Local Churches in Unity & Cooperation

Take your Bibles and go to Matthew chapter 9. I'll confess up front, this is going to be something of a foundation stone to look at a number of things, as we kind of seek to grasp what I call a systematic, a biblically systematic overview of the truth of local churches in unity and cooperation. Something we've just kind of always done in all segments of evangelical Christianity, there's always been a group we're connected with, and overwhelmingly so. Most of us connect with a certain local church that's connected to other local churches in purpose and in missions because that's what our fathers did, and that's what their fathers did, and that's what their fathers did.

My dear, dear friend, Brother John O'Simms at the Shelbyville Mills Baptist Church in Shelbyville, Tennessee, I believe I'm saying this right, it's many, I think he said he's a fifth generation Southern Baptist, but they're not so much Southern Baptist now in his conviction and opinion, but he said, that's just where I come from. But it's the nature, listen to me, if you study church history, it's the nature of everything that when man puts a system together, it's not bad, it's not wrong, and very, very obviously, so many of them started with godly man and good intentions, but as the years and the decades and the centuries go by, there becomes a bureaucracy and institutionalization of things, essential doctrine begins to erode away, and the whole system can begin to function on things and for things that have nothing to do with sound biblical Christianity. We have great denominations, Methodists, Presbyterians, and now quite a few Baptists, denominations who have, listen folks, not just struggling here and there, they've woefully lost the path of being true churches. And now I'm not coming to you as some new prophet, I'm not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, I'm just a preacher, a Baptist preacher in conviction, not necessarily denominationally speaking, but Baptistic in the sense of what the history of what Baptists believe and stood for. But my point is, the trend is they just seem to get on the downgrade and they begin to connect together and unite together around things that have nothing to do with why they existed in the first place. So we find ourselves much like John Wesley, the father of Methodism, and George Whitefield, the father of Calvinistic Methodism of a few centuries ago, where they were Anglicans, Church of England, and they begin to exegete the Bible and preach the Word of God and call on all those infant baptized dead Anglicans to repent and come to faith in Christ. In other words, cash in your counterfeit religion, cash in your church membership and really find Christ. They had no concept of starting anything new, but it didn't take too long before the Anglican church hierarchy said, you guys got to go, you got to get out of here, you're messing everything up, we've got us a system going here and people are comfortable in it and it's financially okay and we just don't need you to mess it up with this doctrine of you must be born again.

And so it ended up new movements came out of that. To a significant extent, a lot of our Baptist forefathers were powerfully influenced by their preaching and example. And even the Methodist church that, by the way, corporately and denominationally speaking, has woefully lost its way. I love my Methodist brothers and sisters and there's some Methodist pastors still trying to preach it straight, but on the whole, the system and the hierarchy are apostate.

They just are. Folks, listen to me, you can't debate about whether or not homosexuality is acceptable to God and not be off track. I mean, just, I mean, think about it for a moment. Churches are debating that.

This isn't the left wing of the Democratic party. Churches, denominations. So it brings us who are far from perfect, but who are striving to be faithful repenters and striving to walk in biblical truth?

Well, who do we unite with and who do we cooperate with? And I'll be honest, I've been studying, praying, reading history for literally decades on that issue. And this is not new to many of you in any ways and most of it is drawn out of some things that I taught in my classes in the Pastors Training Institute, but I wanted to hit you guys with it.

Are you listening to me this morning? Us equipping pastors and us partnering with pastors and mentoring pastors and continuing to support them as they revitalize their churches and plant new biblical churches, that work is, first of all, it's laborsome and difficult and expensive, but it's not my work and it's not Brother Steve's work and Brother Tim's work or Brother Matt or any of us, though we're all in various degrees involved, it's not our work, it's all of our work. It's your, look, are you listening to me, Grace Life Church of the Shoals? God's called us to this.

I don't mean some special, unique calling. We may be one of the few really doing it. Matter of fact, we are one of the few really doing this, but that doesn't make us special.

It's just old Bible stuff. People just ought to be doing it. You're just crazy enough to follow me and do it. I say crazy only in the context of so few are doing it, we look weird or odd, but we have gotten significant affirmation and commendation for what we're about from people in high places, as if people in high places matter to God.

Are you listening to me? Just because he's professor so-and-so and president so-and-so of so-and-so institution didn't mean God's impressed at all. And I thank God for these men. Don't misunderstand me, that's some good brothers who are professors, some good brothers who are presidents of schools, but there's nothing in Scripture about their blessing or affirmation makes us good or right. Now, it's good when we get it, amen?

We appreciate that and we've gotten a lot of that. When we were first putting the Pastors Training Institute together and Brother Tim began to organize and lay out everything, we agreed that we're not worrying about the accreditation of the world, but if we can achieve what we know needs to happen and still get that accreditation, that's okay. And so, Brother Tim sent out our stuff to one of our accredited graduate schools of theology and they almost immediately said, we'll give your guys full credit for everything if these standards are kept. They weren't praised, it's good when people affirm what you're doing. But, shall I say that there's a world full of pastors who have degrees and PhDs and a lot of things who are not very faithful, effective pastors.

Well, I'm kind of chasing a rabbit, but if you catch that rabbit, it could be a pretty good thing. So, who are we to cooperate with? So, we're entitling this local churches in unity and cooperation, all right? Local churches in unity and in cooperation.

And by the way, that order is essential. There has to be a true unity and then there can be cooperation. What's trying to be forced today is force us into unities or into cooperation rather when we don't have the unity as the foundation we're supposed to have. In other words, God is the one who makes us unified. We don't try to, now we can build on the unity He gives us, we can work at the unity He's established, but we can't make a unity. God does that and then we work at cooperating together because of the unity He gave us.

Well, here's the foundation stone I want to pick up on and go from. Matthew chapter 9, and I'm going to go up to verse 35 and go through 38, all right? Matthew 9, 35, and Jesus was going about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Would it not have been amazing to have been there in that day and watched that, experienced that? Verse 36, and seeing the multitudes, He felt compassion for them because they were distressed and downcast like sheep without a shepherd.

Now, can I pause there and just give you a side note? I'm convinced part of Jesus' concern, part of His burden for all these people coming to listen to me was because overwhelmingly so they were coming for the next free meal because He was miraculously feeding a lot of them. Overwhelmingly so they were coming for a miraculous healing because He was doing lots of that and that's not bad, but that's not the main reason He came. He was burdened because they don't realize the sinful wretchedness of their souls. They don't realize that they're under the wrath of God and they can't get their hearts and minds off of temporal blessings to see the things that really matter.

I'm not saying that's all of His burden, but I think that's the main reason He's burdened about all of these people coming. Verse 37, then He said to His disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest. Now, we have to study the balance of Scripture to know, okay, what does God say real workers are?

What do they look like? What must they believe? What must they do before we can get very serious about sending them out? Not every person that gets excited and has a deep emotional sentiment about serving the Lord is a good or true worker. We need qualifications beyond the sentimental realm. You and I live in an age when all of the sudden sentimentality is the final truth. I feel like I'm really a girl, though I was born a boy.

Well, I feel like I ought to have sex with all these different kinds of people. Well, I feel like, and we go on and on and on, and then politicians fall all over themselves to embrace and promote and encourage all of this stuff that, folks, there is no limit to the kind of warped, perverse feelings that can come out of the fallen, depraved human heart. We do not live by our sentimentalities. We do not live by feelings or emotions. We live by the objective truth God has given us in His Word.

That's the only way to have any kind of decency or sanity in a society or in a culture. There was a day in America, though there were many non-Christians, but overwhelmingly the populace held to a Christian consensus that the Bible contained the moral absolutes and the truths men and culture should live by. We call that a godly worldview or a God-centered worldview. Sometimes you could call it the Judeo-Christian ethic.

And it kind of held us all together. I talked to a man who was an avowed agnostic years ago, and he would basically agree with the moral principles of the Bible being the basis for our laws, for our culture, because he said without that we'll just be in chaos, in anarchy. As the Bible says, when there are no judges in Israel, every man did what was right in his own eyes. I'm going full circle now back to church life now. If we're going to be involved in helping men be good pastors and build sound churches, we've got to go beyond, well, I just feel like that's best. Well, on some things that's okay, because some things the Bible's not clear on. You just have to discern, I think this is best. There's nothing in the Bible that says, Jeff Noblet shall begin doing an exposition of 2 Timothy in two weeks.

But I feel like that's what I need to do. But when it comes to churches, and the leaders are the pastors of the churches, there's an abundance of rock solid, biblically systematic truth. We're to base that on and function out of, amen? And when a church, a denomination, or whoever, clearly departs from clear, you know what, talking about things that are difficult to understand, we're not talking about things that good and godly men who know the scriptures could have a little bit of a difference of viewpoint on.

We're not talking about those things. We're talking about things the Bible is really clear on. We trust the word of God. Well, let me, Roman number one, talk about the creator of our unity and oneness.

I use the word cooperation in the outline on the screen, same idea. The creator, where does this come from? You see, brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters, Christian unity didn't come from you and I drawing up out of our natural fallen abilities and gritting our teeth and saying we're going to learn to serve and love together. Well, that's the Baptist way right there.

Fleshly empowered and just trying to do the best they can in the powers of their natural fallen flesh. No, no, no, our unity is a supernatural thing gifted to us in God's grace. Now, we have to work at it, but it's the foundation comes from him. We have to grow in it, but it originally comes from him.

A few things to think about. One shepherd and one flock is something I want to talk about for just a moment. One shepherd and one flock, John 10 seven. So Jesus said to them again, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of definite article, the sheep. Our unity becomes from the fact that we all come to God through one door. Can I say this to you?

I'm going to say it to you. No one, no one, Jesus said, comes to the Father but by me. There's only one door. There's not a best door or better door, the most encouraging door. There's only one door and his name is Jesus.

Automatically, we are radically connected one to another when we've turned to Christ as Lord and Savior, because we've all denied all the other doors the world would put before us and we've turned and we've chosen one door, the door Jesus Christ. So you better get used to me and you better get used to that brother or sister around you because we've all gone into the same house and we're just going to have to live together. Amen? I don't... Have you noticed? I don't know that you've noticed this. Have you noticed in this house called the sheepfold? Have you noticed when you went into the door? There's some peculiar sheep in there. There's some strange, some strange birds in there.

Yeah, but even though they're a little peculiar, a little goofy, a little odd maybe, and by the way, you probably are to some, nevertheless, what we have that unites us is greater than all that other stuff. God did this. John 10, 11. There's so many things we could use, but I just found this in John.

I thought this is a good foundation stone. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for, definite article, the sheep. Not going into all the theological concepts of universal atonement views or particular redemption or particular atonement and all those kinds of things, but brothers and sisters, there's a unique sense in which Jesus died to secure the sheep. Definite article there. However you want to slice it, and I know there are some texts that we struggle with and I struggle with, but you'll never convince me that Jesus died savingly for all the goats who don't get to heaven.

If Jesus died, the eternal Son of God, to vicariously atonement and all of God, to vicariously atoned for their sins, their sins are vicariously atoned for, and they'll be in heaven. Here's what I'm saying. This separates you out. That doesn't mean you're supposed to leave your union. It doesn't mean you're supposed to leave your employment.

It doesn't mean you can't be a part of a social club in town, though most of them aren't worth being a part of. Doesn't mean you can't send your kids to the school and play ball with the other kids, but it means that what's most important and foundational to what I am and what my family is, is that we are those Christ died to save and bring into the fold. Jesus, he established this oneness.

He established this unity. John 10, 14 through 16. I am the good shepherd, and I know my own.

Definite now, my own, and my own know me. Even as the Father knows me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep, I have other sheep which are not at this fold in the context of Jew and Gentile. He's talking about Gentile sheep.

And I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice. He said, and now that was shocking news to the Jews of this day. That was shocking news to the Jews of this day. They thought the Messiah was coming for just Israel. The Savior was just coming for Israel. He said, now wait a minute, time out.

I've got this. Now, folks, you can't, you can't comprehend how mind-boggling and how in angering, is that a word? How it angered the Jewish religious authorities to have the concept in their minds that non-Jews could be accepted in the covenant elect family of God. But I think they are because I don't know about our church that's of Jewish descendants. I'm not.

I don't know anybody. We're all Gentiles. And Jesus said, I've got Gentiles I'm bringing into the fold. Now, he said, even though in the world's concept, Jew and Gentile are radically opposed to one another, he says, the fold that I've got that's out of the Jews will hear my voice. Those I've got out of the Gentiles will hear my voice. Notice the last phrase, John 10, verse 16, and they will become one flock with one shepherd.

Powerful unity there. Now, notice the actor in all of this is Jesus Christ. The initiator, the one who accomplishes this is Jesus Christ. He forms this glorious unity.

It is the creation of God through the work of his son, Jesus Christ. Now, let's think about churches as a whole, all these local churches. We know that the word church, ekklesia, as it is in the original Greek that we find throughout our New Testament.

What is it? Almost a hundred times it's used and in almost every time, it's clearly talking about a local visible body of baptized believers. Not some great big universal church. No, when it talks about church, it means that group, us today in this room that meets together, they can see each other, they can serve each other, they can love each other, they can correct each other, they can help each other. That's what the Bible is talking about overwhelmingly in the New Testament when it uses the word church. The churches of ekklesia, the churches of Antioch, the church at Jerusalem, specific identifiable visible bodies of believers. However, though every local church is an independent autonomous body with no hierarchy or authority other than Christ and the word of God, we are in God's eyes still one flock with one shepherd.

Now, we don't experience that in this time and space history setting that we're in now. We have to function in local churches. I mean, you can't get up in the morning and say, I'm a member of the great big universal church, the bride of Christ. I might float over to Loretta, Tennessee and worship for a couple of weeks and I might float down to Chattanooga, Tennessee and I'll worship for the chief. I might go down to Birmingham for a month because I'm just a part of all the people of God.

You know what you'll be? You'll be a worthless Christian. How can you ever get God's work done with that kind of independent frivolous childish view of serving God? No, God's not the God of irrationality.

He's not the God of irrationality and confusion. He wants you to join a local church, unite together under the elders of that church and covenant together in that one local church to serve God and get his work done. Now, we're talking about where one shepherd with one flock, God created this. To amplify on that concept, let's talk about Jesus' prayer for our unity. This is a powerful thing as the Lord Jesus is getting close to the cross in his earthly ministry and he gives a lot of energy and interceding to the Father about Christians being united, being one.

John 17 11, for example. I'm no longer in the world, he's praying to the Father, yet they themselves are in the world and I come to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name. Now, not the whole world now, he's not talking about keeping people, he's talking about I'm a church out of the world.

Keep that group in your name, the name which you've given me. Now, here he comes to the end of that, so that they may be one even as we are one. He said, I want you to keep them, and I think you could add the concept, I want you to keep growing them as individual Christians so that they grasp how they are radically, gloriously, supernaturally one together, one to the other. Brothers and sisters, your oneness with true brothers and sisters in Christ and in the New Testament concept in your local church, your oneness to those folks is stronger than your oneness to any blood relative who does not know Christ. Absolutely. That doesn't mean you don't love them and still live with them and care for them, of course we do.

But as you mature, you begin to see my intimacy with my spiritual brothers and sisters is stronger than any other connectivity, any other intimacy, any other connection I could have while I'm on the earth. It's very interesting. I don't know why, but my mind goes back to the township of Soweto in South Africa. This was years ago. This was right in the height of the apartheid revolution, if you will, or the revolution against the apartheid doctrine of South Africa as the blacks of South Africa regained governance and authority over that part of the country. And I was in the township that was pretty much the centerpiece of violence and uprising in South Africa.

And if you want to read some history of some very violent, difficult days, and they still have a lot of that, but it was very violent and difficult in those days. And like always, or you listen to me, it wasn't as simple as black colored skin and white colored skin. There was righteous, godly, loving Christians together of all skin colors in the groups I ministered with. But I go in this church in the township, Soweto in South Africa, and I'm quite aware that it's fairly common for machine guns to come out in those settings. And they begin to sing the songs of the faith.

And you know how they did it? The pastor's wife said about halfway back on one side, and she starts singing, and everybody would sing with her. I've never been in a church setting. And I believe I was the only white-skinned person there.

I've never been in a church setting that was more blessed, sweet, spiritual, and encouraging than that setting. And I thought, I don't know any of these people. I'm not kin to these people. I don't come from the background.

I don't know either. But we are one. God did that. Jeff Nauta just walked down there and said, boy, I'm a progressive, and I'm going to have a new approach to life. And then we're going to have this big new unity movement in the earth.

And I'm like, no, he didn't. God saved me, and God saved them. We just had to be there and worship together that day. That's what baffles me about all the racial issues in our country today. I think when I get together with Christians, it simply doesn't matter. It's just not an issue. I'm telling you, it's just not an issue if you're in Christ. And that's what Jesus prayed for. There's this powerful oneness that he has put together.

I need to preach a little longer because you're only getting one dose a day on Sunday. And I know how you are. You leak. I leak.

We all leak. John 17, 21 through 23, Jesus is continuing his prayer to the Father, that they may all be one. There he goes again, even as you, Father, and are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you sent me.

He said, there's something powerful when the world sees all of us from all these backgrounds, and we shouldn't get along together, but we love each other, and we realize we're one together for time and eternity, and it's just super special. And God did it, and the world looks at it, and they marvel over that because you know why? The world can't do that. The world can't produce that unity.

Only God can do that. The glory which you have given me, I have given to them that they may be one, just as we are one. Notice that in prodigy, in this oneness, I in them and you in me, that they may be perfected in unity.

That's a powerful phrase. Jesus says, Lord, he's saying, Father in heaven, I want them to be perfected in unity so the world may know that you sent me and love me love them even as you loved me. Now, the phrase perfected in unity has the idea of a spiritual maturity, which has unity as its chief fruit. Listen now, be careful.

Don't miss it. Unity is not the goal. Unity in truth is the goal. Unity in Christ is the goal.

What was it? Old preachers, you know, preachers have all these illustrations. You say, well, you're kind of an old preacher.

Okay, I am. But you can tie two cats' tails together and throw them over a clothesline and you've got togetherness, but you don't have unity. Overwhelmingly so, in our churches, they do not know the unity of the Spirit in Christ. There's no perfection. There's no maturity in the body so that they enjoy the sweet spiritual unity that only God can provide. It's been many years. We're approaching being able to say decades, not quite there a year, but we're approaching at Grace Life Church of the Shoals to be able to say we have not had even a small blemish on our sweet unity in this church in a long, long, long time.

And there's only one reason for that. You won't allow it. You will not allow worldly, fleshly, selfish, emotionalism things to form a group to cause a problem in God's church. It's not a matter of the pastor and the elders and the deacons, even the small group leaders keeping it put down. I mean, that's our job. The Bible commands us to do that. But just the membership at large just won't tolerate anybody coming in who wants to start some sort of sect or faction or movement.

Why? Because there's a maturity. We've, hey, any of you been here for a few decades? We've seen that. We've experienced that.

And we prefer what we're enjoying now. Now, the unity as we expand out, the unity that we're to have as individual churches now, so you're going to another level, individual local churches now, if we're going to unite together and cooperate together to get God's work done, and by the way, we have to do that. It's so abundantly clear in the New Testament that that's just expected, that local churches will connect together, unite together, and do God's work together.

All right? But the unity among individual local churches is not an absolute equality, but based on the likeness of the churches. In other words, one church has been at it for 20 and 30 years. They're just going to look different than a brother who's faithful, but he's only been at, let's say, five years in his church. You can't say, well, they can't be united with us because look how, look where they are and look where we are.

That's not the point. If their convictions are right and their hearts are right and they're striving to get there, then, hey, they're united with us. Amen? We take in baby Christians and we take them just like they are, and baby Christians make messes, and baby Christians are immature, and baby Christians get back in the flesh a lot, and baby Christians go by their feelings and emotions, and that's okay. We've been there too.

We're all growing still, and those of us who've been around a long time, if we're not careful, can backslide and start acting like babies ourselves. So what we're looking for is a genuine intent that they're on track biblically and spiritually, and hey, if they are, they're one with us. Amen?

So it's not an absolute equality concerning application experience because that takes time, but it's the likeness between us that we can come together in unity. James E. Carter, I don't know where I found this quote. I don't know who he is, but he said this, churches cannot do without one another even though they are distinct from one another. You're not a part of the anchored in truth family of churches.

No, you're part of Grace Life Church of the Shoals, which is connected with the anchored in truth family of churches. All right, I won't be long here, but there's an essential foundation. I call them pillars, essential pillars to this unity and cooperation that we have.

Essential pillars. Now, you could say this different ways, you could slice it up different ways, but I'm convinced based on Ephesians 4 and the balance of biblical teaching, those three things have to be united, at least on the important aspects of those four things. Your doctrine needs to be alike, you need to be empowered by the same Spirit, and there needs to be a striving of faithfulness and true discipleship.

And by the way, if one of those is real, the other two is always going to be there. So if we're going to unite and work together with other churches, there's got to be an agreement on doctrine. I'm talking about the cold, hard doctrine you put down on a statement of faith. Obviously, we need more than a cold, hard doctrine. That's just stale, cold legalism, but that's got to be, there's got to be, I mean, if a person doesn't agree with us on the nature of the person of Christ, we can't work together.

We can love them, but I'm not going to ask you to give, give, give to support missions so that you can support somebody to go out and preach that Jesus really wasn't the divine Son of God. We've got to agree on doctrine. We've got to agree on the empowerment of the Spirit, and we've got to agree on that these churches are all alike, striving to live out true discipleship and the things the Bible's clear on, the things that matter. Paul says in Ephesians 4, 1-7, he's talking to one local church, but the principles certainly apply out to local churches. Therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling, which you've been called. So he's talking about living out something, something that continues on. Now continue on, verse two, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love.

Let me pause right there. Grace Life Church of the Shoals, we've known many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many years of sweet harmony in this church for one simple reason, that you as individual members have matured to the place where, generally speaking, you do, verse two, you walk with humility, you deal with one another with gentleness. Somebody's an uncle head, but you have patience, and you show tolerance in love. In love, look, only the Spirit of God puts that kind of love in you. You have a new love capacity to put up with those peculiar sheep that drive you crazy. You still love them, and you still tolerate them, and understand we're all peculiar to somebody. They don't think I'm picking you out. No, you are strange, but so am I.

You are peculiar, but so am I in some ways. Here's my point, but it's that love element. We see something of God's work in their lives. We see something of the regenerating power of the Spirit in their lives.

We see something of how they love our Savior and love his work like we do, and so we have a humility and a gentleness and a patience one toward another. Now, some Sunday school teacher gets in their class next Sunday and begins teaching that work, salvation is the only way to God. Now, we'll get active on that real quick. You say, wait a minute, Brother Jeff, if you jump on that, then you're going to cause disunity. You're going to divide. No, no, no, I'm removing the disunity.

Are you with me? We unify on truth. That would be the removing of the disunity. A lot, again, most of what folks call today, even in church settings as unity, listen, is not the unity of the Spirit, it's the toleration of the flesh. They tolerate flesh, they still say, oh, we've got to keep the unity.

You're not keeping unity. You're dishonoring God and forming a false church with the Antichrist spirit in it. So the shepherds have to know, the pastors have to know when something has to be silenced and cut off to maintain the true unity on truth. That is the unity of the Spirit. Boy, I'm running all over the process I want to get to, but I just can't hardly help it. Now, Ephesians 4 again, one through seven, let's go to verse three, being diligent.

That's talking about a process again. This is an active, continuous action expression here, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit. That's the Holy Spirit who gives us truth in the bond of peace.

Then he gives the foundation stone. There's one body and one Spirit, just also you are called in one hope you are calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Now, let's take these apart, these three things. First of all, I said, if we're going to have unity, churches to churches, who are the churches we're going to have unity with? First of all, those churches that are, number one, first pillar, grounded in true doctrine, grounded in true doctrine. I think that's part of what's emphasized when he says there's one Lord, if they don't embrace Christ and what the Scripture teaches about Christ. Listen to me, he's not the Jesus of what you feel like he would be like.

As C.S. Lewis said, he's not a tame lion. You bow before him and yield to who he says he is and what he's like. Do you listen?

Are you listening this morning? Do you know how many times this past, I mean, I didn't grow up in church, time or two we went some, but I didn't grow up learning much. And by the way, there's some benefits to that, depends on what church you grew up in. Do you know how many, do you know how many hundreds of times, I guess you would have to say thousands of times I've been in the biblical text and I had to repent of my natural inclination of who Jesus was and what he would do and how he would do it.

I had to repent of what I really really felt he would be like and turn aside of that and embrace what he says he's really like. Can I get an amen? That's what we have to do every week in church.

That's what you do every week in your Bible study or quiet time. We're constantly embracing one Lord, the Lord as he revealed himself to be. And there's some essential doctrines about Christ and salvation we must embrace. One Lord, one faith. Now, in the context, that's probably referring to the fact that they all in the feasting church believed on the same Lord and it's talking about the moment of faith. But listen to me, the context, everything preceding that is a continuing action exhortation. This is something you didn't just believe you started being a believer and you kept on believing and walking in it. Because if you just believed and didn't go anywhere else, there's no unity.

Now there's a basis for unity, but you're not going to live it out because you're not growing at all. But if we're not together on sound biblical doctrine, there can be no unity. One of the dangers of cooperation in modern evangelicalism and in modern denominations, now listen to me, one of the dangers is that we tend to drift into a lowest common denominator. It's almost like, yeah, we know we don't agree here and yes, we know some don't agree with this.

Yes, we know some don't agree with this, but at least can we get together for this right here? We should be looking at the high points of doctrine to come together on, not looking for the lesser things that don't matter and saying, well, that's our unity. For example, in Southern Baptist life, and by the way, there are good godly men in Southern Baptist life, good godly women, brothers that I will love till death and I will associate with till death. But I'm talking about in the system, in the bureaucracy that is Southern Baptist today, there has been the mantra for years that says, well, will you not together for missions?

Well, we ought to keep cooperating together for missions. Brothers and sisters, how are we going to do missions with someone who doesn't even know what the gospel is? How are we going to do missions with someone who doesn't understand biblical repentance and biblical faith? How are we going to do missions with someone who has a radically false, if not very weak, shallow view of the nature of the atonement? These doctrines matter.

They matter. Okay, let's just cooperate to get the permission. So we go out to the mission field, we throw all our money at something, and there's some real solid brothers and sisters out there, but there's a mixture of others who are teaching out and out heresy. And sometimes it's not because they mean to. You've got to understand a lot of our folks come out of terribly weak, shallow churches.

The point is you can't cooperate with that. Just saw one of our businessmen just caught my eye just a second ago. He's got a business.

They produce a product. If he had a sharp, slick, persuasive guy come into his business, but they kept wanting to sell this product over here, and he spent 30 years developing this kind of product, he's going to say, I love you, man. You're a sweet guy and you're very effective, but you're not on board.

We can't work together. Doctrine matters. There will always be the struggle with what things are essential and what's non-essential, but I would say this to you.

The things that are essential are quite obvious and clear. You've got to be together on doctrine. What we see today in Southern Baptist life and in many modern denominations, same thing they saw 100 years ago, the same thing they saw 200 years ago, the same thing they saw 200 years ago, the same thing that was happening 300 years ago, it's always been in this continuum of denominations falling away and then rising up of new groups who were striving to reclaim the old truth and walk in it. What we have today is the institutionalization of compromise, the institutionalization of compromise. Certain compromises crept in over generations, and these compromise, now listen to me, these compromises didn't come out of wicked, vile, false teachers. They came from, I think, sincere men who got a little sloppy with the Bible and begin to put into practice certain things to make their work more effective and make it more successful, and then they begin to focus more and more on that works, that works, people like that, and then when they got over here, there's almost no resemblance with the truth they used to stand on 100 years ago, and it's slow and it's subtle. I think that's been one of the easy things for me not growing up in church is when I walked into the church and opened the Bible, I thought, what's going on?

You just, you wouldn't believe the trouble I caused as a young minister, and God knows I didn't mean to, but I'd go knock on the pastor's door somewhere, and I would sit down and think, why do you do this? And why do you do this? And why is this allowed? And why is this allowed? And why is this allowed?

God is my witness to this day. I've never had one of them to say, you're wrong. I've had them to say, you're right, but that won't work, Jeff.

That'll cause problems. People don't view it that way. People do. We know, I know, I know it's in all of our historic statements of faith.

I know our forefathers really lived that, but you know, just can't do that. I'm not setting myself up as some kind of hero because I'm not. I was just young and stupid. And I mean stupid. How many of you are in here young?

Don't raise your hand. We know who you are. Now, if you're young, are you listening to your pastor this morning?

Now, you know, I'm kind of sarcastic and halfway tongue in cheek, but this is true. If you're young, you're stupid. Are you hearing me? And every young person in here, you need to go look in your mirror every morning and say, I'm stupid because I'm young. I'm thankful for the things I have learned so far, but I'm still young and I'm still stupid. That's why you parents are double stupid.

If you follow your children in important areas like where to go to church and things like that. But that's just, I'm just, that's rock solid truth you just heard. That's not being funny.

That's not being crude. That's truth. The Bible says foolishness is bound up.

There's just a lot of it crammed in there and it's tight. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. And it says, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from them.

The point is, we're all growing. And as a young pastor, I had way more zeal than I had wisdom or common sense. And I would just kept pushing because folks, I was seeing things in the churches I started attending after my conversion that weren't way over here, kind of difficult, narrow, you know, we kind of had to dissect the scriptures and find out where you might pass. These were glaringly obvious compromises. And we always have some of those, but it was the embracing and allowing, even almost bragging that we have them. The institutionalization of compromise, along with the institutionalization of false doctrine. Now listen to this statement.

I think they used to put this on the screen before the service. The work of missions should be the object of cooperation among local churches. Doctrinal truth must be the base of cooperation among local churches.

Did you hear that? Missions is the object, but we can't get together on let's do missions. We must get together on what is truth because the truth is what we're taking to the world. The psalmist wrote, send out thy light and thy truth. We cannot take a lie to the world.

We must know the truth. That's why Paul commanded his young understudy pastor Titus to guard sound doctrine. It wasn't a suggestion, it was a command. Church, are you listening to me this morning? Your pastor is passionate about guarding sound doctrine for this flock. I mean, I'm patient with young guys that may mess up something here and there because I know their heart, but if anything, now listen to me, in the tiniest way, looks like it's about to be taking root, I will come at it.

Trying to think of the biggest bomb I can think of with an atomic bomb that ages me, doesn't it? I mean, we're just not going to do it. Are you hearing me?

Now again, understand the balance. We've learned to be patient, sweet and kind every way we can because sometimes you've got a good brother and he lost his mind on one vacation and bought Beth Moore's book. And he comes in, he starts talking stuff and me and the elders start going, but he's a good brother. We don't just run out there and get him in a headlock, ride him to the ground. We pray, we watch. A couple of weeks later, he's bumped into two or three other brothers who said, have you lost your mind? And he says, yeah, that was kind of goofy, wasn't it? And he goes on. That's what happens in a mature church.

You don't have to run, beat everything up all the time, but you still have to be vigilant. Well, what I'm talking about, if we're going to unite together with other churches, they have to be all grounded in sound doctrine. And by the way, that rules out a bunch immediately.

Now, I want you to listen to what I'm saying. That even rules out a bunch of churches with good men as pastors who tried to do their best. But you know what these pastors are fighting today? I mean, the good brothers who are trying to do it right, they fight, they have such mountains of obstacles against them. And they're fighting so that we would love that pastor, we may not can do missions with him because the embodiment of what he's actually about is so contrary to sound doctrine, it would pollute what we're about. So we love him and we would help him individually, but we can't cooperate for missions. There has to be enough of an embrace in the body on sound doctrine that we can work together. Last time I looked, and it's been a while, we had over 200,000 viewers of my small treatise on why we were leaving the Southern Baptist Convention. 200,000.

And some of those viewers were by groups. So I don't know. And by the way, that was not premeditated. I didn't even know I was going to say what I said when I went to church that morning. God just got on me with it and I couldn't let it go. And I knew we as a church family had long, long, long, long ago disassociated ourselves in any real active way with Southern Baptists.

And can I back up from that? Long, long ago, they disassociated from us. And we would ask, why won't you associate with us?

They would pick out something that's absolutely false and doesn't matter. Well, y'all have a plurality of elders. Well, so did Paul's churches in the New Testament. And so did our badness churches of 100, 150 years ago. But they would divide. They divide over things that don't matter.

The Bible has some flexibility. So they pushed us out. And finally, we said, okay, since you pretty much pushed us out, you don't associate with us. We've decided we love you. We know there's good brothers and sisters out there that love the Lord.

We love you. But we're just not going to send our money anymore. We're going to send our money to the mission work God's given us to do. So we've had a lot of interest in our position on why we don't think we should cooperate with a great big machine called Southern Baptist. Well, if you just went to the churches and sat down and looked at the doctrine that was being taught and embraced, sometimes some good brothers who are doing the best they can, but nevertheless, the doctrine is very unsound, you'd understand why. And since I've already picked on Beth Moore once, and I love Beth Moore, but she's a woman out of control. She's a woman out from under godly authority. She ought to be sitting down with godly elders and saying, am I missing it on my doctrine here? Because she's missing it bad.

Are you listening to me? When Beth Moore becomes the most popular preacher in your denomination, you got serious trouble. Not that we don't love her. Not that God has never used her. First of all, she has no business preaching in God's church.

That's the office given to men only. Secondly, her doctrines are very in error. Her view of God's guidance and direction is way out of bounds. If you view God leading you the way she does, every one of us could come up with God said, God said, God said, God said, and do anything we want in life, instead of going to the book. This is what God said right here.

So, now I know all that's old news to us. We've been there for a long time, but I'm going to talk about the Pastor's Training Institute probably next week and tie this all together. But I want you to be reaffirming with your pastor. We're going to be kind, we're going to be loving, we're going to be compassionate, and we're going to understand that some real sincere and genuine brothers and sisters who are called in something that privately they wish they weren't called in, just to be honest. But to do missions, we must know those local churches are grounded in sound doctrine. Can I get an amen on that?