Unity: Value Other’s Differences

Well, Father God, we just want to say thank you for the opportunity to be in your house

once again and to worship.

And Lord, with the song that we just sang, Lord, we're just reminded that God, your ways

are better than our ways.

Lord, I know many of us have a lot of plans and a lot of things and thoughts in life, but

Lord, your purpose, your plan, your ways are so much better than ours.

And Lord, as we come together today as a body of believers, we fully acknowledge that we need

to surrender ourselves to you, to be able to experience what your plans are.

Lord, if we've come today and we've come to hear your word and just try to feel good and

maybe just learn something new, Lord, we've come for the wrong reasons, we've got the

and to become a part of your kingdom and become a part of your purpose and become a part of your plan

is so necessary, even in the simple aspect of how we walk in fellowship with you.

And so, Lord, I pray this morning that you would just speak truth to us right now in this moment.

I dare to imagine there's people in this room who did not come here to submit today.

And so, Lord, I pray that in the depths of their heart that they would feel you speaking to them.

And Lord, they would recognize your voice and know that this is not anything to be afraid of,

but Lord, we should step out into your loving grace to work and move on our hearts this morning.

And Father, as we meet with you and we ask for you to send your Holy Spirit

into this place and into our hearts, Lord, we also ask for you to be with the many people

of our church who aren't able to be here. God, we pray for all of our women who's been on the

retreat this weekend. Lord, we thank you for giving them the opportunity and the ability to

go away and have a good time and, Lord, to study your word and just fellowship with one another.

Lord, as they travel back right now, as they're on the road, we pray that you would

be with our shut-ins, with our people who are experiencing

just physical ailments and issues. Lord, just touch them and let your Holy Spirit be with them today.

Father, we pray for Pastor Long and his wife and their family as they're going through this

hard time, and we pray that you would continue to guide and lead in the season of their life.

And Father, we are here because we know that you are the only one

who can work and move in all these things. You're the only one who can touch our hearts. You're

the only one who can speak truth to us and help us to turn away from the things that we're so drawn

to. Lord, you're the only one who can do that. So this morning we come before you,

we humble our hearts and lives to you, and we ask that you would speak and move in a powerful way.

Father, we love you. We thank you for your son, Jesus, and all that he did on the cross for us.

And we ask all this in his precious and holy name, all God's people said. Amen. You may be seated.

Well, we got about 20 women on our women's retreat this weekend, so I don't know how many of you

guys, how your weekend have been, but I'll share with you a little bit about mine.

So far we had a broken candle. Two kids got cut. One kid got their fingers smashed in the door

of the truck, and it's been fun. Can't wait for Hannah to get back. But no, we've had a great

time. Hope they've had a good time. We've been talking about unity within the body of Christ,

unity within the church. And so, you know, as important as it is for us to

make sure that we're protecting this thing that God has called us to do,

today we're going to talk about having value for each other's differences.

And this sounds like something that is talked about a lot today. Like, you know, we talk about

diversity. We talk about all these different things today in our culture. It's a much more prevalent

than it used to be. But especially inside the body of Christ, inside our everyday life,

when you think about what it means to value one another's differences, it is so very important.

And when I think about like the most special and intimate relationship that I have,

which is with my wife, you know, I did not marry her because she was like me. In fact,

I married her because she was the opposite of me. You ever heard the old saying that, you know,

people who argue are more alike than they like to admit? You know, we generally argue with people

that we're alike because we butt heads were very similar. And so one of the greatest things about

one of the most special relationships in my life is that my wife is different. First of all,

she's a woman and not a man, which is a good start. The other thing is, is that for everything

that I'm gifted and talented in, like, she's not like me in those ways. And she's very gifted

and talented in other ways. And so for example, like I do a lot of stuff with equipment and things

like that. And I can work on a lot of things with equipment. And then a couple weeks ago,

the computer on one of my pieces of equipment went out and she was out there working on the

computer and researching stuff and looking and figuring out what the problem was because

she's good with computers and I'm not. And so we compliment one another. And in a simple

example like that is understanding how even the intimacy of marriage of how like we're God has

called us to compliment one another. And he's created us to be very different as a man and woman,

even inside the body of Christ, God has created every single one of us to be different for a reason.

We're supposed to be different. You look around in this room, look at the people beside you.

I'm not going to make you shake hands and do weird stuff this morning. I know you're

probably scared because I did that a couple of weeks ago. But look around the people around

you. You all look different. One of the greatest compliments we've had about our church in the

past is that I'm an older gentleman who shared with me is I was just so impressed at how many

different people you have in your church, young people, old people, different ethnicities,

different walks of life, different everything. It's just amazing to see the amount of different

people you have in your church. And he was a pastor. He knows how special and how rare that

is to have a church with so many different people in it. And we said last week, one of the

disagreements or arguments, but how we handle them. The fact that we are different

is one of our greatest testimonies that we have as a church. God created us to be different.

He loves the fact that we are different. He loves the fact that we are unique in individuals.

And at the very same time that we're all unique, we're all different. We all look different. We

act different. We talk different. We all still bear the image of God. We're all made in the image

of God. That's a wonderful thing to think about. The person who looks complete opposite from you

is yet still made in the image of God. They bear the image of their maker on their lives.

And as a calling for us as believers, we're called to live in unity with one another.

It's one of our greatest testimonies as Christians is how well we maintain the unity between one

another as believers. So this morning, we're going back to Romans. We're going to finish up

chapter 14 and we're going to dive into chapter 15 for a few verses. And out of reverence for

the word, I'm going to ask you to stand once again, because I think it's really important

that as we are talking about something as simple as this, we acknowledge the power and the

authority of God's words. I'm going to ask you to stand with me. You can turn there,

Romans 14, we'll start with 19 through 22, or it will be on the screen if you would like to

look there. So Paul says, so then let us aim for harmony in the church and try to build

each other up. Don't tear apart the work of God over what you eat. Remember, all foods are

acceptable, but it is wrong to eat something if it makes another person stumble. It is better not

to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else if it might cause another believer to stumble.

You may believe there's nothing wrong with what you are doing, but keep it between yourself and

God. Blessed are those who don't feel guilty for doing something they have decided is right.

Let's go to chapter 15 verses one through nine. We who are strong must be considerate of those

who are sensitive about things like this. We must not just please ourselves. We should help others

do what is right and build them up in the Lord. For even Christ didn't live to please himself,

as the scriptures say, the insult of those who insult you, O God, have fallen on me.

Such things were written in the scriptures long ago to teach us, and the scriptures give us hope

and encouragement as we wait patiently for God's promises to be fulfilled.

May God who gives us patience and encouragement help you to live in complete harmony with each

other, as is fitting for the followers of Christ Jesus. Then all of you can join together with

one voice, giving praise and glory to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore accept each other just as Christ has accepted you so that God will be given glory.

Remember that Christ came as a servant to the Jews to show that God is true to the promises he made

to their ancestors. He also came so that the Gentiles might give glory to God for his mercies

to them. This is what the Psalmist meant when he wrote, for this I will praise you among the

Gentiles. I will sing praises to your name. You may be seated this morning.

Point number one, as we talk about unity, you must aim for it. It's one of the first things we see

in chapter 14 as Paul continues on, and he's talking about these weird differences, and you

and I have a really tough time understanding what these people were disagreeing on. You know,

last week we talked they were disagreeing on the days that they should worship on.

They were disagreeing on the foods that they should be able to eat or not should be abstaining

from eating. These were big issues inside the early church for different reasons, because the

Jewish law, but also there was a lot of food that was offered to idols, and so there was a

belief in the early church that you shouldn't eat food offered to idols, that it would contaminate

you spiritually, in a sense, and so there was a lot of arguments over all these things,

and the church had big disagreements on it, and Paul in wisdom is writing a lot of these

books in the New Testament, especially in Romans right here, and he's trying to give guidance

in this. He says, listen, there's so many things for you as an individual that if you feel free,

if you can do this without feeling guilt, great, okay, awesome. Blessed is the person who can do

something whenever it's been revealed that it's okay for them. He says that, but if there's another

person among you who feels convicted over this, you shouldn't do something that would cause them to

question what's right and wrong, and it could be a matter of this person's just a young Christian,

they aren't quite mature yet, they still have a very sensitive conscience, or it could be the fact

that maybe there's something we're doing in our life that we haven't felt guilty about yet,

and it could be something that the Lord needs to reveal to us, and he just hasn't done that yet,

and so the shoe could be on either feet, does that make sense? But Paul's writing about this,

he's navigating through these differences that these people are experiencing,

and as a church today in 2025, there are a million, billion, cajillion, whatever other

zillion reasons you could think of that we could disagree on something as believers in Christ,

whether it be differences in culture, politics, and even personal convictions. We can find an

endless world of things to disagree on, but we're called to maintain unity within the body of Christ,

and Paul says in chapter 14, you gotta aim for it, and you know this, that if you don't aim

for something, you won't hit it. I've always enjoyed shooting from a kid, I got a BB gun when

I was like five or six years old, probably before I should have had one. I ran around the world, shot

everything I could find, shot up in the air, shot randomly, didn't care, didn't aim it a whole lot,

didn't matter, because I just got to shoot, and that was fun. Got a lot of whippens for it too,

a lot of broke glass, a lot of dents and things, a lot of stuff that was going on that shouldn't

have happened, but when you're a kid and you're young, you don't care, because it's just the fun,

you know, it's like one of the first things that you find when you teach someone how to shoot a gun

they just want to shoot it. They're not really concerned with aiming something, so a lot of times

you'll try to teach them and show them, and then the first thing they'll do is they'll turn away

and they just shoot, and it's like the thrill of just firing that first round, just getting it

over with and going, oh, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, and as you continue

to shoot, and just like anything else in life, if you want to enjoy it and you want to continue

doing it, the only way that you can continue to do it for decades leading on into the future

is if you get better at it. You're trying to improve at it. I mean, if you just go out there

and it's like, close your eyes, it's like, okay, that was fun, I want to do something else now,

but for you to continue to do something and enjoy doing it, you got to get better at it,

and so as you study something as simple, and I'm just using shooting because Paul's talking about

aiming, you begin to realize that everything that you do when you go to shoot something matters,

and it matters even more according to the distance that you're going to be shooting.

There are people who shoot stuff at over a mile away. There are people who are absolutely

incredible at what they are able to accomplish, and I'm not that good. I can tell you I'm not

that good, but I enjoy shooting, and so I know that the way that you hold the gun matters

I know the way that you're looking, the positions that you get in as you're shooting,

the way that you breathe, the way that you squeeze the trigger, the way that you hold your hands,

everything that you do, the fact that when you pull the trigger according to when you breathe,

it all matters, and that's just from a simple very elementary aspect of target shooting.

That's not moving into competition. That's not moving into military. That's not moving

into life-or-death situations. It matters. The smallest little things, the quality of your weapon

matters. The quality of your ammunition and the consistency of your ammunition, it matters,

and if it matters something as simple as shooting, which is a enjoyable sport,

if it matters in something as trivial as that, and we look at our spiritual lives

in our walk with Christ, and something that is eternally significant, something that determines

the eternal life, whether it be for you or someone that you know, how much more important

is it that we do it and we do it right? We do it well, and this is why Paul says you have to take

aim at living in harmony with each other, because if you don't aim for it, you won't hit it.

We can all profess faith in Jesus Christ, and we can all say, yeah, I love the Lord, I got saved,

I was baptized, I'm good to go to heaven, and we can all make that claim, and that's all well and

good, but to ignore everything else in scripture that calls us to live for Christ, to sacrifice

for Him, and to not just do it on a personal level, but to do it on a body of Christ,

a church level, to live in harmony with one another is one of the greatest testimonies that

we can give to the world. It's one thing to be able to say, Christ done a great work in me.

It's another thing for a community to look inward at a church of 150 people and say, man,

God is doing something amazing among all those people. Not only can He do it for an individual,

but man, look at what He's doing in the lives. Our greatest testimony is not going to be the

absence of disagreements, but it's going to be the manner in which we handle those disagreements,

the manner in which we handle those differences, and so we have to aim for it.

And guys, this morning, amen. If you're living for Jesus and there's no effort in your life

aiming for unity, you're not going to hit it. You have to purposefully live among other believers

with the conscious thought of, I'm called to live in unity and harmony with my fellow brothers

and sisters in Christ. Because here's the truth. If you haven't been hurt by church or someone in

church, it's going to happen. If it hasn't already happened, it's going to happen. We're people,

we're all sinful, we're not perfect. We're going to fall. We're going to do something or say something

to hurt one another. And in those times, we have to maintain that attitude and that mindset and

that thought process of we are aiming to maintain unity. The unity of the church is more important

than us and how we feel and what we want and vengeance and whatever else we can think of

that we feel like we need. One of the greatest callings on your life as a believer is to aim

for unity. Point number two, if you tear others down, you inevitably tear God down.

If you tear others down, you inevitably tear God down. Now, Paul says this in chapter 14, verse 19.

He tells us to aim for harmony, but verse 20 follows up with and warns us not to tear apart the work

of God. When we have disagreements, when we have things that happen within the body of Christ,

and trust me, they're going to happen. They are going to happen. And when we have these moments,

we have to be really careful that we don't fall into this temptation and the thought process of

tearing down another person because here's the deal. Who is made in the image of God?

All of us. Every time we slander someone, every time we talk bad about someone,

every time we put someone else down or we make fun of them, inevitably we are doing that against

God. That person bears the image of your father in heaven and your savior.

That's a hard pill to swallow because I'm sure that every one of us right now can think of

at least a handful of people who it's really hard for us to even be around them,

but they are made in the image of God. And guys, I'm telling you,

it's really important for us to look in the mirror and also understand that, man,

we're a handful too. I'm a handful. Like I'm not easy to live with. Ask Hannah like I'm not.

It takes a lot of work for us to make our marriage work because I'm not easy to live with.

But we're all made in the image of God. And so for us to be reminded that yes,

while we're capable of sin and hurt and pain and frustration and all those things to do that

to one another, we're still made in the image of God. God chose to give his image to every

single one of us, which is a wonderful, amazing blessing. And so we got to be careful not to tear

one another down. Mark chapter nine, verses 38 through 40. There's this little instance where

the disciples come in contact with us. And I'll just read it to you.

John said to Jesus, teacher, we saw someone using your name to cast out demons,

but we told him to stop because he wasn't in our group. Don't stop him. Jesus said,

no one who performs a miracle in my name will soon be able to speak evil of me.

Anyone who is not against us is for us. And guys,

when we talk about church and when we talk about following the Lord and serving him and

the expectations for people, I just want to be really clear that I'm not calling us this morning

to welcome in sin or anything like that. But to be reminded that everyone's not going to look

the way that we think they should look. They're not going to talk the way we think they should

talk. They're not going to act or dress or anything the way that we think that they should.

Maybe they should improve in some ways. Maybe they shouldn't. And that will hopefully come in time.

You look at this situation where even the disciples who were handpicked by Jesus to follow him

saw other people doing this and they wanted to shut them down because they weren't a part of

their group. He wasn't, Lord, you didn't pick him to follow you like you did us.

You didn't say that they could do this. You didn't send them out and give them the authority

to do this. But yet here's this very peculiar unnamed person in scripture who's going out and

doing ministry in the name of Jesus. They had enough faith to go out and begin using the

name of Jesus, doing God's work among people. And the disciples were angry about this because

he's not part of us. And so they try to stop him. And Jesus says, don't stop him. Let him be.

Guys,

there are going to be people that we interact with, that we do life with,

that we do church with who aren't going to be exactly what we think that they should be.

They're going to be immature in some ways. They're going to be very mature in other ways.

Some people are going to be younger than we think they should be to do this. Some people are going

to be too old than we think they should be to be able to do this. You with me? Like we can find all

kinds of reasons for people to do stuff and not to do stuff. But if people profess Jesus Christ

as Lord and Savior, they may not be exactly what we think that they should be.

But we have to be really careful that we don't fall into the trap of tearing other people down,

because if we begin to tear other people down and we're hindering God's work, we can find

ourselves working against God rather than working for God. And that's a dangerous place to be in.

You look at Jesus's own disciples, they were hindering the very work that they were

sacrificing their lives for. Because they had this thought process of he's not in our group,

therefore he can't do what we're doing. But Jesus says no, if they're not against us, they're for us.

One of the things we kept saying last week over and over again is Jesus is enough. If someone

professes Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, they may not look exactly like you, they may not

believe every single thing that you believe, they may not dress the way that you dress,

they may not talk the way that you talk, but Jesus is enough. And if we tear down someone

in the image of God, we tear down God. If we tear down the work that someone's doing,

we tear down God's work and we need to be reminded of that.

Point three, our desire should be to help. You know, when you look at this situation

of what's going on, we should never look at someone else and our instinct should not be

to just go in and start tearing them down. Our instinct and our desire should be to help them.

You know, I heard someone say the other day that for anyone who spends all their time on

social media and they're critiquing and they're blasting everyone else,

those people aren't accomplishing anything.

It's like you, they were saying that if you look at a person like that, like they're not

a successful person because they're too busy worrying about critiquing and blasting someone

else and they're not doing anything successful in their own life. Because if they were, they'd

be focused on that and not focused on someone else. Guys, our desire as believers should be

to help one another and to build one another up. And it can't be this attitude of pridefulness

or arrogance in it. There really has to be this attitude of humbleness to come to someone else

and to try to guide them and lead them in the name of the Lord and try to help them

along in their walks with Christ because people know the difference. People know.

They know whether or not you care about them. They know whether or not you actually love them.

They know whether or not you're genuine.

We aren't as well hidden as what we like to think that we are.

And so we have to be very careful. Our desire should be to help people, but not for the

wrong reasons. In Galatians 6, verse 3, Paul wrote to the church in Galatia.

Galatians 6:3

That was one of my favorite verses. He says,

if you think you're too important to help someone, you're only fooling yourself.

You're not that important.

We are called as believers to help one another, especially other believers.

And so our desire should be to help one another, not to tear each other down, but to help.

One of the greatest callings of our life is to love our neighbor as ourself.

Point four, we must accept one another.

And again, I just say, I'm not calling you this morning. I'm not challenging you.

We're not supposed to accept sin. We're not supposed to accept malice behavior.

We're not supposed to accept false gospels or people who are trying to change the gospel or

preach a different thing. We're not called to accept that. So I'm not calling you to be passive

or to be weak in any sort of way. What I am challenging you this morning to realize and see

and understand more than anything is, is we live in a very diverse world.

Not only will we all look different from one another, but we've all been raised differently

from one another. Our understanding of scripture, our understanding of God, our understanding of

church is very different from person to person. One person may have been raised in church and

scripture and prayer their entire life. And they've had countless generations of godly people

to set example before them. And one person may have grown up in a single family home,

prostitution, drugs, whatever. And you cannot expect those two people to look and act and

be the same. And it doesn't make one less than the other because the person who's raised up in a

godly home for generations of godliness is a wonderful blessing in their life. And there

are people that they will be able to minister to that this person over here won't be able to

minister to. And on the same hand, there's people on this side of the fence that this person will

never be able to relate or minister to or connect with at all. Unless God just miraculously provides

the opportunity. But the person over here, while they didn't have the same upbringing,

the same knowledge, the same understanding, they may not be living as holy as what we like to think

they should be living. They're professing Jesus Christ. They have turned away from sin. They

love the Lord. And while there still may be immaturity in their life, it's amazing how a

lot of these people God uses in amazing and powerful ways. We were made differently

for a reason. God has a purpose. We must accept one another. There are five things inside our

focus passages that we looked at today that we're called to do as believers. The first one is we

must help. The second is we must live in harmony. The third is we must join together in one voice.

The fourth is we must accept one another. And the fifth is we must serve one another.

We help. We live in harmony. We join together in one voice. We accept one another. We serve

one another. We're not going to look exactly the same. We're not accepting sin, but we are

accepting our differences and we value one another's differences. There are people in your

life that you have contact with every day that you will be able to minister to and present the

gospel to that I will never have the chance to reach them. I will never have the chance to do

and have the impact in their life that you will have. God has created you.

God has allowed you to endure situations and circumstances in life that may have been terrible

but have prepared you specifically for this moment. When I think about some of our

pregnancy issues early on in our marriage with Hannah and I, it prepared us specifically to be

how many people who have struggled with the same exact thing.

Everything that's happened in your life, good or bad, for whatever reason God has ordained

and God can use. And we're called to accept one another and to pray for one another and to build

one another up so that God can use us to bring glory and honor to him. Point five,

our differences are a blessing. That's what we have to be reminded of over and over

and over again. The fact that everyone in this room is different is a blessing.

True unity is only something that God can bring about if we're willing

to let him work and move within us as a body of believers. You know, you can look at a team

and they may all dress the same. They might wear a uniform. They may move in the same step.

They may look very unified. You can look at the military and they all wear the same uniforms

and they move in in formation and they do drills with one another and all that stuff looks great

and it is a form of unifying people. It gets you on the same mindset. It's good things to

practice because I'm going to tell you a true unity is not created by how we look.

It's not created by how we act, how we talk. True unity is the attitude from every individual

to humble themselves and submit themselves before a father in heaven

because we understand that his purpose and his plan is better than anything we could ever have

for ourselves and if we're willing to submit and humble ourselves to his plan

and I do that and Greg does that and Wes does that and Brian does that and Jared does that

and we submit to his plan. We're not united by common interests. We're not united by the way

we look, the way we act, the way we dress or anything like that. We're not united by

anything superficial or physical in this world because it's all temporary

but we're united by something that is bigger than all of creation. It's eternal. It's something

that will span our understanding of time because if we are united under God's plan and his purpose

and what he's calling us to do, that's unity that can't be created or duplicated in anything

else in this world. There's nothing like it. It's unexplainable. It's exactly why

the absence of differences, the absence of arguments, that's not our testimony.

Our testimony is how God can take 150 very different people and unify us in a way that

doesn't make sense to the world because they've never seen anything like it.

That's our greatest testimony and guys I challenge you as believers as a church this morning,

if you don't aim for it, you're not going to hit it. It's something that you have to understand.

It's not just about oh I need to wake up and do my devotions this morning. I need to pray and I

need to read my Bible and I'm going to go do this Bible study with someone else. It's not

just about what you can do and accomplish in your own walk with Christ but to even understand

that God's called you to something bigger to aim for unity with all of your people.

It doesn't mean you have to be best friends with everybody but you live in unity with one another,

that you serve one another, that you love one another, to know that we may not hang out every

single day but if you need me, you got my number, call me, I'll be there.

If we don't aim for it, we're not going to hit it and it's our greatest testimony as believers

and we should be aiming for it so that we can see it accomplished. Let's pray.

Father, thank you so much for this day and for the opportunity to be at church once again.

Lord, I pray for every man and woman in this room, every young person, every old person, Lord,

that you would speak into our hearts and show us your truth.

Lord, help us to see that the calling on our life

to be unified in one voice so that you will receive glory and honor

is just as important as us giving our hearts and lives to you and being saved.

It is part of the package. It's not anything separate. It's all part of the expectation of

a believer. Lord, help us to live according to your word and your ways to be your people

with one voice bringing glory and honor to you. We love you. We ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen.