United in Jesus - 1 Corinthians 1:10-17

Last week, I traveled to Atlanta for a conference with S Network. It's a church planting network that Northland partners with that we used to do a lot of our church planning. I get to partner with them on a lot of projects. And was there for three days of meetings, kind of long days, you've probably been to these kind of things before, kind of the meetings go all day long and wrapped up in the late afternoon, went to dinner with a few guys before heading to the airport. And by the time I got in the backseat of the Uber to head to the airport, I was really done talking to people. Now, I know that it takes a lot for me to get to that point, so you can imagine that I got to my finally hit my limit talking to people. I had to work on my sermon, I was preaching last week, so I thought, I've got an hour in an Uber, in Atlanta traffic, the airport, I'll just kind of sit back here quietly, work on my sermon, got my laptop out, opened it up, going down the road, and the Uber driver says, so what do you do for a living? That's always going to be an interesting question. People either want to talk a lot, or they they don't want to talk at all, say answer that question. And so I said, well, I'm a pastor." He said,You're a pastor. I said, yeah. He goes, "I really need to start going back to church again." Okay, here we go. So close the laptop, put it in the backpack, and it's an hour of conversation in the back of the Uber to the airport with this guy. Here's his story. He is a follower of Jesus he got involved in a local church, he got really involved in that church, started to serve in a lot of ways, and because he served so often in that church, he became very good friends with the pastor. They would talk all the time, they became really close as they worked together in ministry. And he didn't say what it was, but somewhere along the the way, the pastor did something to disappoint him Something happened that changed his relationship with his pastor, his image with his pastor, and from that moment on, he stopped going to church. He was a a guy, really committed, really involved, but because of a disagreement with his pastor, some kind of disruption with his pastor. He has now not been to church for three years. He has has young kids. He said, "I know, I should be at church, I know our family should be in church." He said, "But I just can't get over this thing that happened." He said, "T's a church that I listen to online. I really like the preaching. I think I might start going there, and we talked about how he needed to put aside this past disagreement, this past disappointment. And it was time that he'd get his family back into a local church again. Now, that conversation revealed a couple of tendencies that, for honest, all of us have. One of those tendencies is to let disagreements with people negatively impact our relationship with God. We could have opinions, we could have preferences, we could have things that happen where it has a negative impact on our relationship with God. The second tendency is, we can focus on people too much to the point that we get our focus off of Jesus, and on people. It's easy to get our focus off of Jesus. Today, I want us to find these tendencies in this passive scripture that are before us. 1 Cothians chapter 1, we're going to start in verse 10 in just a moment. Adwell just read that force earlier in our service, but I think we get some help in this passive scripture in dealing with these tendencies. We're in 1 Corinthians. This is our seg week in this series. We're going to be in this book all the way through Easter. Really excited to walk through this book. It was written by a man named Paul. He was a missionary of the early church in the first 30 years or so of the expansion of the good news of Jesus across the Roman Empire, Paul was one of the central figures in that. He took several missionary journeys across the Roman Empire, preaching the good news of Jesus. One of those cities that he went to on his second missionary journey was the city of Corinth And in 50 A.D., while he was in Corinth, a church was planted. And some people began to follow Jesus, they began to gather together, and a new church was started in the city of Corinth. Now, about three years later, Paul is on his third missionary journey. He's now in the city of Ephesus, And while in Ephesus, he hears reports about some challenges going on with the people in the church in Corinth. He learned about those challenges from two sources. One was a letter that the Corinthian Church wrote to him to get his help and his advice on some struggles they were having The second source was a report from a group of people that they're just called Chloe's people. We know nothing more than they' Chloe's people. So Chloe's people say that some challenges are happening in the church, and the letter indicates some challenges in the church, as Paul writes to the church to help them with some of the challenges they're facing. One of those challenges? Well, they're facing division and fear faction and disagreements. They're facing sexual immorality that they need to confront and deal with. There's a lot of theological confusion and disagreement. There's some discrimination happening within the church, there's disorder in their worship, and there's an overall spiritual immaturity as the cultural and religious and philosophical and moral issues that are troubling this young church are causing them to struggle to divorce themselves from their past and from the culture they came out of. Now they're following Jesus. And so today, we're going to deal with the first of many issues that Paul is going to confront in this letter, and that's the issue of division in the church. Now, here's the thing. All of the issues that are happening in Corinth, you can find some example of that in churches in Kansas City today. and there's nothing new under the sun here. We wrestle with the same problems. Now they're different. The culture was different, a different historical setting, a different time, a different place. And so they're not going to be exactly the same. But at the heart of it, the things troubling that church are going to trouble churches today. And so what we're trying to do in the coming weeks is to bridge the gap from Corinth to Kansas City City and see what is going on there, and how is it dealt with there, and what are the principles that we might learn today? I think we're going to find today that this is one of those issues. We have a tendency to let our personal preferences contribute to division in churches. We have our opinion, our preferences, and they can cause a rift if we're not careful. We also have a tendency to get focused on people. And we can either focus on the really good things about people or the really bad things about people. either case we take our eyes off of Jesus and start focusing on people. I think the principles of this passage today might give us some help when those tendencies creep into our lives. So heres what we're do. We're going to dissect this passage a little bit, see if we can't uncover the heart of the issue in Co see if we can't find some timeless principles that we can apply to our lives today, and then we're going to wrap up with three questions in an effort to help us apply these principles to our lives. So let's jump in chapter 1, verse 10. I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, and that you be united in the same mind in the same judgment. So we started last week reminding them of their identity in Christ You've been made holy by him, you've received his grace. He's given you gifts. Let's walk, and our new identity is holy gifted people of Jesus. Now, I's going to confront the first issue that was getting in the way, and that was division in the church. Notice a few things about verse 10. First of all, notice the strength of the language. I appeal to you or your version might say, "I urge you, or I might say, "I please plead with you." He's not suggesting, not recommending, not encouraging. He is urging and pleading. This is up upmost importance, brothers, that we pursue unity within the body of Christ Notice, also that of all the issues he's going to address, this is the first one he picks. I think there's a reason for that. I think he's getting ready to he's going to confront sin. He's getting ready to confront theological disagreement. He's getting ready to confront disorder in their worship. He's going to talk to them about how they're gifted to serve and challenge them to serve. I think all of that is going to be built on the foundation of unity Unity is crucial. We have to come together, we have to be of one mind on these critical issues, on what's of utmost importance, and then as a unity. united body, we can move forward tackling the difficult issues become our way. Notice also in verse 10 that this isn't just Paul's opinion. Notice verse 10. He says this. I appeal to you you, brothers. He doesn't say, "I appeal to you, brothers, as an apostle of the Lord Jesus, I appeal to you as the one who planted this church. He says that I appeal to you, brothers by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a Paul's opinion. This is not Paul's opinion. This is the desire of Jesus that they be united. He appeals to them in the name of Jesus, not in his own name, then the name of our Lord Jesus, that you be united And he calls on them in verse 10 to put aside to mend the divisions that exist among them, and to be united in mind and in in judgments. This word, in verse 10 divisions, is the same word from the first century world that would be used to refer to political parties, rival political parties Now we see in our culture, there are two predominant political parties. other smaller ones you may find yourself in any of those. But in our nation, we can get very divided because of what political party we've aligned ourselves with, and there's a strong division between those two parties. He said, "What's happened in the church is you've done that in the church. You've created these rivalries. You've created these parties in the church, and he says, "Brothers, that should not be. We need to come together." And he's calling on them to be united in the main things of what it means to follow Jesus, to strive to carry forth His Word and his mission. And the language here is the language of putting back together something that was broken something that's separated. In language outside of the Bible, this terminology would refer to things like the mending of a garment, a cloak has been torn, and it needs to get sewn back together. It was the same language you would use in the medical arena, like if a bone had been broken. When you set that bone or a joint gets dislocated, you pop that joint back into place. He said, "Sthing's been torn apart. Something's been broken, and, brothers, you need in the name of Jesus to put it back together again." And you can imagine, there would have been a lot of disagreement in such a diverse church is correct. We talked about this last week. It's on a major trade route. And so the city of Corinth is an incredibly diverse city, people from all parts of the world around it. And they brought with them all of their views and all their perspectives and all of their religions, People are coming out of various pagan religions as the beginning of Ap Jesus. You have the overall theme that's happening in those first few years of Jewish Jewish people who are following Jesus, and now non Jews, Gentiles are going to follow Jesus and there's a difference between those two groups of people, and you have all these socioeconomic classes. How do they all come together around one one common goal? We's calling them to is not uniformity, but unity. You can come from different perspectives. This church can be a blend of Jew and Gentile, and the same thing the church today, our church can be a blend of people of all different cultures, all different nationalities, all different races, all different socom socioeconomic classes. We come together and we're united around the cause of the gospels as Jesus Christ makes us brothers and sisters. I was thinking, I was to Jacob, who's one of our drummers here, who's getting a master's degree at UMKC Music Conservatory. I said, how many people are in a symphony? I was texting this week. I was thinking about symphonies. He said the Kansas City Symphony has 85 musicians, and they play 22 different instruments And they're radically different. You have things from strings, to woodwinds, to brass, to percussion, but all of this, how do 85 people playing 22 uniquely different instruments all come together on one stage and make something big, because their eyes are fixed on one conductor And there's diversity among the symphony, but they play together in unity because they decided we're going to put one page of music in front of us, and we're going to put one conductor in front of us, and we're going to work together in unity for something beautiful, and that's what the church does. Or a football team, we took our boys up to the airport years ago when they were very little. We found out what gate the chiefs were flying out of, and we were getting autographs as the guys would show up to fly out. And you saw the diversity when they all took the helmets off and the uniforms off, that's a really diverse group of people. You had the linemen coming in, and they were like in just baggy sweats, just gray sweatpants and gray hoodies. And then the receivers would show up, and they were just like dripping in chains around their neck. And then the quarterback showed up, they were in suits and ties. that diverse, even the skinny little soccer player kickers show up, and you got everything on that team How do they all come together? Because they have one playbook, and they have one coach, and they bring all their unique, diverse sizes and skills together to work together to a or at a common goal, and so it is with the local church. We are united, not because we're all alike, but because we all pledge our allegiance to the same Lord and work together toward one common mission and for the glory of Jesus. Calling the church, come together, be united, mend what is broken, and let's for the glory of Jesus be united, he calls them. Now, verse 11, we begin to get into the specific issue in Corinth. It has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. Last week, we learned that Chloe's people is one of the sources of his information, so they've spilled the tea, about some quarreling, some rivalries in the church. We don't know what they're fighting fighting about, what's at the heart of it. You can read deeper, a lot of commentaries will suggest the different issues that might have been at the heart of this, but what it played out how it played out, was people began to form alliances around different leaders in the church, verse 12 names of those leaders. What I mean is that each one of you says, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollus, or I follow Cepus, or I follow Christ. So what happens is whatever's going on, people have gotten in political parties, little factors, little groups, and they have aligned themselves with different human leaders of the church. Now, there's little evidence, nothing to suggest here, that Paul and Peter and Apollos were fighting with each other We don't know if they were not. There's nothing that says, these guys are fighting. For all we know, these guys were unified and leading, but the people were drawn to one over another. Some were drawn to Paul. Paul would have been the first time most in that church, I mean in the church that heard the gospel. He came to town preaching the gospel. They began to follow Jesus because of Paul's preaching. And they saw Paul as their pastor. They saw him as the planter of that church and they felt a certain allegiance to him because of that. Now, after Paul left, Apollus shows up, and Apollus leads the church for a while. We know from Acts chapter 18, one thing's about Apollus, that he was a gifted communicator. We were told in the scripture that he was an eloquent and impressive speaker. And I don't know what happened, but maybe some guy said, "Man, I really miss Paul." He's the guy that led me to Jesus. And another guy said, "N, Paul's nothing. Have you heard Apollus preach?" Paul could never preach as well as Apollus. I'm glad Paul is gone, and we get to listen to Apollus, every week. That may have been happening. Then you have Cephas, who's Cepha. Cephas is the aramaic name for Peter This is a reference to Peter. Now, Peter would have had a certain appeal among the Jewish followers of Jesus in the church. You have all these Gentiles coming to the church now, and the Jewish people said, "Clly, Apollos is okay, but man, Cephas gets me. Peter gets me. He's a fellow Jew Jew. And he has a perspective that I have as a Jewish person. And so I prefer Peter. And the other group that says, I follow Christ. Now, maybe those are the ones we should admire here, that they're not following Paul or Paulus of Cus, but rather Christ. It may be the way he words it, I wonder if they were almost saying they follow Christ kind of in a pompious, self righteous way, that he's not really commending this fourth group as being in the right. Maybe some are like, I follow Peter, and some say, I follow Paul, and this group's not I, I follow Jesus. You know, they were their sort of the pious ones in the group. And so people are aligning themselves, these are groups. It's, brothers, this shouldn't be. This has got to stop. Look what he says in verse 13. He asks them three questions And they're rhetorical questions.. They very clearly anticipate no as the answer to each question. He shows the absurdity of what they're doing by these questions he asks. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul Is Christ divided? Certainly not. Can't divide up Jesus into factions. You can't divide up the body of Christ into factions. He's going to use this imagery again later in the letter. In chapter 10, he talks about the Lord's Supper. He says, "We need to be one body because we share one loaf of bread here one body of Christ that we partake in. In chapter 12, he's going to talk about their exercising of their spiritual gifts. He's going to say, just as the body is one, but as many members, the members of the body, though they are member, though they are many, are one body, so it is with Christ Christ is one body, His church is one body. You can't divide him. Second, was Paul crucified for you? Of course not. Paul wasn't crucified for you. Paul contributed nothing to your salvation. Why would you align yourself with me?' s saying, what I did nothing for you to be made right with God These men offered Paul, Paulus, Peter. They offered nothing to contribute to the salvation of this church. It reminded me of the song we sing last week, the lyric from the bridge of that song, no enemy can hold you down, because there's no body in the grave now. One head gets to wear that crown, because there's's nobody in the grave now. One head, one person died on the cross for you. One body rose from the dead to prove victory over sin and death. One head wears the crown, and that's the head of Jesus. Paul was not crucified for you. Paul was not resurrected for you. Paul's head does not wear that crown. Third, were you baptized in the name of Paul? Now, baptism's important. When you give your life to Jesus, you are transformed by the power of God in your life. You put your faith in Jesus Christ, you repent, and by your faith in Jesus, you are born again, you are saved, your sins are forgiven. Your next step is to proclaim that publicly through baptism. Your follower of Jesus Your next step is to say, I'm now following Jesus. I want to make that public through baptism. But baptism doesn't say that us. It is our faith in Jesus that saves us. And while important, Paul is saying, "Gys, I didn't you weren't baptized in my name. You weren't baptized in the name of Jesus all throughout the book of Acts We see the phrase baptized in the name of Jesus over and over again. No one was baptized in the name of Paul. The answer to all of these questions are resounding. No, Christ alone is the one to whom we owe our loyalty. No human leader, not even an apostle, should be giving the loyalty, the allegiance that belongs only to our Lord Jesus. Christ. And look at verse 14. He says, here, not only were you not baptized in my name, very few of you were even baptized by me. Look at verse 14. I think God that I baptized no one none of you except Christmas and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the household of Stephanus Beyond that, I do not remember, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else. You weren't even baptized by me. Only a handful were baptized by me, Paul says. Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue mentioned in Acts 1, Gaius, a travel companion, mentioned in Acts 19 in the household of Stephanus, mentioned at the end of this letter as the first converts to faith in Christ in the city of Corinth. Beyond this, I don't think I baptize anyone else. By the way, just parenthetically, side note, these verses encourage me when I forget stuff okay? This week, you're gonna forget something really important, and it's going to bother you that your memory is so bad, you forgot something. Remember, the Apostle Paul can't even remember the names of the people he badly baptized in the city of Corinth. So cut yourself a little slack when you forget something. guys, I don't know. I think that was it. There may have been others, that's all I remember Why? Verse 1? Because Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. Now, we are to baptize. We are commissioned Matthew 28, Jesus go and make disciples and baptize them. So baptism was important. The folks coming to Jesus where Paul is preaching are being baptized, but he said,You guys are missing. If you think that me baptizing you saved you or something special, he said, you're missing it. The point was the cross of Christ. And if you're getting focused on who baptized you, or which preacher you like better, you are emptying the cross of its power because you're talking about things that are trivial in light of what's most important, and that is the preaching of Jesus Christ in Him crucified. So what may have been happening, we don't know for sure, there seems to be clues here. And what we understand about Apollos as a preacher from Acts chapter 18, that quite likely what could be happening is that they just really preferred Apolis's preaching. He was a better preacher And they said, I just really would rather I love it that Paulus is here in preaching. He's doing such a better job than Paul did when Paul was here. their preferences one guy over the other had caused a division in the church. Now, this would have been easy to do in the city of Corinth. In the Roman world at that time, public speaking was highly valued, and you had these professional speakers who would travel kind of like it's kind of a TED Talk culture here. A guy would come to town and be very eloquent preacher, a speaker, not just preaching, but speaking, and they would go to these forums, and people would give up, get up, and they would give these amazing talks on different topics, and they would be judged on this and awarded for this. And so it had a culture of highly valuing rhetoric that was put on display And maybe Paul's preaching was not a as impressive as those professional ordators who had come to town. Maybe his preaching wasn't as impressive as men like Apollus. What he's saying, guys, it doesn't matter how well I preach. What matters is the content of my preaching, which is Jesus Christ and him crucify. Paul's message did not depend on philosophical arguments or his eloquent delivery. It was always about Jesus. Now, it's going to take, I think, three weeks before we get here, two or three weeks, but 1 Corinthians chapter 2, listen to what Paul says about his preaching. If you have ever had to speak in front of people the Word of God, whether your life group leader or Bible study, teacher, children's ministry, worker, you ever have to talk to people and you get nervous? That's a natural thing. Here's the passage for you. This gives me a lot of encouragement when I feel this way It says, and when I came to you, brothers, I did not come to you proclaiming the testimony of God with lawfulfty speech or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And get this, can you relate to verse 3? I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling. And my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest on the wisdom of man, but on the power of God. What is he saying? Sermons won't change your life. Jesus changes lives. And that's why I preached. There are allegiance was not to a preacher. Their focus should not be on the eloquence of a sermon, their hope, our hope, is in Jesus Christ in Him crucified. So what are the principles? I don't know if these are issues. Maybe there's a whole debate going on over, I like Rustin better than Matt. I've not heard that. You'all have done really well to There is, Dalton, thank you. Maybe some are here today saying, "Oh, good, I heard Rustin was out of town that that means Matt's preaching, I'll go to church today. Maybe next week, when I go out of town on the adult retreat, we may see a significant spike in attendance, because, oh, good, Matt's gone, and Ruston gets to preach. I don't know if that's going on, but there is a tendencyency to have preferences, and that's what's going on here. So let's preacher about whatever We have preferences in our lives opinions about things, and their opinion was about which guy to follow. Ours might be different, but we let our preferences get in the way and cause disunity. What are the principles here that we might apply when that happens? Number one we are united in Jesus. We must remember that we are united in Jesus. Now, there are going to be significant issues over which we should divide. Not every teaching is really teaching Christ and him crucified. Let's say every religion should just get together and hold hands and sing Kumbaya around the campfire. There are days that we divide, and we divide over significant things. I'm talking about when we divide over secondary issues or issues of personal preference or opinion rather than the clear truth of God's Word And will unite together around the gospel of Jesus Christ, because our salvation transcends the barriers that tend to divide us. This is a call to unity that we see all throughout Scripture.. John 17, Jesus prayed it in the garden, but right before being arrested, Father, let them be one as we are one, and for the rest of the scriptures, the New Testament, we see this called unity Paul wrote. wrote about it, many times. Let me show you a couple of them. Philippians 1: 127,Only let your manner of life be worthy of the Gospel, so that whether I come to see you or I am absent I may hear you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. I want to hear about you that you're standing firm in one spirit, that you're striving with one mind, that you're walking side by side, not divided for the faith of the gospel And then Philippians, too, he wrote this.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 accord, and of one mind were united in Jesus, we come together, diverse body of people, diverse opinions. We're not going to agree on everything, but we agree on our commitment, our allegiance to Jesus, and our caring forth message of the Gospel of Christ and Him crucify. When I think of unity, there's a picture I have on my phone that I often think about, and I pull it out once in a while. If you've been around the Northland for a while, you've seen this. We're going to bring back Belly Boy today. How do I know his name is Belly Boy? It's actually painted on his body. You can't see it, because he's holding this small child. That small child is Mason, my first born child. This is a special moment in life of our family. We got tickets to a preseason game, and for the first time I got to take my twin sons to their very first Kansas City Chiefs football game. It was a special moment. Near the end of the game, all the starters all had baseball caps on by now. The state had cleared out. We went down near the front, looked in front of us and and there was Belly Boy. And in a moment of caught up in the joy of my boys being at this game, I hand over my firstborn child to this man and ask if I can take a photo. This is before cell phone cameras or digital cameras at all. I think I took this film to Walmart, took a few days to get it back, and then went through the pictures and thought, "Oh, my goodness, what have I done?" What kind of father would do this? Look at his little face. see the little red on his chin? That's from Belly Boy's stomach as he picked him up and just rubbed his little face up his sweaty, painted belly. And I was like, "To smile? Who does this? Belly boy and I have nothing in common. We don't shop at the same clothing stores. We don't work out at the same gym. We don't go to the same barber or the same dentist. Nowhere in the city would I hand my child over to this man. except Arrowhead Stadium. Because on that night, in that place, we shared one thing in common a powerful thing in common, a passionate love and devotion to a football team. And every barrier melted away, and every difference went away, and I have this picture to remember that while we are quite different, in that moment, we were united I think of Belly Boy when I think of passages like this. Because we we are united by something that transcends every other difference in this room, and that's our passionate devotion to Jesus Christ, and our shared commitment to shared the good news of Jesus Christ and him crucified in this community and around the world, and that transcends every racial, national, economic, preference, opinion, everything melts away when we unite around the cause and our commitment to Jesus Christ, we are united in Christ, and everything else can be laid aside. Second, we owe our elegiance to Jesus. We owe our allegiance to Jesus Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified? Were you baptizing the name of Paul? No, certainly not. One head gets to wear that crown. And our sole allegiance belongs to him. We have a lot of opinions, we have a lot of differences. There is easy for factions and distractions to happen when our opinions get elevated above our allegiance to Jesus. And we serve side by side in our common cause, advancing the kingdom because of our commitment to Jesus. Third, we keep our eyes on Jesus. We need to keep our eyes on Jesus verse 1, Christ did not send me to Baptized, but to preach the gospel and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. Get your eyes off of people. Paul is saying,Take your eyes off of me, take your eyes off of Peter, take your eyes off of Paul's, and put them on the one crucified on the cross for you. Our only source of power is Jesus. Our only source of hope is Jesus. Our only allegianceces to Jesus, and our only focus should be on Jesus. One head gets to wear that crown. Why? Because people will let you down. Paul will let you down. Apollus will let you down. Cephus will let you down. Matt will let you down. People will let you down. Believe me, I disappoint people all the time. I remember earlier in my ministry, someone said to me, I listen to a lot of preachers on the radio. "and you're just not as good as them." I said, "Thank you for that help." And he gave me a stack of cassette tapes. He said, "Listen to these, I think it'll make you better." That's how old that story was. And I listened to those, and it may have made be better., I don't know, but for this brother, I said, "Br, I these guys are on the radio. Like, no one's coming to Northland Church to I mean, now we've got YouTube filming this. But the internet, you can be out there. But the truth is, I'll you all the time, people, one day, somebody said, I just don't like your preaching, you're not very passionate." I said, "What does that mean?" He said, "You don't yell enough, you don't cry. You don't bang on the pulpit. I said, "I'm so sorry. I've disappointed you in my delivery. we had someone leave a while back. He said, "I don't like jokes, and I don't like sports, and you and Ruston talk about both too much. And we disappointed him in our delivery of it. And now, honestly, I don't deal with this in the last 10 years, I haven't dealt this much because someone says they're leaving North and 'cause they don't like the preting. I just go, "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, Ruston's not better." And I'm head at night. I can just assume they meant the other guy, but listen, the truth is, I'm gonna let you down. Ruston's gonna let you down. Eventually, someone is going to stand up here and going to deliver a sermon that disappoints you And so if you're putting your hope in the leader of any local church, you're headed for a big letdown. Put your eyes on Jesus. Every fact, not only will every leader let you know, every Christian will eventually let you down. And if you form an opinion about Jesus, because of how another person reflects Him, you've got your focus in the wrong place. Too many people say, I don't want anything to do with Jesus because people don't live their life like Jesus Yeah, that's going to happen.. Anybody ever take piano lessons when you were a kid? Anybody take piano lessons? Anybody quit pretty quick when you were a kid? Yeah, yeah. My wife did, too. Her teacher met with her parents and said, "You're wasting my time and your money." And did your parents, maybe you had a conversation like that. So you probably didn't get very far as a piano player. So if I had put a piece of music from a famous composer like Beethoven or Mozart and put it in front of you and said, "Hey, try to play this, you do a terrible job, right? And so someone says, "I always heard Mozart was a really good piano player, but I heard you play it, and that guy's a really good composer. I heard you play him, he's actually terrible. No, he's not terrible. You're terrible at playing his music, right? Here's what is, folks. Jesus is awesome. We're just really bad at living like him. And so if you have formed your opinion about Jesus based on the way other people live like Jesus, they're gonna let you down, because none of us measure up to living our lives the way Jesus has set before us. And so if your eyes are on a leader, if your eyes are on another believer, and you are somehow disappointed or discouraged or saying, I don't win anything to do with the church, I don't want anything to do with Jesus because of the way people follow Jesus. You've had your focus in the wrong place. Get your focus off of leaders for good or bad. Get your voice off of other people for good or for bad, and put your eyes on Jesus. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Let me ask you three questions as we wrap this up. Number one, how can I protect the unity of my church? How can I protect the unity of my church? What can I do when things are broken to help put them back together? What can I do to mend things that are torn? Let me give you two things that you can do. There's a lot we can say. There'll be a whole sermon on this one question alone. Let me give you two quick things. Number one put others first by laying aside your personal preferences on secondary issues." In Philippians 2, Paul said,You need to be of one mind by looking to Jesus. He's said, Jesus, laid asideide his interest for the sake of our salvation. There are going to be times we lay aside our preferences for the sake of unity. That's a defensive measure to protect unity. Let me give an offensive move you can make, and that's be a peacemaker. Go on the offensive. Don't just sit back and say, I won't do anything to cause this unity. How can you be a peacemaker to put back together what has been broken Sometimes, in times of disunity, it comes because somebody demanded their own way and had their own preference, and contributed to it, are people who stood by and said nothing and did nothing. How can I be a peacemaker? Some of the most hurtful seasons in my life in ministry were when there was division that I was at the center of, or I was not someone's preferred whatever, and there there was a tension. It was not so much sort of the enemy in that sense, you put that in quotes, but the friend who did nothing, when something hurtful was being said or done good friends who said nothing in the moment. How can I be a peaceacemaker maker? What can my role be to protect the unity of my church? Second? How can I keep my eyes on Jesus? Don't let the disappointment in your life deflected you from Jesus, nor let admiration distract you from Jesus. We could admire or we can be disappointed. Both take our focus off of Jesus, keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and follow. finally have I trusted in the power of the cross. Why are you here today? What do you gain from being here today? If you're here today because you enjoyed the programs or like the music, encouraged by a message, or love the friendships you're forming, you're missing out on something bigger that God wants to do in your life, God wants you to have a transforming encounter with him through faith in his Son Jesus Jesus Christ. That's at the heart of what we do here. Why? Because one day we are all going to die and standfore to God, and our membership in a church will mean nothing in that moment. God won't care what church you remember of. He's not going to care whether you. I hope we see this song in heaven, because I really like it when we sing it on Sunday. you pull out your sermon notes, your bookmark, that you read the Bible through. I checked all the days off, God. The only that matters in that day is Christ and Him crucified. Have you put your faith in Jesus Christ. Have you committed your life to Jesus? Are you following Jesus? Let's pray together. If you never given your life to Jesus, right now, your prayer could be Jesus, I need you to be my Savior. Serving in the programs of this church, dropping something in the offering plate of this church, checking off attendance at a service at this church. God, I know none of that matters. I need Jesus. Only Jesus can save me. Jesus, I'm turning to you. Maybe your eyes have gotten off of Jesus. God helped me. I put my focus on others who have disappointed me and it's hurt my relationship with you. I've elevated some too high, and it's hurt my relationship with you. God, get my eyes off of people onto you, Jesus. Jesus, we thank you there. you're the one head that gets to wear the crown. We thank you that you were the one crucified. You were the one who's been resurrected. Our only hope is in you, Jesus. Let us be united in this. Convict us when we let our opinions and our preferences, harm unity, compel us to be peacemakers when it's needed. Make us of one mind, one spirit, striving together for one cause cause that we might make Jesus Christ known in this community that all may know Christ in him crucified. Help us in this Jesus. We prayed in your name. Amen.