Sermon
Unity Not Uniformity
November 20, 2005
Pastor Leighton Sheley

I'm going to invite you to take your Bibles and open them to the Book of Ephesians chapter 4. I met with some pastors a while back and we were talking about some trends in the church. Some of the pastors had ministries that spanned many decades and they were observing some of the trends or some of the changes that were taking place in the church. Some of the church leaders observed that it was becoming more and more common for people when they were searching for a church not to be looking for a church that preached sound doctrine or a church where they could go in and contribute by joining the choir or teaching a Sunday school, but they were just going someplace that felt good, someplace where they could just sit and fill a pew, relax and take it in, but have little requirements as to participation.

And there's a phenomenon that's even more recent that has been observed that there are a number of people who actually don't even affiliate with one particular church at all. They just go to whatever church has got the most exciting event happening at any given time and they never really invest themselves in any church, and as a result, neither they nor the church that God would like them to be called to receive the full blessing or what God intended.

Now today we want to look at some of these things. It's really very much an introduction to some of these concepts of the church and the body of Christ, and the Spirit, the Spirit of unity, and the believer's place in the body of Christ and so forth. We are going to look at chapter 4 to begin our study.

"As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." How do we do this? Verse 2: "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." What's the goal? Verse 3: "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." Why? Verse 4: "There is one body and one Spirit-just as you were called to one hope when you were called- one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."

Now you may have noticed that some of the descriptive words found in verse 2 are also found in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 where Paul describes love in such a beautiful way; love is patient, love is kind, and so forth.

'Make every effort' is from spoudazo, which means to make haste and from which are derived the words or the meanings of zeal and diligence. And I want you to note something here, that Paul is not just writing to the leaders of the church of Ephesus, he is writing to the church at Ephesus. He is writing to the people of the church of Ephesus, and he is saying to them that preserving the unity of the Spirit should be the diligent and zealous concern of every believer - of every believer.

Throughout church history the unity of the Spirit has been constantly attacked. It happened at the very first generation of believers and the apostle Paul had to address that issue in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians, and he writes, "I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Cephas"; still another, "I follow Christ.""

I ask you, "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?" And what Paul is trying to communicate here is there is one Savior and there is one body for the Savior. There is one Lord. Let there be no divisions among you.

The unity of the church has been under constant attack since the very first century and it is the responsibility of every believer to zealously protect the unity of the Spirit. Now I want you to note also that the unity of the Spirit cannot be created by the church and it cannot be manufactured by believers. It's not called the unity of the church, or it's not called the unity of the believers; it's called the unity of the Spirit - the unity from the Spirit.

It is the unity that Jesus prayed for in his prayer recorded for us in John chapter 17. Jesus prayed, "Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name-the name you gave me-so that they may be one as we are one." And "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message (that's us), that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me." "May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

So then why is unity so important to Jesus? It's because it's through our unity that the world will know that Jesus Christ was the Savior sent from God.

Now in the company of unity is usually found peace, and this world is filled with anything but unity and peace. There is no unity or peace between nations, between businesses, and precious little inside of most houses. When the world looks on and they see a group of people who gather together, as we do, from all walks of life, all cultural and ethnic backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds, educational backgrounds, age groups that spanned the decades, executives and laborers, police officers and felons, people who live and love in unity and peace, the world looks on knowing this is not natural. This is not normal. And they are absolutely right. It is not natural. It is supernatural. It is supernatural. It is the work of God's Holy Spirit.

It is the work of God's Holy Spirit to create unity. It is the responsibility of every believer to protect unity. Now unity is also God's plan because there is one body. The body of Christ, the true Church, is made up of all believers. There is no Gentile body and Jewish body, or male body and female body, or slave body and free body, there are no Hispanic body and Filipino body, there is no church of the Highlands body. There is one body that is made up of all of the believers of every corner of the world, and each and every believer is a part of the body.

The believers at Church of the Highlands are part of God's body. We share a specific vision and mission in part of God's body. If we were some strand of muscle in one of God's fingers, we work together to accomplish God's will. We take directions from the head. And you know what happens when muscles aren't working together? It's called a cramp.

"There is one body and one Spirit-just as you were called to one hope when you were called-one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." Did you notice how many times the word 'one' was used in this passage? You see everything that relates to salvation, the church, the kingdom of God, is based on the concept of unity as reflected in Paul's seven uses of the word 'one' in these three verses.

Practical unity is based on spiritual unity. And to emphasize the unity of the Spirit Paul recites the features of oneness that are germane to our doctrine and life. His focus is on the oneness of those and every other aspect of God's nature and plan and work as our basis for commitment to live as one.

Now you say, Satan is against anything God is for. If God likes strawberries, Satan hates strawberries. If God hated strawberries (and I'm sure he doesn't), then Satan would love strawberries. Satan is contrary to anything God desires. And where God wants to bring unity, guess what Satan wants to bring? Disunity, division.

Now having established the importance of protecting the unity of the body in Christ, Paul now moves on in transition in verse 7 and begins with the word 'but.' It's a conjunction that makes a contrast, and what he's doing now is he's contrasting unity with uniformity - contrasting unity with uniformity. Now this world may have a fascination with clones. Every few weeks we hear a front-page article about some sheep being cloned someplace, and some discussion about humans being cloned somewhere in the far reaches of this world. This world may have a fascination with clones, but God doesn't. God designed into DNA so there wouldn't be clones. God doesn't have a fascination with clones

In fact, God takes the time...now consider the life cycle of a snowflake, and God designs each snowflake individually. There are no two alike. God is just not interested in clones. To each one of us, verse 7, grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. And I really like the way the New Living Translation translates this verse. He says, "However, he has given each one of us a special gift according to the generosity of Christ." Every believer has been given at least one gift, and some have been given more. And it's always given according to God's plan.

Now each of us has received individually grace, and each of us has received individually a gift. Believer's gifts are like snowflakes and fingerprints each one is completely different than the others. God has made you special. He's handcrafted - you are handcrafted by your Creator. You didn't just come off an assembly line someplace. You were hand created by your Creator and there is no one else that's like you. God designed you for a special purpose. There's something that he wants especially for each and every one of us to do.

God said I'm going to make Leighton. He's part of my plan for San Bruno. I'm going to give him these gifts in these proportions, and I'm going to make sure he has extra grace because he's going to need it.

You know I've been given gifts that, although I appreciate the intention, have served no useful purpose. I have been given ties that have occupied space in my closet for 25 years. I can't find anything to go with that tie. I could wear it to a circus or something. I just can't see that many colors being in one place at one time. You know God's gifts are not like the tie from uncle so and so, no God-given gift should be unused.

God's gifts are given so that they might be used to accomplish God's plan. Using God's gifts is called ministry, and every believer is called to ministry. Every believer is a minister. Now that's not what some of us have been taught or come to understand. Some of us have been taught or come to understand that we believe ministry to the professionals, but that's not what the Bible teaches.

Ephesians 4:11-12, "It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers," Why? To prepare God's people for works of service. "To prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up." You see the Bible clearly teaches that all of God's people are called for works of service. If you are a Christian, you are a minister. So what is it then that keeps some people from using their God-given gifts?

Well, I think one of the more common answers is, well God can't use me because...and then you fill something in on the blank. Because I'm still struggling with some issue of sin in my life, or I sinned deeply against him and I have ruined any testimony that I might be able to give on his behalf, or because I'm mentally deficient, or socially inhibited, or whatever the reason might be. You fill it in whatever it might be. You've heard these kinds of excuses I'm sure. But if we read 2 Corinthians 3:5 and following it says, "It is not that we think we can do anything of lasting value by ourselves." We can't do anything of lasting value, eternal value by ourselves. "Our only power and success come from God. He is the one who has enabled us to represent his new covenant."

Now the New International Version renders it: "He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant." He has made us competent. It is not we who have made ourselves competent to be ministers. It is he who has made us competent. It is God and God alone.

You're saying, but, pastor I've failed so miserably. I mean I'm so limited; I'm so imperfect, how can God use me? Well let me propose to you that God has had nothing but imperfection to work with, with one exception. Only Jesus Christ was perfect. He has had to work with imperfection for centuries. He knows how we are formed. He remembers that we are but dust. There are no super humans. God can use us just like we are, with all of our failures, with all of our frailties. Who is better equipped to counsel and encourage someone who is struggling to overcome an addiction to pornography or alcohol or drugs than someone who has struggled with an addiction and overcome? And who is better to counsel or encourage someone who is struggling to keep a marriage together than someone who has struggled and overcome?

And sometimes He uses as our failures. There have been ministries in churches where couples that got divorced and remarried would come alongside young couples that were struggling to encourage them to keep struggling and not give up, and they opened up their hearts and they revealed their regrets of having given up too early. God can use us with our frailties and our failures. God has given every believer a gift to be used, and some people need to discover their gift or gifts, and some people are afraid to because they're afraid of failing.

You know some of the greatest breakthroughs in human history were made after many, many dismal failures. Madame Curie's discovery, Thomas Edison's discovery of the light bulb, after hundreds of failures. Many successful businessmen today have, if you were to trace their business background, would have failed businesses in the background. They learn from their mistakes. They learn from their failures, and because of that they're successful today.

A man was asked one time, a successful businessman, how are you successful? Good decisions. How do you make good decisions? Experience. How do you get experience? Bad decisions.

Moving to verse 11: "It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up."

The gifts of leadership are not intended to create Christian celebrities. Rather, these gifts of leadership are intended to equip the saints for service, for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, works of service which God prepared in advance for us to do - Ephesians 2:10.

Katartizô, prepare, basically refers to something which is restored to its original condition. It is often times used in medical journals in Greek to describe the setting of a broken bone - to restore something to its original condition. The ministry of equipping is the work of leading Christians from a life of disobedience to a life of obedience - restoring. And how to accomplish this is in this very chapter, chapter 4, beginning at verse 12. Now proper equipping by church leadership leads so that the body of Christ might be built up, built up, oikodome. Literally, it refers to the building of a house and in a larger sense any kind of construction. What Paul is referring to here is the building up of Christ's body.

Now when a contractor is working on a building he has specific goals in mind, and when Christ is working on building his church, his body, he has specific goals in mind. What are they? Verse 13: until we all reach (number one) unity in the faith, (number two) and in the knowledge of the Son of God, and (number three) become mature attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Now the faith, unity in the faith, is a reference to the content a body of Christian truth. Unity in the faith is holding the same understandings and opinions considering fundamental Biblical truths. Now unfortunately, there are few who call themselves Christian who know their Bible and faith well enough to stand as one against the immoral, godless philosophies that fill our contemporary society and try to fill our churches. Doctrinal ignorance and spiritual immaturity that's what leads to disunity, and it was this kind of disunity that Paul was addressing in his Book of 1 Corinthians - his letter to the Corinthians.

Now the word knowledge in the original is epignosis, which means a deep and accurate knowledge. It is distinct from a knowledge about...a lot of people have a knowledge about the Son of God, that's not what this is talking about. It's not talking about a knowledge about, it's talking about a knowledge of, a knowledge in. But few people have invested the time and the effort and the energy required to know and not just know about the Son of God.

Now the third result of good church leadership is maturity. You know there are few things pitiful than a 40-year-old adolescent. You know we are surrounded by examples of men who refuse to grow up. They refused to take responsibility. They are selfish. They are unreliable at home and at work. They are not fulfilling the develop that they were created for, and you know what, there are people who refuse to grow up spiritually as well. They accept Christianity for the fire insurance, but they have absolutely no intention of turning into a person that gives evidence of a spiritually transformed life. They don't want to change. They don't want to grow up. They don't want to mature. They're living with one toe in heaven just in case, but their weight bearing foot is firmly in this world.

God's goal for every believer is to attain the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. God wants every believer to be like Christ then they will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. You know I was reading this and I was thinking of when I became a daddy and my children came home, and of course first they are helpless, but it doesn't take very long and they are starting to get around the house - on their own - and you never quite know where they're going to end up, and so I started looking around the house for things that might hurt them.

We lived in Daly City at the time. It was two stories, there are stairs, I want them to learn how to go down stairs the right way, not the painful way. There were cabinets that hold cleaning utensils and we went out and got those little plastic locks because we wanted to protect them, because they didn't know what was good for them and what was bad for them.

Cults prey upon new converts to Christianity because new converts are open and searching for the truth, but they are not wise enough or mature enough to know what is good and distinguish it from what is bad. Like children they can drink something that is harmful to them. They can get tied in with groups that are harmful to them. Cunning, kubois, the word from which we get cube, it can also refer to dice and we all know that dice have been loaded by professionals and con men for thousands of years. Craftiness is a term that describes the manipulation to make error look like truth, and scheming is used elsewhere talking about the schemes of the devil, to reference a planned, subtle, systematized intentional pathway to error. It is intentionally leading someone down a dangerous path.

You know every healthy church needs trustworthy, diligent, caregiver protectors for those who are new in their faith. Now our nation's Christian heritage was built upon congregations that knew their scriptures. You go back and you study the Puritans, they were in church for three hours. They had a designated person that would go around with a prod and wake people up who went to sleep. But they knew their Bible. And the textbook for the schools, the public schools, was the Bible. And it wasn't until the start of the last century that the Bible has been taken out of the school system systematically, and our once Bible knowledge rich nation is now more gullible than ever to false prophets and various cults that pander this, that, and the other thing under the banner of Christianity, and there are far too many churches that have in their name the word God or Jesus Christ that have no relationship with the true God, true Jesus Christ.

15: "Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ." You know people grow when they are told the truth and receive it. That's true in personal relationships; it's true in our relationship with God. Now there are some people who just tell the truth and there is no love. I'm sure we've been around those kinds of people. You'd like to argue with them, but you can't, because they are telling the truth, but the way they tell it hurts. Truth without love hurts, and where truth has not been communicated or where it has been rejected there is no growth.

If a husband and wife or a wife quits trying to speak the truth in love then there is no growth in that relationship. Instead of growing the relationship withers and dies. And where a spouse refuses to hear words spoken in truth and love, there is going to be no growth. The relationship is going to wither and die. For a healthy, happy growth to take place the truth must be spoken and received in love.

Proverbs 27:5-6 says an open rebuke is better than hidden love, and wounds from a friend are better than kisses from an enemy. Wounds from a friend. Listen my friend, I need to tell you the truth here.

Verse 16: "From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work." True church growth is not the result of some fancy strategy we get from some church on the East Coast. True church growth is from Him. It's not the results of gimmicks and gadgets and image spinning and all of those kinds of things, and growth happens as each part does its work.

You know I was reading that and I was remembering a few years back when 30-stupid-something, now I'm 40-stupid-something. We were away for a weekend with some friends and one of my friends went and got one of those water bikes, not the one you stand on but the one you sit on, and I was out learning how to ride that thing and I was having a lot of fun. I found that when you got in rough water you could get a lot of air, but you couldn't go very fast because as soon as you were out of the water then the engine only had air and not water and so you just couldn't go very...but if you got in smooth water, that thing would go 35, 40, 45 miles an hour.

And we were in this cove and out in the middle was the rough water and in this cove was the smooth water, and so as I was tooling around in the smooth water I saw this boat getting ready to go past the point, and I began to think, I thought to myself, you know, I can get this thing going pretty fast in smooth water and then I'll hit that wake and get lots of air. And I was absolutely right. I was up there so long, I told the congregation last night, I was up there so long I saw my life pass before my eyes. I was up there so long I saw part of the rerun. I was actually up there so long I had an opportunity to think about being up there, and some things concerned me while I was up there. For one thing, the craft I was on the nose started falling to the right and it was no longer underneath me but the water still was, and you know when you are going that fast water is like smooth asphalt covered in ice. Furthermore, it's rotating in the air, and when it came back in it was nearly vertical so when it hit the water it gouged the water, which means it stopped and I didn't. And I went over the handlebars and skidded on top of the water until I got slow enough that the water enveloped me, at which time I thought I would check and see if the life preserver worked. And it did. It helped me to surface the water, facedown. I was glad I didn't get knocked out.

So when I get back to shore I'm sitting on the dock for a while trying to gather up my strength, I put my foot down to try to stand up and the world turns different colors. They took me to the hospital and found out that I had really done some severe damage on my ankle, and I was hobbling around on crutches for a while. You know that's quite an education. I couldn't put my foot down let alone put any weight on it. Life became an ordeal. It took me three hours to take a shower. Things that would take, you know, 10 or 15 minutes when all the parts are working took three hours. It was an ordeal.

And you know what? The body of Christ today has got some parts that aren't doing their job, and stuff that should take 10 or 15 minutes is taking three hours and it's an ordeal because there are parts of the body that are not functioning. And so I'm going to ask you today: you are part of the body of Christ. The Bible says that the body of Christ grows and builds itself up as each part does its work; the question is this, Are you doing your part? Are you using the gifts that God has given you in ministry? Let' pray.

Lord we are so thankful that your word gives us such understanding. We're so glad, Lord, that we can see the bigger picture because you have revealed it to us. Lord we are so thankful that we can know why this world is so messed up and that we can know why we are so messed up, and that we can know that you love us anyway. And that you have gone to the cross to redeem our souls from destruction, and that you have chosen to adopt us as your very own children, that you desire to, through your Holy Spirit who resides within us, make us more into the image of your son Jesus Christ, and that when we fail you never fail.

Thank you Lord, thank you Lord. Lord we are praying right now for our church in the weeks and the months and the years to come; that each and every one who is called to be a part of this part of your body will be functioning in the gifts that you have given to them, not for their own glory, not for the glory of Church of the Highlands, but for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. God bless.