The Danger of Division

The First sermon in our series: "11 Dangers for Every Christian"

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 10:10-17

Dr. Nick Floyd

Senior Pastor

Transcript

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Thank you for joining us today. At Crosschurch, we believe people need Jesus. People need each other. People change the world. And people leave legacies. Our desire is for you to understand, accept, and grow in a relationship with Jesus Christ. Thank you for listening. If you would like to know more about Crosschurch, please visit CrossChurch.com.

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Looking forward to opening up the Word of God with you today. I want to welcome all of our campuses today. This is what we call a One Church Sunday, where we link up all across Northwest Arkansas. If you are brand new to our church, you may not realize this, but we are in one campus of what is four campuses around this area and region. We are united by a common mission. I wish we could all be together in the same room every Sunday, but it is just physically impossible and honestly would physically limit the amount of people we're able to reach. And uh so we are trying to stay together as one church. And so once or twice a month, we are all joining together via video. If you're at that campus and uh whatever campus you're at today, we welcome you. Glad to have you here with us today. And uh, as you heard on the video, you heard Eli just talk about this Wednesday night. Uh, let me speak to all the adults in the room, okay? If you have never attended a C3 at the Greek, uh, I want to invite you this Wednesday night to join me, join us on that night. And here's my ask of you do not take a seat in the theater. Those are for the students, but uh bring a lawn chair, bring a blanket, sit on the grassy area surrounding that bowl. And I promise you, your heart is going to be incredibly warmed and encouraged with what this church is doing to reach college students and the movement of God uh that is right there on campus. Uh last year we had over 3,000 students show up, and uh we're just gonna give them a straight-up gospel message and uh call them to repentance from sin and faith in Christ this Wednesday night. And so I'm gonna encourage you, adults, you come, you sit on the side, and you watch and you pray. Okay, I promise you you will be blessed and take me up on it. Come find me if you do come. I'd love to say hey to you, but uh, we're gonna have an incredible time there. Uh, second, as you saw, uh our journals are in. Somebody told me this morning those look like Dallas Cowboy Blue. I said, not really, but I appreciate the sentiment. Um, we are uh we're excited about this. This is every sermon title, every sermon passage for the next year. And uh here's what I would tell you if if you're not gonna use it, and it's fine if you don't want to use it, some of you have your own thing uh that you do uh for taking notes. Uh, it's totally fine. Just drop it back on the table when you leave. We invest a lot of money in these, as you can imagine. And uh you may say, well, why do we spend so much money on these? Well, we deeply care about your discipleship. We don't just want you to be an attender of church, but a fully devoted follower of Jesus and any study that you look at, uh, secular studies even tell you this. You are way more prone to remember and retain what you write down. So we've tried to make it as easy as possible for you. And uh so hope you'll enjoy this. Uh, we've been working on this uh for a while. And uh when you leave today, you will get a sticker for your opening page right there. Every new sermon series, we give you a sticker when you come to church. Some of y'all love the stickers, all right? Uh this year we've done scratch and sniffs, uh, stickers. And so if yours doesn't smell, just keep keep scratching it and we'll see. We'll all watch you. I'm kind of gazing around, seeing if anybody's looking. Nobody's sniffing. Okay, you didn't you know it's a joke. Okay, but uh, we're really, really excited about that, okay? Um, as I just mentioned, we're here to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Pinnacle Hills. Uh, I didn't give you the best number of all. The best number of all is not the 350 or those who've been here for 20 years or 4,000 people worshiping here on a Sunday. The best stat of all is in 25 years. We have seen 5,255 people be baptized right here at Pinnacle Hills. So praise the Lord for that. And we can't wait to see what the future uh looks like. Okay, I want you to grab your Bible, 1 Corinthians, grab your journal. Uh, we're gonna begin a brand new series today. Uh, you may wonder, Nick, how do y'all decide what in the world we preach? In other words, how do how do y'all decide like what's gonna go in the journal, what's not gonna go in the journal? And uh here's how it happens. Every year, uh, usually winter or spring, uh, myself, the other teaching pastors, we will go away together for 24, 36 hours. And uh, and we usually go to Tulsa, we rent an Airbnb, and we just go to work. And uh, so we did this this past January, at the end of January. Uh, the four of us, Ryan Blackwell was still here at that time, Jeff Crawford, Mark Hutchinson, and myself. We all drove to Tulsa and uh and we went through um just started working. And usually what that ends up is I come to the meeting with some ideas, things that God's put on my heart. They may do that as well. We'll bring calendars and we'll just start rolling. And so we worked in the afternoon, and uh, and then you know, eventually it was time for dinner. We broke, went to dinner, came back, kept working that night in the living room of this house. And uh, and man, it was all falling into place pretty easily, like maybe even a little bit easier than normal. We were all kind of of one heart of, yeah, let's do that, let's do this, this fits in that six-week six-week window. That's a nine-week series right there. And uh, we could not, for the life of us, figure out the very first sermon series of the year, which is right now, this August section. And uh we had considered First Corinthians and, you know, just kind of kept wrestling with other things. Nothing seemed to fit. And almost out of frustration, I stopped us and I said, guys, what do we feel like our people need? And that's where it began. And so the four of us, who are the four preaching pastors to you on every Sunday basis, we began to share concerns that we have for the people of God. Now, this is true about our church. Honestly, it could have been true for the people of God at any church, but we began to be burdened for you and we began to say, well, man, we're I'm nervous about this. I'm concerned about this. And we began to warn about danger after danger after danger. And so eventually we went back to 1 Corinthians and we took what we had just said, and we said, well, those, a lot of those line up with exactly what Paul was warning this ancient church about in the city of Corinth. And so we decided to do 1 Corinthians. And so the subtitle of this series is this it is 1 Corinthians, 11 dangers for every Christian. So for the next 11 weeks, we're gonna walk through this great book of the Bible. And uh, there are some things that are on our heart, there are some things that are on the Bible's heart that were on Paul's heart all these years ago, 2,000 years ago in ancient Corinth. Here's what I tell you. Some of these are dangers for the individual believer. So these are like dangers for you personally. Others of them are like could be said within a friend group, family setting, workplace. Um, others of it are things that we need to be concerned about. When I say we, I mean our church family needs to be concerned about these. We need to be warned of specific types of danger. Now, I don't know if you've realized this, but the entire world is like uh is warning you of danger. So if you drive south today or north on 49 after church, you get to a bridge, you'll see a sign that says something to the effect of, hey, if it ices, be careful because it's it's gonna get slippery right here. Or there are all kinds of warnings on food labels. Man, you can't even eat lettuce right now. And if you do, you do it at your own peril. I've been avoiding lettuce for 42 years, and I want to encourage you to join me. You know what's never made me sick? Chocolate chip cookies. Not once. Not once, okay? So just avoid that. Uh there are those commercials that you see on TV that are introducing a new drug that just hit the market, and uh, and everybody's like on the beach and they're hitting a beach ball back and forth, they're laughing, they're drinking a coke, and you know, they're just having just a great, great time. If you listen to the narrator, they're describing how if you take the medicine, you're gonna at best lose a limb, but you're probably gonna die. You know what I'm saying? Like all kinds of warnings throughout the world right now. And here's what I tell you Paul had some warnings for a church just like this. Like, just like we're sitting in today. He said, There are some things in your life that if you're not careful, will kill your spiritual life. And he and he speaks first of all, I think it's interesting, he doesn't speak to you, first of all, in the passage, he speaks to us. And so we'll begin where the Bible begins, where Paul began. And here's what he talks about, first of all, in chapter one. He speaks about the danger of division, the danger of division. Some of you have heard me say this before, but um, I believe sometimes in church settings, we think that the early church was a perfect model of church and that they had it all together, and we just need to get back to the early church. If we get back to the early church, we're gonna be better off. And I I agree with that to an extent, but also I would I would just ask a question. Have you ever read First Corinthians? These people are jacked up, there's relational strife, there's sexual sin of all types, and we're gonna get to that over the next 11 weeks together. And so this is not a perfect church whatsoever. He said, Well, why wasn't it a perfect church? Because it had people in the church. Why is Cross Church not a perfect church? Because you're here, and I'm the pastor. Jacked up galore, right? We're just a messed up group of people who happen to meet together every Sunday, right? That is the church. And so Paul warns these people about hey, you're a family, and yet it's gonna be easy to get divided. What I'm about to say today, it no doubt applies to your family, it applies to a friend group, a workplace, business. Like, yes and amen to all that. You can use it in that way. That's just not what Paul's talking about in this passage. He's speaking to us in this local church setting about the local church. He is speaking to us as individual followers of Jesus, who are sitting next to other individual followers of Jesus, and who oftentimes get mad at one another. Okay, that's what it's all about. And so he begins with the goal, and I want to begin down in verse 10. First nine verses are some introductory remarks and uh stuff like that. Then he gets to verse 10, which is where he begins to speak about the goal of unity. He says, This, I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there may be no divisions among you, and that you may be united in the same mind and in the same judgment. Now, Paul's there. God's desire for the people of God is that they would be one. And that is much easier said than done. So why is it easier said than done? Again, you're a sinner, I'm a sinner, people next to you are sinners. We will not be perfected till we get to heaven. And so until then, we we bear with one another in love, the way the Bible says it. And so I want you to write this statement down, okay? It is easier to be divided than it is to remain as one. It's easier to be divided than to remain as one. That's the message of our first verse today. Now, think about this within our own church context, okay? Some of you have a genuine question of Nick, why are we doing the preaching like we're doing it right now, where we're utilizing a little bit more video and we're kind of linking up together, like what is the purpose of that? Because it is easier to be divided than it is to remain as one. Uh, we don't want to be four separate churches, and I promise you, with everything that was with that is within me, it would be much easier than you think to get there extremely quickly. And so this is one of numerous ways that we are saying, hey, let's stay together, let's stay together on mission. And yet, here's the here's the bad news. Okay, I have bad news for you. I know you came to church for encouragement, but can I give you the bad news? At some point in your life, somebody who calls themself a Christian will hurt you. Somebody you're going to church with who is supposed to be a godly follower of Jesus, they will hurt you. Even you may look at church leadership at some point, and you may say, Well, I don't appreciate how you handled a situation or you blew it on this or you made a wrong decision. And no doubt, that's true about our church. It's true about any church you'll ever be a part of. Okay. Um, we all will deal with this at some point of pain from the people of God or the house of God or an individual person of God. Okay. So the question is, well, what are we supposed to do with that? Some of you, if you're honest, you're on the fringes of our church because at some point in your life, some Christian hurts you and you're like at a distance from now on. Or some of you are inconsistent because at some point, somebody in your life who said they were Christian, maybe it's a church, like they hurt you, and so you're just inconsistent altogether. Some of you have all the external look of being right and involved, and you're deeply involved. You're you're all the ways that we would measure being involved, you're involved, you're just deeply bitter. And I can see it on your face many times as I'm preaching. It's not like a call out of anybody today. Some of you are like, trying to force a smile right now, so I'm not talking about you. When we get hurt, it has all kinds of unintended consequences. And sometimes those are even detrimental in our own lives here. So, in the middle of situations like this, of getting hurt and being divided from someone else, Paul gives this encouragement. He says, You got to be united together. He he talks about church unity in uh in four or five different ways. He gives four or five different words or phrases here that I want you to write down in your journal today. Number one, he says this he calls us brothers. Okay, it would be appropriate brothers and sisters. Okay, he's speaking about people who are in the same family together. He's not appealing for us to be uh, you know, joined together with outsiders or with lost people. He's writing directly to you saying you are in the same family of God together. So everybody do a little exercise, be uncomfortable. Look to your right, to the person there and say, We're family. Tell them now turn to the left, tell the tell the other person or family. Okay. If you're a college student and you're hungry, just find an adult and just say this. Please feed me. Okay. After church, take me to lunch with you, okay? Stuff like that. He says, brothers, he says the second phrase. He says, All of you agree. Now I want everybody just to look around the room today. I don't know how many people are in here, but it's a lot. You may wonder as you read the Bible, how in the world are we all supposed to agree about everything? It's not what the Bible's saying. Uh, this is not a shallow mindset where we all think the same way about every single thing. It means we agree on the main things together. Jesus is the only way to salvation. Bible is the word of God. We agree on spiritual things, we agree on the main things, on the right things. And here's what you'll find. You say, well, why would Paul begin this letter to this church? Why would he why would he begin by speaking on this aspect of unity? Well, if we agree on the main things, we'll not be divided about the little and petty things. And yet in many churches, that's reversed. We don't agree on the little petty things, and so we let those things distract us from the main things, and the church doesn't get anything done because we're so busy fighting one another. That's what Paul's warning about here. He goes on, he gives a third phrase here. He says that there be no divisions among you. No divisions among you. The word for dis uh for division here is the Greek word schismata. It speaks to the tearing of fabric. So here's what Paul is saying to them. He's describing the church to them, and he's like this You as the church, you are torn apart through division. You ever been into that kind of church? Like it's not fun, it's not fun at all. Uh people and churches and believers, they they start to focus on the petty secondary things and they they argue about those, and before you know it, the whole church is divided over little things. Preferences rule the day. People, you know, say things about worship. Like, man, I don't worship didn't speak to me today. I didn't realize we were singing to you today. You see what I'm saying? Or or man, I I wish we should be doing this curriculum in the kids' ministry instead of this curriculum because we should. Preference type thing, or you got your seat in the sanctuary. And man, when somebody else, when a first-time guest who doesn't know Jesus sits in my seat, God forbid you're the person who asked them to move. And like I'm jokingly serious here, none of us have a seat here. Okay. We sit in certain places, we don't have a seat. My favorite days at the Fayetteville campus, uh, where we're often pushed into overflow is when I walk it. I normally sit about where I sit. See that? Sit right here. Um my favorite days are when I walk in the back of the Fayetteville campus sanctuary, and our head usher, guy by the name of Ted Seago, goes, Hey Nick, I gave away your seat. I say, sweet. And I go and I stand on the wall over here at Fayetteville, and I worship against the wall with everybody on that section, and then I walk on stage. Nobody has a seat. So, so so we're not ruled by little petty golden calves that if you change this golden calf, the whole thing gets disrupted. We agree on the main things. And when we agree on the main things, everything goes a lot better. Okay. Now, thankfully, this doesn't describe our church, and we're not a we're not a fighting church. Many of you have come from other churches, and you like take a deep breath here, and you're like, man, I'm so glad that we're not we're not in a church that fights anymore. Um, you may say, well, so why are we talking about division when we're not a divided church? Because if we don't always fight for unity, at some point we will be divided. If we don't lay the groundwork that we are together in a family, at some point we will be disrupted. We often just have like an internal uh phrase that we use with people. We're like, hey, we don't fight here. So if you want to fight, I can recommend some great churches in the area for you to go to, but here we don't fight. Doesn't mean we don't have hard conversations, doesn't mean we sweep things under the rug, doesn't mean there's not hard that happens. But what it means is we address it, we work from a place of unity, and we come together as a church body. I think that's what Paul is after here. He gives the fourth statement. He says that you be united in the same mind and in the same judgment, united in the same mind and in the same judgment. The word united here carries the idea of mending something that was broken. So, Paul, think about those two phrases. Paul's saying, you're not together and you need to mend the relationship. You're apart and you need to come together. I've said it this way before. If there's if there's anywhere in the world where two people can get it wrong, get in a fight, can't stand each other, and then make it right, apologize, forgive, move forward in unity. May it be the Church of Jesus Christ. Like let's let's show the world what we do that they don't do in the business world sometimes, or that families don't do in their own family lives. Like we are a model, doesn't mean we don't get angry at each other. Doesn't mean we don't disagree with one another. It means that we we come together, we work from unity, and we work together to get to a place where we need to be. Now, think about this. When it says the same mind and same judgment, it again is referencing the foundation of the word of God and the cross of Jesus Christ. That that is what we are together on. Um, here, just a little cool Bible trivia for you if you like that. Um, in the first 10 verses, Jesus is mentioned 10 times. So, who is the foundation of our unity together? It's Jesus. It's not me as the pastor. It's not even Cross Church as a church. Jesus has called us to be one here together. Now, again, I want everybody, everybody look up and down your road, like all judgy like. Like just kind of scowl at people, check them out. All very different in the room. Are we not? Like, I wish you could see my vantage point of I'm looking at kids, I'm looking at young adults, looking at you know, high school kids, middle-aged people, wise people, you know what I'm saying? I'm looking at a lot of a lot of different generations here represented today. But here's here's what you gotta understand some of you have been in church since you were like nine months before you were born, and you're still in. Others of you have wandered into church and it's your very first time ever into church. Church feeling may we never remember our interactions with people, may give them a great picture of who Jesus is or a terrible picture of who Jesus is. Um, some of you know the Bible very well. Others of you don't know the Bible at all, don't even own a Bible. Um, some of you are from the The rest of you welcome to the Lord's country. Okay? Come from the northeast or west, and we're glad to have you. Clap over being from the okay. That's good. How about you clap when I say something spiritual? Like Jesus is the only way. Okay, there we go. All right. Pagans. All right. Some of you love the devil's cowboys. Others of you need to get right with the Lord. Okay, we're all very, we're all very different, right? So think about what the power of the Bible, what it's saying to us. Incredibly different all around you. Like you'd never hang out with these people, probably outside of church because you're so different. And yet you come together in church and within this family, and you become closer than family. That is something that only Jesus can do. Author David K. Lowry writes about this passage in such a beautiful way. He said Paul's appeal was for harmony, not the elimination of diversity. He desired a unity of all the parts, like a quilt of various colors and patterns blended together in a harmonious whole. Man, I love a good quilt. Anybody else? It's like the benefit of a blanket without being hot. I don't want to be hot, I mean covered with that cool greatness. That's a quilt. If I were to hold a quilt up here, if you've ever seen one, they are often different patches of cloth that are all sewn together to make one big blanket. And then even though all the patches are very different, it comes together as one. That is the Bible's description of the local church. Not the elimination of diversity, but the presence of unity. And that's a powerful, powerful thing. Can I give you like a silly picture? Because you're gonna make fun of me at lunch after church, but I'm doing this for you. Okay. Um can you imagine if my if my big thumb had a problem with my left pinky? And I started arguing like, man, I got no need for you in my life. I don't have any need for you in my life. You're small. You're big. I just go back and forth back and forth. Ridiculous, is it not? Like some of you are googling other churches to visit right now, okay? As ridiculous as this is, it's not quite as ridiculous as two members of the family of God and the body of Christ who are also at odds together saying, I have no need of you. So as dumb as this picture is, this is dumb and dumber. It's dumber to be in a place where you are so at odds with someone else in your church family, in the same body of Christ, that you are at odds, the Bible says, No. That is never where you should be in any respect. So he begins with the goal. Look at verse 11. He goes to then what's going to be the temptation for you in your life? All right, look at verse 11. He says, For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people, there's quarreling among you brothers. What it means is that each one of you says, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollos, I follow Cephas, I follow Christ. Pause there for a second. Um, we don't even know who Chloe was. We believe that she was a prominent woman. She most likely even had servants, and all we know is that somehow her people got to Paul. So all the way from Corinth to Ephesus, these people of Chloe, whoever they were, were like, Paul, man, you gotta write a letter to those people in Corinth. That church is jacked up, fighting all together, sleeping all together, doing all kinds of sin together. Like, you gotta write them a letter, Paul. All from Chloe. Now it goes on. Apollos was a was a popular believer and teacher in Corinth, Cephas was the Apostle Peter, just his other name. And are you seeing what's happening here? These believers within this church are falling into different camps. Oh man, I've I'll follow Cephas Peter. Now man, I I'm an Apollos guy. Write this statement down, and there's a constant temptation to fall into camps of division instead of pursuing unity. There's a constant temptation to fall into groups of division, camps of division instead of pursuing unity. Uh here's what I say. It's very natural for you to go towards people that say, Well, I think the church should well I think this. You don't buy what I'm saying? Let's let's talk about the next time our church does any major initiative moving forward, and then go to your small group that week and just listen to the conversations. Is it divisive conversations? Is it conversations of unity? Uh you can have a part in that. You say, Well, what does our church need right now? Men and women of God who will pursue unity. What does our church need more of in the future? Men and women of God who will pursue unity, who will be a mature follower of Christ, deal with issues, forgive people, and move on. He goes on. Look at verse 13. He says, Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? So let's do a little question and answer. Is Christ divided? Yes or no? No? Was Paul crucified for you? Yes or no? Okay. Were you baptized in the name of Paul? Yes or no? Okay. No to all those. He said, I thank God that I baptized none of you except Christoph and Gaius. This is funny. So that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. Verse 16. Now I did baptize also the household of Stephanus. Beyond that, I don't know whether I baptized anyone else. He's just forgotten. Okay? This very authentic Bible moment right here. He's writing it like I didn't baptize any of you. Well, shoot, there was the household of Stephanus. Beyond that, I don't know of anybody else. And we did that big revival one time in Corinth and a baptized. I don't remember. Just a funny little thing in there, okay? Verse 17 is where we'll end. For Christ did not send me to baptize. Let's read this together, but to preach the gospel. And not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. Paul sums up a section on unity by saying, Listen, I'm not here to baptize, but I'm here to preach the gospel. So even though baptism is mentioned, the focus is not on baptism, it's the preaching of the gospel. So if you're here today and you're new to Christianity, you're new to church, new to the faith, the Bible, here's what I would tell you. Baptism cannot save you. You may have seen people get baptized before. It does not save you, it only makes you wet. It is what you do after you give your life to Jesus, after you get saved. It's a public proclamation of your faith. In that same vein, uh, as glad as we are that you are here today, coming to church doesn't save you. Doesn't make you right with God. Being a good person doesn't save you. The comparison game. Man, I'm better than the dude that I work with. Trust you me. That doesn't save you. Only Jesus Christ can save you. Paul says, I've come to preach that message, the gospel. You say, Well, what is the gospel? The gospel is this that God in heaven looked upon you exactly as you were before you had ever even thought about him. And Jesus Christ died for you. The Bible says that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. People often come to church and they think, man, I think God's speaking to me. I need to go stop doing some things I'm doing, I need to start doing some good things, and then I'll come to God. It's the exact opposite. You come to God exactly as you are, and He is the one who cleans you up. And so today, some of you may need to take that step. We're gonna give you that opportunity here in just a moment. But it may be the first time you've ever heard the gospel, or it may be the first time it's ever clicked with you. God loves you. God loves you. You may have spent your whole life looking for love and searching for love. God loves you. And Jesus can change everything about your life. He can forgive you of sin, give you a brand new start, cover all of your past with his blood. Only Jesus Christ can do that. I want to close with with a uh with a passage that's not in 1 Corinthians, interestingly. But it's another one of Paul's letters. He's writing to a different church. He's writing to a church at Ephesus, and it's the book called Ephesians. This is the heartbeat of the seven verses that we have looked at. It's just in a different way, said in a different manner. Just look at the screen. Paul says, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called. You say, Well, what is the calling? Is that like my calling to be a teacher or a businessman? No, it's the calling that God gave you to be saved. He's saying, like, if God's called you to be saved, act like you're saved. He then goes into this with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Here it is. Eager to maintain, another key word, the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. When the Bible says the word eager here, it is it is make every diligent effort. As much as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all people. It is an ongoing effort. Well, Nick, I've tried. Ongoing effort at peace. When the Bible says that we are eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace, here's what it means: we don't create unity. This message is not a we got to fight for unity. You know what this message is? We fight from unity, we're already together. That's why it says you got to be eager to maintain what God has done. And so, anybody got issues with anybody else in the church? I mean, honestly, the last thing when an issue arises that we want to do is be eager to, you know, reconcile. We're eager to like, you know, ask the Lord to smite them, not eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. And so I want to encourage you to be that kind of person today. Now, this may be true in your family today, maybe at odds with somebody in your family, eager to maintain spirit of unity in the bond of peace. You may be the issues with somebody in this church right now, in this service, and you sit in a section that you know they're not gonna sit in, and you enter into an interest you know they're not gonna enter into. If the shoe fits today, I want you to wear it. Eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. I want you to think about my hand as we wrap up, okay? Um, every one of these fingers represents people that are in every church across the world. Every church. It's true in our church as well. Let me describe who these people are. Number one, I'll say, are these are the thumbs up people here all the time, supportive, smiling. Man, I love my church. But it basically stops there. You're not really involved, don't serve in any way, don't give anything, but you like your church, you're just a thumbs up person. Um actually are the pointer finger people who they're always pointing out what's wrong in the church, always critical of other people, always cynical of other people. And at times they're on they're on the fringes of the church in their cynicism. And they're just pointing out how everybody's wrong. You say, Well, Nick, who's the middle finger? I don't think you want to know. Um, I'm just kidding, I don't know who I just need to skip over that one, okay? You got the ring finger, okay? Better said, ring finger. You're committed. So many. I mean, we just looked at people who've been here 20 to 25 years and who have been living out the Great Commission faithfully within this church body. They have served so that you could find a place to park when you first came to church. They have given a decade before you ever came here so that you would have a place for your preschooler to be dropped off. They are committed to the max, and so just from the heart of your pastor to you, to many, many of you in this room, I say praise God for you and thank you. And some of you need to you need to get right here. Others of you, I'll just call it like the pinky finger. Um, you're maybe newly saved, or this is this is all new to you, and so it's just kind of a weak thing that, and many, unless you keep growing, you're kind of unstable, you look, you look at all of them, you're you're short. You need to just keep growing into your faith. Every church has all five of these people. And uh what I'd say is apart and divided, we're all very vulnerable. If I were to stick out a finger and somebody hit it really hard, it'd probably break my finger. Or stick out my pinky and somebody hit it, it'd break my finger. Okay? When we are all separate, we don't accomplish very much. When we are all separate in division, fighting with one another, the last thing we are concerned about is a lost world outside of these walls, because all we're concerned about is fighting with one another. What 1 Corinthians chapter 1 begins with is a call to be united. And that when we go from being divided to being united, we are a force for good in the world. Man, we are a force for good in reaching families here in Northwest Arkansas. We're a force for good on a Wednesday night. Guys, there are very few churches in our nation that will have the opportunity and a platform to have thousands of college students Wednesday night to share the gospel because we're united together in reaching college students. We are united together in caring for the poor. You realize last week at Feed479, we fed more people than any other week in our history. Listen to this 8,500 people in one week. We are a force for good. Sweating, my glasses are falling down. So here's the call. If you're like this, get like this. You're on the fringes, get like this. You are here but not committed, get like this. You want to be standing the next time we do 25 years, you come on and you do this. And when we are united together, God has a way of using his church. There is nothing like it, the most diverse movement in the history of the world that is not bound by gender, by age, by race, but it is bound together with one mission, the gospel of Jesus Christ to the whole world. So I'm asking you to join me in this, okay? There are some of you, you say, well, what am I supposed to do with this? What I'm asking many of you to do is to become an anchor of unity in this church. Again, I'm preaching to the choir because we're a united church, don't have a lot of division, like, but for the future, I need some families who are gonna be like, hey man, let's go. We're gonna be uniters. Like we will be people of unity within this church. If that's you, I'm just gonna ask you to come in just a moment, get on your face with your family. Say, Lord, we want you to use us here to fulfill this passage and to be who you want us to be. There are others of you who, um, if you're honest with yourself, you'd say, Nick, I I'm at odds with somebody else. And maybe it's within the context of your church, like the passage was. And what you need to do right now is catch them in the lobby on the way out, or maybe it's send a text. Hey, can can I call you this week? I just I want to apologize for some stuff. Maybe it's in your family, and you need to do the same thing even as I speak right here. Take out your phone. Hey, mom, I'd like to talk this week. Hey, son, hey daughter, I'd like to talk this week. God's been doing a work in my heart. Some of you have been in that journey already, and you you have done what the passage talked about. You've been eager, and you've made every attempt at reconciliation, and honestly, you're at your wit's end, and you don't know what to do. I'm gonna ask you to come and just get on your knees before the Lord and say, Lord, I've done what I can do. I need you to do what only you can do. Would you bring reconciliation in my relationship? Family member, business partner, church member, whatever it may be there. And today, if you've never trusted Christ, the gospel that I spoke of just a moment ago, it is for you. You say, Nick, you have no idea what I've done. You're right. I just know what he's done. And he died on the cross for you, willingly, knowingly, of, you know, with knowledge of everything that you've ever done in your life, today you can be saved. I want us to bow our head and close our eyes as we end our service today. Our staff's gonna make their way to the front of each aisle. And if you're here today, and uh man, you're the person I just talked about, you know you're lost, you know you need Christ, and you are ready to surrender your life to Jesus for the very first time. I'm gonna invite you to come in just a moment. As we stand and sing, you leave where you're seated, and you just come to one of these men or women. We've got them all across the front. We've got them stationed by the by the stairs to the balcony. And here's what I tell you: if you need to be saved, all you gotta do is walk to them and take their hand and say, I need to give my life to Jesus. And today, they will lead you to faith in Christ in a very private manner, not coming on stage, anything weird, okay? But would you do that today? Maybe you're here today and you are at odds with somebody else, and man, you you've made every attempt. Or know you need to make an attempt. You're scared to death. I'm just gonna invite you to come. Just get on your knees at the altar, Lord, help me. I'm gonna ask many of you, maybe you've been an anchor, and maybe you want to be an anchor in the future. I want to be a person of unity within this body of believers. Would you come? Just get on your knees before the Lord and just tell him, Lord, use me in that capacity. Father, it's our desire that you would move in these last final moments of our service. Um much more than beyond anything that I could do or our church could do, but something the Holy Spirit could only do. So, Lord, would you do it now? It's in Christ's name that we pray.

unknown 41:52

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

If you have questions about what you have heard or would like more information about your relationship with Jesus, please email us at info at crosschurch.com or visit our website at crosschurch.com. At Crosschurch, our mission is to reach Northwest Arkansas, America, and the world for Jesus Christ.