Teach Me

We're coming to the close of our series, and I'm telling you, my goodness, oh yeah, I've got to do this. Chris is not here today, so that's usually his job, but I've got to release the kids. Thank you, Tim, for reminding me. He's back there.

Hey, I'm here. So, kids, if you'll see Mr. Tim over here, if you want to go to your classes, to your church, and to the events that he has planned for us, they're just having a great time back there, man. They come out of there all charged up and having a great time. So, you're welcome to exit the room.

We're closing, again, we're closing our series. I've heard so many good feedback on this series. It's just amazing. I actually have a friend who lives in Charlotte who contacted me and said, hey, man, I listened to your series, and I've been thinking about risking it for a long time. So, I see what you're doing in Virginia Beach, and we've been really good friends since college, and he's like, I'm thinking about moving to Virginia Beach, man.

And I'm like, really? He said, yeah, yeah, can I come down a couple of weeks just to check out the area and stuff? He said, man, and, you know, we used to play in a band together and all that back in the day when I was a freshman in college, and I was actually, he actually saw my drummer comment, because we were like, we're in need for some drummers, and he's like, you know, his wife's like, Mike Curran, you play drums, you know? And he's like, I said, move to Virginia Beach. And he says, I heard your series, and I'm like, I'm giving up.

Man, we've been challenged for a long time to make a change. He says, I'm not telling you we're going to Virginia Beach, but it's proof that what's happening through this series is really touching people's lives. And people just, I'm having to give up some things. I'm having to push through some things, leaving jobs and aiming for what God's called them to do. I mean, just emails and phone calls and people telling me during the week, man, how much this series has impacted us.

Today, we're going to bring it all together and talk about something that I think is really, it's kind of challenging to talk about, because there's so much division today in our country, in our culture. And I'm tired of it, to be honest with you. There's a lot of hate. And I want to talk about unifying us today. Unify us, O Lord.

Unify us. I want us to pray that. Unify us. And this, some of you are asking, unify us, isn't, isn't, that's, is that a risky prayer? And I believe it is a risky prayer, because when people are asked to be unified, they get defensive.

Because, you know, we don't like to, we don't, we don't like to fold and, and we like to pick sides. Let's just say it like that. We like to pick sides. We like our thing. We have our opinions.

We like our politics. We like our, our, whether we're, we're, you know, socially, culturally, ethnically, whatever it is, we like it. And we like our side. And we're willing to defend our side to the point where we hurt somebody that's close to us. And we seem to be divided.

I mean, it's crazy. You just look at the news. Democrats hate Republicans. Republicans hate Democrats. Blue lives matter.

Black lives matter. Green lives matter. I guess that's out there somewhere, I'm sure. All lives matter. And we've got all these groups, and they're not really, it's, it's like one does this, and the other does that.

And there's all this strong hate. There's all this strong division, and it hurts my heart. It makes my heart sick. I can't even cut on the news anymore because, because of all the, the hatred and disunity. And I just don't see a lot of love right now.

And the sad thing is, we as Christians are called to be different, but we're not looking much different. And we need to pray for unity. I mean, think about it. We, this, this has been going on for a long time. We, even within the church.

How many of you have heard Christians criticize other churches? We criticize churches all the time. We criticize our fellow brothers and sisters. We criticize them because of their domination, their background, or, or, or whether they're a new church, or whether they're an old church, right? I mean, you hear it all the time, or I'm not going back to that church, and to video preachers, you know.

What kind of church is that? Or, or it's like a concert, and the, and the, and the music's too loud, you know. Or, the music's too soft, and the pews, and I don't like pews, and, and, you know, there's a communion table in the front, and flowers, you know. You know, we criticize each other because of what background, what culture the church may be, and, and, and we kind of beat each other up. And in seminary, it was even worse.

When I was in, in doing my master's degree in theology, I mean, we had all these, these guys who thought they knew more than they actually knew, right? Because we're, we're all smart, or supposed to be smart, but we're not really, because we don't, we don't hardly know anything. And we know just enough to be dangerous, and we would sit around, and we talk about what the church should be, and what the church shouldn't be, and we would debate how, how the churches are doing it wrong, or how the churches would do it right, and, and trying to solve the world, world's problems, you know. And, and, and, and then we, we often become divided, divided as Christians. And I've caught myself doing it.

And, you know, it's, it, it's a tough, it's a tough thing that really causes, it's, it's one of the devil's strategic plans, strategic missions is to divide us. I'm convinced one of the enemy's greatest strategies, greatest strategies is to divide the church. Because if he can divide the church, we become weak and ineffective. But if we can unite, now the world's going to do what they're gonna do, right? Everybody else said, you know, culture is going to do what culture does, right?

They're going to divide on political issues. They're going to divide on cultural issues. There's going to be hate. But the church, we as a church, can decide to come together, right? We can decide to be unified.

We can make that decision that we're not going to go that route. That we're going to come together, we're going to love our brothers and sisters within the church and within other churches, and we're going to come together because if we are united, we are unstoppable. If we are united, we are unstoppable. If we're divided, we're weak. We're ineffective.

But if we are united, we are unstoppable. 1 John 4 20 says this, and this is what gets me. You know, when you look at the scripture, it says, whoever claims to love God yet hates his brother and sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister whom they have seen cannot love God. Because your brother and sister is right there, right?

You can't. You see them. You hate them. How can you even love a God you can't see? And Paul talked about this.

Jesus talked about this. And we're going to hit on that today. So let's look at that. Let's look at Romans 15. And if you have your notes, you'll have some blanks there to kind of guide you along.

And let's just see what the Bible says about unity and how we are to pray and how we are to direct ourselves to be a unified body of believers. Paul says this, May the Lord who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind towards each other that Christ Jesus had. So that with one mind and one voice, you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accept one another. Accept one another.

Then just as Christ accepted you in order to bring praise to God. And Jesus says this in John 17. I pray also, as one of his final prayers actually, I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message that all of them may be one. So that they may be brought to complete unity. Jesus had a desire for us to be unified.

To be in one accord. Then the world will know that you have sent me and have loved me even as you have loved me. And the common enemy is usually the person in the pew next to you or the church down the road. And Christians attack Christians all the time based on denomination, style, political opinions. And Satan's strategy so badly is to divide us.

But the truth is, when we can join together, when we're able to build things unitedly together, when we are able to work together, we can do infinitely more. Infinitely more together. And this has shown effective in our nation's history. World War II. World War II.

We see the Allies. The U.S., China, France, Great Britain, and many other countries came together as one force. Not one could have done what they were able to do dividedly.

But they came unitedly and they conquered the Axis. Germany, Italy, and Japan. You sports people. Football season's here, right? I'm expecting, yeah, that's like, this is like the football place.

When I moved here, I couldn't believe how many of you guys love football. I mean, y'all will give your lives for football, man. I mean, it's like, whoa. Yeah, it's awesome. I'm from North Carolina, so basketball, college basketball is kind of the thing there.

We have our football teams, but we never really had an NFL team until the Panthers came along way later, right? But I know a lot of you love football. But y'all understand this, when you watch a game, or you've been a part of a team, or you know how teams work together, you know, the quarterback's not going to be able to make a great pass unless he has a great offensive line, right? And the receiver's not going to be able to operate if the quarterback, or catch the ball if the quarterback isn't throwing the ball well, right? And if the team is coming together, if they're arguing in the huddle, and they're like, no, we should do this.

No, we should do that. No, I don't believe in that. I don't believe we should go that direction. And you don't believe that. It's like, well, I'm the coach, or I'm the captain, or I'm the whatever, and we need to come together.

It just isn't effective. And some of you have probably seen that in your own teams, right? You're like, man, that quarterback, he doesn't know what he's doing, right? Or it's the ref's fault, you know, usually. Right?

Yeah, sports is just like that. And we know that if we work and operate as a team, unitedly, you can be a force unstoppable. Even the team, you can have, you know, three or four great, even one great player, like magnificent Michael Jordan type figure on your team. But if the team is not operating as a team, it's ineffective. And I'd rather have a lot of mediocre players that are operating as a team than a few all-stars in the team going chaotic.

Because, and God understood this principle. I think about, you know, SEAL Team 6 and how they went in for bin Laden. And I listened to some of the interviews. And someone asked, there was actually a commentator that asked one of the soldiers, you know, well, what did you think when you were told that you had to go in and y'all were going to do this? And about the mission.

He says, well, there was no challenging. The mission was the mission. There was a mission. There was a plan. There was something we had to do.

There was no thought as to whether it was the right or wrong way of doing it. We had a mission. We got together as a team. We went in. We did the job.

And they were effective because of it. And Satan desires to steal our unity. And he knows if he can steal our unity, he can kill our churches. And if he can kill our churches, he can destroy the body of Christ. And he can kill anything that's happening in the church.

He can kill anything that's happening throughout the world. Because the local church is the hope of the world. And if we're dysfunctional, if we're not united in the cause of Christ, we are ineffective. Missions can't go out. Churches can't be planted.

We cannot do anything if we are not on the same page with our mission and vision. And it not only kills the mission, but it steals our own joy. When we're not here. When we're not here. Unified, when we're not together, when we're hurt and we're breaking each other's hearts, we need to come together and love each other and join forces together and not break because of religious opinions or political views or whatever those may be.

We need to come together. We need to come together. I want to give you three reasons today why we need to come together, why we need unity. And the first one is, we need each other desperately. We desperately, desperately need to be with each other.

We cannot do this alone. Romans 12 says this, Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ's body. We are many parts of one body and we all belong to each other. We all belong to each other. Churches divide over the silliest disagreements.

Churches, I've been there, the attitudes about the color of carpet and whether the wallpaper should be this color in the back nursery room. It's just crazy, man. People just get all heated. The pastor said something in church or Sister Sue did something to harm my child out of line and I'm done. Or, you know, and sometimes we're just paranoid and we think that nobody likes us and this and that.

And there's just the silliest things rather than, you know, coming and dealing with it. And you know what? We're full of personalities. We are a bucket full of personalities here today. We have all kinds of different things.

And you know, it's hard for people to get along. You know, especially when you have opposite personalities, right? But here's the thing. Unity is not uniformity, okay? Unity, when we come together, it doesn't mean we all have to act like the same people, do the same people, or be the same people.

And there's certainly not, some of you heard that and that's one way and some of you heard it another way, right? Right, okay? All right. I don't want a bunch of Leons around here. I can tell you that right now.

If everybody was like me, it would be a disaster taking place. But we have strengths in our diversity. We have strengths. We need to learn to embrace each other's diversity. And on a larger scale, we criticize other churches for those same reasons.

Not only among ourselves, but other churches. That church, you know, is boring. I don't like that church because they play that kind of music. Or that church is too seeker sensitive, man. They don't talk about the gospel enough.

And it's too feel good. God forbid a church feel good. I mean, you know, I guess you're supposed to feel bad. And then the other person is like, I don't go, our church is so much better because they, you know, they don't, they play organs and stuff like that. Or it's the opposite.

You know, it's just, you know, that church, there's a crazy tongue talking people. Stay away from that church, you know. And over here, it's like, you know, they're just, they don't, they don't talk at all, you know. They kind of look at you when you walk in the door. And I don't feel like I dress right, you know, because I'm not like them.

And we just criticize each other. And then we say, this church over here, man, it's just way too big. It's just way too big. I can't plug in. And then over here, they're like, man, church is just way too small.

It's just way too small, man. I need a big church. And we just, we criticize each other. But here's the point I want to get to. Who cares what everybody else is?

Just be who you are. Just be who you are. Salt Church, be who we are. Be who we are. Don't worry about that church over there.

Don't worry about that person over there. Just be who we are. And we like to throw rocks. We like to throw rocks at others to build ourselves up. Just be who we are.

We are different for a reason. We reach, we reach people in different ways. God, embrace your uniqueness. Because God has called you to do something that he hasn't called me to do. And he's called me to do something that he hasn't called you to do.

And he's called churches to do things that other churches aren't called to do. Small churches. He uses small churches for great endeavors. Some of the biggest endeavors done in the world are done through small churches. And big, large churches.

And charismatic churches. And reformed churches. And Pentecostal churches. And Baptist churches. And Methodist churches.

And Presbyterian churches. Or whatever churches. Conservative churches. Liberal churches. Whatever you want to call them.

You know. Wherever we are in the spectrum. You know. God has called us all to unique things. And we need to embrace.

And if we are going to make a mistake. Here's the thing I want to say. If we're going to make a mistake. I'd rather us err on the side of grace. Yeah.

Rather. Not be against. Because. Sure we can call out those things. I think it's very important.

Don't get me wrong. It's important for us to stand on the essential truths. On the essential doctrines of the church. The doctrines that. That.

That. That. Our. Our. People that have come before us.

That the church before us. Had bled and died for. But that the martyrs had bled for. It's important for us to stay true. To what the Bible says.

And everything that's in it. Every promise. Every doctrine. Everything that God has placed before us. It's important for us to call out.

Thing. But. I would rather reside. In the way of grace. Grace.

Always. Needs. To rule. And. It's just so funny.

Like. I was. I just had a conversation with somebody the other day. That. That was.

That was arguing about the electronic Bibles. You know. It's just like. You know. Um.

These. These electronic Bibles are actually reaching people. Be. In regions that. Don't even.

Have Bibles. You know. It's. It's just amazing. You know.

Every kind of language. Every kind of people group. They're. They're. They're.

They're. They're. They're. They're. They're.

They're. They're. They're. They're. They're.

They're. They're. They're. They're. They're.

They're. They're. They're. They're. Here's the point.

I mean, people are dying every day for the gospel of Jesus Christ. They're dying in other countries. They're being beheaded in front of their families. Their whole families are getting killed in villages for the sake of the gospel. We're arguing about the type of Bible we use.

I mean, come on, guys. Let's unit. Man, we've got so much liberty. We got so, so much freedom. Yet, we're arguing about these little petty things that divide us.

And we need to pray that we all come together and we all worship God together. Every man, every woman, every child, rich, poor, every ethnic group. The Bible tells us every tongue, every language, every land will come together and bow down before the Lord. One day, we will all be bowing down before the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings. Why not live it now?

Why do we not live it now as Christians? Why not start now at this moment? Because we desperately, desperately, desperately need each other. We've got to have each other. We can't do it alone.

God has not called us to be long rangers. He's called us to do this thing together. The second point I want to make is that others will know God's love. We do this not only because we desperately need each other. We need each other desperately, but others will know about this God that we serve.

Romans 15 says, Accept one another, then just as Christ accepted you in order to bring praise to Him. Accept one another. I want to talk about that word just for a second. It's not just something that we just say, I accept you, or something that comes to our mind, or whatever. The actual Greek in this word is a picturesque, very long, drawn out idea.

It's not just, I accept you, I actually am grabbing your hand and I'm walking with you. I'm walking this out with you. I'm walking this road with you. I'm with you. I'm with you through it.

I'm helping you. I'm guiding you. I'm embracing you. When you accept one another just as Christ accepted us. When he talks about that in scripture, we accept each other just as Christ accepted us.

When we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He gave us grace when we didn't deserve grace. He gave us hope when we didn't deserve hope. When we were yet sinners, God died for us. Can we not do the same thing?

Can we not accept one another just as Christ has accepted us? But instead, unfortunately, we are known for what we are against rather than what we are for. Think about it. When people talk about the church, it's always about, well, they don't like doing that. They don't want to participate in that.

They don't want to do that, right? They don't want to get involved in that. So why can't we instead be known for what we are for? We are for love. And we love each other.

And when they see us together, they see love. They see God. Why can't we be a people that just pours and oozes love and talk about the goodness of God rather than, let's not get, I don't want to go over there. I don't want to, you sinner, I saw you over there drinking that beer over at so-and-so. And I saw you over there smoking, you know, whatever it is.

You know, I'm just throwing things out there. But I saw you, you know, over at so-and-so. I saw what you were wearing that day. And we're always known for what we're against, right? But why can't we be known for what we're for?

What we're for. A new commandment I give you, says Jesus, to love one another as I have loved you. So you must love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. He says, love one another, love one another, love one another.

And there's something in, when you study the Bible, if something's being said over and over and over again, that means it's very important. Okay? And he says, love one another, love one another. If you love one another, everyone will see. And if you, so love one another.

We need to love one another. It doesn't matter your worship style, your denomination, your background, your culture. Love one another. Love one another. Idiosyncrasies, it doesn't even have to be any of those things.

It could just be personality clashes. Just love them. Just love them. Regardless, love them. We need to learn to love people.

And one way the world will know that we are his disciples if we love. If we love, man, we need each other. And because the world will see God's love in us, they'll want what we have. And I'm telling you, you look at the New Testament, it says, I don't have that scripture up here. This is just coming off the top of my head.

But when we read the book of Acts, we see these people gathering in houses. And they're loving each other. And they're caring for each other. And they're worshiping together. And they're feeding each other.

They're bringing in the orphans. And they're bringing in the sick. And they're offering hope into a community. And people are like, you know what? I don't know about this Jesus thing.

But these people got something that's exciting and good. We're going to leave them alone and let them do what they're going to do, right? And you know what? I might want to check them out sometimes. It wasn't even about what they believed.

It was about who they were. Because what they believed reflect who they were. And we need to allow what we believe to reflect who they were. So it shows the love of God. People see our love when we're unified.

And then thirdly, we can do immeasurably. We can do immeasurably more together. Can you say that with me? We can do immeasurably more together. Let us leverage what we have now to reach the greater good.

Whatever you have. Whatever we can do together, we can be effective and unstoppable. And in the New Testament, we see it. There's a small band of non-educated, unlike people, by the world's standards. But there was something attractive and contagious about them, as I mentioned.

And Acts 4 says this, All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions were their own. They shared everything they had. Now, that's a tough one, right? Let me just stop right there.

Share it. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You know? Shared everything they had. I had a conversation with somebody one time.

And they said, you know, why don't we get back to the New Testament? You know, the way they're doing things. Okay. I said, that's fine. That's fine.

I'm fine. Your car right there, that's mine. That's mine and yours, you know. And they're like, really? Yeah?

It's like, okay, can I come and live in your house? And can I, you know, hang out? I'll wear your clothes and, you know, just whatever. You know, let me come in and dig in your refrigerator and stuff. And people are all like, let's get back to the New Testament until they really understand what these people really, how much they really, really, really loved each other.

You know, they had everything. They shared everything. And God's grace was so, and I love this last part, and God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there was no needy person among them. The world is sick and tired of just hearing about the love of God or the love of Jesus. They actually want to see it.

And we, as a church, unified, if we could come together, pray, God use us. And they'll be like, you know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know about all that. I don't know about the Bible and this, you know, and this perfect book.

And I don't know about this raising from the dead thing, this Jesus. I'm not sure about all of that. And I don't know about, you know, some of the, in their minds, the hocus pocus of it and everything. But I'll tell you what, there's definitely some love there. And there's unity there.

And they're different. They're different. And they're holy. You know, holy means separated. There's something about them that's just separate from what I see in the world.

And we pray for power. We come together. If we come together and we, in unity, and pray for power, and pray for faith unity, and pray for active unity in the church, we can see things happen. I read this one time. If the church could come together in a week, this is what could happen.

If the church came together in unity with everything that they could have, even, you know, just everything that they could do, whether it's tithing, whether it's participating, whether it's being, you know, involved in the local church, whether it's missions, if we just all came together in unity and said, we're going to do this thing, we all come, we put our hands in, we throw everything on the table, we say, we're all in, this is what would happen. It says in Monday, starvation would be eliminated. On Tuesday, every person would have drinking water in the world. Wednesday, poverty would be rectified, eradicated, excuse me, eradicated. Thursday, everyone with a medical need will have attention.

Friday, all orphans will be under care. Saturday, everyone who has lived will know about Jesus. And Sunday, we pause and worship him. If we unified, and this can only happen when we are unified, working together, making a difference together. If we would stop beating each other up, biting each other, instead, love each other.

Join hand in hand in love. We are unstoppable. Jesus, I pray, God, for unity. As we go, as we went through this message series, Lord, we learn different things about digging deep in ourselves and pulling out the stuff that's keeping us from being what you've called us to do, Lord Jesus. But this is kind of the root of it all, Lord.

After we fixed ourselves, we need to come together. In fact, as we fix ourselves, we need to come together. In fact, we can't even fix ourselves, Lord. That's why we have to hope and depend on you, God. Because we can only change.

We can only be transformed through the power of you, God. And God, I'm asking you today that you would unify us. That you would start working in our hearts and in our lives today, God. That you would start pulling us, start drawing us to something, Lord. Whatever it may be, God.

You're placing something in each person's heart today as a unified unit here at Salt Church. That we can pull together and we can do abundantly above what we could think or ask. By the power that is working inside of us. So for the next week, Lord, we're just going to pray that. We're going to pray that.

Everybody in this room, I'm inviting everybody in to pray that as I pray. We're going to pray for unity. Lord, we pray for unity. We pray that you unify us, God, in the name of Jesus. That you take anything that's not there out and bring it.

Just bring us together. That if there's a disagreement between two people in here today. Or there's some divisiveness or some anger or some bitterness, Lord. That we would come together and ask forgiveness and reconciliation and heal and move forward as a church, God. For some of us here today, we may not know you the way that we talked about today, Lord Jesus.

Maybe somebody here knows of you, God. But they don't know you. And if that's you today. And God's calling you. Maybe you feel something in your heart pulling towards God.

Maybe he's calling you out to come and follow him. It's not religion. It's not about doing. You've probably tried it all of your life to try to do the best you can. But it just seems empty.

But you can find a fullness in Jesus Christ today. If that's you. If that's you. If you're just lost. And you're hurting.

And you're desperate. I ask you to give Jesus a chance. Just give him a chance today. You can make that decision today. If that's you.

If you would just gently lift your hand. I want to pray for you. Is there anybody here today that just needs to come? You've got to be full in with God. You want to walk out with God.

You want to do this thing with God. Make a decision today. Today is the day to make a decision. It would be the greatest decision you ever make in your life. It starts now.

Is there anybody? Hands? Anybody else? It's time. It's time, man.

Let Jesus love you. Let Jesus love you. Let Jesus love you. Pray this with me. Lord, I admit that I've done things my own way.

I'm super far from you, God. I've separated from you, Lord. But today, I make a decision. I believe that you are the Son of God, that you died on the cross for my sin. I give my life to you today.

I walk with you from this day forth as my Savior and my King. Change me and transform me from the inside out. Let me ask this in your name. Amen. Hallelujah.

We thank you, Jesus.