own unique body type is probably best at a certain distance you usually don't have people that are really going to short distances and long distances and so every every person that enjoys running the probably find a distance that is best for them the people who like to just push really hard and go really fast they are the good sprinters and they can do the fun runs like the 5 K. which is 3 point one miles with a 10 K. which is which is 10.6.2 miles and they're the ones who run hard and fast and the other people who like the in durance events what they do is they try to find a good pace for themselves and they just hang on for as long as they can they try to to run with endurance the entire length of that race half marathon 13 miles full marathons 26 miles I've discovered that I'm not really good at any race but the ones that I do enjoy I really enjoy trail runs especially here in Arizona because Arizona is awesome and it's really nice to be out there on the trails and running around all the cacti and all the trees and the vegetation here is just awesome but as strange as that might sound the favorite race not more than racing but the favorite race that I've done in my entire life is actually the longest one it's called race across the years I know I've talked about this before I'm going to talk about it a little bit again today but this is such a unique race because most races you're running for a set distance you're going from one distance to another set point to another set. Point and then you figure out how long it took you to get there race across the years this for a set amount of time and so you have a set amount of time the general race whether you run walk skip crawl whatever you want to do and then the distance that you've done in that set amount of time that's your score however that works and so this very unique event it's here in Phoenix it's called race across the years it's at Camelback ranch the ballparks where the Dodgers and the White Sox have spring training and you can sign up for a race of $24.00 hours or $48.00 hours or $72.00 hours and if you're really crazy you can do the 6 days and so you race for that amount of time and these people at the I've done it twice Hopefully I'll do it again and you're out there and you look at everyone around you and you're saying these people are crazy what are they doing and then you realize you're out there too so what are the say about you but some of these people who go for 6 days they're going about 550 miles it's insane that's like from here I think to San Francisco Can you imagine running and walking to San Francisco in a week so these these people are crazy but the cool thing about doing this race especially over the other races is your body goes through these phases where things change mentally physically and emotionally and you go through these phases and stages and the neat thing is the very 1st time you do this or for the 1st time anyone does this it's sort of like this big adventure because most of us are not insane and do this all the time and so you're you realize in this race there is going to come a point in time where I have gone the greatest distance of my entire life in one single setting and you're going to get that and so you wonder to yourself how is my body going to feel and react when I have gone 20 miles or when I've gone 30 miles or when I've gone 40 miles or 50 miles most people here have no idea and so it's really great you get to find out how. You find out the pain that you're going to be in and out and also just the emotions that you go through physically mentally everything it's as big adventure.

My 1st time that I did it I did it for $24.00 hours and I wanted to get 100 miles I didn't know if I was going to be able to get it because if you go 100 miles you get a belt buckle that says you want 100 mile and that's pretty cool and so the 1st time I did it I did 70 I think it was 71 miles and I realized there was no way on God's green earth that I could ever do 100 miles in $24.00 hours so the next year I said I'm going to go for the $48.00 hours because I really want that belt buckle and my lovely wife said yeah I'll do it with you she actually did some of the laps with me the 1st year and so the 2nd year we did this 1st day we did I think 52 miles or something like that then when we actually went to bed we actually had tents lined up on the track so you can actually rest and we woke up the next day and we kept going and around mile 78 my mind me I was my body is not in alignment so you keep walking along enough and eventually things are going to break down and so I strained my right N.C.L. and so I was done but Kristin the superhero that she is she able to she was able to finish the 100 mile race and so she has a belt buckle that says she did 100 miles and I set out that belt buckle because I was going to come and show you all again and I forgot it home. And so you're used to running 100 miles can you go right home get it really quick maybe not maybe I'll bring in some of the time. So Christian finish the 100 miles in fact I'm if I was a betting man I'd bet that she's the only person in this room was ever going to 100 miles really without stopping in a race is that true so there's my wife right there and after that happened many of you might remember Jim Horn Jim Horn passed away a couple years ago he and Ellen were part of our church for many years and Jim what a stinker he is very funny guy for those of you remember Jim He kept asking me no you know why are you doing this you know what what's wrong with you that makes you want to do this and and after I did the 2nd time he already knew the results but he wanted to kind of you know give me a hard time he said So how did you do this time Well Jim I got 78 miles it was yeah OK. How did your wife do.

Well she got she got the 105-0000 that's great that's great so does your wife let you hold a belt buckle.

Thanks Jim Yes she does every now and then I get to hold the belt buckle but but there were these these phases in stages of that race and everyone needed different kinds of encouragement at different times in the race to keep going. Really unique wonderful race I hope I'll be able to do it again in the near future but that's sort of like the Christian life as well in the Christian life it is this long range and every one of us at different times in our life we are going to experience the lowest lows that we ever knew we didn't even know existed there's going to be a tragedy we're going to lose something very special and precious to us or we're going to go through very difficult times and we're going to realize life is really hard. And we need one another then to pick us up and help us push ourselves to the finish line and we're also going to go through the greatest moments that we will ever experience and we're going to think life is so wonderful I can't even imagine it being better than this and in those moments when we're running the race really well many people come alongside us and really encourage us and so hopefully as we run this race we will be doing it with one another and so for this morning what I want to do is I want to look at a handful of verses that show us how and when to encourage each other at the various stages of each other's races and so let me give you 4 times that we need to help and encourage and push each other to the finish line and the 1st time is this the 1st time when we need to cheer each other on is when things are going well we need to encourage each other when things are going well don't wait for someone to break down and stop the race before you come alongside them and encourage them if you see someone doing well in life encourage them to even go further and this would include someone with their job or their profession if they're getting promotions and raisins you can either be jealous of them or you can come alongside them and say great job I'm so happy I'm proud of you that things are going well if they have a great marriage come alongside them and say I see that you and your wife or your husband you've got to get along really well I want you to know you're an encouragement to me or you see great relationships between parents and children we need to really come alongside each other and encourage each other when things are going well I want everyone to turn in your Bibles to the book of 1st US alone means we're going to read a couple different passages here

1st US alone is the 1st one going to be on the board but I want to read a little bit more here 1st less alone means chapter 5.

1st Isolani in Chapter 5 verse 11 Paul encourages the thoughts alone eons as they are doing a good job as they are doing while 1st US alone is 511 says therefore encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing and so he's telling us to build each other up encourage each other just as you are doing you're already doing this you're doing a great job. To do this now in this context Paul is telling them to not worry because they were very concerned that the day of the Lord had come they thought that maybe the day of the Lord had come that they may be Mr being gathered together to the Lord Jesus Christ or that God is about ready to start pouring out his raft and so Paul is encouraging them to God's going to deliver them from the coming wrath but earlier Paul tells them how well they are doing it so if you're in 1st US alone eons go back to chapter one I want to read this I think it's a such a positive letter that Paul wrote to this group a really great group of people the Thessalonians were 1st US only in chapter one and we're just going to read a handful of verses here beginning in verse 2 and you just see that they're doing a great job they're getting it right 1st US alone eons Chapter one Verse 2.

He says to them we give thanks to God always for all of you constantly mentioning you in our prayers remembering before our God and Father your work of face and labor of love in steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ for we know brothers loved by God that he has chosen you because the gospel came to you not only in word but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction you know it kind of men we proved to be among your for your sake and you became imitators of us and of the Lord for you received the word in much affliction which is the joy of the Holy Spirit and look at what he says in verse 7 to them so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and K.-I for not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia K.-I but your facing God has gone forth everywhere so that we need not say anything for they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turn to God for idols to serve the living into your God and to wait for His Son from heaven whom he raised from the dead Jesus who delivers us from the Rasta come and so this church they were doing great and so Paul encourages them to keep running and so when someone is doing a really good job they can be extremely productive in their life and that project to Vittie usually pays off in times in their life when they're not being very productive and so when you see someone who is doing really well in life we need to really come alongside each other and say Could job I see that things are going well good job keep running the race well here at church let me kind of give you some examples of what we can do here at church St The people who are serving whatever role it is thank the Sunday school teachers who spend their week preparing the lesson for you thank the nursery people in the nursery who are watching your children while you're in here. I know we all take turns doing that thanks to the board members who spend time every month gathering together seeking God's wisdom to make the right choice for this church as you see someone running the race thank them and I think one of the best side benefits of having someone run the race well is a really encourages other people to run as well has there been anyone in your life that you've known.

That did their faith that they lived out their faith so well that it inspired and encouraged you I would certainly hope that all of us can think of a half dozen people that we can say these people really made a difference in my life those are the ones who are running well and they need to be encouraged and so the people in Tesla Nika were they were inspiring others and support says keep going again verse 7 says so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and K.-I So it's the 1st time that we need to encourage each other when things are going well. Unfortunately things are not always going well there are different phases in our own race and so let me give you the 2nd time we're supposed to encourage each other we're supposed to encourage each other when someone gets tired.

Because in a race everyone is going to get tired and the longer the race the greater the possibility that you will want to quit running the race you'll just wanted to just be over you'll say it used to be fine it used to be enjoyable but right now it's just painful this race isn't worth it anymore and for anyone who has done a great long distance a vent you get to that point I know the the deepest most dark place or they've ever been in my life emotionally was when I was hiking out of the grand canyon rim to rim to rim those last 3 miles there were times where I thought if I just died right now I think I'd be OK I mean I'm half serious when I say that when I just ate so bad it's like I just want to fast forward my life 2 or 3 hours so that I can get out of this stupid Canyon How did I get here in the 1st place you know whose idea was this you you go through those those dark places and that's when you get tired and you want to stop running here send 24 it says this I love this passage we're going to always mean there are 24 but I did 25 in there as well. But the author of Hebrews says and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works 9 neglecting to meet together as is the habit of somebody encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near but that 1st phrase there in verse 24 says unless this literally means let us spend time thinking about how to and then it says stir up one another the Greek word for stir up is proxy Maass and it also can be translated to provoke or to irritate or to incite someone so the Bible is giving us permission to irritate each other and all the children brothers and sisters said amen the Bible says I can do this well this is talking about getting along side someone and really encouraging them to keep running their race and I think there's a couple different ways that we can do that the 1st is through positive reinforcement because if anyone has done a physical race you get tired but this race of life is anyone tired with the race of life right now I'm sure half of you probably raise your hand but you're afraid to raise it if you're too tired to raise it but sometimes when we're going in we're like you know what is the point of all this I'm doing the right things and it doesn't seem like it's paying off sometimes we need to come alongside each other and say listen this is all done by faith and God says that we will be rewarded for our faithfulness a passage that says that glacier in 69 and let us not grow weary of doing good for in due season we will reap if we don't give up so sometimes when you see someone a brother or sister in Christ or they want to give up whatever that means come alongside them and say don't do it let's keep going and so there is that positive reinforcement that sometimes we need another time that we need to come alongside or another way that we do this is to remind people of possible discipline or the loss of rewards because sometimes people will be running the race of face and then they'll say this isn't what I thought it was. The people running that race they sure like they're like they're having a good time and so they'll run the race that Satan has set out before us that the one of selfishness and so sometimes we need to say no no you don't want to run that race if you do there's the potential of discipline and God disciplines those that he loves or even the possible of loss of rewards in the future. You know I had a friend of mine did research across the years a couple of years ago and I was unable to do it with him and he did it all by himself and in the middle of the night he got into the dark place mentally and emotionally and physically and there wasn't anyone there to push him through and so in the middle of the night he said that's it I quit and he packed up everything and he drove home with half the race left and when I found out I was going to go help walk with him and run within the next morning and when I when I heard that I thought oh man that that moment when he needed someone to say just relax just take a break if you're tired just sleep if you need something to eat just eat it's going to be OK when he needed someone to be there no one was there at that moment and when you're high if we get to those moments and we will in this life if we don't have anyone there to be there for us when we're tired to encourage the courage us we can make some really horrible decisions and so this race to face it is a long and so keep looking around at the other runners and when you notice something different about them ask them How is your race going or are you tired if you're tired that's normal but don't give up keep going and do what he Hebrew say spend time considering how to irritate I mean to encourage one another. And so that's 2 ways that we encourage each other and when we do it so well 1st thing is when we when we need to church each other on when things are going well the 2nd time is when someone is tired or they want to stop running and the 3rd time is when someone they can't move using this analogy of a race when they can't move because life has just crushed them it's too heavy the burdens of life are just too much for them.

Glacial fix to it says to us bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the Law of Christ. You and I and different times are to come alongside each other when people are crushed and they have too much weight to carry and help carry their load the word for burden is the Greek word Barros which means heaviness or weight of burden or trouble and if you watch someone carrying around a significant amount of weight physical weight for any period of time eventually it becomes too much and they collapse and they can't do it anymore.

And you back in the summer of 1904 after my 1st year at Grace Bible college I went back to Seattle I spent the summer with my dad and I had a really cool summer job I worked at a gumball factory with the Nelsons Yeah renos the Nelsons from the Seattle Green Church it was a great job I actually rebuilt the mechanisms on gumballs gumball machines so when you put the quarter in there you kind of turn and I could I could fix those at least in 1904 I could probably not today but it was a great job Monday through Friday 10 hours a day they had 3 day weekends it was great and every morning Monday through Friday I would be in the back and I would fix fix the gumball holders but there were some around drivers and what they would do is they go around all the gumball machines that these people had and they had literally thousands throw Seattle and they would fill the gumballs or the candy back up and then they would remove all the quarters and they'd bring it back to the shop and they would count the corners just on the other side of the walls and I worked on and so I could hear all morning long changing changing changing just drove you crazy you know you wanted to stop all morning long and they would take these big sacks of corridors to the bank. And I found out that a $1000.00 worth of courters weighs 50 pounds all right and so they would take these 50 pound sacks of corridors to the bank and it was really interesting you'd think you know how do you take a 50 pound sack of course to the bank well all they would do is they throw it in the back of a little pickup truck and they just drive to the bank and I remember thinking don't you need security or I mean you know that's and they said well let me let me tell you something in all the years one time we had someone steal a sack of quarters Here's what happened all right so let me ask this question how far and how fast can someone run with a 50 pounds agro orders the answer is not far enough and not fast enough so that person got caught so they're not too worried about anyway how far and how fast can someone run in the race of life when they are carrying a heavy burden Well the answer little bit different.

The answer is to the finish line if we help each other we can run the entire race well what are some of these burdens that we face that we might need help with.

Identifying the Burns might be easier than helping helping them but I think maybe the number one burden that some people face in this life are probably health issues because a someone is going through a very significant health issue it affects everything in their life it becomes this all consuming focus and in this day and age fortunately we have the technology where people can go to doctors and and sometimes be healed be fixed you know their surgeries but it's a drain physically emotionally and even financially if someone is dealing with some significant health issues it's probably they probably can't work and it's costing a lot of money and so when someone's dealing with the burden of health issues that's a time when we come alongside each other and say hey can I help is there anything that you need another time when people are feeling crushed is just when they're going through financial difficulties. And sometimes it's due to no fault of their own maybe the industry that they're in it's changing in their they find themselves without a job or loss of job because of health reasons and then things snowball and people really find themselves in despair another time when people are just burdened is when they have an enormous amount of responsibilities an unusual amount of responsibilities at a given time and they just feel like they're paralyzed those are also known as mothers with small children.

Or anyone that has a great amount of responsibilities you can just become debilitated Well what should we do when we come across a brother or sister in Christ that has a burden that we're supposed to help carry while sometimes giving and again you have to use your discretion in the situation because it's different but sometimes giving a person just a small break whatever that means or whatever looks like it can really help them do a wide variety of things it can help them catch their breath it can help them just clear their head it can help them remove their energy but most importantly it helps them know that they're not alone and that's probably the biggest thing that all of us need to know is in this race. We're not alone and just carry the weight just a little bit for them can't do it the whole way for just a little bit of time and it makes a huge difference and so I think all of us need to be keeping our eyes open for the people that are closest to us to see if they need a little help from time to time so that's the Bible says we need to help each other in the race when someone is carrying a burden. Now let's talk about the 4th time now the 1st 3 times we talked about those and I think they definitely fit this analogy of a race on the 4th one I'm kind of forcing in here I'm making it fit because I'm the preacher and I can do that by just letting you know so here are the 3 times that we've already talked about we do it when things are going well when people are getting tired when they can't move and the 4th time that we help each other run the race is when someone is taking a break when someone is taking a break but we'll talk about this obviously but the longer the race the more breaks a person is going to take for those of you who have ever run in a 5 K. which is a quick 3 point one miles there's no breaks you don't stop and why you you run as fast as you can usually you don't even stop for water right least the fastest people do that in a 10 K. yeah you might stop your drink some water as you go through the aid stations the longer the race you do need to stop and take time in these old enduring so events people will actually stop sit down eat a meal now like pizza or they'll eat some food old drink some some water some gator whatever it is they'll take a break they'll stretch and then they'll keep going and so the longer the race the more breaks you really do need and I can mention in race across the years that 2448 hour race people literally have tents set up on the side of the race so that they'll they'll sleep for a few hours in the wake up and they'll keep going. You know there's a joke that I think I've mentioned in a sermon I'm not sure but some of you have teased me by telling me this joke I'm going to tell you this joke but let's say you walk into a room and it's full of people and one of those people is across here and another one of those people they are a vegetarian How do you find out who they are well the answer is they will tell you you don't have to worry about they will tell you because they're passionate about that listen what do people in the races want to talk about when they take a break the race they talk about their race they talk about how they're feeling what they're doing a good moment if they had a bad moment that they had when you go to the aid station they're talking about oh yeah this is great you know I I almost tripped almost stumbled over there and when I race across the years you talk about what hurts what doesn't hurt anymore can you feel your feet can you not feel your feet you have to turn your toenails of the toenails fall off all of the different things I'm serious about that that actually happens well this race that is set before us we need to be talking to each other about the race and the best time to do that is when we have a moment to reflect with one another so this is the passage I'm kind of forcing into this outline it's from 1st Peter chapter 4 in this passage there's a few there's a 31 and others in here and I'm going to pick out one of them 1st Peter 4 versus 7th or 10.

It says the end of all things is at hand therefore be self controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers above all keep loving one another earnestly since love covers over covers a multitude of sins verse one says show hospitality to one another without grumbling and tense as each has received a gift use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace but the key here is there in verse 9 Moore says show hospitality and for Peter to write that to those people at that time it meant something maybe a little bit different than it does today today when we travel we have the luxury of automobiles and you know hotels back then in this day people would brothers and sisters in Christ we need to open up their homes when people are traveling and so that they don't have to stay and in very dangerous situations and so a lot of times when not so much friends and families but when believers from different cities would come people would open up their house and they'd say yeah you can stay with us for a week or or however long as you conduct business and that's why it says do it without grumbling because house guests are like fish right after one week they stink or something like that something that's how it goes but I'm sure people get frustrated when they had to do this and so Peter writes of them show hospitality when we are hospitable that's really our opportunity to just sit down take a break from this race and ask each other how are you doing where we ask each other how there been times in your life maybe this week or just your life in general when you have been running the race and it's going been going really really well tell me about those and let me tell you about mine or find out when they were weak or if they have any burdens talk about those things we need to take breaks with each other be hospitable and take those breaks and really talk about the race that we're in well what are ways that we can do this. There are so many different ways and I don't want this sermon to turn into out how to make friends with others but we need to be very intentional about this we need to be inviting other people into our lives sometimes it means even Here is a church we have small groups small group ministries if you're not involved in one next time we open these up make sure that you get involved it's hard to get to know each other on a Sunday morning in a setting that's not really what this is for but so that we take those breaks when we get together with each other and we talk about the races that when we have small groups Another great way to get to know each other is right after service what we all have to do right after this we need to eat right so invite people over to your house or say hey if you're going to eat let's let's go to a restaurant together but make this a priority and think of it as we need to take a break from this race together let's just sit here together and let's talk about the race that we're in we need to be very intentional intentional about creating more friendships with each other and Facebook friendships don't count All right we need real relationships. Can you think of a time when someone's hospitality or their friendship made a huge difference in your relationship with God and I hope that you can I hope you can say that you took a break with another person and I really lifted your spirits wall that's how it's supposed to be and this is how God is really designed his family to function so let's take breaks with each other let's practice hospitality hospitality and let's talk about our race. Well when it comes to your race as it talks about it here is 12 won this race that your in this race of your faith where are you out right now if you went through this outline not so much the 4th point but the 1st 3 points on could you say you know right now well things are really going well this is great I'm really enjoying my life is that right now or would you say I'm pretty tired I'm just glad that I'm here this morning that's how tired I am or might some of you say I am I don't know how I'm going to function tomorrow I am just so burdened in my life with so many different things I'm pretty sure all of us can probably describe where we're at and it's funny how it changes it's always changing but are you able to describe where the people closest to you are at in their race and that's what we means that's what we do when we one another each other we run the race with other people don't run alone in his miserable run with someone else. Well I hope that spending time looking at all these one or other commands has incursion inspired you I know I've enjoyed the study myself but God meant for us to do life with each other as part of God's family what I want to do is I want to close this sermon and this series by looking at the passage of Scripture that we looked at to begin this whole thing and that is Jesus' prayer to the father on the night that he was betrayed before he paid for our sins this was Christ's prayer to the father about how we would treat each other in John 1720 Jesus prays I do not ask for these only but also for those who will believe in Me through their word that they may all be one just as you Father are in me and I in you that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. And what an honor and a privilege it is that through our love for each other the world might come to know the grace of God So let's be devoted and love each other let's pray.

Lord thank you so much for all the passages that you've given us in Scripture and as we can pick out these one another passages. It just reminds us that this race that we're in it's hard and it's not supposed to be done alone so thank you for for giving us the wisdom and the insight here in these passages that we read to know when we come alongside each other and how we're supposed to do that and so father I just pray for the relationships that are in this room there are people in here who are I know that they're just craving for friendships healthy good life giving friendships with other believers and so Father help us as a church to create those opportunities and for everyone to take initiative everyone has to take initiative on their own as well thank you for giving us this idea that Lord you you put the Holy Spirit in all of us so that we will be one with each other and that's only possible because of your truth because of the Spirit lives within us so Father help us as a church and as individuals to really yield ourselves to the Spirit's purpose and your purpose in our lives so that we as believers in not just our church but all believers everywhere that we will see we will show the world what unity means and that through our unity with each other that they'll realize that they're missing out on something and that is the forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life because of your Son Jesus Christ and so it's for that goal and for that purpose that we come together we will meet and we pray that you will fulfill that purpose in our lives we pray this in Jesus' name amen have a wonderful week and be good to one another during it.

You know Western night is kind of like this this annual marker the now summer is definitely officially over and now we're kind of into the the cooler weather and so it was great to have that last night and I would say that last night by far was the Best Western night that we've ever had here on 12th Street wouldn't you agree we had a great time and it's funny when we were looking at this building last year one question that kept coming up was yeah we like you that's great but where are we going to do with us tonight well now we know right out there right in the parking lot.

I also think that because this is the 1st place Matt was extra motivated to win the pie contest you know he got to get the 1st one here well we have 2 more sermons in our series on one another one another commands that we have some scattered throughout Scripture and last week we started to just kind of wrap up the remaining random one and other passages and so last week what we did is we talked about the importance of speaking the truth to each other and not lying the last 2 that we're going to do for today and next Sunday I want these to be more like conclusion sermons we're going to kind of wrapping up this entire series on the one another commands and the main point I believe of all The one another commands that we look all throughout the New Testament God wants us to be one with each other Jesus Christ prayed that we would be one with each other so that the world would know the truth about who Jesus Christ is. And so all of us are in this one another ring together God wants us to represent Christ to the world and so what we should do is we should root for one another we should cheer each other on we should build up and encourage one another and we're not in competition with each other we're not competing against each other but human nature being what it is sometimes we do kind of fall into that trap and we do try to kind of compete against one another and so that's what today's sermon is really going to focus on well one of my favorite passages in the entire Bible is Hebrews 121 and I can because it has like this reference to it but he was 121 says Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses those witnesses are former one another worse right such a great cloud of witnesses let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and then it says and let us run with in durance the race that is before us and so in a spiritual sense the Bible teaches us that you and me were running a race but we're not competing against each other we're running this race together and so with that thought in mind the final 2 sermons will be about today we'll talk about how to not trip up your fellow racers don't prevent them from running the race and the next week we're going to look at how we can help motivate our fellow racers but today we're going to talk about not tripping up our fellow racers and the issue that we're going to be dealing with is judging each other

are we supposed to judge each other. Are we supposed to do that you know I think this is probably one of the most misunderstood topics in the Bible when taught when people talk about judging oftentimes they'll quote a couple different passages one that they'll talk about or the quote is Luke $637.00 and Luke $637.00 it says judge not and you will not be judged condemn not and you will not be condemned forgiven you will be forgiven so a lot of people I've heard them say Probably you've heard them say maybe you've even said this to you is don't judge me don't judge me the Bible says don't judge me and then if you go a little further in Luke Chapter 6 down a verse 42 we talk about the hypocrisy passage and says How can you say to your brother brother let me take out a speck that is in your eye when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye you hypocrite 1st take out the log of your own eye and then you will be then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye you know I think today there are some people who think that there are some magic words that they can say and they can do whatever they want and there are just simply the phrase Don't judge me have you ever had anyone do that now don't judge me but it's like soon as you sprinkle those magic words then you can do whatever you want or or this is a non judgement zone Have you ever seen someone do that or are posted on Facebook non judgement zone it's like magically you can do whatever you want now it's kind of crazy how people think but they are main passage for today is found in Romans Chapter 14 verse 13 so read that right now in Romans $1413.00 it says Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another there is our word all alone any longer but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. And so this passage says that we should not pass judgment on one another make it our determination to not try to trip each other up or make cause a hindrance in the way of our brother or sister and I think for one of the most for most of these one and other passages what I've done these sermons I've looked at several different passages that use the words that we're looking at but for this morning what we're going to do is we're going to really focus on this passage but in the section of Romans 14 so I encourage you open your Bible sarong and Chapter 14 we're going to be there pretty much the whole morning and we're going to kind of see what Paul is saying here in verse 13 he kind of has a big build up to it in the in the preceding verses but before we look at Romans Chapter 14 and see how it applies to us I do want us to realize that there is a time when we are supposed to judge each other all right there is a time when we're supposed to do that and in 1st Corinthians 5 I'll just put this up on the screen so you have to turn there this is these are the times that we are supposed to do this 1st Corinthians Chapter 5.

Verses one and 2 Paul says to those in Corinth it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind it is not tolerated even among pagans for a man has his father's wife and you are arrogant ought you not rather to mourn let him who has done this be removed from among you in verse 2 some of your verses probably say something different than arrogant you think why why are they being arrogant about this well I think the idea was this was taking place within that church there in Corinth and the people that knew this was taking place they said oh we're just going to love them anyway we're not going to judge them we're going to be tolerant of each other and we're just going to let them live their lives and so Paul says no this is going on in your midst you need to expel this wicked person and then if you go down in 1st Corinthians 5. I'll start reading in verse 11 but I have verses 12 and 13 up here Paul is writing to the same people and he says but now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater a reveler drunkard or swindler not even to eat with such a one in verse 12 says For what have I to do with judging outsiders is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge God judges those outside purge the evil person from among you so the Bible clearly teaches that we are supposed to judge each other specifically determine whether an action is a violation of God's moral commands if someone is clearly living deliberately against what God says we're to make a determination we're supposed to judge whether that is right or wrong and in some situations the judgment goes beyond just deciding whether it's right or wrong actually passing out judgment and so in certain circumstances we can do that one such setting where this judging should always be taking place is within the home parents and children parents should always be determining whether the children are living up to the standards of the house and if not they should punish their children to discipline them because they love their children why I hope this makes sense I think it probably does for everyone so let's go back about and talk about when we should not judge each other. You know I feel very blessed I am 44 years old I have lived in 3 different parts of this great country I grew up in the state of Washington then I moved to Michigan and then now I've been here for 12 years going on pretty soon will be here 13 years and pretty soon will I will have lived here longer than I lived in Michigan so I was kind of crazy but I was texting my friend yesterday watching the Michigan football game which I know all of you should have been doing. If you weren't and Michigan they played Penn State they absolutely destroyed them and during the 1st half I'm texting my friend well this is great we're going to win we're going to destroy him so hey after halftime I have to go to church I have to set up for an event tonight so don't tell me the score I am recording it and he said You're doing what do you do want to church and I said we're doing this thing called Western night it's pretty cool we have barbecue we do it outside we have country music and we have a pilot in championship and he said really that sounds pretty cool that's awesome because they can't do that in Michigan. It's ways you're cold they're like building their igloos right now they're getting ready for hibernation but I'm just thinking it's so we need that we can take our faith and we can create some fun things to do with it because of the climate in the geographies that we live in and that's true of every believer everywhere in the world we have the same faith but because of a variety of circumstances sometimes we get to live out that faith in different ways different methods whatever it is and sometimes the differences of where we live and the cultures that we live in sometimes those differences kind of creep into the way that we live on our face and sometimes if we're not careful when we see someone living out their faith in a different way than us we say how I do this is right and how they do this is wrong when the issues have absolutely nothing to do with the truth of God And so what Paul did is he wrote this passage to help the Romans and ultimately to help us to know how to be good one another worse all right and that deals with not judging one another so I have 2 points for my passage today from my sermon today and it's about how we can avoid tripping up fellow racers right and the 1st way we do that the 1st where we avoid tripping each other up in this race that we're in is that we need to understand what it means to say that the sufficiency is found in Christ we need to understand the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. Let's go to Romans Chapter 14 verse one Romans 14 verse one this is reading from the E.S.B. It says As for the one who is weak in face welcome him but not to quarrel over opinions all right

isn't that strange to hear Paul say that someone has weak faith I mean what does that mean have you ever thought about that I mean because isn't face to face either you either you have a face or you don't well to have face or to believe means that you entrust something of yourself with another person or something else you're in trusting yourself to another person and specifically when we're talking about face in this setting we're saying that we have face in Jesus Christ we have placed our faith in him and we entrust ourselves specifically to what Jesus Christ did on the cross. We're putting our face in him and in that and we're fate putting our face in his resurrection in all those things to save us from our sins and give us the hope of eternal life and so our face in Jesus Christ is in his completed work it's done he has already died for our sins he's already raised back to life so that he can give us the hope of eternal life and our face in Christ is complete it's completely done and so Paul is criticizing these people here Romans for their lack of insight into some of the implications of their face in Christ these are Christians who are not able to accept for themselves the truth that they're facing Christ has liberated themselves from the Old Testament ritual system and so Paul desires in this passage here in Romans Chapter 14 he desires for couple things for those who are strong to help those who are weak to become strong but then also for those who are strong to put unity before their desire to be right among the other believers and the 3 issues that he brings up in this passage in Romans 14 we'll look at 2 of them but the 3 issues are food the food that they eat their observance of special days or certain days and we will get to this it's later on the passage but wine whether it's a permissible to drink wine and I want to make kind of a personal comment on this and I think as we're reading here in Romans Chapter 14 we're going to deal with the issues that they were dealing with at the time but I think it's.

It's easy for us to take for granted how this happened a long time ago and these significant changes that these people in Rome had to really deal with for them and especially for the Jews they had a lot of changes to keep up with 3 things in particular they had to change they had to deal with the fact that all the old testament was pointing to this Messiah that was about to come and he already came and it was Jesus of Nazareth and so they had to just really. Stan that these prophecies about the coming Messiah partially have been fulfilled some obviously have not yet been fulfilled they also had to understand that Jesus is the fulfillment of the law they have grown up being taught this is how you live out your face you do all of these different rituals and in all these different customs we have the benefit of looking at the like the book of Galatians we spent about almost a year and elations. We are told the law was not given so that people can be saved the law was given to point people to the fact that they can't save themselves through their works and that it was to point to Jesus Christ and so we should have a we have a greater appreciation how Jesus completed the law and they also had to deal with the fact that Gentiles are now equal so they had all these things to deal with and those are huge substantial changes for them to take in in a very short amount of time and so for many of them who were used to the old way of doing things it was a process to see how those rituals had now been completed and they no longer had to do those well so keep reading a little bit and kind of deal with the issues that they were they were having to struggle with Romans 14 beginning in verse 2 it says one person believes he may eat anything while the weak person eats only vegetables Let not the one who eats despise the one who have stains and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another it is before his own master that he stands or falls and he will be held for the Lord is able to make him stand and so in those 1st couple verses there Paul is talking about what they eat but he's not talking about like a specific diet he's not telling them that they have to have a specific diet like the actions diet or to be paleo or the Kido diet those these fads that come around some are some are very helpful some are probably nonsense or vegetarianism. I didn't mean that about vegetarianism but my favorite diet my absolute favorite diet is it's called the donut diet.

You eat a maple bar on Monday and a fritter on Friday and life is just great so you don't a diet I think is the best but there's probably a few issues that this could be alluding to what you know what he's talking about eating the 1st is the dietary laws one point in time God said you can eat these foods but you can't eat these foods but that had changed in Acts chapter 10 God since Peter a vision he sends down a sheet from heaven and it's filled with all sorts of sorts of animals and he says go Peter kill and eat and so we realize that now we're able to eat anything that we want especially bake it we can eat bacon and that's a real that's a good thing that's an that's an upgrade he also most definitely is talking about food that was sacrificed to idols and this was a very common practice among the Gentiles they were pagans and they lived in idolatry and so what they would do is Gentiles would sacrifice food or meat to appease the local god which there is no local god actually but they would take me they would sacrifice it to the local god and because the local guy doesn't exist he doesn't eat the meat so you know what they do with that meat they turn around and sell it at a discount and so people could get that meat at a discount and so people are eating meat that had. And sacrificed to idols and so a weak believer would associate that food with the pagan lifestyle that they just came out of so can you see how this would be a problem for them they're brought up learning and being taught that there's these foreign gods there's these local gods and we're supposed to sacrifice them so the so so that we don't so that they we are in their favor and when they realize that that's nonsense and that's not true they want to disassociate everything in their life from that pagan idolatry.

We don't do that today but maybe we have other things that might be similar and I think I've shared this at one time but I remember I had this friend and I think when he was when he was younger I don't know if he was a believer at the time or not but he used to do drugs and when he would do drugs he would listen to a very specific rock band. And he said later on in life he could not listen to that band because obviously it would bring him back to that emotional and physical place where he would do drugs and so and I'm not going to tell you the name of the band so that you don't associate forget it. But so dealing with this issue with food sacrificed to idols those who are strong in the face they knew that there's only one God and the food that was sacrificed to an idol guess what it's just food that's all it is there's nothing special to it but some of the weaker brothers couldn't make that distinction and so they would say I'm not going to eat that meat and they wanted to remove themselves from all of that pagan idolatry and this is the way that they would do it but they would also judge the people who would eat they didn't have enough faith in themselves and they would they would they would judge the people who would continue to eat the meat that was associated with pagan idolatry and so these were the issues that these true believers were not seeing eye to eye on back then well that was the 1st issue another disputable matter that they were dealing with back in those days were some of the feast and festivals in the religious days let's keep reading here in Romans Chapter 14 beginning in verse 5.

Says one person esteems one day is better than another another esteems all days alike each one should be fully convinced in his own mind

the one who observes the day observes it to go on or.

In on or of the Lord the one who eats eats in honor of the Lord since he gives thanks to God while the one who abstains abstains in on her of the Lord and gives thinks to God. With the setting aside of the law this was a big issue back then should they celebrate certain feast and festivals are they required to do that are they permitted to do these things another passage I'm not going to put it up on the screen but kind of addresses this is found in collages Chapter 2 Paul writes to them and says therefore let no one pass judgment on you in question of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath these are a shadow of the things to come but the substance belongs to Christ and so Paul is telling them all those things were to point to Christ they are not doing these things to earn salvation and this is why it's so important for all of us to understand the sufficiency of Christ in Christ the entire law has been fulfilled in Christ the work has been completely done and what we are left with is the freedom to enjoy God's grace and the freedom to worship God alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ but back in the day these were the disputable matters that they had to deal with eating meat sacrificed to idols whether they were supposed to continue to follow the law these are big issues today are they but because we're believers and we live in culture and society there are issues that we have to deal with I I kind of came up with a list of issues that might be disputable matters and I also think that you go you fast forward in time every 20 years and you're probably going to come up with a new list of disputable matters just as society changes but when it comes to living out our Christian faith I know for a while on there was probably very a disputable matter whether people could go to movies or not or play cards things like that could you go dancing as a believer or how about video games I mean could you to imagine telling a junior high kid or high school kid you can play video games I mean I be the end of life or what about holidays can we celebrate all holidays as a Christian can you celebrating Can you participate in Halloween. What about Christmas all of these holidays are we able to do that or how about this can a believer get tattoos or body piercings or bodily augmentations upgrade you know who worshipping with uplifted hands in prayer and. About home schooling should Christians send their kids to public school or charter schools or should they just keep them at home for homeschooling and I just listed off a whole bunch of items did any of them kind of get your blood going oh my God there's other ones they don't matter but you know that no one subject and that's really really important probably depends on the culture in the society that you're brought up and back in West Michigan I don't know how much of an issue it is today but a denomination split over a specific issue the reformed church split into the Christian Reformed Church and Reformed Church whether or not they should send their kids to a Christian school or public school and a denomination split over that issue and so these are the issues that we deal with. I think it's human nature to think about how our behavior affects our face and it does and so maybe when we read Chapter 14 we can read a little bit more like this that we should accept him who prefers to worship God by singing only him is that the right way so much the same in the right way to practice our faith or how about this except him who prefers to worship God by singing praise him sir praise and worship and looking randomly or or except him who chooses to attend Saturday evening worship services or accept Him who likes to eat coffee earth drink coffee and donuts during the service you know one year back when we were in Michigan week off I went to go visit church with a buddy of mine because when I'm on vacation I like to do that and it was the local megachurch and they had the worship center filled to capacity and they had an overflow room in the gym and it was the neatest thing because they serve coffee and donuts during the service and so I remember I'm sitting there I'm thinking you know I'm always preaching i never going to do this I want to see what this is like and so I got up during the middle of the sermon which none of you should ever do.

And I went back to the back and I got coffee and donuts and I came back and I felt like the biggest heathen in the world.

I got over it I lived I don't get struck by lightning but I'm sure How about this is it OK to read your Bible on your i Pad or is this the only acceptable way to read your Bible so there's all these disputable matters that come up and you know I think from time to time we're just going to be dealing with these new issues.

As they come up you know I'm going to make a prediction and I know this is going to be true no I'm not going to predict when Christ is going to come back but here's a prediction and it goes something like this. When a believer is younger they genuinely embrace the new changes that come into a church in this kind of exciting in the say yeah let's let's do it this way let's change and as that person goes through time and they get older you start looking at these new changes are going on that's ridiculous you know why would anyone want to do it that way and I can even see the change taking place in me you know I'm not necessarily a young believer anymore and young and in my own years and I'm getting older and sometimes you look at change that way.

A piece of advice that I heard I read in a book a long time ago when it comes to matters like this is for us to understand that there is a different difference between the contents that we're supposed to look at and the container that they're in so we can look at our face in terms of contents and container when it comes to the contents of our faith those are timeless and will never change the Jesus is the Son of God that salvation is only through Him However the containers that they're in sometimes can change even over different periods of time or maybe from one culture to another and so if you're dealing with disputable matters we should ask ourselves the question are we dealing with an issue of contents or the containers that the same content should be in and if you can kind of make that determination maybe it helps us to know whether a response to judge or not judge on a certain issue another piece of helpful advice I read when it comes to matters like this it says that we should avoid the 2 extremes when it comes to situations like this the 2 extremes are legalism and libertinism All right legalism I'll give you kind of a definition here legalism is when we make a list of rules and we conform to those rules then we attempt to make our personal convictions normative for others all right that's legalism the other side of the spectrum that we should avoid is where we say since I'm free in Christ and the Bible for bids none of these things than I feel free to do any of them or all of them no matter how it effects my other brothers and sisters in Christ so we should avoid those 2 extremes you know sometimes I think we can get caught up in what the container should look like instead of focusing on the contents but the content of our faith is the finished work of Jesus Christ he completed it so it's done we don't have to add anything to it and that sometimes we're. Disputable matters come in so it's the 1st way to avoid tripping each other up in this race and that is to understand the sufficiency of Christ if he has completed and finished the work well the 2nd way to avoid an I'm not going to spend much time on this is to avoid tripping each other up in this race is to understand that we are own we are each individually accountable to God Each of us are not accountable for another person to God we are accountable for ourselves to God if we continue on in our palace of the Romans we get to verse 10.

In here Paul writes to them and he says why do you pass judgment on your brother or you why do you despise your brother for we all stand before the Judgment Seat of God For it is written as I live says the Lord every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God So then each of us will give an account of himself to God we're not going to give an accounting of anyone else to God it's ourselves and so we should give people sometimes the freedom to express their face in ways that don't change the contents you know as a as a read through this and as a read the passage here in Romans Chapter 14 I have of one last thought I guess that comes to my mind it's amazing that God is completely OK with each of us developing different convictions. He really gives us the freedom to develop different convictions on these disputable matters he good leaves room for all these different things to happen in our lives and how they affect our relationship with them and so in the end what God is most concerned about is us being genuine in the way that we live our faith what I want to do is I want to finish Romans Chapter 14 here at least go up to verse 19 so let's continue reading so therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it is unclean for if your brother is grieved by what you eat you are no longer walking in love by what should we do not destroy the one for whom Christ died so do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil for the Kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men so then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual building I love that last phrase let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual building. You know I want to I want to conclude my sermon by talking about one of my passions there's Michigan football and cross fit so I talk about Michigan football I want to talk about CROSSFIRE just for a minute and I don't do this every Sunday so don't judge me on CROSSFIRE but I'm really glad that I found cross-eyed for a couple reasons but I think the 2 top reasons are it has helped me get stronger for those of you don't know across what is a it's a high intensity workout that combines Olympic weightlifting gymnastics movements and just body weight so it's intense to kind of get the heart rate up but I love it because it's helped me get stronger and I wish that I would have done this you know 1520 years ago so I could have been even stronger than I am now but the 2nd thing is that I love about it is it satisfies that competitive it that I have I'm a competitive person I don't know if that's every come across any of you but I discovered especially in my 1st church the 1st couple years that I should not take my competitive energy and focus it into the church it just is not good it does not go over well for anyone and so I found crossword is something that I can be competitive with every day that I do it I try to go a few times a week and I'm competitive with other people but I'm also definitely competitive with myself so I see myself getting stronger and better but something that is so unique about Cross Fit is this even though you're working out every day and technically you're competing against other people in the class of the same time but you do genuinely as you get to know them you genuinely root them on and cheer for them when they progress as well when they hit a personal best when they lift a weight that they've never been able to lift or they're able to do a certain movement you're genuinely happy for them it's such a unique environment and I think the world needs more environments like that. There are not many groups where you can find that kind of camaraderie and and sportsmanship and they're really rooting each other on but you know the place that should even be better than that when it comes to rooting ensuring each other on it's the local church it's here at church where we should genuinely cherish and love and care for each other and Root 3 chugger to mature in their relationship with Christ there's no room for competition in the body of Christ this is where we root for each other and said being Judge Mental over disputable matters can really harm that and so because that is what God has called us to do let's make sure that we don't trip each other up by judging each other over these disputable matters and this definitely pray that God gives us the wisdom to know what is what was going let's close in prayer

Dear Lord we thank you for this morning we thank you for these one another commands that you've given us in your word and we we thank you for the one anothers that we that we have in the relationship with each other here agrees to Phoenix Florida it's so easy for us to take our own opinions and our own preferences and and make them very important parts of our face well or there's a lot of danger in that because we might trip each other up as we're all running this race together it's a father as we look at this passage in Romans Chapter 14 I just pray that should just give us the wisdom to be able to determine what what those issues are in our life and when there is grace and when there is freedom for another believer let's celebrate with them and when there is not let's a definitely have to point that out before either I pray that as we go through this race together that we will share each other on and do would ever it is within our power to pursue what leads to peace and mutual building like your Holy Word says we pray is now increasing their man.

All right at this I'm going to start off with a question I sometimes I do this and this is a dangerous question to ask because this could just start a fire storm in here but so just answer this question in your mind or talk to your family at lunch OK But here's the question. Is it ever OK to lie to someone else what.

I heard I heard a man say Yes way too.

Is it ever OK to lie to someone you know some of you might be thinking lying is wrong the Bible tells us not to lie. Again I'm just bringing this up just for discussion sake not right now but maybe for later actually in the Bible there are a couple times that it's recorded where someone lied and God bless them for it a couple examples. In Exodus future in the Exodus and this is well after Joseph had passed away the Israelites they were really increasing in number and the Egyptians were becoming very fearful of the number of the Israelites and so Pharaoh told the midwives as soon as a Hebrew woman gives birth if it's to a son kill that baby boy and so the midwives it so that they feared God and so they refused to do this and Pharaoh came to the midwives and said Why is it that you are not killing the newborns and they lied and they said well the Hebrew women they are there are very strong and so they will have the kids even before the midwives can get there and this is a god bless the midwives and actually gave them families of their own so there's an example of they lied but God bless them another example and we're not going to go through all of the examples in scripture but another one I think is very important Joshua and before they went in and captured the Promised Land they sent the two spies into Jericho and the two spies ran across a woman named Rahab and Ray had hid the spies and when the city officials came in they said We know that you have spies here were are they we're going to bring them out so we can kill them she lied and God bless her for. That not only did God bless her he saved her when the Israelites came in and destroyed Jericho but she's actually in the lineage of Christ and obviously in those situations they live for a greater purpose and I don't want to get into all of that but. What about when we lie to the other people is it OK for us to lie if we're going to surprise someone like our lineage you have ever had a surprise party for someone else I go birthday party and you had to lie to them to deceive them to think that they're going to do something else is that OK or is that not really lying is that like tricking someone or a birthday presents we lie about that or a one time I had to lie to Kristen just one time.

When we were dating when we were dating we kind of already we knew that we were going to get married and we kind of even had our date picked out when we were going to get married and and I had picked out the ring from my friend back in Seattle Washington because he worked at a jewelry store and I got his discount that's cheap anyway but you know the story but I he was back in Seattle and I was in Michigan and Kristen was wondering you know when I was going to propose and I told her I would never have the ring mailed through the mail and so I had to go home for Christmas break so they could pick up the ring and bring it back and so over Thanksgiving which was obviously before Christmas I got down on one knee and I proposed and she didn't quite answer me yet and so I had to I'm sure you will you marry me she was yes and almost the next question was Did you have the ring mailed.

So I lied to my wife my girlfriend at the time well this morning sermon is not about when it's OK to lie and when it's not OK And the difference between lying and tricking someone for a good purpose and so let's just kind of take that whole discussion and kind of put it off to the side right now but what we're going to do today is talk about the importance of speaking the truth to one another we are. Our series on one another and today we're going to talk about speaking the truth to one another and what I wanted to get you thinking about is this the importance that you find in your own life for someone to speak truth to you so on a scale of one to ten how important is it to you that the following people speak the truth to you OK ready let me give you a few examples how important would it be to you that the person you're about to purchase a car from tells you the truth.

That's going to be up there right maybe some of you would even use that you use a number ten how about this how important is it to you that your personal financial advisor who manages all of your money tells you the truth pretty important right OK how about how important is it to you that the waiter at your restaurant tells you the truth. Pretty important maybe not as critical right must have allergies my college roommate We always joke because he was a waiter at restaurants and whenever he would come out and bring the salad with the rich ranch dressing they would always say Now this is fat free dressing right he said Oh yeah yeah yeah absolutely is free or is that regular decaf What do you want or decoys Yeah this is decaf so.

Your waiters lied to you just so you know or how about this how important is it to you that the person who preaches to you on Sunday morning tells the truth right pretty important right I take this pretty seriously or how about how important is it to you that the political leader that leads you tells the truth. Why are you laughing.

Are a couple more how important is it that your spouse tells you the truth or how important is it that your children tell you the truth or how important is it that a salesman tells you the truth. One last story and will kind of get on to the sermon but I remember when I was my. Final year in college there was a gym health club that opened up and it wasn't doing very well and there were rumors that it was going to fold but this is my last semester and so my roommate Brad bruiser who is actually a pastor somebody might know briberies or as we said hey you know let's let's join this gym or get married in the summer list work out and and I remember sitting down with the salesman and someone had told me that Jim might not survive and so I asked him he said you need to sign a two year contract no up front money I think was like ten or fifteen dollars a month and I asked him I said if the gym folds if you guys close the door in my release from this contract and I looked him straight in the eyes and asked him this question he goes oh yeah no problem if we fold in your release from the contract Well three weeks later four weeks later we drive up to the gym and guess what there was a closed sign on the door when I go it's too bad but you know at least we're released from our contract a few weeks later I got a bill in the mail to pay my monthly membership and I called them up on the phone and said the salesman told me I would be released he said No Well he lied the contract says you owe us money for two years as long as you live within twenty five mile radius of one of our gyms and out of spite I didn't pay them. That's right and then when I tried to get my first loan for a mortgage guess where short of my credit report call me and I was really upset with that salesman anyway you know I suspect that for all of those people who probably had a high number maybe even all of you said that's a number ten I want the people that I'm dealing with I want them to speak the truth to me Well how about in a family relationships between a parent and a child you know I have a confession to make I confess this to Steven to Mike before the service I knew I was going to be talking about this in the importance of parents speaking the truth to their children and I've done something kind of kind of sneaky here at the church I've convinced a couple kids that the coffee machine makes donuts.

I really have an. And so here I am talking about sowing lies about anyone but I know that they believe the older ones No no that doesn't make donuts but they're convincing their younger siblings that they can makes donuts but when I googled up the biggest lies that children tell their parents I'm going to just see if some of your familiar with these the biggest one of the biggest lies that a child will tell their parents is I didn't do it.

You're you know we've probably heard that before right well well then who did well I don't know that's like number two they usually know or when a child wants to watch a television show or play a video game and the parent asks Are you done with your home or he had What's the lie that goes with that oh yeah I'm done with my homework or a couple a couple more if the child doesn't want to go to school what lie will they tell their parents oh I'm so soon oh my stomach hurts or the last one before a child needs to go to bed it's time to go to bed child will say but I have to go to the bathroom that's not a lie worth risking so I make him go to go to the bathroom. And we're not going to share the lies the parents tell their children so we're going to move on.

But why do people lie we deal with this everywhere in every part of society why do people lie people who lie are obviously doing this for very selfish purposes and people usually lie because they're putting their own desires before another person's And I'd say the two main reasons probably the two main reasons why people lie is because they're trying to get something that they want.

Or they're trying to stay out of trouble and so that's the two main reasons probably why people lie but I think that it is impossible for two people or group of people to have a healthy relationship if that relationship is filled with people who are lying to each other and that's what we're talking. But right now in our sermon series on healthy relationships and especially talking about our series on one another in one another and just to kind of recap what we've talked about there is one hundred places in the New Testament where we see this phrase one another thirty percent deal with Unity thirty percent deal with love that's we talked about last week fifteen percent are on humility and another twenty five works sort of random and I've kind of lumped of those random one another commands into two categories the first one to look at today and the next one we're going to look at the over the next couple weeks but as you look at those random one another commands it's dealing a lot with truth and how we speak to each other not lying to each other and speaking the truth and so today we're going to do is we're going to look at these handful of verses that command us to speak the truth to each other and so let's go ahead and look at those right now and then also let's look at the consequences the Bible teaches us how pins when we lie and also when we told the truth and so if you're following along in your sermon notes here's the first point this is talking about the consequences of truth telling The first consequence deals with lies lies lead to isolation.

If you want I or another person lies to someone else what that ultimately does is lead to isolation. If you think back to the first lie ever said it's back in the Garden of Eden and Satan lie to either about eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good evil. Good Satan lie so that even a relationship with God would get better or worse obviously worse and so that lies purpose was to lead Eve and all of us into isolation and that's what lies do they break down relationships in the most important relationship the Jew and I can have in this life is with our Creator and that relationship. It was built on truth when I look at our first passage for this morning it's found any fees in chapter four you can look at that in your Bibles or I'm also going to have this up on the screen but if he's in chapter four we're going to begin in verse seventeen if he's in chapter four beginning in verse seventeen

and as you're following along in these you're reading this either on the screen in your bible what I want you to do as I want you to notice the connection between truth and I think humans relationship with God All right these are these are inseparable there is truth and our relationship with God Notice how these work together so he's in chapter four beginning in verse seventeen.

It says Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds they are darkened in their understanding Ilya needed from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of heart. They have become callous and they've given themselves up to sensuality greed to practice every kind of impurity or just I want you to notice the so far it says that we as Gentiles or as the unsaved we have turned away from the truth and what is the truth do the truth brings us closer to God and so we have turned away from the truth we have wandered away from the truth and that has led to believing in lies and when you believe in a lie it's going to isolate you from our Creator keep reading here verse twenty but that is not the way that you learned Christ assuming that you have heard about him in more taught in him as the truth is in Jesus to put off your old self which belongs to your former manner of life it is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness so I want you to notice this again this whole passage this whole section is saying that our former way of living is described as having a mind filled with deceit and lies and there are lies in your mind it's going to lead to that kind of living this living that goes away from God However the new way of living. And it starts in our minds and it brings us closer to God and then Paul says this in verse twenty six therefore because of all these truths having put away false would let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor for we are members one of another speak the truth to his neighbor it's interesting that in this passage the first thing that we are told to do after we accept the truth of who God is is speak the truth to our neighbors I think that's worth noting the first thing that we're told to do after we've accepted the truth is just speak truth to our neighbors look at verse twenty five again therefore having put away falshood let each of you speak the truth with his neighbor for we are members one of another and the reason why we're supposed to speak the truth to each other is because we are members with each other. Would you lie and this kind of a dangerous question to ask but would you lie to another person if you knew that it was going to harm you. Or maybe you know if the gratification was there enough. That's what we don't think about in the moments before we live to another person we're so caught up in the instant gratification of getting what we want to avoiding trouble that we don't realize how it's fracturing our relationship with another person if we're going to lie but lives affect everyone lies affect everyone and everything who was affected by Eve buying into say things like I.

Ever see one of us every single one of us every single human being that has ever lived has been affected by that lies so the next time that you you lie or think you can you think of a time that you lied and you got caught and I'm talking a big lie not a small one but a big one did in that moment did it improve your relationship with that person or did it destroy that usually Obviously it's going to harm that relationship here's the thing about our world and I don't want to get to. Much on a tangent with this but our world right now does not value truth. We are told that whatever you want to believe is fine for you but your truth is your truth but we can also see the consequences of that because the world right now is so fractured and people are so isolated from each other and that's because people are looking for truth in other places so that's why we need to speak the truth to one another because lies lead to isolation wanted to turn your Bibles to Romans chapter one I'm not going to put this up on the screen here but in Romans chapter one. Says kind of one of those timeless passages every time I've ever read this in my entire life.

Over just these brief forty some years every time I read this I think boy this really describes the world today it seems like it's even becoming more specific in descriptive but in Romans chapter one beginning in verse eighteen here we read what happens when people give up seeking the truth and they live for themselves this is what happens Romans one verse eighteen. Says for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their own righteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes namely his eternal power and divine nature having been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made so they are without excuse for although they knew God they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to him but they became few tile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were dark and claiming to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal god for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things you know this downward spiral that people find themselves as described here in Romans chapter one it begins with. Suppressing the truth not acknowledging the truth about who God is and the way that you suppress the truth is you have to replace it with a lie and so that's the first thing that we deal with when it comes to the consequences of truth and lies this is true of our relationship with God This is true of our relationship with one another so this is the first consequence of truth telling lies lead to isolation Well that's kind of a bad example now let's talk about the good examples of what happens when we speak the truth the first good example of the consequence of truth telling is this truth leads to renewable truth leads to renewable find this in our passage in collages cautions chapter three verses nine in ten. Cautions three nine and ten says. Do not live to one another seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator I think all of us know what a lie is I think you don't even have to be given a definition to know what lying is but when you look at the definition of scripture the word means specifically to speak deliberate falsehood of what a lie is when you speak deliver a false word or when you are intentionally trying to deceive someone mainly for their harm or for your personal good here in this passage it says that lying is tied to the old self and its practices the old way of living that's how people live they lie where it's all about them speaking truth to each other is tied to the renewed way of living as we are created in we are shaped into the image of our creator and so I think we can say that the words that come out of our mouth is truly a direct reflection of our spiritual condition when you and I speak to each other when we speak to God when we are. Speaking Truth it is truly an indicator of our spiritual condition you know there's a there's a passage back in Mass you I think I have the slide up here this is where the fair seas were criticizing Jesus and they said your followers they're breaking the law of the elders are not washing their hands before the eat and Jesus talked about what really defiles us is not so much what comes into the mouth but what comes out of the mouth in masses Matthew Chapter fifteen this passage in Matthew fifteen seventeen Jesus says Do you not see that whatever goes into your mouth passes into the stomach in his expelled but what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this defiles a person for out of the heart evil thoughts murder adultery sexual immorality theft false witness slander these are what defile a person but seed with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.

Have you ever seen just how true this is that the words that come out of a person's mouth it really is a true reflection of what's going on in their heart and their mind people will speak what is important to them. You know I'm a recently couple months ago I met with a friend of mine and someone that I had not seen in a while hadn't really had any conversations with for awhile and this person they are a True Believer in Christ I believe that they believe in Jesus is definite resurrection but I didn't know where they were at spiritually and so I was glad that I had a chance to sit down with this this friend of mine and it was it was kind of discouraging because the first thing that came out of this person's mouth were a whole bunch of profanities and they wanted to tell me about all the people that they were upset with in their life. Thoughts to behind. I can tell where his mind was and where his heart was the things that he was dwelling on he was not focused on truth telling and and being renewed in the image of our Creator and don't ask me who it is I'm not going to tell you No no one here. No one here but but it was really hard to see that where what you're focusing on that's going to come out of your mouth and this passage here in Colossians is telling us if we want to be renewed in the image of our Creator we need to practice the spiritual discipline of telling truth and so I think here's some good news with this passage in Colossians telling the truth is a spiritual discipline and when we can commit ourselves to speaking the truth to one another I think this is one of the most practical ways that we put off the old self and put on the new self it's as simple as that sometimes the words that we let come out of our mouths so we must speak truth to other people we must always speak truth to other people and somebody might say yeah but what about what about the time when it's going to hurt someone or when there are it's going to offend someone or maybe what if the truth is going to start an argument. Or the truth is truth is going to do that we all know that we've all been in conversations where someone is believing a lie and you try to correct them with the truth and it starts a conflict or they're offended by the truth but however I think this is something we all need to answer this question for ourselves if you were believing something that was a lie and your belief in that thing was causing you to live your life in a certain way if it was truly a lie would you want to know.

I think all of us would say yes all of us do not want our lives to be based on a lie we all want to be based on the truth and I am convinced that one of the most loving things that we can do for the world around us in the people in our lives is to speak the truth to them even if it's going to hurt or offend them in first Corinthians chapter thirteen the passage on love and then read the whole passage we looked at this last week but there's a phrase in there talking about where love is it says that true love love read Joyce's. As with the truth.

So you and I can't possibly have a loving relationship with another person if it's based on a lie and so we need to speak the truth to other people look at our passage and plushy cautions three nine again. Read this again it says do not lie to one another see that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator and so speaking the truth leads to our renewable in Christ image and the more like Christ that we are generally speaking the better in the healthy our relationships are going to be with others so that's the second consequence of truth telling the third consequence of truth telling is this truth is encouraging when we accept the truth even if it stings a little bit at first as soon as we have the truth and we can understand the truth it is greatly encouraging even when you have to tell your your your spouse or whatever it is that maybe you don't like their cooking or you know they don't look good in this outfit here or wives or are you aware if you make a meal and you asked your spouse or your family do you like this meal do you really want them to lie or do you want them to tell the truth you want to tell the truth in a gracious way right you can say the truth of it as long as you say it in a gracious way but sometimes the truth hurts but usually leads to strengthen the relationship so if the truth was given in grace.

I think the most important truth that any human being can discover in this life is going to hurt a little bit at first but then it becomes a great source of encouragement. The hardest truth that we have to realize that we've got a passage for you is this. Romans three twenty three. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

For any human being the. It is full of pride things that they're good enough to earn God's favor this truth should hurt Romans three twenty three it's a horrible truth but guess what we need to know this we need to know that our good works don't leave us in a right relationship with God If a person believes their whole life that they are good enough to earn God's approval it doesn't change the fact that at the end of their life they're still responsible to pay for their sins if they have not placed their faith in Christ and so this is a truth that we all need to know in the good thing about Romans three twenty three for those of you know this know that it quickly goes into another truth that is very good for ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus that is a truth that is encouraging you and I have the hope of eternal life because of what Jesus Christ did for us you know in our Thursday morning men's Bible study we've been going through first that's alone and we just looked at some of these passages recently Paula for those of you familiar with the book of first US alone eons Paul just love these people he's always talking about how much he loves them and they were really concerned about whether the day of the Lord had come or not they were worried that they possibly missed it and so Paul took a little bit of time to give them some truth about these future events that are coming and listen to what he says about this so first less alone in chapter four beginning in verse sixteen I'll put these up on the screen Paul says to them talking about the future events he says for the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command with the voice of an archangel and with the sound of the trumpet of God in the dead in Christ will rise first then we who are alive who are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so we will always be with the Lord therefore encourage one another with these words this is a true. Truth about what's going to happen in the future if you have placed your face and you are in Christ that's probably the most important phrase that we just looked at if you are in Christ then your future is in Christ and when he comes and says that we will be hit with him forever how many of you are encouraged by that truth I am I am greatly encouraged by that truth and he goes on the next chapter Chapter five beginning in verse four first his the five persons five nine ten says for God This is a great truth for God has not destined us for Wrath but to abstain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him therefore encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing and so when we take these truths or any other truth that are in the Bible and we speak them and we give them to other people ultimately the truth is going to be encouraging to us so that's why we're supposed to speak the truth to one another you know I'm very glad that God is not like us because we can lie to each other I know it happens far often far more often than it should but it says that it is impossible for God to lie I'm grateful for that and so that means that we can really build our lives on the truths found in God's word God is not lying to us he tells us exactly what we need to know and in His great love for us he tells us that we are sinners but he also tells us that he fixed the sin by sending His Son to die on the cross for our sins and he comforts us with the hope that we will be with him for ever in eternity and that is the truth now we need to share with each other and encourage each other with.

Well as we kind of wrap up this this portion of the one another commands on a personal level how do you do with this subject.

How do you do with truth telling. Now some of you you may be hearing you think you know this is such an important. For me I always make sure that I speak the truth and I definitely think there are people who who do that a lot more than others some of you might be here and think you know maybe just account to keep the peace with friends and family members maybe I don't stand up for the truth or I just kind of go along with the lies that people are believing I just don't want to create waves but I'm sure that there are a few people in here that realize if you're if you're honest with yourself you have a problem with lying that it just comes out way too easy that in your relationships maybe a with a husband or wife or parents children or work you don't tell the truth so I hope that today is as we read these words or talk about the importance of speaking the truth to other people that all of us will just take ownership over the words that we allow to come out of our mouth and that we will turn to God and ask him to give us the strength to do this spiritual discipline to speak the truth to other people and I want to end by reiterating what the most important truth is in the world that we are sinners deserving of punishment but Jesus died to pay for our sins and that's our face in that alone gives us the hope of eternal life.

In John fourteen six Jesus said I am the way and the truth and the Life no one comes to the Father except through me and this is the truth. Have you accepted this truth or have you bought into some other lie that it's up to you or that it's through your own works well this morning what I want to do is give anyone here an opportunity if you have not accepted this truth that your salvation is only possible through Christ death and resurrection that you can take hold of this truth and be renewed by being in Christ yourself so right now I want to give anyone here who has never done this an opportunity to accept this truth and to claim Christ as your own so if you dial your heads and close your eyes with me.

If you'd like to accept Christ as your lord and savior for the first time just simply pray this prayer and God will hear this if you say this in your heart so dear God I know I am a sinner.

But I believe Jesus died to pay for my sins.

And I believe that He rose again to give me the hope of eternal life.

And so right now I place my face in Christ alone for myself.

And if you prayed that prayer for the first time today or if you have ever prayed that prayer then you are in the truth and so let us speak the truth to one another was closing prayer.

Dear Lord thank you so much for these passages that we read today maybe for some people here it was hard to hear because we realize that maybe we're not speaking the truth as often as we should but Lord you give us as instruction because you want us to have healthy relationships you want our relationships with friends and family members and coworkers to be strong to be healthy in what may be the best way that we can do that or one of the best ways that we can do that is to speak truth to each other so Father I pray that you'll just encourage us in a boldness to be truth speakers and to say it in such a graceful way that we're not offending others or are putting them off so that they want to understand the truth that you have to give us the Lord our desire here a grace by which a Phoenix is to share this truth with the world so help us to be people who speak the truth and to do it in a very gracious way Lord thank you for giving us your truth and it's upon the truth of your Son Jesus Christ that we we base our lives and we pray this in his most holy name Amen.

As I sat down right after the Nelson's my son Kyle said. Dad a cowboy hat is not a good look for you.

I appreciate his honesty you know I think one of the most exciting and terrifying things that we go through in life is finding out the things that we're good at and also finding other things that we're not good at and as you get older you definitely determine some of those things for yourself but it's also kind of fun to watch other people especially as a parent or grandparent you watch your children grow up and and the things that they're good at and they're not good at hopefully or kind of guiding and directing them into certain maybe fields and industries like for instance if your child is a really good liar you direct them towards politics right try to get into that or maybe a lawyer you know I'm here I'm just kidding I'm just kidding but if your child is really good with math you know one of the things if your child is a really good mathematician what is things that you might want to push them towards maybe things like accounting or maybe engineering things like that you know met the world needs mathematicians or if if your child is really dramatic overly dramatic you know maybe push them into acting because that's a very steady stable field you know you can get a lot of work or or really if you're there dramatic you have them going to sales you know salesmen are nothing but dramatic people reason are right city and more maybe if there are there athletic you kind of push them into sports I'm hoping this is a father speaking Hopefully they get a full right college scholarship you know if if they're really good at that and how about if someone is really good at spelling it's a trick question because you don't need to be good at spelling because that's why God created spell check.

I was for to resupply you or she is you know I'm not a very good speller on and on. You know one thing that I'm not good at and I hesitate to say that because the longer I'm here the more you know the things I'm not good at but I'm not good at repairing things that break my why. If she was here she would say amen to that but anything that's mechanical or electrical I look at it and I think I have no idea what to do maybe we should just throw it away and buy something new and that's why I have phone numbers like Bennett on speed dial and I call call and brown or you know you know hey guys this is how do you fix this. But sometimes if I can see how someone fixes a maybe I can do that but one thing that I do feel I'm I'm fairly good at and I really enjoy doing is I love understanding something and then explaining it to others I really enjoy that that's something I think God as made need to be decent out and maybe that's why he's called me in the ministry so you're here this morning you're good at something right what are you good at what are you good out in life and it's not being prideful to say you know this is the way that God has created me and this is I'm good at this and that but the question for today that I want to focus on is how good are you at one another in one another that's what our series is on right now if I could get mission is the screen go on Nathan is working I need to do is really good at fixing all my problems that's where he's back there but right now we're in this series called unhealthy relationships I always like to do this in the fall just talk about what is the purpose of church why why do we do what we do several weeks ago to start off this series on healthy relationships I talked about that book by John Deere called the bait of Satan talking about how Satan wants to destroy our relationship with each other and so he gets us to be offended and as soon as we're offended with someone else it releases all these emotions and it goes down the path that Satan wants to take us but what we've done since then is we're looking at all of the words all of the Greek words all alone words as the one another commands in the scriptures and especially specifically in the New Testament and I've showed you the slides before we're not going. Repeat those today but of all of the hundred places in the New Testament where the Greek word all alone is mention thirty percent of those deal with Unity thirty percent of those deal with love the way that we should love one another and that's what we're going to talk about today fifteen percent deal with humility and twenty five percent are just random one another commands last week I know a lot of you ladies were gone I think we had almost forty ladies up at the the women's retreat and so I was supposed to go and do the love one another section last week but I figured it just doesn't feel right with all these ladies God we should talk about love when ladies are here so I talked about humility and sold those of you ladies who were gone especially specifically those of you ladies who were married and had a husband here last week how many of them were more humble this week than before I hear a lot of snickering.

Because last week we talked I preached on humility and if I need to preach again I'll do it I'll do it right now and I am maybe not OK but last week we talked about humility and the three ways that we put humility into action is we consider the needs of others we associate with the lowly and we are a promoter of others well today we're going to look at the thirty percent that talk about how we should love one another. You know in the Bible obviously in the Old Testament in the New Testament love is talked about a lot and rightfully so but I think that before we talk about loving one another and looking at some of these commands I think it be worthwhile for us to just take a moment and refresh our memories with what the Bible says love is I think the world has a very different view on what love is but this is what the Bible says love is and this is out of first Corinthians thirteen not only the description of the definition of love but also talks about the importance of first Corinthians thirty.

Paul is saying if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal and if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all face so as to remove mountains but have not love I am nothing.

If I give away all I have and I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love I gain nothing and now here is his definition of love love is patient and kind love does not envy or boast it is not arrogant or rude it does not insist on its own way it is not your double or resentful it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth love bears all things believes all things hopes all things endures all things and then verse eight says Love Never And it's you know I've mentioned this before I know in different sermons but when you look at this description of love from First Corinthians thirteen there's a there's a lesson it's great to see so as love is but it says love is and love is not and has sixteen descriptions and you can cut it right down the middle because eight are things that love is or does and eight of those are things that love does not do or is not and so you can say that love is a balance of action and inaction or love is the things that we do but equally what we do not do and so to be perfect at loving others it's hard and yet that's what God says is the most important thing that we can do now as we get into the love one another section that we're going to do right now I want to start with this verse and maybe this is a good verses start with because as we read this hopefully everyone in this room is going to feel very inadequate after we read this verse but with John fifteen verses twelve and thirteen Jesus says this. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you greater love has no one than this that someone lay down his life for his friends and so Jesus is telling us and I want this to have has to sink in Jesus is telling us that we are to love one another the same way that Jesus has loved us and when I read that I get a little intimidated because there's no way that I'm going to be able to love others the way that Jesus loves us I'm going to feel very inadequate this this almost sounds impossible this would be like if you watch the world renowned brain surgeon perform surgery on someone and then he hands the scalp pulled over to you and he says I want you to perform brain surgery on this person as I have on this person if I go I can't do that I'm I'm not as perfect as Christ obviously so how are we supposed to do that so my first thought is Well I can't do this and you in you can't do this it's impossible for us to do this however Jesus wouldn't command us to do something if it wasn't possible but if it was impossible for us to do this so fortunately we have many other passages in the Bible that talk about love and specifically loving one another so for this morning what we're going to do is we're going to look at the handful that teach us how to love like jesus how you and I can love like jesus so let's get into the sermon notes right now for those of your taking notes let me give you the first point.

The first point is this the way that we love like jesus is we let God do it.

The way that you and I love like Jesus we love each other like Jesus loves us is we let God do this this is God's work in our life first US alone aeons three you can turn there in your Bibles we're going to put most of these verses up on the screen first US alone eons chapter three and if you don't have this underline in your. Bible this is a great one to have underlined because this gives us a lot of confidence that we can do this command that God has given to us first US one in three beginning of verse eleven it says this.

Now May our God and Father Himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you and then verse twelve says and may the Lord make you increase and a bound in love for one another and for all as we do for you so that he may establish your hearts blameless and holiness before God and Father of The Coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints now you read that and who is the one who is enabling us to love others it's not us it's God and so there are four things that we see just in the brief passage it says that God is going to make our love increase and a bound for one another and when it says increase we all know what increase something and when you increase something you go from something with set limits and then it goes beyond that and so he says the god will increase your love for others in Italy Creech to the point where in a balance something is abounding is spilling over you know when you're poor cop a cup of coffee in the into the cup and it goes over it is a bounding And so Paul is praying that he is God willing creasing abound our love for one another but then it also says who God is going to do that for.

He's going to do this for one another which means believers but then also for everyone that our love for everyone in the world is going to abound you know. As I read this passage and maybe hopefully you're here today and you're looking at us passage in your thing you can yourself to love one another and I know sometimes I can be very difficult but have you ever experience when you felt love and compassion and mercy for another human being and you realized that the ability to do that did not come from yourself but it definitely came from God working. And you know that happens to me all the time and when we meet other people that upset our preferences and they're a little bit different than us and we think how my supposed to love this other person when we go to God and we say God here I am just use me that's when he will allow us and he will fill us so that we may increase in the bound with our love for one another.

But you know what God God tells us. When we're supposed to love people he says that we're supposed to love them just as much as he loves us and I think this is something important for us to realize when we're out there and we're dealing with people that really upset us and frustrate us it's important for us to realize that God loves that person exactly as much as he loves you but those of you who were here last Sunday we talked about humility and one of the basis for our humility is to realize that all of us have the exact same value and worth in God's sight and the same is true about God's love and so when Jesus commands us to love like he did if we make ourselves available to be used by him then God will make us increase in abound in our love for all people another verse that kind of goes along with this one is found later and first US alone as for if you go down to chapter four verse nine.

Paul says this about the Thessalonians I think he really liked the testimony and he said wonderful things about them but first of all nice for nine he says now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another and so I personally find this very reassuring because if we are commanded to love like Jesus did it's great to realize that God is the one who will teach us to do that and sometimes we just need to kind of get out of the way don't get our opinions and preferences all up all you know preventing us from love other people so for commanded to love. Jesus it's great to realize he's the one who's going to do this and so the question is if God is the master teacher are you paying attention to what he's teaching you when it comes to your relationship with other people so that's the first way that we learn to love like Jesus we let God do God's work in our lives the second way that we are taught to love like jesus is when we keep the big picture in mind.

Today is Sunday tomorrow is Monday for those of you who are not retired you probably have a big to do list so was the first thing that you're going to do tomorrow. Some of you think and thanks for bringing that up on Sunday Pastor I don't want to think about that yet I want to go home I want to take my now I want to watch football but tomorrow morning if you have a job you've got a big list of things to do and right now your blood pressure is probably rising and and you don't want to have to think about that yet well but here's the truth and this isn't true for every single human being that has ever lived the number one thing that each day and every day that you and I are supposed to focus on the most is the greatest commandment that is the first and most important thing that you and I need to be focused on. I'm going to look at Romans Chapter thirteen here Romans thirteen verses eight and nine this is Paul speaking obviously to the Romans and he kind of reiterate the greatest commandment here and so this is what he says Romans thirteen verses eight and nine. Says oh no one anything except to love each other I just want to stop there is that is not great oh no one anything how many times do we have a relationship with another person and we try to you who are trying to keep track of who owes something to the other person I also like this this passage and I wonder if I called my mortgage company and I told them I'm sorry I my mortgage is done is the Bible says I owed no one nothing I don't think I will work but Paul says oh no one anything except to love each other for the. One who loves another has fulfilled the law for the commandments you shall not commit adultery you shall not murder you shall not steal you shall not covet and any other commandment are summed up in this word you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

You know we all get caught up in the pressing issues of the day whatever they might be the funny thing is on the all seem to change it every few months we're all worked up about something new but this is something that will never change there will always be people now we're interacting with in our lives and God wants us to keep this as our top priority that we love them and we treat them just like Jesus did this is the big picture the God wants us to always be focused on in our life and so if we're supposed to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and strength and love our neighbor as ourselves or supposed to be loving something and so the question that all of us need to ask is Where is our love going towards what what are we focusing our love and affection and attention in our life is there anything in your life that is taking your attention off of loving others and second Timothy Chapter three Paul kind of warns us about what is going to happen in the end times or in the latter days and I definitely think that this definitely applies to us right now but in the second term of the chapter three verses one through five it says but understand this that in the last days there will come times of difficulty for people will be lovers of self lovers of money proud arrogant abusive disobedient to their parents ungrateful unholy heartless unappeasable slanderous without self-control brutal not loving good treacherous reckless swollen with conceit lover. Of pleasure rather than lovers of God having the appearance of godliness but denying its power avoid such people this is a really good description do you think this describes the world today the obvious I mean this just completely describes how people are living today and I think that in the way that we are living our lives today with instant access to the media and technology I think we're seeing this even more and more today than in times past but as we see the world around us being lovers of other things other than God this is the time for the Body of Christ to shy This is the time for us to put into practice We've got us teaching us and we will stand out in the world will take notice in a world that's filled with hate and everyone is being offended at everything what if the body of Christ were to show the world the true and most important thing by simply being loving to others and that doesn't mean that we have to sacrifice truth or sacrifice our morals to do that but we can treat people with love and respect and I think this point of loving others and keeping us at the forefront of our minds and kind of makes me think back to a few weeks ago when I was doing the series on the bait of Satan what satan is trying to get everyone to do is to focus on themselves he wants us to get us focused on ourselves and especially He wants us to get focused on our specific opinions and preferences he wants us to just well on Nat and really focus on that and if someone comes along and says something that goes against our opinions and preferences we're supposed to be offended we're all supposed to be offended but how much different were the world be if everyone didn't focus on their own perfect preferences and opinions Instead they focused on this greatest commandment in the Bible the world would be great wouldn't it someday it will be like that but it's not today but this is going to start with us when God's followers the followers of Jesus Christ say I'm not going to get caught. Up in the world's way of doing things I'm going to put this commandment at the first priority in my life I'm going to love others the way that God has loved me so this is how we love Jesus we love others like Jesus we let God do it we also focus on the big picture which is the greatest commandment and finally the final way that we love like jesus is by serving others the way that we love like Jesus loved us is we serve others now for those of you are familiar with the Bible stories there's a passage in the last part of the book of John this is after Christ had risen from the grave and the disciples they were they went back to their own way they went back to the Sea of Galilee in their fishing and Jesus shows up on the scene many are probably still familiar with the story here is fishing and then he's making a delicious fish Breakfast is that some good fish for breakfast or maybe sometimes a pretty good and so he's having breakfast and Jesus comes along and he asked Peter three questions you know the questions that he asked that most of you probably do he said Peter do you love me and three times Peter said of course Jesus you know that I love you. And what did Jesus tell him to do so well that's all I needed to know thanks for reaffirming your love for me you know he said then feed my sheep So he's telling Peter if you truly love me then what you're going to go do is you're going to go serve. You're going to take your love for me and you're going to put it into action I don't know if you and I can truly say that we love one another and that we love God If there's no action of service involved in that they have to go together. Here's a passage.

Galatians chapter five vs thirteen and fourteen Paul teaches us this truth he says. For you we're called to freedom brothers only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh but through love serve one another for the whole law as fulfilled in one word you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

All through life we're going to be serving someone usually it's us you know we like to serve ourselves or make sure that we're we're getting our or our needs met or we're going to be serving other people and if God is teaching us how to love each other and if our love is increasing and overflowing then the way that it demonstrates itself is through service in some way to one another. I'm going to kind of get up on my soapbox here you know I'm a pastor of a church and so I think about how does this translate how does serving one another translate into our local setting here you know I don't remember when it was but every now and then you know how you have you have these moments and you realize oh that's why we're supposed to do this I don't know if it was before I was a pastor of a church or shortly after but it kind of dawned on me one of the reasons why God has called us to meet together as a local assembly of believers and to interact with each other a huge part of why God calls us to meet together is through service because this gives us an opportunity to serve you know I think the God could probably do a better job having a one on one conversation with each of us if we're suppose the gods goal is for us to be made into the image of Jesus Christ for us to be transformed into his image and I think God could probably do a better job one on one than we can do here in a church but why does God call us to meet together why does he call us to meet together to work on a crisis like this and there's a there's a quote that they came across a long time ago and I really love it and I think this kind of deals with why we are supposed to be part of a church but it says it's hard to be holy when no one is around upset your preferences which is very true right it's. To get along with everyone if no one's really upsetting you but sometimes I think of church is for this or that for that reason alone I also think of church a kind of use another example churches sort of like a gym.

Once in a gymnasium weights treadmill all those different things some of your like a gym that sounds from what in the world is a gym a gym is a place where people go to to get stronger and so you can become a member of a gym you go to Planet Fitness ten dollars a month you can be really superior and be a part of crossfire You know something like that where you had to had to throw that in those shameless plug for Cross Fit but people go to a gym for the taking it stronger but just because you have a gym membership doesn't mean you're going to get stronger what you have to do have to actually go in there and you have to actually sit down on the machines and you have to move the weights around in the way that they're designed to be moved around with the right intensity and weight and if you do that that's when you become stronger and you grow well Church this right here it is a place where you can become more like Christ I didn't say it is or will be a place I said it is a place where everyone can become more like Jesus Christ but it's only when we put into practice what the Bible says that that's going to happen. Serving one another in some ways it's a lot like prayer you know why are we supposed to pray are we supposed to pray so the God changes situations sometimes he does sometimes he doesn't but I think mainly the main reason why we are supposed to go to God in prayer is because when we pray God is able to change our attitudes our actions our thoughts to be more in alignment with his and I think the same can be said in some ways about serving Yes when we serve or meeting in need however serving changes the servant the most when we serve we are the ones who. Change it makes us less selfish in fact if a person says I'm not going to serve I'm not going to do anything the reason why they're saying that is because they're selfish they don't want to help they don't want to serve and so one of the great benefits of being a participant in the local body of imperfect believers is that kind of answers the question if God wants me to be more like him and he calls me to love one another then who is it that I'm supposed to love well if you're in a local church then you look around and say it's these crazy people these are the people that I'm supposed to one another these are the people that I'm supposed to serve you know whenever I talk about stuff like this like whether it's serving or giving I always my concern is that people might start to feel guilty and think oh he's just talking about this because he wants us to volunteer for the nursery or something or something like that and that's true but I think maybe our church I'm a very proud to be the pastor of this church because I think that we have a greater number and greater percentage of people that are involved and I think your standard typical church and I definitely think this is one of our strongest values faithful service I also don't want anyone here who is doing too much to say you know why is he talking about service am I supposed to do more necessarily the case but what I hope everyone here this morning will consider is that serving in a way that you can is something that God has called all of us to do and it's an honor especially in light of what God has done for us John three sixteen passage hopefully all of you at least heard before says For God so loved the world that he did what he gave. God loved so he gave he served us he gave his own life so that we can have the hope of eternal life you and I there's no way that we can now give God but out of gratitude we can serve so well. We're talking about loving one another that's how we do it and I hope that this this morning you know just by putting these verses before all of us it kind of helps us maybe kind of recalibrate our priorities you know God wants us to love God wants us to love others just like Jesus loves us and so we can do that by letting God do it really truly letting God have control of your emotions and your mind he's going to lead you to love others we also do that by keeping the big picture in mind that's the most important priority that we can have every day and we do that by serving others and now what I want to do there's another passage that talks about one way that we can love each other and I want to stick close by doing this are you ready All right we're close by doing this first Peter five fourteen

greet one another with the kiss of love so turn to your neighbor and plant a big No I'm just kidding.

All couple of you did Are those good hopefully are related you know to each other.

Or whatever so.

Why did my kids kiss each other they did not kiss you Joe that's where that's typical while the next two weeks we're going to do is we're going to look at some of these random passages on one another in one another I'm looking forward to those I think we're going to have fun with some of those passages but I hope that all of us will keep this commandment to love one another truly at the forefront of our mind because this is why God created us he loved us he gave to us and this is how we show the world that we are God's children so let's love one another Let's close in prayer.

Dear Lord I thank you for today I think you for lovingly and gently and in your own way of doing things reminding us of our purpose on earth Lord is just so thrilling to think that someday we're going to be in your presence and we will be with you forever but by face until that moment we need to put into practice the things that we believe we believe that you sent your son to die on the cross for our sins and you raised him back from the grave and if we believe that then we are now one with you and we are one with each other and so Father help us to put into practice these one another commands and especially today as we look at these these loving one another verses help us to do it just the way that Jesus did for us we pray this now in Christ name me man.

You know Steve remember to dismiss the kids like oh yeah we how do we all do it and then Mike and I look at each other and we go No he's not going to remember.

All this is this is only the second Sunday in October and can you believe how much rain we've had hasn't been incredible so I'm sure maybe all of you probably know this is already the wettest October in the history of Arizona this is great it feels like we're kind of getting fall and as a Pastor Mike mention our Western Night is coming up in just a couple Saturday nights away and this is the first time in the history that I've been here and I think this is the twelfth Western night that I'm actually wondering and can kind of concerned is it going to rain on Western. Before it's just thinking like I hope it's not scorching hot on Western nights so so we have something to look forward to well I am picking back up in our series on one another and see there we go we have the slides going and Originally when I kind of planned out my sermons I was going to do right after unity we've spent three Sundays talking about unity I was going to go straight to love and then to humility and then Anderson ended up being in town and whenever Ben is in town I think it's great for us to have him here because they're kind of he enjoys the kind of our missionaries and so it kind of changed a little bit of my sermon schedule and I was just thinking to myself this last week OK Should I just continue on the just do the love portion the thirty percent of the one or all the commands or on love and should I do that and I was just thinking you know we have about forty plus women who are gone from our church today they're up up in Prescot at the women's retreat and it would just feel kind of weird preaching a sermon on love without all the women here right and you've got your got you guys are like you know what anyway and so I was just thinking you know for the sake of every husband here who has his wife gone I'm going to preach on humility today all right.

So now you're like oh I. I see what you're doing because some of you for those of you who are married and your wife is gone you might not get any ribbing today and I can listen to what he's saying about humility so so you're welcome for that guys that might apply to but so far what we've been doing we're in a new series on one another and it's based on the Greek word all alone and it's found a hundred times in the New Testament and you can break this down there seventy six times it's translated one another we've gone through this slide a couple times and when you put this thing to do different groups we've noticed there's a pattern thirty percent are on unity and we've already looked at all the unity passages or most of them thirty percent are about love which I was going to do last week but will do next week fifteen percent so a good portion of them are about humility and then there's twenty five miscellaneous kind of random passages and when we look at the passages dealing with unity we can even kind of break those down into some subgroups there are passages that tell us things that we're supposed to be if we want unity with each other there are things that were supposed to be things that were not supposed to do and things that we are to do and so that was our last sermon two weeks ago the things that we are supposed to do in order for us to experience unity with each other and the three points I know all of the hardy have it memorized and you can probably recycle these but the three things that were specifically to do to that unite us is when we live in obedience to God's word and have that firm foundation upon which we all live when we wait for each other we endure suffering because sometimes we suffer with each other and then also when we forgive each other and now this morning we're going to talk about humility and you probably notice up there about fifteen percent of these one hundred other commands deal with humility and that's kind of a a big chunk it makes sense for when God is talking to us about one another in each other and and being one with each other that we were. Deal with love and issues of unity but when we deal with humility as I've spent all week thinking about this it sort of makes perfect sense that so many passages talk about having humility towards one another so that we are one with each other when Jesus prayed on the night before he was betrayed in the garden of guess somebody that all of the followers all of his followers would be one as he and the Father are one. Without practicing humility that would not even be possible even among the Trinity and so let's talk about humility today and I guess all the different ways we can think about this what I want you to kind of get is the core of humility is this at the core of humility it is a having a proper understanding of our own value and worth. A truly humble person has the correct understanding of their worth and importance and value and the truth is that every soul that every soul that has ever been created in or on earth in human history alternately has the same worth to God.

Everyone is worth the same to God There is no human soul that is worth more or less to God and have to emphasize that to God obviously human beings from our perspective have more value and worth than others right some are more talented Some have more wealth some have more influence some are more intelligent so we can look at the value and worth from a human perspective but I think maybe one of the best ways for us to think about this from God's perspective God's perspective is this there's an event that's going to come up in the future where every human being is going to be judged by God and the criteria that every human being is going to be judged by is the exact same and here's the criteria were you sinless and perfect. Or did you ever sin when you lived on the earth. Now. The two criteria the God is going to judge every single person and every sinner is going to get the exact same consequence and that's eternal punishment and every perfect sinless follows human being that ever lived is going to get the exact same existence as well and that is an eternal everlasting existence Well fortunately we know that because all of us are sinners we all fall short of the glory of God that when we humble ourselves and we accept Christ sacrifice for our death then God will look at us as having Christ righteousness so that's how we're able to experience the Trinity with him but I want you all of us are just kind of think about this moment in our minds and in our hearts.

Two of the wealthiest people on Earth right now you probably know who they are Bill Gates who is number two right now and Jeff Bezos I think I'm pronouncing his last name correctly he is the founder of Amazon He is now the wealthiest person in the world and for those of you who paid attention to the news this last week was it Tuesday or Wednesday we had the huge market dip yes see that I read online there was an article that said that Jeff Bezos on that one market dip lost nine point one billion dollars of his net worth in one day can you can see it's hard to even imagine what nine point one billion dollars is like but he lost it in one day I think almost would be like well take the point one hundred million dollars and I'd like to.

Be great to be able to lose that much money but Jeff Bezos Bill Gates they're worth more than any of us specially from a financial standpoint even their contributions to the world and society Bill Gates founder of Microsoft it's changed the way that the humans interact with computers Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon How many of you shop on Amazon I mean all of us shop and it's changed the way society is work another thing about Bill Gates and of course I don't know either of these men personally but Bill Gates is known right now for being very philanthropic he gives a lot of his money away but when. They all stand before God it's going to be the exact same for Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates as all the poorest little children in India in Africa who died of malnutrition they're all worth all of us are worth the exact same amount in God's eyes and the criteria used for all of us to determine our eternity is the exact same in Soul that is the basis for all of our humility that's something that we really need to understand it begins with the right understanding of the value of our souls in God's sight and that value is the price of his son there is nothing more valuable on earth to God than the soul of every human being all right we are the most valuable things that he has created and so for us to be one with God and one with each other it's only possible when we are humble we practice humility with each other and I think everyone knows what the opposite of humility is right it's pride I kind of I want to do this I was thinking about this you know one of the one of the first things that created disunity among the created order was when pride was introduced and some of you might know what I'm talking about and that's when Lucifer the the most powerful and beautiful of all God's creation became proud you have your Bibles I want you open your Bible so easy kill twenty eight it's the passage is too long for us to put on the screen here but turn over to his Eagle twenty eight

and we're going to look at the moment in time what is recorded when Lucifer or Satan fell and the relationship between him and God the Father was disrupted.

He's equal twenty eight beginning in verse eleven.

You know this this passage is an interesting one the Bible talks a little bit about the Ain the angelic realm the principalities the powers the Dominion it's all around us the things that we can't see it's really need to know that some day some day in the future we are going to see and understand the spiritual realms and everything the around us that we can't see but here this is talking about events that probably happened even before Adam and Eve they were even created these equal twenty eight and so this is a description of Satan or Lucifer and here he is referred to as the King of Tire is equal twenty eight beginning in verse eleven.

Says moreover the word of the Lord came to me Son of Man raise a limitation over the king of tire and say to him thus says the Lord God You were the Signet of perfection full of wisdom and perfect in beauty you were in even the garden of God every precious stone was your covering Sardis Topaz and Diamond barrel on ICS Jasper south fire emerald and Carbuncle and crafted in gold where your settings in your engravings on the day that you were created they were prepared you were an anointed Guardian cherub I placed you you were on the holy mountain of God in the midst of the stones of fire you walked you were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till unrighteousness was found in you in the abundance of your church you were filled with violence in your midst and you sinned so I cast you as profane thing from the Mountain of God and I destroyed you old Guardian cherub from the midst of the stones of fire and look at verse seventeen this was Satan's downfall your heart was proud because of your beauty you corrupted your wisdom. For the sake of your splendor I cast you to the ground I exposed you before kings to feast their eyes upon you know Satan became proud and this is something that we F. we can't even comprehend this we have no idea what this talking about but among all the creative things among all the angels Satan or Lucifer saw that he was better than everyone else and so he elevated himself and that pride the lack of humility that separated him and destroyed his relationship with God the Father Well now let's take a look at what the Bible teaches us about being humble towards one another and if I were to ask you to give a definition of humility I think all of us could probably have explained humility relatively easy there's a couple different definitions let me just read a couple of these for you my definition for humility is Humility is the freedom from pride or arrogance and you kind of know that when you're around somebody you can tell if their home will or prideful or arrogant This is probably my favorite definition of humility humility is so is the quality or condition of being humble but I like this definition here humility is having a modest opinion or estimate of one's own importance or rank that's what humility is having this modest idea of this is where I stand among everyone else and ultimately realizing I am the same in value and worth as every other human being and so we are told to be humble towards one another this passage is before we really get into our points in the message but here in first Peter this is kind of the key verse I want to kind of look at first Peter five five it says likewise you who are younger be subject to the elders and he uses this phrase which I think is wonderful he says clothe yourselves all of you with humility towards one another for God opposes the PROUD TO gives grace to the humble humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. And I love how Peter uses this phrase he says clothe yourselves I mean literally we kind of kind of picture this on our own minds when we wake up in the morning what you have to do you have to close yourself so you can go out and spend the day outside Well we are literally to clothe ourselves with humility and it's this idea of it's something that we need to do or maybe a better way to think of this is this is a discipline that all of us need to practice a habit that we need to put in to our life humility is not just something in our minds usually say what makes a humble person what we talk about well maybe they're they're soft spoken or maybe they're quiet or maybe they even think poorly of themselves but humility as we're going to see throughout the rest of the sermon is that humility is an action it's something that we actually do well there's lots of verses throughout the New Testament the talk about showing humility towards one another but for this morning we're going to focus on three Serina look at three verses the talk about us having the action of humility and the point number one in your sermon notes is this this is how we put action humility into action the first way is when we consider the needs of others to be humble It means that we need to consider the needs of others well squarehead Let's take a look at Philippi inst Chapter two verses three and four and I have had most of these passages up on the screen Philippians Chapter two verses three and four this is what Paul writes to us about humility he says verse three Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility count others more significant than yourselves let each of you not look look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others and in verse three dealing with humility notice for the first word in verse three least in the S.V. this is what it says it says Do do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit the work of the Greek were. For selfish ambition this is really interesting and as I looked this up this week you kind of brought a smile to my face because we live in America and we like to do this the Greek word for selfish ambition it's not two words it's one single word it's the Greek word era Sia and it has to deal with running for public office.

There's ambition is dealing with electioneering or intriguing for office it's the desire to put oneself forward and so people with selfish ambition they're trying to kind of promote themselves over and above somebody else and we're seeing this right now here in Arizona are we how many of you are sick of all the ads from Martha make Sally and Kristen cinema right there or they are going ad each other they are really going out of each other and there's two ways two main ways that people get elected to office here in the United States number one you've got to either make yourself look really good or the second way is you make someone else will really bad and we're seeing both of those definitely right now but when it comes to having a healthy relationship you and I should not treat each other as if we're trying to get elected to a position over each other we're not in competition with each other so therefore we should not have selfish ambition I like how the English or the E.S.A. the translation translates this one word into two selfish ambition and I think this is perfect but I hope we don't misunderstand this ambition not so much selfish ambition but ambition is a good thing listen nothing in the world gets done without someone having a little bit of ambition right parents when you see your children raising getting older you want them to have a little bit of ambition right because if they don't have the ambition what happens they live in your basement forever right so you want to have them vision you know go get a job go get me go to these are live life outside of our house so so ambition can be a very good thing but selfish ambition is Usually it leads to another person getting taken advantage. The joy of. I thought about people with selfish ambition this week as I was kind of starting in preparing for this as I was driving in my car and I have a good example all of you can relate to this because especially if you drive I was driving down fifty nice to Bell a couple times this week and they were doing construction of course on fifty one thousand new and whenever they do construction in the road they usually shut one lane down and they make everyone go over to another lane if you might know where I'm going with this and so one of the proper rules and etiquette of driving when you see you're supposed to merge you merge and you wait in line like everyone else right to go through the intersection and I gotta be careful what I say because I've broken this before and I know some of you probably have too but it doesn't is drive you crazy when you're in line there's like twenty cars in front of you and someone thinks that they're more important than everyone else and they drive on the right side all the way to the front of the line they cut in you just do would you like to just pull them over and think Who do you think you are. From you're like yeah that's me I do that all the time I'm I'm no fool but you know whatever is going through their mind they're probably texting and they didn't look up until they saw where they were but they were thinking what I have to do right now must certainly be more important than everyone else who's waiting I am more important so I will get to the front of the line but that's a great example of selfish ambition where you say I am more important my needs are more important than anyone else and so that's what I'm going to do so as do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit now the Greek word for conceit because knocks a dig can no doxie it's dealing with him for those of you are familiar with the word doxy means glory and so conceit is vain glory or self esteem or empty pride this is a person that can see that person is someone who likes to puff themselves up and make themselves look really important front of other people we all know people like that raw. Another another term to describe people that are full of conceit are storytellers have you ever come across a person and you have shared with them something positive in your life and they say well that's nothing let me tell you what I've done in my life and they're always trying to one up you that's the person has conceded when you're around a person that has a selfish ambition or they're always trying to puff themselves up make themselves look better than you does that help your relationship or does it doesn't harm it and so humility is when we do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.

Look at the whole passage again versus three and four says do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility count others more significant than yourselves let each of you not look only to his own interests but also to the interests of all there's we are given two ways to do this to not be self have selfish ambition or conceit in the two ways or that we think of others as housing having more value than ourselves and that we think about how to help others get their needs met It's like how it says I like what it says Do not look only to your own interest so I got a pop quiz for those of you who have ever flown on a plane what does a stewardess tell you to do if in case of emergency the plane lose altitude and what happens.

The gas masks fall the oxygen masks fall and what are you supposed to do put gas mask away you hear you're in a gas chamber the oxygen masks fall and they always tell you put yours on first and then help others we're supposed to also look to the interests of others of course we have to help ourselves otherwise we're not in a position to be able to help others well how do you do with this how do you deal with this one being being conscious of other people's needs you know I think um one of the best things that helps humble a human being is when they become a parent as soon as you become a parent you realise that there are. Needs of others and it's hard to be a pride full arrogant person when you have an infant with a poopy diaper you have to change right that's the great humiliated that's the great humbler changing poopy diapers Well that's the first action considering the needs of others the second action is that we associate with the lowly the way that we can put humility into practice is when we associate with the lowly in the passage that teaches us this is Romans Chapter twelve verse sixteen Romans twelve sixteen says live in harmony with one another so how do we do that you answer the question Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly never be wise in your own sight.

The word for associate It simply means that we're supposed to put ourselves in a situation where we're actually experiencing life with another person so we're supposed to associate with the lowly The Greek word for lowly Tappan us it literally means not not rising far from the ground a lowly thing is something that literally is right next to the ground and obviously when you're talking about human beings who are the lowly I think we can kind of have an understanding of of what on this is referring to and we're talking about people who can't contribute much in life you know when you think of a person who is lowly what you know what comes to your mind usually we think of maybe those pictures that we see on T.V. in commercials of people in different countries I think the people that are lowly in this life are the poor or possibly maybe even the homeless the people who are weak physically weak they're disabled or maybe they're diseased and or maybe the lowly can be described as people who cannot repay you if you help them those are the lowly the people who cannot repay you if you help them why does God tell us to do this why does God tell us to associate with the low. I think there are several reasons but one reason that came to my mind was this when you are associating with the lowly it helps keep you humble and I've had this go through my mind maybe you have to if you are going around somebody when you're around somebody who is lowly this thought comes to my mind quite often I realize that ultimately we're the same we have the same value and but by the grace of God I'm not in the same situation that they're in how many people in this life are lowly because of nothing that they did they were either maybe born with some kind of physical disability or maybe some kind of a disease is ravaged their body and they're just not able to be that the productive person that most people are like and so someone who is lowly God tells us to associate with them. And why don't we why are the reasons one of the reasons why we don't make ourselves associate with the lowly what I came up with a couple different reasons one reason is because maybe we're all still junior highers at heart and what I mean by that is when you go to the cafeteria in elementary school or junior high or senior high and a kid that looks a little bit different than everyone else he's he's sitting over at a table eating lunch all by himself and the other kids think someone is B.S. friend but it's not me because if I go sit with him everyone's going to think that I'm like him and I want to be popular in everyone else's eyes so sometimes we don't associate with the lowly because we're afraid of what other people going to think about us that's one of the benefits of getting older eventually you don't care what other people think about you but that's when one of the reasons another reason why we don't associate with the lowly is because lowly people usually are needy people they have needs they have specific needs that need to be met and we think you know I just don't have the time with the effort to really give to this person who is in need and also associating with the lowly.

You never really get a reward out of it meaning it can usually be a one sided relationship where you're giving to them and they can't really give anything back to you.

Got an example kind of a just a quiz to kind of test your heart let's say who would you rather help who would you help first let's say you work for a major corporation and there are two people in the parking lot that have a dead battery one is the C.E.O. of the company and the other is the person in charge of the grounds of maintenance Who are you going to jump the car first.

Everyone's thinking well the C.E.O. right if I help the C.E.O. He might get to know me any might give me a raise or give me a promotion the good the groundskeeper can't do anything for me.

That's kind of a thought to me we should all think about who are we going to help God tells us to help people who are lowly sometimes it's the people who can't help us back. Well I think I'm as it comes to associating with the lowly You know how many people do you associate with and do I associate with that have I can absolutely do nothing to advance our self-worth if we think like that then I think all of us should be grateful that Jesus Christ did not think that way of us because there's nothing really that we can give back to him suffer our love and our adoration but he associated with us well those are two of the ways that we can be humble to consider the other the needs of others to associate with the lowly and the third is to be a promoter of others to really build them up this is found in Romans Chapter twelve verse ten if you're already in Romans you can just like a verse ten Romans twelve verse ten it says A love this verse that says love one another with brotherly affection outdo one another in showing on or now you might be thinking wait a second the word humility is it in there well you know I think you're probably seeing just a second why I'm looking at this passage even though it doesn't say to be humble it's still part of humility because this is. Lying into another human being is worse there's two words that are really need in this passage it says outdo one another the Greek word literally means to go before and to show the way so we are told to outdo each other in showing honor in other words we're supposed to be the one set an example don't wait for someone else to set the example for you be the one that's out in front setting the example and the word for on or it literally means the price of something it means the price in the value that is affixed to something in another context this can actually mean the range of a person of a human being and so it's saying treat everyone as if they out rank you that's how we show humility and I think there's a ton of applications especially with this verse some of you might be familiar with the book I think Gary Chapman wrote a book or Gary Small I want to shoot the five love languages so a lot of you are probably familiar with that book if it's a really good book it kind of goes into the five main ways that we as human beings like to be told that we're loved and valued and I was thinking one way that we can outdo each other in showing honor is with you know the love language of of a person that you're whist and you can kind of feed them and kind of speak to them that way but maybe one of the the easiest ways the quickest and fastest ways that you and I can show or outdo each other in showing honor is to give compliments to each other. To find something about another person and just give them a compliment show them their value and their own or you know one thing I like to do from time to time is to give people nicknames I like to give nicknames and you know make sure you're giving someone a good nickname right but I didn't know he was going to be here today I point over there because he always has or whatever Rick Barton I'm going to I'm going to pick on Rick Barton today he's not here for those of you who don't know Rick Barton you should get to know Rick Barton he's a great guy but Rick I think he gives nicknames to a lot of people and and he always says something to me maybe he says this to other people. But the first couple times he said it's me ten twelve years ago when I first met him it kind of threw me off but he comes up to someone comes up to me maybe some of you and he says hey boss how you doing he uses the term boss and over the first couple times it kind of took me aback but then he says it was such affection that you know it's an enduring nickname that he's giving to you and so the first few times I was around Ricky said hey boss how you doing I was like I kind of like this guy you know he of the things that I'm someone that has value and importance you know this is the kind of guy I want to be around you know the way we speak to each other can do wonders for our unity with each other if you want to walk into a group of people and they all have nicknames for each other like Hey Champ Hey stud hey hey you know hey boss you want to be a part of that group right but if you walk into a group that's just the opposite where they're biting in devouring each other they're gossiping about each other you think there's no unity there I don't want to be around those kinds of people you know when it comes to a sermon sometimes something is so clear that I like to give up a homework assignment so I kind of want to give a homework assignment with this and this is as easy as it gets.

If you wanted build unity with the people in your life if you want to have healthy relationships then look for a genuine way to complement the people that are in your life.

Outdo them in showing on or find something that they're good at something that they did really well and compliment them about that that is one of the best ways that we can build unity with each other and when we do that we're showing someone else their value and their worth and that is the way that we truly are practicing humility. While some people struggle with pride some people struggle with humility maybe you do maybe you don't maybe you're like I'm glad my wife is an error because she would definitely be reiterating everything you say but when it comes to our eternal future I want to hold understand this when it comes to our eternal future. We have won because Christ humbled Himself for our sake he humbled himself he sacrificed himself to show us the value that he sees in each and every one of us so what I want to do to close is look at the extended passage in Philip Ians to read just a couple verses out of there I want to read this passage and see the great example of humility that Christ sets for us and so maybe we can follow his example so you can read along here this is flippin Chopper two beginning in verse one

it says so if there is any encouragement in Christ any comfort from love any participation in the spirit any affection and sympathy complete my joy by being of the same mind having the same love being in full of cord and of one mind do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility count others more significant than yourselves let each of you look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others have this mine among yourselves which is Yours in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God did not County quality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on the cross therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the same the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father is and Jesus died so that you and I can be united with him and even be united with each other and his humility was a huge part of that and without it we would still be responsible for our sins Well I hope that today by seeing the example of Christ here and by studying God's word all of us will make this a priority in our lives we know that we need to be humble in north we know the North to be two one and have unity with each other we need to be humble So let's wake up every morning and when we get dressed let's make sure we clothe ourselves with humility in the schools of prayer.

Dear Lord I thank you so much for this passage that we read today all the passages in your word to teach us about how to one another each other and how to build relationships healthy relationships with each other and learn today as well as we're dealing with the subject of humility I know for some people that might be a great struggle and for others maybe you just worked on them long enough in their lives that that it comes easily but Lord help us today to realize you gave enough verses on humility that we need to pay attention to them if we're going to have healthy relationships with others with other members of the Body of Christ as other people that are that are just here on Earth we need to put on and clothe ourselves with the humility that you teach of so Lord I pray that will take all of this to heart that we will look for ways to meet the needs of others that we will look to build each other up and set the example in showing honor to one another Lord help us to do this and enjoy the healthy relationship that you've called us to have your present Christ name in.

Good morning it's great to be back here with you although it's not back here for me because this is the first time in this sanctuary it's beautiful Last time I was here as was Joyce and we were peering through the windows oh no there was a someone living in the house over here I'm sure he was wondering what are you doing on our property but we wanted to see the future home of Grace Bible Church of Phoenix and it's wonderful to be here with you today and taking part in worshipping God in this wonderful facility. This church means a lot to me and to my wife Joyce I don't know where Joyce is a oh there she is she's waving and I met Joyce in this church not this building of course but this church a church is the people of the church and it was I still remember the day February twenty three nineteen eighty six it was a Sunday evening service and I came to present the work that I was planning to do in Kenya as a missionary and Joyce was in attendance and I think some of the pastor and some other members were working to get us together and it must have worked because now we are married thirty two years and that year was a busy year thank you but we met February twenty third we were I think in gauged in June married August sixteenth and left for the mission field November third all of one thousand nine hundred six so that was a busy one and we praise the Lord we're still continue to serve the Lord Arthur three daughters were all born in Kenya while we were missionaries there and then now we have nine grandchildren hard to believe that that time has gone but we praise the Lord that we spent all those years serving the Lord together as a team that gives us great joy I always say I'm happy to grow old as I as long as I'm growing old with the Lord right as long as he's with us we can overcome all I was in ten. Recently at a conference and one of our pastors has just gone through tremendous turmoil in his family his wife passing and of cancer and then his daughter was murdered but at the end of it he says God's grace is sufficient and I will carry through Carry on carry through and God's grace is sufficient to overcome what we do face in this life so thank you to our Grace Bible Church thank you for supporting us all these years because that was also the year that you started supporting us and these thirty two years you stood with us in the ministry of proclaiming this wonderful gospel of God's grace and that's all you want to talk about today as we speak I just want to say in the international director now of things to commission I was a pioneer missionary for eighteen years with Joyce then I took the position of Executive Director in Indianapolis at our office that was eleven years and then three years ago I took the position of international director we spread out our leadership team and so now I am responsible for the overseas work of things to commission and I travel almost constantly visiting all the fields where we work we work in seventeen countries now and the world seems to be getting smaller and smaller as I travel around I think of how far how hard it was for the Apostle Paul to travel and I think of how easy it is for me to just sit on an airplane you know eating meals that they give me and I get to where I need to go but it does involve also training new missionaries and taking the gospel to new countries where we have not gone before and I'll talk about that coming up I wanted to talk about the Word of God First because mission is done because of what's written here. This challenge is off if I could not prove what I do from the Word of God I certainly would not be participating. In the lifestyle I am but because mission can be proved from the Word of God it challenges us it commissions us to do the work that God wants us to do and so I want to talk about that commission we have my sermons and titled seeking reconciliation seeking work reconciliation recently in Singapore we had the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong un of North Korea and if you live in that part of the world North Korea is always a concern there loose cannon you don't know what they're going to do and they don't have communication official communication with anybody and there was able to be a summit between the first time I think an American president has ever talked to the leader of North Korea and there is an attempt at least the first step to try to bring reconciliation of course we want him to reduce his nuclear weapons but we also would like to see reconciliation between North and South Korea as you know after the Korean War those two that was one country and families were just divided you know this line was drawn there and families were divided people haven't seen each other for decades now since the war ended and how wonderful it would be if reconciliation could be achieved in Korea and that's of course our hope and our prayer I still remember some of you who are younger won't remember one thousand nine hundred eighty nine when there was a special edition of the newspaper I was living in Kenya and it said the Berlin Wall has fallen how many of you remember that day OK Quite a number of you that was an exciting day remember that thing called the Cold War people were building bomb shelters in the backyards because there was going to be this nuclear holocaust and all of a sudden the Berlin Wall has fallen I remember President Reagan's speech Mr Gorbachev tear down these walls that's a. You can see it on youtube for those of you are younger but I remember that speech and it was just like a year later that wall came down and a couple years later Joyce and I were in action Berlin and Raible to see where that wall was and it's exciting that we could just walk across it and one time people were like shot with machine guns when they tried to walk across that same that same territory and now you can just walk across the younger generation they'd only nor Germany they don't realise there used to be two countries East Germany and West Germany but they were reconciled they were brought back together families that had been separated families that had been shot trying to see each other we're now reconciled and living together as one and what an exciting day that was for those people God These signed us to live in relationships that's the first point I'd like to make we go back to.

Creation I like to see the big picture so I go back to creation What's the first verse of the Bible in the beginning God created right the first Burr the first action of God is what creating and. When God created it expressed his individuality it expressed his free will and later on in the same chapter it says that God created us in His image rights and so we also have that ability to express our free will to express our individuality and as we look at around at the world we see that people still have that image of God that basic spark of God We see even someone who doesn't believe in God still can express their creativity they can create and we appreciate that God has put that into us that makes us unique being. Who were created by God that we are created in His image we have free will we can create and part of that free will that creativity is to develop relationships of course the greatest relationship we have is with God Himself the first one of the first questions God asked and the terrible question in the Bible where are you remember that question. After Adam and Eve ate of the tree they were hiding in the bushes I'm not sure I'm getting into eco Is this too far from my mouth or.

Maybe I don't know that OK but. They had enough of the tree and so when God came into the garden what did they do they hid from him they had a great relationship God had created them to live in relationship with him they had a spirit God is Spirit and they related to each other and then after they ate of that tree which God had for bid them from eating of he came into the garden to see them and they were nowhere to be found God was standing alone in the garden where he always stood and he was looking for those precious people that he had made and those people had exercised their free will. They had made the choice to disobey God and step out of the relationship instead of running to him to talk to him to embrace him they were hiding in the bushes. And God stood in the garden alone. And said Where are you.

Why did God ask that why didn't he just kill them and be done with it because God wants a relationship with us.

He loves us He wants us he desires that that friendship that communication that. It's interesting how God brought the animals to Adam and to see what he would name them think God can't name animals of course he can't he wanted to see what Adam exercising his own decision his own freewill would decide to name these animals and got accepted his decision they had a relationship with each other and that relationship sadly came to an end on that day with that terrible question where are you now we say God is still asking that question right because God still loves us just as much as he loved Adam and Eve He loves every one of us he loves everyone in our community he loves them dearly they are precious to him and he wants to be in relationship with those people. And we have a part in that process but God also wants us in a relationship with one another a second question God asked in the next chapter Chapter four of Genesis.

Cain and Abel brought the offerings and then Cain was not happy right and God came down and talked to him and he asked him another question first thing God said outside of the Garden of Eden Why are you angry right why are you angry and he came and asked that question because he wanted the two of them to live in relationship with each other and of course we know the result of what happened the terrible first murder and.

Sadly there is still conflict in the world today isn't there a terrible conflict. Joyce and I lived in Kenya at the time of the Rwanda war and about eight hundred thousand people were killed in just a couple of months and basically because they were from two different tribes and they just slaughtered them because they were a different tribe. And we just see things like this happening again and again people we cannot live. That relationship is broken between people and I I think of our country also those.

Hearings there on Kavanagh last week and boy there was some tension some disagreement between Americans right about is this the truth is this not the truth and I saw a lot of division and suffer a sion within our own country what is the truth.

God wants us to have that relationship you know in the Garden of Eden there was one thing that was not good right God said everything is good in fact when he made humans he says it's very good but then he says it was not good for what.

For the man to be alone right it's not good for the man to be alone god. I mean God exists whether humans exist or not God is still God he doesn't change but he looked at this human he had made and he realized this guy is lonely This guy needs somebody this guy needs a relationship that he doesn't have right now and it's not good for him to be alone and so God created Eve to be with him and so God recognizes that need to be together to interact with each other and so I believe that we as humans were designed to have relationships we are spiritual beings not just physical beings I appreciate the Sunday school lesson that Joel was teaching today where he talked about us not fighting just against flesh and blood but our fight is against the Prince of polities and powers of the air we are spiritual beings and how we are doing spiritually will reflect how we do physically if the spiritual part is not strong there will definitely be a. Salt in how we live our physical lives and so it starts by getting connected to God maintaining that relationship with God and so God These signed us to live in relationships and God's message today I'd like us to open to second Corinthians Chapter five.

Second Corinthians Chapter five

we call this the Grace Commission. Right you may have heard of the great commission Well this is the Grace Commission and if we look at verse.

I'm going to draw back to verse fourteen second grant the inspired fourteen for Christ love compels us because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all die and a wonderful verse saying that Christ's sacrifice was made for all he died on the cross for all the provision of salvation was made for all but it says in verse fifteen and he died for all that those who live. Not everyone lives not everyone has come alive spiritually not everyone is living with Christ but those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again and so we as believers we don't just live for ourselves and how's my relationship with God Of course God wants us to live in relationship with him but we also have to be concerned of those outside what is their relationship with God how are they doing we cannot just be concerned of ourselves as God asked as Cain asked God am I my brother's keeper right. Well was he. According to God was Cain his brother's keeper Yes God was to God held him accountable for the condition of the situation that his brother was in and for. So also we don't live just for ourselves even if it spiritually just to satisfy myself spiritually. But I also must live like Jesus Christ lived that I must be concerned about those outside who don't have the relationship with God that I have.

What's going to happen to them I had they living in a relationship with God is their spirit one with God's Spirit and what can I do to change that and so as we go on in this passage it says so from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view though we once regarded Christ in this way we do so no longer. I believe that saying that we see people from a spiritual standpoint yes we tend to be I think America's becoming more secular many Western nations are and we see the physical and we judge people based on the physical what clothes are they wearing what car they drive what job do they have and yet it says we don't look at people that way anymore we should look at people how are they doing spiritually.

Where do they stand with God and that is a concern that we have as missionaries where do people stand in their spirits not just where do they stand or sit physically but where do they stand in their spirit with the God who created them in the beginning.

And then he goes on verse seventeen Therefore if anyone is in Christ the new creation has come the old has gone the new is here.

Verse eighteen all this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ not counting people sins against them and he has committed to us the message of reconciliation you see in those two verses it talks about both the Ministry of reckon so. The ation and the message of reconciliation you see reconciliation takes two parties to be involved God did his work on the cross I always describe it as a ring of reconciliation God did his work in the cross and because of the death of Christ he was able to step into that ring but if we're still outside his reconciliation taken place. You see it takes two to step into that ring and agreed to be reconciled God has done his work of reconciliation there's nothing more he can add his work is complete but it's now for us as humans to step into their be reconciled to God and by doing that we're reversing the effects of that curse that happened in the Garden of Eden we are under the law of the spirit of life instead of the law of sin and death right sin and death says you sin you die.

But you see the law of the Spirit when we receive the Spirit it overcomes that law and the law no longer applies to us because the Spirit who indwells us gives us life gives us eternal life gives us assurance of the life that waits for us so God has stepped into that ring of reconciliation.

Then WHO ARE WE verse twenty we are there for Christ embassadors as though God were making his appeal through us we implore you on Christ we have be reconciled to God You see if reconciliation was already completed in verse nineteen there would be nothing to preach it's done it's over everyone saved but Verse twenty is here. And verse twenty says we are the ambassadors of Christ Christ is not going to come down and talk to our neighbors we are going to go and talk to our neighbors and through whatever means whatever skills or person to person skills you have we are going. To tell them Be reconciled to God God has made the first step now it's for you to step into that ring salvation is by grace through faith right Grace is what God did on the cross we can't change that happened two thousand years ago Christ died for us but faith is something people can place their faith in Jesus Christ today and that is the message we preach today is a message of faith in Jesus Christ that people can be reconciled to God they can have eternal life and I pray that we will take up that message and ministry of reconciliation bringing people back into a relationship with God And finally we have the task of proclaiming reconciliation. Paul has this great idea in the Bible has this great idea of one day everything coming together under the head and that he had is Jesus Christ initially but eventually will be God the Father himself because it says that Jesus will hand the kingdom back to God the Father and Paul has this beautiful view but it's not taking place today because there's millions and in fact billions who have not heard a clear presentation of the gospel they have not heard the name of our Savior Jesus Christ and it becomes upon us to go to them and preach that message you know the value of going to sending people out to preach the message I was in Milwaukee last week or two weeks ago and a man came and talked to me as name was Randy and he says Randy I had a band I drive for. And he says the other day I was in Oshkosh and I picked up a guy and he was a Filipino and he says will you drive me around for three days I have business to do for three days and I just like to have one driver drive me everywhere so Randy said sure you know all that I don't know while much the guy paid for that but. Randy says I'll do that and as they were driving they started talking about spiritual things and the man he asked the this Filipino man are you a you know do you believe in Jesus Christ as always yes I am of I'm strong believer in Jesus Christ and the guy says ask him Well what church do you attend and he says well in the Philippines I attend the Grace Church and he's like Randy's like whoa you know he attends the Grace Bible Church of gosh what's Gunson and he says How did you hear about the gospel of grace he says well many years ago a missionary named Vernon Anderson came and preached to my father and my father believed in grace and our whole family attends the Grace Church know

my father you know where my father was saved and first sent out from Osh Kosh Wisconsin there was a member of the Grace Church there who would not give up on my mom and they called themselves American pagans and they had nothing to do with church they never darken the door of a church but this woman from the Grace Bible Church there would not give up and every chance she got she which they had to pay their rent to her so every chance they got she would evangelize them and then eventually they went to a Bible study taught by the pastor of that church and they heard the Gospel and they decided to be missionaries and they were that was Osh Kosh Wisconsin and now all these years later someone comes back just randomly I don't know but. He met a member of that church and he was saved because that church sent off a missionary and so this is what mission does it transforms whole families and this man's family was transformed and so we still have that task of taking this wonderful message and it is a transforming message my dad came from a family where his father was a drunkard and his mother was had he a lot of emotional problems because his father was a drunkard and yet our whole family has been transformed by this message of Jesus Christ and again and again we hear these stories and Joyce and I have committed ourselves to the message. And ministry of reconciliation it's one thing to have the message and know the message but it's not something to hold for ourselves it's something that can transform the lives of the people around us and it does every day somebody whose life is transformed by the gospel of grace but if we hold it for ourselves it's not going to have the opportunity to change those around us and I praise the Lord that Joyce has called us our one of our big ministry says Grace Theological Center. Our mission every year we teach for two months eight hours a day and we train missionaries in the last three years we've trained thirty nine missionaries in the Philippines. About three fourths of them two thirds of them are now on the mission field serving the Lord these are Filipinos Americans and Indonesians who we train in the Bible School is held in the Philippines Joyce and I both teach there.

We also work with what we call our team missionaries.

More and more missionaries are coming from other countries that were former mission fields see like where I was talking about my father going over in one thousand nine hundred fifty eight to the Philippines you see the Philippines we no longer consider it a mission field of things to come mission they are now partners I teach this thing called the TRO a strategy target plan train release and partner and they are now partners with us in taking the gospel to the next place if you came up to me after the service and says I want to be a missionary in the Philippines I would say.

What are you going to teach them that they're not already doing I would actually want you to go to some other country where the people are unretouched where there has been no missionary to preach the Gospel and that would be where we want to send people we are focused very much now on countries that are less than five percent Christian giving an example of Thailand point five percent Christian you can walk through a town in Thailand for. Weeks and you will never meet one Christian you will not hear the name Jesus Christ you will not see a church they don't have enough type Christians to reach their own people and I praise the Lord we now have missionaries in Thailand Killian's in the Murat's who are preaching the gospel there they can speak the language they can preach in the language they can read the Bible and they are committed to reaching. Those people with the Gospel we. Are teen missionaries are in we're in five countries already Myanmar Cambodia Laos and Vietnam and East Timor those are the five countries where we're already working now a team missionaries aren't going to come here to the states we've found that it's hard to get visas for them and it's costly to send them here and it's very time consuming they would have to spend a year here raising their support so we seek to rate help them raise support they raise one third in the Philippines and the Philippines Philippine churches are rising up as a missionary sending country three years ago only seventeen of our churches we have five hundred twelve churches in the Philippines though only seventeen supported missionaries. Three years ago I heard the latest it to stick I've heard is seventy four churches are now regularly supporting missionaries and so they are rising up the goal of the mission department head in the Philippines is half of those five hundred churches are going to support mission in the future and that will increase but we still want to raise two thirds of the support here in the States and they raise one third over there and so this is a little different way of looking at it because in the past you're used to supporting an individual like you support Ben enjoys Anderson and we are supported by this church every month but in this case you you would be supporting the people on a certain field you want the Gospel to go out to Vietnam Well you can support Vietnam and we will make sure that there is somebody going out to be.

And even if that missionary leaves we'll find another missionary to take their place and that outreach in Vietnam will continue so if you wanted to adopt one of those countries we can certainly talk to you about it and we can you will know who is there right now but. You would be more adopting a country than adopting a specific missionary I just want to read a quote from joy. And. Vietnam.

Vietnam is a communist country so we have to be a little bit sensitive about countries like Laos and Tampa and Vietnam are both communists and yes our missionaries have been picked up they have been interrogated by the police so those are sensitive countries we don't even put the names of the people on our website if you talk to me personally I'll tell you who they are and what they're doing but we won't put it up on the website but joy in Vietnam. She taught at a very good school a university in the Philippines and she wants to teach in a nursing school with her husband Jimmy Jimmy won't teach he's working on learning the language she just wrote to me on what's up.

Pastor been I guess that means a low and Vietnamese.

I don't know but the quest for this job seeking thing is taking on a slow pace because she wants to get a visa by teaching in the university and that also gives her access to university students.

God is teaching us patience when at a certain point I wanted to scream out and turn to another direction just then he would use a person to remind us yesterday I was invited by the V.N. dong college to witness their contract signing with another school asking if this is God's way of teaching me to hold on I am hopeful that he will show me the right track towards the working VSA goal the what maybe didn't quite difficult taking it one step at a time soon I'll be able to claim the mountain thank you so much for backing us up in prayer pastor being keeping you in our prayers. This is the kind of difficulties they're facing they get discouraged too you see Vietnam's not inviting missionaries to come to their. Country In fact it's illegal to be a missionary there so people go in with jobs and then they share Christ as they live there and.

In the Sunday school we were talking about prayer when Joel was was teaching in a fusion six eighteen this is a spiritual battle if Satan can get these people off the field I don't know how many people they'll reach in their lifetime one five ten one hundred and then how many grandchildren and spiritual great grandchildren.

We don't know but if same can get them off the field and discourage them right now then he doesn't have to worry about any of those people hearing the Gospel in the future. And so this is mission is a spiritual warfare especially where Satan has reigned supreme for so many years thousands of years he's not going to give up easily and I thank you for praying for the missionaries they desperately need they are under attack every single day and so thank you for standing with them stand with Jimmy enjoy in Vietnam we're hoping to send another couple there next year to join them and they'll be living in the Saigon air area and they'll be proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ to those people.

I want to well my points always like to review my message God designed us to live in relationships right that's the way God designed relationship with God and relationship with each other a church is not just a spiritual institution it's really a social institution as well I met my wife in a Grace Church and it's a great place to meet you single people out there it's a great place to meet your your spouse a Grace Church and God's message for our time is reconciliation it's the message of reconciliation. And the ministry of reconciliation and our task is to proclaim God's reconciliation to the world at the verse chapter six we're reading second Corinthians five verse chapter six verse one and two as God's coworkers we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain for he says in the time of my favor I heard you and in the day of salvation I helped you I tell you now is the time of God's favor now is the day of celebration I look at this verse and I think how can you receive God's grace in vain I thought God's grace conquers all nothing stands in the face of grace Well this verse talks about the possibility of receiving grace in vain and I see that this is the way I see this because he talks about salvation you see I see the world and I see the cross on top of the world you see the cross is the sign of God's grace he died for our sins while we were still sinners.

And then from that cross God's grace is to flow out in streams and rivers all over the world touching every single person in the world because God wants every one of them to be in relationship with him and so that stream of grace is to flow out all over the world. But what if I receive grace and I receive grace and I receive grace and I become bigger and bigger with grace

but it never goes beyond me.

What happens to that tributary what happens to that stream.

We've just dammed it up. And we've created the Dead Sea of grace yes we are enjoying God's grace and this is a church where the Grace is preached all the time and you're enjoying the grace of God right here in this congregation but what about those out there who know nothing nothing zero of the grace of God.

How is that tributary of grace going to reach out to them if we block it with ourselves. And I pray that we will consider this and not receive God's grace in vain that it will flow beyond you and me I'm not saying everyone get up and go out and become a missionary but there might be some of you who should do that.

But missionaries have to be sent. Right and they are sent through your prayers through your letters of encouragement maybe your kids want to be a missionary you can encourage your kid to be a missionary.

Support you know you work hard for your money and when you give that that's your life going in invested on the mission field.

But let us not receive the grace in vain let it flow through us and affect impact the whole world for Jesus Christ.

I was in Kenya recently an up close with this.

And I met a guy named a pastor he's been writing to me on Facebook and he's a pastor of one of our Grace Bible churches in Kenya we use the same name there Grace Bible Church and his name is John Gotti UKI and he's a young pastor twenty five years old and I always wondered who is this guy I mean he writes to me and he's excited and he's growing this church in the guru is like the fourth largest city of Kenya so when I was there last time I talked to him and he invited me to an acquittal and at some point in our conversation he says I am third generation Grace Bible church I'm thinking wow I was like the Pioneer missionary and I don't know who you are he says Yes my grandmother helped you plant the church in Malaya when he has another part of Kenya near Mbu where we used to live and sure enough I remembered his his his grandmother.

I was just a brand new missionary and there was an opportunity to plant a new church in this area. And she helped I mean she was basically one of the pillars of that church plant I am sure the Llewellyn would remember how to use one's mother. And this would be that woman's grandson is now our Grace pastor and he says I am going to plant we are going to plant five Grace Bible churches in the city of New Kuta it's a big city and I think of the investment that we made and how all those years ago working with that woman it wasn't easy planting that church that place was man full of mosquitoes and opposition and it was it was not an easy church plant but today boy they have a beautiful stone building and it's tiled floor and it's a very nice church growing all the time.

But I think of of that's what mission is you know mission is an investment and now here three generations later the Grand this this John Karr UKI twenty five year old single guy he's a grace pastor and he's excited about the work he's doing he's excited about the grace of God and he wants it to be known throughout that city he always tells me not corduroy is the best city in Kenya and I'm thinking there's a lot of cities here but for him there is only one city that's not cool because God put me in the cool and I will serve the Lord there that's at the that's at the bottom of the Great Rift Valley if you see in those pictures of flamingos flying around that's in the City of an acquittal so I leave you with that and say thank you. You see it is true Joyce and I went over there cliff and the well and went over there and we preached God's grace to the people of Kenya and there is fruit there's now third generation fruit of what we did all those years ago but you know you're part of that because we would not have been there if you had. Not sent us to be there. And one day some day when God remembers the work that's been done what we call the Judgment Day or the Bema Seat of Christ and he looks at our lives and says OK what did you do for yourselves what did you do for me.

And the reward for getting the work started in Kenya certainly.

We were part of that but you are just as much a part of what we do you may never meet John Kerry Yuki but I guarantee you John Carter UKI is there are serving the Lord because you as a church stood together with us and I thank you for standing for a mission in this church and I pray that you would continue to to do that going into the future the task is not done my friends next year two thousand one thousand we want to go to Taiwan two point eight percent Christian two point eight percent how many people have never heard the Gospel in these countries so thank you by the way in your bulletin there's a there's.

This where is it news you can use for prayer this is our mission things to come mission should be in your bulletin today I can't tell you I could stand up here the whole time untold stories about these people but I my time is up so. But here's some of the things we're doing Joyce and I are going to.

Oregon from here and then I'll be going to Brazil for two or three weeks and then I'll be going to Dubai we have a church there the name back to Singapore again which we use as our base and then hoping to visit some other countries so pray for us and pray that will be strong in the work that we're doing I don't keep us healthy for this ministry let me just close in prayer it's a precious Heavenly Father I thank you for Grace Bible Church of Phoenix thank you for this beautiful facility they have it's great to be able to preach here this time for the first time. I thank you for Pastor Josh and Kristen and their love for you and their love for the people here their desire to serve you Lord and I just pray that this church is going to continue to have an impact on the community or perhaps there's many here who don't go to church who don't know the love that you have for them I pray that this church will reach out with that message of reconciliation that God loves all people and he has a place for every single person for all this in Jesus' name he mine thank you.

Well there's you all see the weather forecast for this coming week.

We made it.

Almost so funny how this is just like the opposite of the rest of the country they're all dreading what's to come but we're all excited about it growing up in Spokane Washington the months that I look forward to the most was the month of May And there's a few reasons for that the first was my birthdays in May So as you know as a kid you always look for your birthday month but also Spokane Washington is known as the lilac city and all the lilacs bloom in like the second week of May and it is it is absolutely beautiful there's all these purple flowers and all these bushes all throughout the city of Spokane it's really pretty and then also when I was growing up I don't know if they do this today but usually on Memorial Day weekend Fairchild Air Force Base always had their air show and so we didn't go every year but my dad he was really into jet planes and and so the couple reasons that I really like to go to the air show was my dad would talk about each of the airplanes and say yeah that's the fastest one you know that that can travel the longest distance and so he would tell me all the specs on the stats on all the different airplanes and it's kind of fun to see my dad get all excited about things and you know having a guy get excited is kind of fun and my kids never have a dad he gets excited about anything but anyway but it was also really need to kind of walk through the planes and and see how big they are and and in the most important thing about the air show was on the way home we'd always stop at the same place and get a huge ice cream cone now that was like the best part but um you know several years ago right after we moved here I took Caleb and Kyle to the air show out at Luke and this was like in March and I don't remember how old they were when we moved here they were four and two so it was probably a couple years after that so they were still really little guys and I remember I looked on the Web site and said go park in a dirt parking lot and a shuttle bus will take you from the parking lot to the airshow and so we got out there it's already getting hot and it's dusty and. Were so many people that the shuttle buses got stuck in traffic and so were sitting there waiting forever for the shuttle bus to come.

Couple hours went by and eventually there you know there were little guys and crying and one would really go so we just went home so we can go to the airshow. And I did I've never had the courage to try it again so I've never been to the airshow here but one of my favorite things about the air show how do your venue an air show and most OK Aren't they cool they're awesome the best thing in my mind is when you get the planes to do the fly bys and especially the corded needed fly bys of jets like that isn't that awesome Those are the Blue Angels and it's amazing you look at that picture and it's a cool picture in and of itself but how fast are they going they're probably going to three four hundred miles an hour as they fly like that and so I love to watch the Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds which are the F. sixteen S and it's so need to see them information in and they'll kind of. Pay and off to the right to left or right information and they'll do loops and they'll do all these things here's another picture and look at that fact I was trying to find a You Tube clip of the Blue Angels and I didn't really find anything that would have been fun to watch here in the service or I just have a couple clips but I remember listening to one of the commentators as he was describing what the Blue Angels were doing and he says in this formation their wings are eighteen inches apart eighteen inches apart they're going hundreds of miles an hour it is extremely dangerous for them to be doing this and so when you look at this it is obvious that all the pilots that are piloting these planes they have to be precise and they all have to be as the saying goes they have to be on the same page they have to be on the same page this is a routine that they are following and they just can't go off script and say well I just want to bank left right now they can do that then. I have to do things in accorded native effort and so in many things in life we all need to be on the same page I think this is true of other things in life I think anyone who's been in the military you know there's one person calling out the orders and everyone else does what the one commander tells you to do in businesses you usually have the C.E.O. or the boss or the manager telling everyone this is what we're supposed to do for the day they're all in the same page definitely when you're dealing with sports teams especially sports teams that run plays they all have to be on the same page for anyone that's married you realize it's really nice to be on the same page with your spouse and usually goes a lot better than when you're not but it's also true of the Body of Christ.

When Jesus prayed a couple weeks ago last couple weeks to look to John seventeen when I can look at that today but on the night before Jesus was betrayed he's in the garden of guess somebody and he's praying and he says Father make all the followers are going to come after the disciples make them one just like you and I Father are one what do you mean by saying that he wants the followers to be one obviously he did not mean that in a physical sense you know we can't be one he also did not mean that in a an emotional sense we can't all be experiencing the same emotions having the same emotions and so when Jesus was praying for the unity of the believers units a year this one this is in the mind unity is primarily mental and what he was praying is that all the believers would understand and adopt God's will for our existence and all of us work on the same page to make that happen and when that does happen what you and I get to explain like Paul says in the fusions for we get to experience the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace while we are going on in the sermon series that work her. The End which is one another ng one another and this is based on the Greek word early on and it's found over one hundred times in the New Testament and we're primarily looking at the times where Paul or maybe some of the other authors talk about one another ring each other does the different commands of one another and when you put these into groups thirty percent of the times that you see this Greek word it's talking about unity and we've been talking about unity the unity of one another's lately you also have thirty percent of them dealing with love which we'll talk about pretty soon fifteen percent are talking about humility in the twenty five or random and miscellaneous And what we've been looking at when it deals with the unity you can subcategorize those into commands were talks about things that we should be in order to be united things that we shouldn't do which is what we looked at last week and things that we should do which we're going to look at today just kind of as a recap talking about the things that we're supposed to be if we're going to be united we need to be patient and gentle with each other that's dealing with the way that we respond to conflict patiences not allowing the conflict to overcome our own emotions gentle is not allowing our rage to spill out on to other people that's how we respond to generally last week we talked about the things that we're not supposed to do and we looked at three main threats to unity and so we talked about the threat of confusion how sometimes we'll read something in the Bible and it's confusing and some people just say forget it I'm not even trying to figure this out that is a threat to the unity because we're united in the truth another threat is competition sometimes we look at each other and we try to one up each other or see ourselves as over or above them better than each other that is a threat to our unity and another threat is our conversation when we bite and we devour each other so the words that come out of our mouth is sometimes can be a threat for unity what's today we're going to do is talk about the things that we should do. And if you have sermon notes in front of you you'll notice I have three points because every sermon must have three points but we're going to spend the majority of the time in the majority of the emphasis is going to be on the first point and will kind of briefly go over the second two. And then as you'll notice hopefully today one thing we're going to do at the end of the sermon is we are going to celebrate together the thing that unites us which is the blood and the body of Jesus Christ and so we together as a body of believers this morning will participate in the Lord's Supper together but let me give you the first thing that we must do in order to build an experience the unity of believers and that is this the first thing that we must do is you and I all must live in obedience to God's Word we must live in obedience to God's word and by saying this I literally mean that we make God's purpose for our lives our purpose. Because unity is a matter of the mind not the heart sometimes you it's somebody else and you feel like you you like the same things you feel passionately about the same subjects but unity especially unity among believers is what we know and what we have in our minds and when we all understand and we act according to God's purpose for our lives then we're going to experience the unity that God wants us to have I want you to turn your Bibles to Romans Chapter fifteen look at a few different passages today that talk about our unity.

And for those of you that were enjoying postman is Sunday School class this morning you're going to see a word study a Bible study Methodist morning for the sermon so we're going to Romans Chapter fifteen.

And I'm going to put some of these most of these passages up on the screen today.

If it will work here we go Romans Chapter fifteen and we'll look at verses five to seven

Romans Chapter fifteen verses five or seven.

The apostle Paul writes. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God Now in the first part of that section in verse five we have our word all the loan which is one another right after harmony and Paul says that we should live in such harmony with one another that together with one voice who may glorify the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ Let's take a look at the word harmony the word harmony is the Greek word for net zero which means likeminded So some of you if you're not looking in the E.S.B. some of your translations might say like minded Well that's what for a net zero means it means to direct your mind to something specific or to set it on something specific I think a great example of people having a like minded this in living in harmony with each other is what we were just doing just a few minutes ago musician they harmonize they be read literally they read literally off the same page of music that's how they stay in harmony with each other you know I'm just even the word harmony and thinking of music it reminds me of the commercial so many might remember this from the seventies.

I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony so we know how we live in harmony right we all drink Coca-Cola Classic that's that's the Coke commercial. But harmony means to some extent that you and I what we need to do is we need to give up our own agenda and we all get on the same page thinking the same thoughts and having the same purpose another great example of the importance of people having for net zero or. Having a like my goodness Yesterday I watched college football I'm sure some of you watch college football when the oftens get through the line of scrimmage are they doing what backyard football kids do you know are you OK you go out and if you're open I'm going to throw you the ball no they get in a huddle and the coach says you're going to run the play X. eighty over a mountain goat lion onto ready break and so they all who are they don't exactly what that means and they all do the exact same play because they are like minded they're in harmony with each other and if they're not the play is going to break down and so that's what harmony and unity means it means having the same mind.

Fortunately there are some great examples in scripture using the same word of practical situations where people did have harmony with each other and when they didn't have harmony with each other so let's look at a couple of those first one isn't Philippians chapter four. Philippines' chapter four I'm going to put this on the screen as well.

Flip in chapter four verses two two through four.

Or she has me flip in chapter four verses two and three.

And I don't know why I always think of this passage I reference this passage quite a bit but I really just wonder what the situation was and someday I'm sure we'll find out but here in flippin chapter four we have two ladies who at one time were in harmony with each other for no and now they're not and so Paul encourages them to get their minds together fully in chapter four verse to Paul writes to these ladies she says I entreaty Oh D.N.A. and treats and TICKY to agree in the Lord the word agree is the Greek word for KNOW which means to live in harmony or to have have the same like mindedness verse three yes I may ask you also true companion help these women who have labored side by side with me in the Gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life and so you look at this and why is Paul calling all these two women in this church and Philip I will have no idea what they were fighting over maybe we will some day when we meet them in heaven will say oh your sin TICKY So what was it what was going on but at some point in time these women were thinking and acting the same for the cause of the gospel they had made the Gospel their priority and their minds were focused on that and something happened they went off script something became more important and now they were striving with different agendas and now that their minds are not the same there's no unity and you can tell what was going on in that church side you were being drawn there was the Yoda side and then there is the sin taking side and policy you need to get on the same page you need to agree to the same thing so another passage in kolache and scored a caution in chapter three.

Kolache and Chapter Three beginning in verse two.

Paul tells us a great way for you and I to stay focused on the Lord to live in harmony with each other for all of us are going to be in harmony in unity with each other this is what we are supposed to do caution chapter three will begin in verse one.

It says if you if then you have been raised with Christ seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God and here is our record for now set your minds on the things that are above not on the things that are on earth for you have died in your life is sitting with Christ in God When Christ Who is your life appears then you also will appear with him in glory but how what a wonderful passage you says said your minds on things above in other words set your minds on God's priority why did God create us in the first place what is our mission that we're trying to accomplish as believers in Christ that's what we're supposed to do and that's hard isn't it because there's a lot of distractions how many of us we're all going to raise your hand but how many of us wake up on Monday morning or every morning you turn on the news or get online or however you get your information and your mind starts being focused on all the things of this world instead of the things that are above it happens all the time right I don't think God is asking us to ignore the things that are in this life that's impossible there are things that we're going to just be focusing on but he doesn't want us to make the world agenda our agenda all right and I think that's such an important point to make we're supposed to keep God's priority in our life first and foremost all the things that we see in this life our souls if these They're temporary but our souls are eternal and so what we need to do is be united in trying to get the people of this world to see God's grace that's how we're going to experience unity so I wanted a couple good examples talks about setting your mind on the things above agreeing with each other and now we're going to look at a couple good bad examples first one is in Matthew Chapter sixteen so open your Bible to Matthew Chapter sixteen.

And this is where Peter one of the many times repeaters chastised by Christ.

Peter such a good example to us all in so many ways Matthew Chapter sixteen and will begin in verse twenty one.

And on the screen I have verses twenty two and twenty three I'm going to I'm going to read twenty one it would all fit on one slide so I'm going to read twenty one and then you can pick up in verse twenty two but Matthew sixteen. It says from that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised and so Jesus is explaining this to the disciples and now we have verse twenty two and this is on the screen. And Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him saying Far be it from you Lord this show never happened to you. But he turned to him turn and said to Peter Get Behind Me Satan you are a hindrance to me for you are not setting your mind on the things of God but on the things of man so in that moment Jesus and the father were in unity they had harmony with each other Jesus knew what the plan was and he was about to fulfill it Peter being a human being he wanted Jesus to be king and he wanted to be King right now but that wasn't a part of the master plan and so Jesus said Set your mind on things above not on the things of man and I want to got to ask all of you a kind of a serious question I think especially as we're looking at this point I think all of us should just take the time just kind of reflect on our own minds and where they go but how much of your mental energy do you devote every day to the temporary things of this life.

For you put a percentage on it is probably pretty high wouldn't it again I don't think God is asking us to not think about the temporary things that you know we're usually thinking of. The thing that we think about the most is probably what we're going to eat right we're always thinking about that that's very temporary we have to think about those things but how much time do you spend how much energy do you spend thinking about the terminal purposes of God and how all of us realize that in this life we have an opportunity right now to join him and when the body of Christ when you and I together set our minds together on God's purpose that's when you and I will experience unity and so the first thing that we need to do to experience unity is to live in obedience to God's word and obviously we need to study God's word so that we can live in obedience to it let's move on to the second couple points second thing we must do is this we must wait for each other we must wait for each other we must be patient with each other if Eason's chapter four we get this verse and we've looked at this verse a couple times and before we read this I'll just say this we need to wait for each other because as believers and as followers of Jesus Christ everyone here is that a different speed in a different level of their maturity not all of us are the same but we need to wait for each other and grow together and efficiency after four verses one in two we've read this before but this is what it says I therefore a prisoner for the Lord urge you to walk walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness with patience and here's the command bearing with one another in love eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace so Paul tells us that we need to bear with one another some of your translations might have the word suffer instead of bear with because this literally means that we need to be willing to suffer sometimes the suffering might be physical a lot of the times the suffering. Is going to be a motional or mental but to bear with someone means to hold each other up we're patient and we're gentle with another person this kind of makes me think of assisting another person that is in need followers of Christ are not always on the same page so we need to be patient with those who go off script from time to time and a lot of times people go off script they won't be doing the things of God for a variety of reasons sometimes it's because of sin. Sometimes it's because of disobedience Sometimes it's because a tragedy came into their life and and they're coping with life's difficulties or ords they're dealing with differing opinions you know just thinking about this bearing with one another and in kind of waiting for another This reminds me of the last time I was in the Grand Canyon I think I talked about this recently but back in the end of May a pastor friend of mine from Michigan came down and said hey I'm going to be in Arizona and it's on my bucket list I want to hike to Grand Canyon and I want you to be my guy that's the word he used he wanted he wanted me to be his guide and so there was him a good friend of his and then his daughter so there were four of us that went into the Grand Canyon all four of us were at different ages and different fitness levels and different abilities and different length of legs which matters when you're in the Grand Canyon and two of us were we wanted to move we want to go fast and two were going a lot slower and so it was kind of a moment where I had to bear with someone else and I remember thinking what is the purpose of being in here well the number one purpose when everyone in the canyon the number of purposes you've got to get out right you get you can't just stay in there you got to get out so that's when I'm on purpose and so if we need to bear with each other and all of us go and get out of the green hangin together at the same time. You know I think a lot of disunity that takes place in the body of Christ is because people are impatient with each other and they're trying to go different speeds and I thing. It's ironic that this is one of the purposes of church God has us all come together and he out calls us to gather and assemble together so that we are considerate of each other and that we all do church somewhat at the same speed so we're not off doing our own thing at our own pace.

You know as I was thinking of this I thought how some people grow in their relationship to God fast some people are really slow and maybe we're proud of certain people and frustrated with others but when it comes to the next thing that all of us are looking forward to which is receiving our glorified bodies and spending eternity with Jesus Christ. You know when that's going to happen for everybody.

At the same time.

It's going to happen at the same time we will all receive our glorified resurrected bodies and be in the presence of Jesus Christ for eternity and that's going to happen at the same time we refer to that as the Rapture in first US alone eons we read this in this what we're going through in our Bible study in Thursday morning so it's kind of this is on my my mind. We can this is verse seventeen but I want to read some verses before Paul is writing to the people in Tesla Nika and he says to them because they were concerned about people who have died you know what happens to them and he writes to them and first US alone as for all pick up in verse thirteen says that we do not want you to be uninformed brothers about those who fall asleep that or that you may grieve as others who do not have hope for sense we believe that Jesus died and rose again even so through Jesus God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep for this we declared to you by word of the Lord that we who are alive who are left until the coming of the Lord will not perceive those who are fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from Heaven with the cry of command with the voice of the archangel and with the sound of the trumpet of God and the dead will rise first the dead in Christ will rise first and here's the verses on. The screen then we who are alive who are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so we will always be with the Lord therefore encourage one another with these words and so this passage just teaches of something important that the next stage of our salvation we have a resurrected glorified bodies God is doing this so that we're all doing this together at the same time there's going to be unity even in that and so if you ever get frustrated with another person understand that's a time when we're supposed to bear with each other that's when we experience unity Well let me give you the third point third way that we can experience unity with each other and that is kind of the fail safe when we don't want to and that is we need to learn to forgive each other we must forgive each other in order to experience unity you know as I was thinking about this you know one of the main reasons why we don't experience unity with another human being it's usually because of differences you know um there's people that are different races genders nationalities and we kind of fear the unknown and so we don't experience unity with them or different beliefs we don't experience people with different beliefs like politically right now can you believe what our nation is like or we have a lot of disunity but among believers among true members of the Body of Christ the main reason that they don't experience unity is probably because one person offended the other person someone offended the other person and that's when Satan drives that wedge in between two believers trying to get them to experience disunity rather than unity and when a person has been offended by another person as we talked about for about a month just a while ago that person spends so much of their life in bitter anger trying to punish another person for what they have done and we waste precious time. And so the earlier that we see ourselves falling into that trap hopefully we will get out of it sooner by forgiving the person who hurt and offended us so that what we can do is spend our time on the things that matter rather than wasting our time being angry with those that we need to be united to one last passage I want to share with you show you and share with you as collage ins and cautions chapter three verses twelve and thirteen Paul writes to us and he says put on then as God's chosen ones holy in Beloved compassionate hearts kindness humility meekness and patience bearing with one another and if anyone has a complaint against another for giving each other as the Lord has forgiven you so you also must forgive.

Jesus Christ came to earth on a mission and now was to provide the redemption for our sins and Jesus had a choice I guess in some ways you can think about this he could have either focused on our sins and been wrathful and angry with us or he could have done with God in him had decided to do in the first place and that is to pay for our sins and to forgive us and the only way that God could redeem us and restore our relationship with him was to forgive us and now we get to join God in His eternal plan and so sometimes for us to experience that unity with him and each other you and I need to forgive.

What I want to do this morning is N. the section on unity and one another in one another with having communion and the passage that we turn to to get our instructions for today on communion or the Lord's Supper is found in First Corinthians eleven so I'm not going to put this up on the screen but you want you to turn there right now we're going to read a portion of this

first Corinthians Chapter eleven.

And every time we have communion and I'll do this today I read from First Corinthians alive and verses twenty three through twenty six those are the instructions that we get when we're going to read the context of this situation now I really love the Corinthians because they were kind of like the junior highers of the Bible and what I mean is they're not kids anymore they're not adults and they just they kept messing up they didn't know how to do things right and so Paul says Now let me tell you and give you instructions on how to handle the Lord's Supper because they weren't doing it right so thankful Thankfully we have a good bad example to learn from but here in First Corinthians alive and Paul is teaching them that as a body of believers this is how you practice communion the thing that unites you together and to Jesus Christ so first Corinthians eleven beginning in verse seventeen. He says but in the following instructions I do not command commend you because you have come together it is not for the better but for the worse for in the first place when you come together as a church I hear that there are divisions among you and I believe it in part for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized but when you come together it's not the Lord's Supper that you eat for an eating each one goes ahead with his own meal one goes hungry another gets drunk What do you not have houses to eat and drink in or do you despise the Church of God and humiliated those who have nothing what shall I say to you shall I commend you in this no I will not and so when they were coming together and participating in the Lord's Supper they were all doing it on their own one was over indulging in the bread some one was over indulging in the wine and Paula saying you don't get it this is the time when we are united with each other this is why we wait. Two at the same time eat the bread and wait to the same time we drink the juice which represents the blood of Christ and this next passage is our instructions will read through this quickly Paul says for I received from the Lord What I also deliver to you that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said This is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me in the same way also he took the cup after supper saying This cup is the new covenant in my blood do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes verse twenty seven says whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the blood the Body and Blood of the Lord let a person examine himself then and so we eat of the bread and drink of the cup for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself that is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died but if we judged ourselves truly we would not be judged but when we are judged by the Lord we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world so then my brothers when you come together to eat wait for one another wait for one another if anyone is hungry let him eat at home so that when you come together it will not be for judgment about the other things I will give directions when I come you know I think I said I'm so glad that the Corinthians existed so that they could do most things wrong so that we can learn from their mistakes but Paul wanted them to understand about their unity and so he tells them now while they are participating in the Lord's Supper which reminds us of the unity that we have with Christ's death and resurrection he says to do it in a united way together because together they are redeemed by the death of Jesus and together really. He will be raised in given to immortal glorified body and so that is what we do as a body of Christ to be unified with each other we wait for each other we make our lives be living independence of word.

So right now it's time as we participate in this communion I'd like to have the men to come forward and be prepared to cross out the bread and the juice.

And

we start with the bread.

And this represents the body of Jesus and all of us says you grab the bread you take the bread out of the tray we're going to do what Paul tells us to do we're going to wait for each other and we're going to do this together and we're going to eat the bread together because we are united and as you hold onto the bread what I want you to spend your time thinking and focusing on is this what you're holding in your hands is the very thing that paid for your sins. And represents the stripes in the wounds that Jesus took upon his body. The bread represents the death of Jesus and you through your faith and through God's grace are united with Jesus in his death so that we can have life so spend time thinking in praising God for this unity that you have with Christ through His death.

Like you just read from the Apostle Paul in First Corinthians this is what he wrote to them and this is what he writes to us for I received from the Lord What I also delivered to you that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread when he had given thanks he broke it and said This is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me

your father how can we thank you enough.

For sending your son to die for us.

And your word tells us that we through our faith in you have forever been identified with the death of Jesus that we have been buried with him in his death and because of that our sins are forgiven. And you've united us with Jesus not only in his death but more importantly it's resurrections a father in this moment we just thank you and we come be as.

If. Her face maybe live in a way that will honor you pray this in Christ name

and now as we pass out the juice which represents the blood of Jesus Christ I think this is the one that excites me the most because we know the story that Jesus died.

He also rose again. And the scripture says that if we are identified with him in his death we will also be identified with him in his resurrection and so there's so much more to our eternal existence we're only experiencing just the first part now and so as you hold on to the juice and as we wait to drink together think about the fact that you are united with Christ future all of us are united with Christ future and so we need to have our mind set on that even in this life to spend time thanking Christ for giving you the hope of the best future possible because of this death and resurrection.

In that same instruction Paul wrote to them as he writes to us and he says in the same way also he took the cup after supper saying This cup is the new covenant in my blood do this is often as you drink it in remembrance of me for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cop you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes

the. Father in this moment this is this morning it's so wonderful to just spend time thinking about our future and how we have faith in what took place in the past we have faith in the death of Jesus Christ and we more importantly we have face it three days later you raised him from the grave just like you said that he would and so Father our faith is grounded on this firm foundation and you will finish what you started that you will come when you will call us to be with you forever and whatever our future is going to look like in whatever role that we have with you we know that will be in your presence forever as a passage tells us and first US long as for so father in tell them until the time that you call us to be with you forever help us to do the things that you have called us to and that is to be united with each other to spend our time so I'm focused on the things that are above and not the minutia and the temporary things of this world oh Lord I pray for not only us as individuals but for us as a church to help us to be united in our purpose and into spreading the message of your Grace to the community around us thank you Lord for this great hope to which you have called us and may we be united in that and pray this in Christ's name Amen. I want last thing when you leave you can take the cups and you can put those in the trash container as you go by but I do want to close right now with the benediction and so may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all again.

All right well before we get into the sermon for today we have some missionaries here and because you know we all we often think of Phoenix as the center of the universe but we're actually kind of tucked away in the southwest corner of the United States and so whenever missionaries come to visit people here in the United States if they're able to come through Phoenix we're glad that they're able to come visit us so so Dean put I OG Come on up again and chief are here they are missionaries with things to commission in South America and South Africa. That's why he's here. And I know you know a couple people in our church she says Sarah Kincaid spent some time with you in South Africa and also rich and Linda Watts were on a mission trip not the summer but the last summer and they were able to spend some time with you and their dear kind of coming through the United States and so while they're here just like this is a great time for them to introduce themselves and let us know what kind of ministry they have so.

Thank you sir good morning.

It's an honor to be with you to Smalling My name is Dean.

We have in recent days and I'm going to present to you a thirty minute Power Point in five minutes so.

Make sure that you are with me that's South Africa

That's our picture my name is Dean my wife there is Sheba we have two kids City and she did as we are up a die how guess we are missionaries of things look on mission in a county called South Africa South Africa is right there in the bottom part.

The Green Collar country down there southernmost tip of the continent of Africa facing up to one ticklish on the left An Indian Ocean on the rights.

What happened pressed the wrong button.

All right a South Africa with nine provinces we are based in the smallest province of how thing that's a very small province right there but that's the most heavily populated province Pretoria is there and then you honey is also there METRO Do you have this burg has twelve million people and we are based in one of the cities of Johnnie's bird.

Of We have fifty five million people about. Not a ten percent are white. And then we have about eighty percent Christians but that's not the Christian that we know in the Bible you know it's not the biblical Christian that we know just a matter of comparison of the South Africa we have we kind of compare with major counties South Africa is one eighth the size of United States a third the size of Europe twice the size of France over three times the size of Germany if you're familiar with takes us multiply takes us by two that's the size of South Africa it is the America in Africa for so many reasons we have Internet we have highways we don't have a lot of any modest but we have Mercedes bins and B.M.W.'s too we've got almost everything.

We would like to share to our daily weekly monthly and yearly ministries. Monday is our day off that's very important for us you will know why but choose day that's OUR a time we are teaching our kids in the morning of just day until Friday morning our kids are wonderful students and we are their teachers Cydia is nine she dishes of five they're kind of six months behind with their studies with a lot of trial. Bling that we are doing right now but I think they are doing good study wise Tuesday evening we have a Bible study in a place called Hamann scrawl about one hour drive north of Pretoria in a factory and then wins the morning we have a Bible study in a company in a business capital of Johnny's burg in a company called it to him solutions. And that guy there in the middle with what is that color gray he is second year in our Bible School and he is the leader of the Bible study group in the evening we have a Bible study among professionals in a place called Box board we have a wonderful group of bikers and engineers and lawyers and C.E.O.'s that are attending they are young and rich and we are sublists the be able to work with these wonderful group of young people first day we have a Bible study in Pretoria very mixed congregation there we have British Darts and mixed race as you call them but they are colored as we call them in South Africa plus Filipinos of course on Fridays we have a Bible study in seven homes and one factory we rotate obviously there's only one Friday and saving homes are trying to kind of host our Bible studies and so it's fun is just so excited to see people wanting to horse Bible study or Bible study groups.

Those are some of the families we are having bible studies every Friday and then we have our pastoral and workers' training ministry our Bible school we have three Bible schools one in Vox bird one in to be song and one incision will be in it's of this Bible school we have three or four teachers that are teaching the. Students there just really about fifteen A students in each of the branch those are students when they come together for special occasions. And then we are printing our own books we used to receive some books from our things the commission office in Indianapolis but you know to see in books it's very expensive plus to receive books in South Africa we have to pay so do double fees and we don't have funds for that well we are so blessed that you know some of the Grace writers are very generous enough to give us permission to print their books for free so my wife she is the one doing the printing and a book binding pray for her she's tiny little woman there but she is very strong we have come ministry also we have sixty to seventy young people that we are working with every May and then we also have a come on come on five minutes only

yes.

And then we have a national conference for two years we had a hard time breaking through eighty people attending a conference but last year we have three hundred that's just amazing growth that we experience and we are so proud of what the Lord is doing through our ministry we have youth conference every June sixteen and then we have missions conference this is the time of the year that we just got there are pastors together and we think and talk and discuss about how we can expand our work in South Africa we have leadership summit we believe in. Iron sharpening iron type of principle we have out roots programs we have a good number of women they are going to hospitals and sharing the gospel they are to the patients we also have You'll find out rich and.

Of course we love the older people we go to them seeing and share the gospel to them and then from time to time we go out to places where we have church planting projects and then there we share the Gospel we also share our material bliss things feeding program with the kids and sharing the gospel to the perience we have give ministry where we click some. Things you know food and share them to our outreach programs we have a gospel truck this is our mobile stage we park the truck in communities meet noice loud music you know and then print the gospel there after that we go it's a mobile stage we have doing services every three months we call our churches together about four churches coming together for feel still we also have church planting our family planted in two thousand and six our church in Kempton Park and then in twenty fifteen we planted a church in Boksburg and then before we went to the Philippines in two thousand and eight of. January we planted a church in Pietermaritzburg.

We have kids ministry my wife is helping with the Sunday school and we have video ministries also we love to call it Grace T.V. sounds very fancy but it's actually you know aspire writhing pirating or duplicating others who have the video ministries but you know it's cool I think I have to stop right there

I don't want to steal time. If you want to know more about our ministry we have a table outside we have prayer cards.

Like this one and then we have a brochure also and we have told our recent news leaders and if you want to connect with us with e-mails we have a sign up people are there you know we appreciate the time we really appreciate and we are praying that the Lord will continue to bless it's one of you sir also just thank you.

If you'd like to get some information from them we got a table set up back there but it's always nice to have missionaries come through here and I think it's healthy for us because sometimes we get so wrapped up and think that nothing happens outside of North Phoenix but God does it work in different parts of the world and so it's it's healthy and it's good for us to hear what God is doing in South Africa and South America too he's you know he's doing stuff everywhere but.

There are good my slides are up there now too also it's kind of nice has passed from I talked about in the next coming weeks several weeks we're going to be doing some stuff over at Eagle Ridge Elementary School and so I think that's good for us as well because you know just having moved here I think our tendency might to think about how we as a church are doing but we're here to serve the world around us and so what a great opportunity we have to get into the neighborhood and to do that through Eagle Ridge Elementary School so it's a great way to kind of get our minds off of ourselves and into the calling that God has for us and if there's anything in life that helps a human being get their eyes off their own self and on to other things it's being the parent of infants Amen parents of infants can you agree with that you know becoming a parent changes the way that you view the world a parent of an infant will walk into any room and they will immediately start scanning our you know what is in this room that my child will put in their mouth or what is in this room that my child will stick their hands into or or stick their fingers into and they're always scanning a room looking for different threats that can harm their child.

I remember that time in our lives when our kids were that age it's kind of fun to look at pictures and it's kind of you know get reminiscent but I'm really glad I'm past that stage because it was exhausting it was really tiring being a parent of infants but as a parent I think all. Of us can say this our desire is for our children to grow up and to become mature and so as they grow up what we do is we look for the threats that are in their life and we hopefully try to remove them so it doesn't harm them were God's desire for us after we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior and we believe that he died on the cross for our sins and rose back from the grave God's desire for us is that you and I are united as one with each other and that's what Jesus prayed for on the night when he was crucified let me just read for you this is actually think this is in your bulletin on the front cover of the the inside of the bulletin this is from John seventeen verses twenty to twenty one this is what Jesus prayed the night before he was betrayed the night before he was crucified and so Jesus prays and John seventeen twenty says I do not ask for these only speaking of His disciples but also for those who will believe in Me through their word that they may all be one just as you Father are in me and I in you that they may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me and so this prayer from Jesus on the night before you is betrayed is huge it tells us that as you and I are united with each other it tells the world the truth about Jesus Christ and so last week I began another series on one another in one another maybe that's a phrase or a catch I'm probably not but I like to think that it might and on what what this is based off of the Greek word Ali wrong and this Greek word is found over one hundred times in the New Testament seventy six times it is translated one another and so were picked out some of those that were going to be looking at twelve times its translated themselves three times yourself in the nine miscellaneous random and then when we put these into groups and this is kind of how I'm kind of structuring these. Next several sermons thirty percent are about unity and so that's what we're going to do right now we're talking about the unity of the one another versus thirty percent or about love fifteen percent about human humility and twenty five percent are random miscellaneous and we'll look at a couple of those I'll pick out a couple of those but when we're dealing with the passages on unity I notice that there were three subgroups there are verses that tell us that we are supposed to be a certain thing is to be united with each other there are verses that tell us of there are things that we're not supposed to do and there are things that we are supposed to do in order to maintain unity with each other and last week what we did is we looked at the verses that talked about the things that we're supposed to be for going to be united with each other we should be and we looked at three things we need to be patient gentle and we need to be the Body of Christ we need to be members of the body and when we're talking about patience patience is how we handle conflict internally patience is not allowing our emotions to gain control over ourselves us what patients needs or at least part of what patients means gentle means how we handle conflict X. turn only it's like we don't blow up on other people that's gentleness and then to be the body simply means to say I have a role within this functioning organism called the Body of Christ and I need to be an active participant and not say to the other members of the body I have no need of you and so that's what we need to be in order to join or to enjoy the unity that God has given to us well today today's messages on what we should not do so that we might maintain the unity of the spirit and a passage that we looked at last week is kind of an overarching passage especially for the section on unity would be if Eason's think it's going.

Maybe not go back if Eason's chapter four verses one through three and there it says I there for a prisoner for the low. Ordered you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness and patience those were points from last week varying was one another in love in verse three it says Now we all you and I should be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace so what I want to do for this morning is look at three things that we should not do in order to help us maintain the unity of the Spirit and what I want to do is I want to kind of look at this from the standpoint of a parent looking for the threats that might threaten their child's safety and so let's take a look at this three threats the Bible teaches us about that can destroy the unity of the Spirit and so the first threat is this first point in your message is this the first threat that kind of threatens to destroy the unity is confusion. The first threat is confusion and by that I specifically mean having confusion over the truth of God's word specifically regarding the truth because if we think about it it's this right here it's God's unchanging. Undeniable word that unites us to one another this is the truth that unites us together if there is no truth in this world then alternately life is survival of the fittest but there is a truth that unites us together I want you to turn your bible says John chapter six. I'm going to just put up one a verse right now but I want you to look at a lot of the other portion of John chapter six and John chapter six this is kind of where we get this point from in John chapter six Jesus says to his disciples he answers them and says Do not grumble among yourselves so Jesus says Do not grumble among yourselves and yourselves is the Greek word Ali launch this is one of the times when we get this word for one another or yourselves and so Jesus says Do not grumble among yourselves the word grumble think all of us kind of those we know what this means it means to. To murmur or to mutter or or to say something under your breath you know who's really good at saying stuff under their breath teenagers. It's like when you tell your teenager clean your room or do the dishes and they go on a room clean my room and that's grumbling that's murmuring that's muttering and Jesus looked at His disciples and says Do not grumble among yourselves or what in the world is Jesus talking about here the context of this passage is very important today you're actually in to get a this is a bonus right you're going to get a church history lesson off this passage so turn here to John chapter six if you're not there already and this passage is the context this is after Jesus had fed the five thousand so what happens to people after you give them free food what do they want more free food and so they're following up to Jesus after he had given them free bread and then i give me some more bread and so Jesus takes this as an opportunity to teach them a truth about himself and we get into this very hard difficult teaching especially for them at this time so let's look at John chapter six beginning in verse forty one.

Says So the Jews grumbled about him because he said I am the bread they came down from heaven they said is this not Jesus the son of Joseph whose father mother we know how does he now say I have come down from heaven Jesus answered them this is our verse do not grow among yourselves because they are just talking and they're just they're not listening to what he says he says to them no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise them up on the last day it is written in the prophets and they will all be taught by God everyone who has heard and learned from the father comes to me not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God He has seen the Father and so this is the truth that Jesus is teaching them he says that he is the bread he is the bread that came down from heaven that He is the Bread of Life. Did Jesus literally mean that he is the bread that people are going to literally eat in consume with their mouths Well of course not what he was talking about is that he is the fulfillment of something that came before he is the fulfillment of the manner that God sent in the wilderness for the forty years when the Israelites wandered the wilderness they would wake up they'd walk out of their tents in the morning and there were some do some substance on the ground white flaky substance and it was manna and you guys know what man of means it literally means what is it and so they looked at the stuff on the ground they said What is it and that's man and so they ate that for forty years and so Jesus teaching them. They did for overall command. So specifically he's talking about the manner that was in the wilderness but even more specifically he's talking about that he is the bread and the wine that it's taken during the Passover meal during the feast of unleavened bread so when Jesus said these things to the disciples they didn't know what at that time that that's what he was referring to but we do today because we can look back in scripture but this is how they responded to the truth when Jesus was teaching this to them so let's just keep reading us verse forty seven.

Truly truly I say to you whoever believes this believes has eternal life I am the bread of life your father is it the manna in the wilderness and he died this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die I am the living bread they came down from heaven if anyone needs of this bread he will live forever and the bread that I will give for the life of this of the world is my flesh.

The Jews then disputed among themselves saying how can this man give us his flesh to eat so Jesus said to them Truly truly I say to you unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has. Eternal life and I will raise them up on the last day for my flesh is true food in my blood is true drink whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him as a father sent me as a living father sent me and I live because of the Father so whoever feeds on me he also will live because of me this is the bread that came down from heaven not like the bread the father's ate and died whoever fees on the spread will live forever Jesus said these things in the synagogue as he taught at Kopra when many of the disciples heard it they said this is a hard saying or a hard teaching who can listen to it but Jesus knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this he said to them Do you take offense at this now this subject in this passage here in John chapter six in particular has caused great confusion over the first thousands of years in church history and I want to give you kind of a brief church history lesson and my final semester Grace Bible college I took a church history class it was probably one of my favorite classes that I ever took there and of all the things that I remember the best it's this subject how many of you know the three main differing views on communion what the bread and the wine represent so you probably do well the three main views are transubstantiation consubstantial nation and the memorial view there will be a test you better write this down no I'm kidding transubstantiation means it's the thought that the bread and the wine literally transform into the actual blood and body of Jesus the concept of you a similar they don't take it out far they believe that the the presence of Christ is in and around and over and through the elements of the bread and the wine and the moral view is that when we take the bread and we drink the juice now we're just doing this in memory of him Protestants generally hold to. The memorial view we hear Grace problem church hold a memorial view usually the Lutherans hold to the concepts and view you know who hold to the transubstantiation view the Roman Catholic Church that's what they believe now do you know when the Roman Catholics started to hold this position now this is kind of a church history this is the bonus year you don't have to pay for this I'm going to give you this bonus while in church history I remember this I remember his name because it's the coolest name ever but there was a monk named rad BURGESS That's a cool name right Brad birders and this monk was generally looked at this thought had been around and it's impossible to pinpoint exactly when the Roman Catholic Church adopted this view but he is the one who's kind of officially given credit with making this the official formalized view of the Roman Catholic Church and it happened in the year eight hundred thirty one.

Eight hundred years after Christ said this the Roman Catholic Church officially took this view now this subject is probably best taught in a Sunday school class and so I'm not going to say too much more on this but I use this as an example to show how important it is that we study God's word diligently so that we can know the truth accurately in this passage in John chapter six Jesus was revealing to us that he is the fulfillment of things that happened before specifically the manner that came down from heaven during those forty years and also that he is the Feast of Unleavened Bread he's the fulfillment of that and the wine and the bread that's taken during the Passover meal that is the truth that unifies us to him that unites us to him and us to each other so when we come to something that might be hard to understand at first we shouldn't do what the disciples did in John chapter six and mumble and grumble and just throw our hands up in the air and say I can't understand this I'm just going to forget about it it's worth our time in our effort to study God's word so that we can know and understand the truth. So confusion is a threat towards our unity because when we get confusing might say ah just forget it you know if you were to see some of the little kids running around here and you were to pin him up against the wall that be fun but anyway if you were to ask them if you were to ask them what is second term of the two fifteen say most of them would be able to tell you because this is a No one a verse that we say every single night second Timothy two fifteen says do in this is this is the verse that a want to is based on out of the King James version but the N.A.V. says do your best to present yourself to God A worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the Word of Truth A W A N A stands for approved workman are not ashamed so that's where I want to comes from second term of the two fifteen this verse is teaching us be a student of the word study it so that you can know the truth because the truth is what unites us to God and it also unites us to each other well I know I took kind of all long way to get to this point but trust to maintain the unity of the spirit we can't just give up on studying God's Word if it gets hard it's the truth and it unites us to each other so this is the first threat to unity that you and I might face and that is confusion but we need to continue to study so that we know the truth now the second threat to unity is competition. Second threat to our unity with each other is competition and this is when we look at another member of the Body of Christ as someone who is potentially standing in our way preventing us from getting what we want you can turn over in your Bibles to go look at a couple verses out of there also put this up on the screen if you like to look there but Ingle ations chapter five verses thirteen to fifteen. The should be kind of a refresher we spent several months English and speculation chapter five thirteen to fifteen says. For you are called the Freedom. Brothers only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh but through love serve one another for the whole was fulfilled in one word you shall love your neighbor as yourself in verse fifteen here is here's our passage for today this is what this means but if you bite and devour one another yours are one another word watch out that you are not consumed by one another. The opposite of unity or seeing ourselves as one with each other would be to see ourselves as competition with each other and if you go in the Bible you see all throughout Scripture even from the very beginning people are living in competition with each other we see that with Cain and Abel we see that was Sarah and Hagar we see that with Esau and Jacob with Rachel and Leah we see this with Joseph in his brothers we see competition everywhere and competition will destroy unity and so here we have in this passage glacial as five actually I think it's kind of ironic we just look at a passage where Jesus tells us to eat His flesh and then Paul is in this passage telling us to not eat each other so obviously those kind of symbolic or Jesus was saying but this is what these words mean the by devouring consume bite we all know about it means it literally means to sink your teeth into something but metaphorically it means to wound the soul of another person when we bite them or wounding their soul to devour means to just literally chew and swallow something but metaphorically it means to reduce the value of another human being we're devouring them we're kind of reducing them to nothing and then when something is consumed there's nothing left you consume the meal it's gone and so Paul says that we are to not do this to someone that we are united with you not reduce them to nothing. So why do we do this why do we do this to each other well go back to verse thirteen I think that kind of answers it in the middle there it says Only do not use your freedom as an opportune. Ready for flash. In other words don't use your freedom to elevate and separate yourself from other people so that you get what your selfish desires want where you go a little bit further in chapter five and Paula tells us why or at least one of the reasons why we tend to be competitive with each other and this is found five twenty six elations five twenty six he says let us not become conceded provoking one another envying one another conceded simply means that you do you want the attention you're desirous of glory any of your reading from the King James Version your version might say let us not become desirous of vain glory glory that is just vanity there's nothing to it. The provoking means to irritate when we grow up in a house with siblings we really learn how to provoke each other very well right I have three sisters and my little sister was the best it irritating in provoking me she drove me crazy now I'm now living with my sisters anymore so we get along great but I also was there I did a good job provoking my older two sisters but you know that's what little brother supposed to do but then also says envying envy is when you want what another person has envy and jealousy are very similar jealousy is when you feel like you're entitled to what another person has that you should have that too but envy is when you just want what they have and all of these actions and these thoughts they lead to the opposite of unity the sort of kind of pit us against each other and we see each other as competition therefore we are told to not do them.

And how competitive are you all of us are competitive to some extent some more so than others but I think a good way to gauge if we are being competitive with each other is if we can do what it says in Romans twelve fifteen I didn't write this down it's not on the board but in Romans twelve fifteen it says to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those. Who mourn that's kind of a good litmus test for us to know if we are living in unity with others if someone comes to us and says hey I got a raise in stead of saying well I was going to raise so that is are some Let's go out to lunch you're buying right we can rejoice with those who rejoice and we can mourn with someone who mourns instead of saying one lot of the now going to me but we can genuinely feel united with another human being that's how God wants us to be but competition really is a threat to that So these are two of the threats first is confusion over the truth or we just give up trying to understand it the second is competition and the third threat to our unity is our conversation early quite literally the words that come out of our mouths in James four eleven.

James says interesting this is the brother the half brother of Jesus he grew up living with Jesus but he tells us just the first sentence there he says Do not speak evil against one another brothers do not speak evil against one another how many times has this destroyed the relationship between two people because one person let these evil sinful words harsh critical words come out of their mouth towards another human being and it destroyed the relationship how many times does this destroy the relationship between groups of people and this is why we go to war because of what people are saying you know it's amazing how the unity between people is so affected by our words both what we say and also a lot of times how we say it and this is why we always need to think before we speak ask ourselves the question are the words that are about to come out of my mouth are they going to build me up build up this other person and help me be united with the. Brother or Sister in Christ or is it something that is going to drive a wedge between us. One of my favorite verses and I think this is a verse that everyone should have memorized release underlined in your bible or highlighted on your phone or however you do that but if Eason's for twenty nine such an important verses says Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.

That's hard isn't it very hard but this is something that we should build a house without and I kind of want to give you all a challenge here this morning if you struggle with any of these three things that we were looking at especially Point number two And point number three being competitive with each other and using words that are are that harmful sometimes the best way to get around that and overcome that is to replace it with a positive habit and so I would encourage you even to do this today to take if Eason's for twenty nine put into practice is there someone in your life that you need to build up with some words it could be a spouse could be children parents could be a coworker could be friends could be someone in this church but maybe today is the day that you can say I want to build my unity was to some other person and so I'm going to let the words come out of my mouth build them up and help create unity between us. Well next week we're going to do is we're going to look at some of the things that we should do and we as we're going through these passages sometimes we see him already but we're going to look at the things that we should do in order to maintain unity with each other but this week we look at the threats and hopefully when we know that these threats are out there were more aware of them and a question that I think all of us should ask ourselves Is this as we're going through our daily lives that we should say is this thought that I'm entertaining right now or the words that I'm about to speak will they bring me closer to another brother or sister in Christ or are they going to drive. A wedge between us it is really hard to be a bystander and watch relationships fall apart between two different people and know that one of these three things is the cause whether they're scum petition where there's misunderstanding there's not a lemon over the truth or there's evil harsh words being spoken of towards each other it's hard to watch that happen and so all of us what we need to do is to do our best to maintain the unity of the spirit the goddess called us to by taking seriously these threats that Stuart threatened our unity was close and Princess God to really help us be aware of these things.

Dear Lord we come before you this morning and I thank you so much for the worship that we're able to enjoy with each other in and that all of us could come and we could sing united around these truths that have been put to music Lord I thank you so much that the diehards could be here and they could share with us their ministry of what's taking place in South Africa and Lord I'm so thankful for the opportunities you've given to us here agrees probably church of Phoenix to to partner with Eagle Ridge Elementary school next door it's just exciting to think of the next year in two years and ten years what kind of ministry we're going to have a maybe some lives that are going to be affected because you you moved us to this location with father this morning as we are talking about the one another commands that you've given to us in your word all hundred of them as we're focusing on the threats this morning I pray that you really open up our eyes as individuals and as a church help us to be aware of any threats that are going on in our lives right now or any threats that are going on in the church at this time or to help us to be aware of them and to do everything within our power and the power that you've given to us through your Holy Spirit to really overcome them because Lord you want us to be one with each other to show the world the truth about Jesus Christ and that's why we exist the father shine your light through us to the world around us as we are seeking to be united with each other and to maintain this unity of the spirit we pray this now in Christ's name Amen.

These are my bodyguards.

Yeah. Bodyguards you know are two thousand the teen is it is a significant year in my life and they didn't dawn on me until as I was going through specific events this last year for instance you kind of stuck up and you were how did in your life where you're you ask yourself the question has that much time really gone by is it really been this much time well back in May It reminded that I have now been graduated from college for twenty years you know you talk about ten year reunion twenty year from high school and now twenty years a graduate from college twenty years ago and and it dawns on me that I have I have been out of school longer than I was in school you know the first part of your life you're in school and then you go to college and I think my earning get out here and and I've been out longer than I was in so I kind of made their realization in May and then just a few weeks ago August twenty eighth Chris and I celebrated twenty years of marriage and and.

She deserves the applause as you know usually And I think it is that much time really gone by Although I'm twenty years and I think that's a fair accomplishment but nothing like sixty stand in Charlotte celebrated sixty August twenty third I think that this character thank you note of applause.

I'm one third of the way to where you guys are only got three more years to go I think that's fantastic and then it didn't it didn't dawn on me and tell last week or this week our camera was saying wait a second to Chris and I've been married twenty years and I began my first church three weeks after we got married and so I looked at the calendar and it dawned on me that today this Sunday the third Sunday in September is when I began my pastoral career twenty years ago. Yes.

And. You know you never know how long a career is going to last but if you think of it in terms of the standard forty years I just I'm realizing that I'm I might be halfway done with my career or just just some really sobering thoughts some very interesting thoughts and I've kind of had some time to reflect on that but this last week I definitely tried to remember what my very very first Sunday as a pastor was like and I have some vague memories I do remember that I wore a suit and tie because I wanted to put on a good impression for everyone and I was in Michigan not in Arizona I remember that I was both scared and excited and I also remember that I was full of optimism and I had a whole bunch of ideas that I wanted to implement in the church and that's typical of a twenty four year old college graduate you know all these ideas that you want to implement and and also it's weird to think that in just a few years from now I will have been a pastor for a longer portion of my life than I have not been a pastor so I'm kind of this weird stage of my life but as I reflect on the reasons why I wanted to go into ministry in the first place those those reasons are still true today and the main reasons are because I really believe that this is true I really believe that God wrote these words through all those authors I really believe that God created the heavens and the earth I really believe there's a heaven and… and I believe that the only way that you and I and the rest of the world can have any hope of having eternal life is because he sent his Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross and raised him back to life I believe all of those things even more so today than they did twenty years ago and I still believe the world around us needs to know this so I'm signing up for another twenty years well soon as he went out because you never know what what you're the future holds but on the last Sunday was an unusual Sunday for the White family we were here a church we decided this is kind of a last opportunity for us to just get away and spend some time as a family and so we went to San Diego we had a great time most of us spent a lot of time in the ocean I think Kyle Jackie and I were in the Pacific Ocean for probably about ten hours I mean we were in there jumping a plane in the ways we had a great time but we woke up on Sunday morning and it was just weird because we were at church and pile and Jackie were like This is weird it's Sunday we're not a church I go yeah I know this is really where this almost never happens and so Chris and I were talking about this and I honestly believe with the exception of West Coast Grace you can't Sundays that each of my kids could probably count on one hand how many times they have not been any sure on a Sunday morning for their entire lives.

I think part of that is because obviously their dad is a pastor that kind of plays into it another thing is we've been really fortunate that they don't get sick very often which is good for your fortunate for a family that's an in a past pastoral family but I was just thinking about this that they were like This is so weird that we're not a church and they didn't like the fact that they weren't a church and so whether I was a pastor or not something that I want to do is I want to instill in my children the importance of making God a priority in their lives and part of that is being involved with a group of believers and God calls that we call that church and so what we're doing here this morning this is God's idea for us to come together and be part of a local church together last week Steve McDonald I'm very lucky to have someone like Steven Pastor Mike so if you few other people that I can call in if I'm going to be out a talented to preach for me and he kind of introduced my series and I'm really kind of starting today and I don't I listen to the sermon and I can remember the exact words he used but you said something like my new series is on how we can one another one another so this is the new series that we're going through on one another in each other and you have heard me talk about this year the last year previous years you've heard me talk about our mission as a church we always need to understand why we exist we exist to develop committed followers of Jesus Christ through the teaching encouragement of God's word staff that is why we exist you've also heard me talk about our values for us to develop committed followers we need to practice certain things are for values as a church is viable center preaching and teaching we all believe that this is true and so we open up our Bibles we also value discipleship and we also value faithful service and our fourth value is what we're going to be talking about for the next several weeks and that is healthy relationships and so a few weeks ago I did a kind of a mini series on the negative side of relationships and that is of going through that four week series on the bait of Satan how Satan will use us being offended with each other to stir up the wrong emotions that will lead to sometimes will ultimately lead to the breakdown and the deterioration of some healthy relationships but what I want to do for the next several weeks is I want to stay focus on how we can have great healthy relationships with one another both inside and outside of the church and the way that we do that is by practicing all of the one another commands that we find in God's word.

I'm getting used to the slides here I got all the slides for you today so hopefully you enjoy this the word the Greek word for one another is a singular word in the Greek it is the word loan and it's a hundred times one hundred times are going to find this in the New Testament and all of that seventy six times it's translated one another and so if you have a can court instead you go to Bible Gateway dot com if you use a certain study method like Joel Titus and since the new school the Sunday you can just type in one another and you're going to get about one hundred different references seventy six are translated one another twelve are translated themselves three yourself and there are nine just miscellaneous translations of this creek word and the night the thing that I like about Bible study is when you study them you can kind of put them into groups and of all the one another's You can kind of classify them into three mean categories thirty percent of the time when you find the word one another the words are the commands are focused on how we can have a unity with each other thirty percent are on the love that we are supposed to have with each other fifteen percent are on the humility that we're supposed to show each other and twenty five percent are just miscellaneous things like greet one another be hospitable to one another judge one another don't judge one another things like that and so what I want to do is for this sermon series I want to start with the unity section the thirty percent that deals with the unity that we're supposed to have to the one another commands and the reason why I want to start with unity is because that's where we should start because that's where Jesus started and I was I was studying this I noticed that with unity these verses all tell us that we're there and there are some things that we are to either be to not do or to do and you see this on the screen up there and so to start this one another series off what I want to do is go to the prayer that Jesus prayed on the night before he was betrayed to see why unity is so important to God and why it should be important to us so let's open our Bible says John Chapter seventeen.

And let's read a portion of Jesus high priestly prayer.

Now you know you go there I was telling us lies now you go back to. All the all or all of this lie that's part and I'm going to have a portion of John seventeen up there but I want to start off a little bit sooner so John seventeen verse six John seventeen verse six it's all I want you to understand this is where Jesus was in the garden of guess somebody and if someone is if there is some words that you're going to pay attention to that someone says on their deathbed that's when you really pay attention because someone is going to say the most important things on their deathbed especially if they know that that's one of the final things that they're going to say and so these are the things that Jesus is praying to God the Father literally before he's crucified and so let's begin just reading in your own bias John seventeen versus Jesus praying to the Father and he says I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world yours they were and you gave them to me and they have kept your word now they know that everything that you have given me is from you for I have given them the words that you gave me and they have received them and have come to know them to know in truth that I came from you and they have believed that you sent me I am praying for them and they show something interesting I'm not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me for they are yours all mine or yours and yours or mine I am glorified in them and I am no longer in the world but they are in the world and I am coming to you and he says Holy Father keep them in your name which you have given me that they may be one even as we are one so on the night before Jesus prayed he's praying for his disciples to Peter James John all of those all those men and he's praying God make them one.

Have them be united with each other just like I am united with you the Father Son and the Holy Spirit and let's jump ahead to this passage in verse twenty.

In verse twenty now Jesus starts praying not for just his disciples but for everyone else who is going to believe and that includes you and me today so I do not ask for these only but also for those who will believe in Me through their word that they may all be one just as you Father are in me and I knew that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me the glory that you have given me I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one I in them and you in me that they may be perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you love to me.

What I want is for to day just the significance of this prayer to sink in on the night before Jesus died he prayed that you and I the true believers and followers of Christ would be one and what happens when you and I experience Oneness Jesus says is the world sees the truth about Jesus when they see us as followers of Christ being one united with each other it says something to the world about the truth about who Jesus Christ is so our oneness is very important and our unity with each other is very important so what does that look like you know what is it where how do we how do we do this well next week we're going to look at the things that we should not do so that we will be united with each other then after that well what are the things that we should do but for day what I want to do is focus on how we can experience unity with each other through the things that we need to be

if we're going to be united with each other you and I need to be certain things and I'm going to share with you two things today are two two main points so we experience unity with one another when we are gentle and patient. When you and I are gentle and patient you and I experience unity with each other I want you to turn your Bibles to a fusions chapter four and I was in Joel's Sunday school class this morning and and early on I thought oh no where is he going with this he stole like the next ten minutes of my sermon you're going to hear so those of you are in the Sunday school class this is going to be a review and I was sitting behind calling sites for today I'm like you know you're stealing my sermon and she goes review is good or so and we're going to be talking about patients today and that's what is Sunday School classes on so there's at least twenty of you that really need to learn about patients in your life but here any fusions for this is a passage where Paul is talking about the unity that you and I are supposed to have with each other it's talking about the ones of the face and he writes this to us and so we're going to kind of break us apart we're going to study this portion of Scripture if he's in chapter four beginning in verse one

Paul says I therefore a prisoner for the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called and stop there for a second the calling to which you and I have been called is to be children of God That's our calling and now explains what that looks like first to

with all humility and gentleness and patience bearing with that here's our rig required all alone bearing with one another in love eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Now you'll notice in this passage in verse two specifically there are three things that we are that are mentioned that we are supposed to be we are supposed to be humble gentle and patient and I've only included two of those for this morning because fifteen percent of the one another commands are about unity so I'm going to save unity for our for humble for for another time but in verse three it says that we are to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace so you and I are supposed to be eager and zealous to be united with each other and to have that bond that the Holy Spirit gives us and so Paul is telling us as believers that among us there is this unity of the spirit in the bond of peace that we were to maintain and when we experience the unity of the Spirit Well what happens in the world sees the truth about Jesus and again in verse two it tells us what our role is in maintaining the unity of the Spirit tells us that we need to do three things be humble gentle and patient and these three character traits really help us to be united with each other and and this sort of makes sense because when you look at the opposites of these words like we kind of did this morning you realize that the opposite of humble gentle and patient is going to lead to disunity among people I mean the opposite of someone who is humble is very prideful Is it easy to be one with a person who is full of pride no prideful person gives us the impression that they are more important more valuable than us or is it was it easier to be one with someone who is not gentle maybe the the opposite of gentleness is God's wrath or a roughness where usually don't feel safe around someone who is acting that way the opposite of patients there's actually one hundred some odd mantra in this for patients but one would be impatience or.

Irritation and when someone is acting that way towards us and kind of pushes us away and so humility gentleness and patience it really draws people together and as I was going through this and I was preparing this not knowing that Joel was going to steal my entire sermon this morning.

Two of these maybe you'll notice are two of the fruit of the spirit. Gentleness and patience are two of the fruit of the Spirit and then he adds in humility and and sometimes as I'm starting a passage of Scripture I always wonder why Paul or whoever the author was why they use very specific words and and that's the joy of being a pastor and starting your all this is why those specific words were used to describe the situation of the setting Well what I did is this week I went back and I reviewed some of my notes on the qualities of the fruit the Spirit because we went over those one by one and this morning as Joel is introducing this Sunday School class and he says we're going to go through the fruit of the spirit I'm thinking oh great I picked two of the nine odds are in my favor and he picks patience and so but that's just showing how it works but English is five twenty two for those of you who are familiar with this passage is to reduce it says but the fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace of patients kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control and so why is it that when Paul wrote a fusion chapter four he did think Chapter four verses one and two but when he wrote a fish in chapter four talking about the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace why did he pick out the force in the quality of the fruit of the Spirit to talk about how we need to have that in order to maintain unity why doubt that many of you are going to remember all of these qualities but you might remember Sunday school class this morning some of you but the interesting thing about patience and gentleness is these two qualities were linked together of the nine they're almost like opposites opposite ways of responding to the same situation so let me give you a definition a brief definition we're not going to spend the whole morning talking about this brief definition of patients and and patients is talking about someone who has long tempered or the area able to suffer along in a situation and when you and I need to exhibit patients or we need to be patient it's because we're experiencing either a situation that causes us to be impatient or we're experiencing most of the time people people who are causing us to be impatient and so especially without in a region of the definition of patients that I read to you back when we did this as a part of the sermon series on the through the Spirit and uses one of my favorite words so you might remember the word maybe more than the definition but we talk about patients dealing with patients of people patients is this the ability to put up with the weaknesses and the foibles you knew those coming before you bills of others and to show forbearance towards them without getting quickly irritated and angry enough to want to fight back so another way to think about patience is Patience is the ability to not take offense.

Patience is the ability to not take the bait of say patience is the ability to say OK I feel all these emotions starting to to raise their ugly head in me but I'm going to be patient meaning I'm not going to let my emotions have control over me so that's what patience kind of means to have control over your emotions gentleness is kind of the same a little bit a little different dynamic gentleness is the ability to handle those situations without aggression so patience is having control over your emotions gentleness is having control over not taking vengeance over the people who are making you impatient

so patience is the internal way to respond gentleness is the X. term a way to respond let me kind of read this definition of this description of gentleness to you that I read probably a few weeks ago a few months ago. But gentleness shows itself when I have learned the Christ like way to respond to conflicts quarrels rejection unfairness or harsh words against me is not with bluster and self defense not with harsh or aggressive words now with angry gestures and facial expressions but rather with softness controlling my tongue and my temper and so when we are patient we're controlling our emotions when we are attacked or irritated it's the internal response but when we are gentle we are choosing not to retaliate when we are attacked or irritated that's the X. terminal response and so Paul says in order to maintain the unity of the spirit we need to be both we need to be patient and we need to be gentle with each other control your emotions control your response and then he adds humility in there because only a humble person is able to be both gentle and patient probably to some extent and when we are those three things gentle patient and humble we can experience with each other this unity of the spirit in the bond of peace you know and you see how this can all work together that's why Paul wrote a fusion is food for vs one in two he's wanting us to experience that unity so if we're going to experience unity we need to be patient we need to be gentle and having control over our emotions and our responses Well it's the first portion the second portion of the our sermon this morning is is this the second point is this we experience unity with one another when we are being the Body of Christ you and I will experience unity with each other when we are when we be the Body of Christ our next passage this morning is in Romans Chapter twelve. Romans Chapter twelve this is a is a passage we're going to spend a lot of time and there's a lot of one another commands in Romans Chapter twelve but I want to look at just a few verses here beginning in first for Romans Chapter twelve beginning in verse four and this is kind of telling us a part about part of our identity as being a child of God that we are a part of the Body of Christ so Romans Chapter twelve beginning in verse four

he writes for as in one body we have many members and the members do not all have the same function so we though many are one body in Christ and individually members one of another having gifts the differ according to the grace given to us let us use them and then he goes on to talk about all the different gifts that we can use in the body so when we experience unity with each other we experience that when we be the Body of Christ and obviously this has kind of a functional aspect of it but I want to kind of this to get at this big picture idea of this you know today the title that we put on God's people today is the Body of Christ we are the Body of Christ and we in other churches we make a distinction between the body of Christ the nation of Israel the nation of Israel were Abraham's physical descendants the body of Christ are Jews and Gentiles who coming together to make one new identity that we have with God However what I don't want to do is I don't want to miss out on the obvious reason why God uses this title to describe his people for today it's not just to make a distinction between us and what happened in the past I think God uses this phrase to describe his people today because a body does stuff. A body it functions a body lives a body interacts with the world around it the body can accomplish tasks and projects and if you read their first Corinthians Chapter twelve that's another great passage we're rolling in a look at just one verse really quick on that it talks about how there's all these different parts of the body and each of us is a member of the body we've been assigned a part of the body and you get through a point where someone might say wait a second even though I might be a part of the body I think that I'm fine all on my own I can do the Body of Christ thing without anyone else's help in the verse twenty one Paul writes of First Corinthians twelve he says the I cannot say to the hand I have no need of you nor again the head to the feet I have no need of you it's kind of ridiculous you know in our body our bodies would say that to the different members of our body right but you know do you realize that within the Body of Christ people say this to the body all the time

they might not actually use these words but how many people they got his place within the body have said either they've actually thought these words or through their actions we've said this to the rest of the body I really have no need of the rest of you people do this all the time in going back to the previous passage in a fusion Zz I think a person who would say that that I have no need of you would be the opposite of someone who is humble gentle and patient many parts within a physical body can't function together if they're doing so with with pride and with Rast fullness and with their patients you know I'm going to spend more time on this point specifically in the next two weeks because it really gets into the do nots and the do portions of unity but I hope that the importance of this point will sink in and that is this in order for you and I to experience the unity with each other we need to be the Body of Christ to realize all of us have been placed in here and that we really do need each other and depend on each other to accomplish God's work in our lives you know as I was preparing for this I was just thinking.

God wants us to experience unity with each other but how often do we really experience the whole heart of unity with with one another it doesn't happen very often I've been thinking to myself how many times in my lifetime having experienced unity with with other people whether it's inside the church or outside the church into two times came to my mind and one time is in particular because of what we sell of not celebrated what we remember this last week I saw a post on Facebook.

About nine eleven and The Post said nine eleven was a horrible day but that person really misses nine twelve.

Do you remember what it was like to be an American on the twelfth of September two thousand and one and the thirteen and the fourteen.

I hate I hated for us to go through nine eleven but I have never seen our country so united I vividly remember driving down the streets of Granville Michigan with flags literally on every telephone pole on every street I mean there were no more Democrats and Republicans for at least a couple weeks.

We were one we knew we as a nation we were one and it took some kind of a tragedy for us to to get our minds off all of our selfish things and our prideful issues and we said no we're one. Sometimes going through a tragedy will we create one this with each other another time that I really experienced unity was in my first church I've I've mentioned this a couple times there was a young man forty years old he had the diagnosis of stage four pain credit cancer wife and two kids he didn't have life insurance we barely had health insurance and so we're like what what can we do what we do and he had been at our church for a couple of years but he had been in and a different church for a few years and so our churches got together we said we need to help this family we need to come together we need to help this family and I remember we had in our church building in the old church came in held out we had a silent auction a live auction and I think was a spaghetti dinner and between our two churches we raised in one night over fifty thousand dollars to help this man and his family and it was just so many member being up there looking around and half the people who are from my church half are from the other church but it didn't matter we were there for one reason and that was to support this family that it was just definitely a time of unity that I experienced and to a lesser extent I also I think experience unity on January fourteenth two thousand and eighteen when all of us took three and half hours to move from union hills to here there and there was some unity with that was pretty good. You know it when Paul wrote the New Testament kind of interesting thing for us to consider from our perspective as there were no denominations back then if you were alive you were one of basically three things either you're a Jew you were just a straight heathen and a Pagan or you're a follower of Jesus Christ at that time there were no denominations and I'm not anti denominational you know we're not a part of a denomination we're just an independent church but with everything that is manmade there's obviously some some positives and some negatives but I just I hope the sinks in that listen that we had today if you are a believer in Jesus Christ you are and I am one with every other believer in this world that says the same thing we are one in Christ

but the best thing or the same time is the major benefit of being a part of a very specific local body of believers is you know I have to ask the question well who am I supposed to one another all of these one another commands when you're in a body you look around and say OK it's that person it's that person these are the people that I get to do these one another commands with.

Unity often takes place best with projects and I think it church should always have some projects from time to time where they can be united in purpose and there's a couple things I want to share with you I'm excited about that are coming up in a deals with Eagle road Eagle Ridge Elementary School you know when we first moved here I definitely thought I think the board thought and I think our congregation thought for some reason I think maybe Eagle Ridge Elementary School is going to have something to do with the reason why we moved here and I've been praying I think some of you have been praying that we will have some kind of a connection with the school and we were able to maybe get in there and have an influence on them and if we have an influence on that elementary school it means that we have an influence on this community all around us and so a while ago maybe a month or month or two ago another pastors name is Blake Williams of Shiloh Community Church was just a couple miles away he said hey I know you guys are new to the area I want to talk to you about a movement going on in all of Phoenix that connects churches and schools and like Ah well yeah let's get together I've been waiting to do this so Mike and I we met with him and it talks about there's something that's already in place is called school can act where it connects churches and schools together so that they can have a relationship and they can kind of meet those needs well this last Tuesday there was a meeting and an area wide meeting for all the Paradise Valley schools where they sat down and he came up with a list of projects that they're going to do on. What's the it's called of their love our school day I'm glad that I wrote that down. All the Paradise Valley schools all the Deer Valley schools all the schools in basically all maybe even Maricopa I don't know how big it gets on October twentieth Saturday October twentieth we're going to have something called love our school day and we have been assigned to Eagle Ridge and so they're creating a list of different projects and we're going to get that in so obviously some families and some of the students are going to do this but I want us to have a great showing where we can say to them hey we as a church are united and through our unity you can see the love of Christ and so we're going to participate in this we're going to have some sign up sheets and we're going to be hearing a lot more about this in the coming weeks so if you have nothing going on on Saturday October twenty eighth I heard you to leave the morning open in fact this last Tuesday I met the principal I met the vice principal I met the vice president of the Parent Teacher Association and I was hoping that we're going to have a good connection with the principal you have the best thing about the principal is could use know that I like a college football team where we're talking about that she's a huge Michigan Wolverines fan she lives in Ann Arbor for a while and so we talked it all football for like the first five minutes and I guess my we have an in with the principal of the elementary school Mike McFadden and I are going to go are tomorrow and we're going to get a tour of the facility so I just I'm really excited about the connection that we're already having with them something else we're going to do is Friday November sixteenth they have a carnival every year and so we're going to get as many people that can do this that want to help we're going to go over there and we're going to try to man some of the games and some of the rights and we just want our community to see that the church next door is united and making a difference and one of the ways that they're going to know that we're from the same church is we're making these shirts that's kind of cool respectable church as kind of our logo on there says Phoenix Arizona Alex Escambia he owns a shirt shop and that's probably not the right way to say it but he makes sure it's and so we're going to be making a whole bunch. Of these We're going to let you order them we're going to make them pretty much it costs are going to about ten dollars apiece and so this is not a fund raiser We're not trying to make money off these shirts but they're going to be nice soft try blend we want as many people of you all of you to buy a shirt and especially if we go to the October twentieth as a member sixteenth as a church we want to wear those shirts so that our our neighborhood our community will see that we as a church really want to make a difference here so I'm kind of excited about those those things that are coming up what I want to leave you kind of with a final thought and which is Jesus prayer before he went to the cross he prayed that you and I would be one

not only that you and I would be one but that you and I would be one just like Jesus is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit and that's something I don't think we will ever ever be able to experience or attain in this life but if that was his prayer and that's his priority then we need to make that our priority that we have one purpose you and I have one purpose in this world and that is to proclaim who Jesus Christ is and so we do that and so in order to do what God wants us to do let us be humble and gentle and patient with one another as we are the Body of Christ is close in prayer.

Dear Lord I thank you so much for teaching us these things in your word I'm thankful for even Joel Sunday school class this morning talking about patience and and it's it is good for us to be reminded but Lord of. When we go through circumstances and situations where people irritate us and and there is the possibility of us experiencing disunity Lord help us to remember this is what you've called us to to be patient to be gentle to be humble with other so that we can experience the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace Florida as we study these one another commands I pray that you'll bless us I pray that you put in all of us a sincere and genuine desire to experience this unity with each other the unity that Jesus himself prayed that we would experience the night before he was betrayed so Father I thank you for sending your son to die on the cross for sins raising him back to life so that we can experience Oneness with you but Lord you have called us to make every effort to maintain unity with each other so for these next several weeks as we go through these one or other commands I pray that you'll bless us and help us to achieve just that. Pray these in Jesus Christ. Amen.