(10.4.26) Sermon | The Same Team | Patrick Hardy

Welcome to the Generation Sturge Podcast, where we explore what it means to follow Jesus and live out our faith together.

Your story matters.

Thanks for listening.

Let's get started.

Amen.

Amen.

You can have a seat this morning.

Well, hey, we've already had church, so uh you may go in the piece.

No, alright, I still got something to do.

Alright.

Well, hey, it's good to be together uh this morning.

Uh you know, the fall season is probably the best time of year, isn't it?

I mean, the the temperature drops, the humidity goes away, parents, your kids go back to school, and most importantly, football gets going, right?

We all love some football.

Um, you know, Saturdays are for college football, Sundays are for the NFL, Monday nights are exclusive to Monday night football, and then Thursday nights are for Thursday night football.

And the only issue that I see with that is there are three nights of the week that we don't have football that I have to watch Dancing with the stars.

So it's like it's a real problem.

I'm hoping that they fix that here pretty soon.

But you know, every fall when the new season starts, if you are a football fan, you will look at your roster on your team and you'll start evaluating the talent that's on there.

You'll go, okay, this guy's pretty good, and we got a new receiver, and then you try to determine, okay, what are the expectations that I should have for this team before the season starts?

Now, like, for example, like if you're a Browns fan, uh, you just hope like maybe you win like one or two games.

Like you've already hit your threshold this year.

You hit three, you're good to go.

Or Bengals, you're just like, please, Joe Burrow, don't get hurt.

If he could just play, we're gonna be pretty good, right?

Um, and then for me, I'm a Patriots fan.

Uh so we went to the Super Bowl last year, thought we were gonna go to the Super Bowl this year, learned very quickly that's not gonna happen.

Uh, so I'm really heartbroken about that.

But I want you to imagine right now that you are a fan of an incredibly talented football team.

This team has the quarterback who's the absolute star.

You have explosive receivers who can catch the ball out there.

You've got an offensive line who can block, you have a defense that makes all of the plays, you got great coaches out there.

And on paper, you look at this team and you go, they should win a lot of games.

But there's a problem.

The quarterback thinks that it's all about him.

The receivers are complaining that they're not getting the ball enough.

The defense blames the offense when they lose the game.

The offense blames the defense when they lose the game.

Coaches are fighting with players, players are fighting with players.

And the team that you had really high expectations for that they were going to win all of these games this year, they're losing.

But it's not because of the talent that they have on their team.

They're losing because they're not playing like a team.

You see, you can have all of these gifted people playing on the same field together and yet still not have a unified team.

The uncomfortable truth for us as the church is I think sometimes the church looks more like a divided locker room than one of those unified teams.

But it makes sense though why we wouldn't be unified.

I mean, we're all so different.

We're incredibly different from one another.

We all have different family backgrounds, uh, we have different personalities, uh, we have different political opinions, we have different experiences, we have different preferences, we are different generations, we have different socioeconomic backgrounds, and now our pastor is making us separate when we worship together.

How are we possibly going to be unified?

As you walk through the doors of the church, we're told that we should be one, we should be united together, but how do we get a room full of incredibly different people all to be on the same page together?

And here's what I think we we oftentimes do: uh we we fake it.

We pretend like we are this unified group because we look at unity and we see it as like this unachievable goal for us.

Like maybe we can strive for it, but we're never really gonna get there.

So we come in, we worship together, we're friendly with one another, and then we go off to our factions.

We go to our friends and our tables and we talk about one another.

We see unity as a target to strive for, not as a reality that we can live in.

But unity doesn't mean that we have to have the same personality, doesn't mean that we always have to agree, we don't have to have the same taste in music.

But what does it actually mean for us to be united?

And Paul gives us the answer in 1 Corinthians, and it's a pretty cheesy church one.

The answer is Jesus.

So if you've got your Bible this morning, open it up to 1 Corinthians.

We're gonna be in verses 1 through 18 in just a moment.

If you don't have your Bible, no worries.

All of our scripture texts will be up on the screen for you to follow along.

And today we're starting a brand new series called In the Huddle, uh, where we're gonna be spending the next six weeks looking at the book of 1 Corinthians and who uh who we are called to be as the church.

And when you walked in this morning, you saw this little table that was hanging out back there.

And uh we have journals for everybody called the playbook.

Why do we have this for you?

Because any good team, they all know the plays that they're running together.

When they call the play, they know their role, they know their responsibility.

And what we believe is that we are lifelong learners.

Meaning, no matter if you've been coming to church since you were a baby, um, no matter how young you are, we should all be learning and growing in our faith.

And one of the best ways that we can be united and unified as a church is through opening up God's word and taking notes and being lifelong learners together.

So if you didn't grab one, grab a playbook, all right, and then all series long bring this back and take your notes in it so that we can be united uh together.

You see, the struggle for unity, it didn't start in the 21st century Western American church.

No, when Paul writes the letter of 1 Corinthians to the church in Corinth, they were divided.

Paul actually planted the church in Corinth and then he spent 18 months there.

He was pouring into them, he was building leaders, he was preaching the gospel, and he was establishing the church, but when Paul left, problems began to emerge.

And you see, Corinth is a really complicated place.

Corinth is located in modern day Greece, but at this point in time in history, Corinth was just conquered by the Roman Empire.

And we have this blending of the Greek and Roman cultures all coming together.

So Corinth is ethnically diverse, it's religiously diverse, it's culturally diverse, and it's economically diverse.

It has it's a melting pot of people from all different places.

They all have all different backgrounds.

So when the church is established and Paul leaves them to be on their own, the church begins to drift away from being this counter-cultural community, and they begin to look more and more like the world that they exist in.

The church was supposed to be counter-cultural, but instead the culture is beginning to shape the church.

So Paul begins his letter to the Corinthian church here in 1 Corinthians with a greeting.

And he says, Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people.

Together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours, the grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So Paul knows that the church in Corinth are having problems.

There are some things going on, but instead of him just jumping right into saying, Hey, we gotta fix some things, he starts by giving them a greeting.

But what he's doing is he's reminding them of who it is that they are called to be.

They are the church of God in Corinth.

They are sanctified and called to be God's holy people.

Their identity was not the culture that was around them, but who they were was determined by who Jesus had called them to be.

And he uses these church words, uh sanctified and holy.

And I think sometimes that's intimidating for us as just, you know, as normal people.

Like, what are you talking about, Paul, when you say sanctified and holy?

But it's super important here why we understand this.

You see, when he's saying that that they are sanctified, what he's meaning is that Jesus has done something in their life.

He has transformed them from the inside out.

And they are called to be holy, which means their lives are to look different from the culture around them.

They are to live set apart lives.

So because Jesus has changed them, they are to live out that change for the entire world to see.

So before he corrects the division that's taking place in the church, he's already setting the groundwork here that they are to look different from the rest of Corinth because of what Jesus has done in their lives.

And then Paul moves into verses four through nine where he begins to give thanks for the church in Corinth, but the way he directs his thanks is very, very different than maybe you would think.

His thanks is not to the church in Corinth, but he directs it all to God.

He says this, I always thank my God for you, because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.

For in him you have been enriched in every way, with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge.

God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you.

Paul's thanks is not for what the church had done.

It's not about the community programs that they have or how great their worship service is.

No, but all of Paul's thanks is actually thanking God for what he has done in and through them and for the testimony that they are to the God that they serve.

Paul's major theme in all of 1 Corinthians is that it's it's all about who the church is called to be, but it's all in light of the good news of what Jesus has done for us on the cross.

And Paul's focus is not on what the church has done or what they what they did, but it's on the unifying truth of what Jesus has done for them.

So now that Paul has buttered up the first Corinthians, uh he buttered up the cor the Corinthians, uh he moves away from his niceties and he begins to address them.

And his next section starts with, I appeal to you.

So although Jesus has done incredible things in and through you, there are still some problems that we gotta solve.

So would you stand with me out of the respect of the reading of God's word as we read 1 Corinthians, starting at verse 1, starting at man, this is what happens when you do two services.

Verse, there's a lot of ones in this.

1 Corinthians chapter 1, starting at verse 10, says this I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say, and there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.

1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you.

What I mean is this one of you says, I follow Paul, another, I follow Apollos, another, I follow Cephas, still another, I follow Christ.

Is Christ divided?

Was Paul crucified for you?

Were you baptized in the name of Paul?

I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say that they were baptized in my name.

Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanus.

Beyond that, I don't remember if I baptized anyone else.

Thanks for clarifying, Paul.

Uh, for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.

But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

You may be seated this morning.

So when Paul he begins to address the church, uh he's addressing the elephant in the room.

Everyone from the church knows that that there's a problem, that there's division happening.

If you're if you're part of a family, you know, family drama kind of spreads like wildfire.

No one ever makes an announcement about all the family drama that's going on.

It's usually spread from, oh, did you hear that so-and-so did this?

Oh my goodness.

And then they go and they tell someone else, did you hear that so-and-so did this?

And then by the time that you get back to the big family gathering, everyone in the family knows all of your business about all the mistakes that you've made, even though no one said it and everyone's gonna pretend like they don't know about it, right?

That's kind of what's going on in the Corinthian church here.

No one has made some big public Facebook announcement saying, hey, the church of Corinth divided.

No, Paul gets word of the division from Chloe's household, which means that the struggles that were being experienced inside the four walls of the church is now beginning to spill over out into the community outside of the church.

People are beginning to get word that there's something wrong going on here.

And what's being said is that those within the church, they're beginning to pick sides based upon which preacher or who they follow for themselves.

Some say that they follow Paul, some say they follow Apollo, some say Cephas.

And now there are like these factions that are being created within the church based upon who they prefer and who they follow.

So Paul addresses this issue head on by challenging the church, and he says, I appeal to you, agree with one another in what you say, and there be no divisions among you, that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.

Okay, Paul.

Don't you think you're being a little aggressive there?

We're gonna we're going to agree on everything.

We're going to be perfectly united on every issue and everything going on.

That's never gonna happen.

That's an unrealistic ideal, and maybe for us we can strive for it.

Maybe we can try and hit the target, but we're never really gonna get there.

But Paul's appeal here, like his greeting and like his thanks, are not based upon the Corinthians trying harder to be united together.

Instead, he points them somewhere else.

He says, Is Christ divided?

Was Paul crucified for you?

Were you baptized in the name of Paul?

He doesn't say, Hey, you know what?

If everyone in the Church of Corinth just went back to following me when I was there, then everything would be good.

Just agree with what I say.

Or you know what?

You should all just like be more like Apollos.

Or maybe if you just followed Cephas a little bit closer, then you guys would all be good.

Let's just agree on one preacher.

It's not what he does.

He puts Christ at the focus.

And he says, Christ is the one who sanctifies us, Christ is the one who transforms us from the inside out and empowers us to live holy lives set apart from the rest of this world.

It is only through Christ that we are unified.

Was Paul crucified for you?

What a ridiculous question.

Were you baptized in the name of Paul?

We didn't baptize anybody today in the name of Paul.

We baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ.

And then Paul says, For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

What Paul is saying, he's saying, don't confuse the messenger with the message.

The point isn't Paul, the point isn't Apollos, the point isn't Cephas, the point isn't me, the point isn't Pastor Christina or Pastor Don or Pastor Gabe.

The point is not Generations Church.

Jesus is the point.

And then Paul lands the plane by saying, For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.

But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

You see, the heart of Paul's appeal is that the cross that Jesus was crucified on for you and me, for our sins, is what unifies us.

It destroys every reason for us to have divisions because at the foot of the cross, nobody stands above anybody else.

You see, we are all sinners in need of a savior.

We are all in need of the grace of God.

We are all dependent on Jesus.

We are all saved through the same sacrifice.

We are all baptized in the name of Jesus.

And as a church, we are all unified around one Lord who is Jesus Christ.

The thing that makes us one isn't having everything in common, is that we have Christ in common.

The most important thing.

We have the same leader, we have the same Lord.

The call to be perfectly united in mind and thought is not the call for you and I to all be the same, for all of us just to be uniform, to act, to say, to talk the same way.

No, it's the call to have the same Lord of our lives, and that all other disagreements fall flat at the foot of the cross when we are seeking Him above everything else.

If we put our faith in Jesus and seek his ways above everything else, then unity is not some ideal or some target that we try to hit, but a kingdom reality that we can live in because of what Christ has done and the way that He's perfecting His love in and through us.

He empowers us to live holy lives set apart from this world.

But even the best teams experience some speed bumps along the way throughout a season.

Like if you are a football team, eventually someone's gonna get injured.

Eventually someone's not gonna run the play the right way.

Eventually, you're gonna lose a game that you probably should have won.

And all of these things can create division within a team.

In every season, what we see is we see teams get off to really good starts, they win games, something happens along the way, and then they fall off.

They miss the playoffs and then they break up.

And we go, you remember that team?

They were really good.

They won all those games, but what happened to them?

Why'd they stop winning?

And for us as the church, there will be things that try to come up to steal our unity and move our focus away to Jesus to the things that this world says should divide us.

You see, unity isn't just something that we have.

It's not like a gift that we get and now we got it, and now we're good to go.

We don't have to worry about it anymore.

We can focus on other things.

Unity is something that we as the church have to fight for, we have to work for, we have to keep precious and cherish it for ourselves.

So, what does it actually look like for us to be on the same team?

I want to give you three practical ways that we can pursue unity in our lives.

The first is this unity is found in putting others' needs first.

Philippians 2 3 says, Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.

Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves.

A team cannot function if everyone is saying, Well, what about me?

Why don't I get the ball?

Why don't I get to score the touchdown?

Why doesn't my ministry get some attention from the stage?

Why don't why don't we do it my way?

Why doesn't anyone recognize all of the things that I do?

A team functions when players begin to ask the question, what does the team need from me?

Let me put this in terms of the questions that we should be asking as a church.

Because what we often do is we oftentimes look at a church and we go, I want to go to that church because of all the things that they give me.

They're gonna pour into me, I'm gonna be filled.

But actually, if we're gonna be a team that's unified, we have to start asking some different questions.

Questions like, what is it that I can contribute?

What can I give?

What does the body need from me?

For unity to be found, our focus has to be on others and not just on ourselves.

You see, Alyssa and I, we've been married for about seven years and we've we're learning, we're figuring out this whole marriage thing every once in a while.

Um, but if Alyssa and I, while we were married, if all I ever did was like, Alyssa doesn't serve me in this way, uh, she doesn't rub my feet at night, and my feet are really sore, like, why doesn't she cook me better meals?

Why is all this stuff happening?

She needs to do all these things better so that I can be served.

That's what a good wife would do.

And then if Alyssa was looking at me and was like, wow, he doesn't do any of the things that care for me, he never does anything right, everything he does is wrong, he never takes care of the kids.

Would we ever be a unified team?

We'd be in a pretty miserable marriage if all we did was focus on all of the shortcomings of each other.

But if we wanted to be unified, we wanted to be united, what we need to do is we need to put others' needs above ourselves.

If I started to look at Alyssa and go, man, look at all the things that I can do to serve her, to help her, to make her life better, to make sure that I am loving her.

And she did the same thing to me and was loving me like in the best way that she possibly can.

And we mutually did that together.

Our unity as a unit would be unstoppable.

There would be no challenge that this world could throw our way, no dirty diaper, no sleepless nights.

We'd be able to get through it all if we were seeking to serve one another.

Some of you here today, you are married, you are sleeping in the same bed, you're living under the same roof, but you are fighting each other.

You want to be unified?

You want to be a team?

Start putting the other person's needs above yourself.

Go first, and you'll find unity.

So let's be a church who is more focused on serving than being served.

The second place where unity is found, it's found in listening.

James 1:19 says everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.

James 1:19

A divided team doesn't listen.

Instead, what they do is when the other when someone else is talking, they're already thinking about their response in order to tell them how they're wrong and how I am right.

You cannot be united with people that you are unwilling to understand.

The lie that we are told is that if everyone just listened to us and did our ways and did our things, then we would be united.

They just need to listen to what I have to say.

When really unity starts with listening to those who are across from us.

Unity begins with seeking to understand instead of telling others why they're wrong.

And you see, listening doesn't mean that you have to agree with that person.

You can sit across from somebody, you can hear their side of the story, you can hear their thoughts and their perspective and listen intently and still come out the other side and disagree with them.

But you want to know how you find unity within listening is because now that you've given them the time to share what's on their mind and their perspective and their struggles, they know that you care about them.

That you don't just care about your way, but you care about who they are.

And because they know that you want what's best for them and you care about them, even when you disagree, you can move forward together.

When I got my first job as a youth pastor, I went into my very first staff meeting and everyone was sitting around a table, and my pastor put out these sheets of paper in front of all of us, and on it were the principles that we were going to abide by as a team.

These were our cultural values.

And every time we got a new staff member, we would sit down and we would go through all these principles to make sure that we were united on them together.

And one of them that's always stuck out to me was that we were going to choose trust over suspicion, which means that we are going to assume the best of intentions with one another.

If others are talking or they're having a meeting behind closed doors, we weren't going to assume that we were being left out and that they were talking about us.

But we were committing to trusting that, hey, they didn't invite me in because I didn't need to be there.

We're going to trust one another.

You see, in my marriage with Alyssa, if every time I just assumed that she was doing the wrong thing and I was suspicious that she was trying to pull one over on me, we'd be pretty miserable.

We actually do this thing where when we have something that's hard to say to one another, and I go, man, this is really hard.

I don't want to hurt your feelings.

I want I want to say this correctly, but I don't know how.

We'll say, hey, we're going to choose trust over suspicion.

We're going to choose to give each other grace so that we could say it and we're going to assume that even if what we said doesn't come out 100% correct, we're going to trust that the other person had the best of intentions while doing it.

What would happen with us as a church or us in relationship with one another if we decided to choose trust over suspicion?

What if we thought that everyone else around us actually wasn't out to get us, but they had the best of intentions?

Even when they do hurt us, it wasn't because they did it intentionally, but because they just messed up, because we're human.

You see, sometimes we think that trust needs to be earned.

And sometimes trust does need to be earned.

But sometimes we need to just choose to trust.

What would happen if we chose to listen more than we talked?

What would happen if we trusted each other with our authentic selves and what we actually had on our minds?

What would happen if we chose trust over suspicion?

I think we would find that unity goes past the surface level when we do that.

The third place where unity is found is it's found in examining ourselves.

Psalms 139, 23 through 24 says, Search me, God, and know my heart.

Test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is anything offensive, if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Every time I read that verse, I just think about how scary that is to pray for yourself.

Search me, oh God.

Show me if there are any offensive ways inside of me.

I want to tell you something.

The reason why we don't want to pray that is because we know there is something.

There is something that Jesus needs to change within us.

We're not perfect where we are.

And this is where unity becomes really personal for us.

Because there is a role that we all play when it comes to fighting for unity.

We can be really good at seeing what's wrong in everybody else without ever finding fault in ourselves.

We diagnose their attitude, their words, their motives, their behaviors.

But following Jesus means asking the question, Jesus, what are you trying to show me?

God oftentimes uses other people to shape us to be more like Jesus.

The people that annoy you, the people that frustrate you, the people who disagree with you, the people who challenge you.

What if those people are not people for you to change?

But they're the people that God is using to change you.

Psalm 139 is really scary to pray.

Because if we pray for God to search us and he reveals to us our shortcomings, what do we do from there?

It means that we're wrong.

It means that we need to change.

We need to lay down our pride.

And I think that scares us.

But also when we're willing to submit to Jesus and allow him to change us from the inside out, I think that's where we can truly find unity with others.

Where we can actually be our authentic selves and no longer hide behind the masks that we oftentimes walk around with.

So as we get ready to close and the band comes on up, I want you to know that today at 1 p.m., my New England Patriots are playing the Buffalo Bills and they are going to get absolutely smoked.

It's gonna be a terrible afternoon for me.

You see, my team, they're gonna go out there, they're all gonna be wearing the same uniform.

They're gonna be playing on the same field, they're gonna be looking at that same scoreboard where they're down by a lot of points.

But that doesn't mean that they're going to be unified as a team.

I'm really preparing myself for a bad afternoon.

Um, you see, unity for the Patriots will not be found in the shirts that they wear.

It will only be found if they want to play for one another and what's best for the team.

Now imagine if every Sunday when we came in, we were wearing the same jersey, but we were secretly rooting against those around us.

Imagine if we spent more energy fighting people on our own team than we were about reaching the lost in our community.

Imagine if we cared more about getting our own way than we cared about lost people being found in Jesus.

Generations Church, that's not the church that Jesus has called us to be, and it's not the church that we are.

We are united around the mission that we are called to make Christ-like disciples, that purpose is found in God's story, and that we exist for the sake of those who do not know Jesus.

I love this picture up here of these guys as they huddle up before the game, before they run the play.

You know, before every every play on a football field, the team will get together and they'll huddle up in a circle and they'll they will call the play that they're gonna run.

They're all getting on the same page, they have the same focus, they have the same leader.

They go, what's the play?

So that they can go out onto the field, and although they all run different things and they all act differently and they all have their different roles, they are united together as a team.

You see, we don't have to be the same to be on the same team.

We don't have to have the same background, the same personality, the same preferences.

We don't even have to agree on everything.

But we do have to remember who we play for.

We gotta be looking to the same leader.

Paul says, Is Christ divided?

No, then neither should his church.

See, we're not here to build our own teams, we're here to be on team Jesus.

So maybe the question today isn't who needs to change in this room in order for you to be on my page, so that we can be united.

You need to change.

Maybe the question that we all need to ask is a question we need to ask to ourselves Jesus, what do you need to change in me so that I can better love the people on your team?

Because what unifies us is what Christ has done.

He's the one who sanctified us, he's the one who's called us to be holy, and he empowers us to live differently.

So if we put our faith in Jesus and we follow one Lord, we can get through any faith, any division that this world throws at us.

But we have to be united in him.

Would you pray with me this morning?

Thanks for joining us on the Generations Church podcast.

Generations Church is a community in Independence, Kentucky, where we believe every person has a story.

And that story becomes part of something bigger.

Your story, our story, God's story.

If you'd like to learn more about Generations Church, connect with our ministries, find upcoming events, or plan a business, head over to generationsnky.com.

You can also find us on Facebook and stay connected with what's happening at Generations.

We'd love to have you join us for worship on Sunday mornings at 9 or 10.30 a.m.

Whether you're exploring faith, looking for a church home, or seeking your next step in following Jesus, there is a place for you at Generations.

Thanks for listening.

We'll see you next time.