Unity In God's Church - Romans 14 - Let's Be Clear

All right.

Hey guys, welcome. We're going to be in Romans chapter 14 today. So if you have a copy of scripture, take it out and turn with me to Romans chapter 14. We're going to be continuing right now in our series, Let's Be Clear. And I don't know how this series has been for y'all. I think it's been good for our church to just kind of make sure that we are speaking with clarity and boldness around some different issues.

I'm going to go ahead and give you this. Okay, listen to today's sermon. And I know we've hit some stuff. Okay, we've talked about transgenderism, we've talked about marriage, we've talked about creation, we've talked about the Bible. I don't know that there is one that we are personally going to wrestle with, listen, or that we need to do more work in, and I mean we.

I'm talking about me before anybody else, okay? Then what we're going to talk about today, we need to be clear about the nature of Christian unity. And that's what we're going to get into today, all right? Romans 14, Christian unity.

As you guys are finding Romans 14, let me just say this though. Guys, we are one month away from maybe your greatest opportunity to invite somebody in to hear the gospel that you're going to have all the way till Christmas. The studies tell us, okay, that on these big weekends like this, people are very apt to say yes if we will just invite them. I mean, how sad would it be for somebody to live in Greensboro or High Point, McLeansville, just kind of the triad, and have nobody invite them to an Easter service.

That will probably happen to tens of thousands of people. Let it not be on our account, okay? And so I want to tell you, go to our Easter page. Man, we have so much that we have going on.

I know they mentioned this. I don't know about you. I'm fired up about the eggstravaganza, okay?

Listen, I don't know if you realize, we're talking about like 30,000 eggs. We're talking about like the whole Greensboro Grasshopper Stadium, okay? I'm asking them if we can bring a helicopter in, and they said no, okay? So they're not letting us do that.

But everything else is not off limits. Why do we do stuff like this? Man, what's the point? What's the point to get a bunch of people to go out? I'm going to tell you exactly what it is. We believe at Mercy Hill that God has made you for more than possessions and promotions.

He has made your kids for more than straight A's in soccer. There is a mission that we are to be about. And things like the Easter weekend, yes, even the egg hunt, why do we do this? We do this as a staff so that we can all have something to invite someone into that gives us a touch with them, that lets them rub shoulders with some other believers, man, that lets them come and kind of get around so that maybe they would want to come and actually hear the gospel.

So guys, you have all that stuff there for jumping in and inviting. I love this, okay? We've never done this before, all right? So get one of these and put it in your yard, all right? We're going to put it in our yard. The problem is where we live, no one will see it. And I mean no one, okay? So, but we're going to have it in our yard and I hope that you guys will do that as well.

So man, let's be about it. Man, who can we think about, who can we be praying for now that we're going to invite? Who can we be thinking about that we care about enough to ask them if they want to come in? I hope that you guys are doing that.

My family certainly is going to be doing that. All right, Romans chapter 14 today, okay? Here we go. We're just going to have to hit it head on.

We're going to dive into this one, all right? What does the Bible tell us in Proverbs 25, 26? I've said it almost every single time.

What the world does not need is another muddied spring. We need clarity and we have clarity in the crystal clear truths that are found in the Bible if we will stand on them. But here's the thing, and Christians struggle with this.

I'm telling you, I could tell you as many stories as you would want to hear. Here's what Christians do. They're like, oh yeah, on the essential things we'll agree. And on the non-essential things, I'm fine to agree to disagree. They're fine with that until they realize there are people that disagree with them. It's like, I'm good to agree to disagree. It's because you assumed everybody holds that opinion.

And when you realize that you are in a church where not everybody votes the same way, when you are in a church where there might be people who have different ideas around, I don't know, things like Calvinism or Arminianism. Some of you are like brand new. You're like, I have no idea what that is. Don't worry about it, okay?

Don't worry about it. You know, it's end times theology. Exactly what's going to happen in the end. Or maybe it's even some political stuff. You're in a church where people may have different views on something like climate change or even gun control. Now here's what I want to tell you, okay? You ain't got to be a genius to figure out where I stand on a lot of that stuff. Just look at my boots and my truck. I'm just gonna be straight up.

You probably, but here's what you gotta hear. The basis of Christian unity is not that you would agree with me about things that are non-essential. That's not, that's not maturity. Maturity is not, what does he think about it so we can kind of align and he can cast a vision for the whole church about what they're supposed to think about climate change or whatever. Not maturity.

Maturity is, I do want you to align with the way that I think, the way the Bible thinks about this. In non-essential things we've got to learn to disagree without dividing. We've got to learn how to do that. And I know that to me is a true basis for Christian unity. So here's what I want to say this weekend. Unity in Christ, big idea. Unity in Christ is more important than uniformity of opinion, all right? The question is, are we mature enough to disagree and yet stay unified on main and essential things?

Does unity in Christ beat all these other things that are not number one tier, they're not black and white, they're not closed-handed as we will say, when there are issues of non-essential nature, are we going to be charitable with one another and learn how to speak to one another and still be able to worship together and go to group together even though on that one particular cultural norm, political issue, or secondary theological issue, we may never agree? See, here's what you got to see today. Any of you guys ever play spades? Okay, I can play spades son. Okay, I don't know if you guys play spades. We played a lot of spades in college.

You're on that bus going to a football game and you're on a hotel or whatever. I mean, we played a lot of spades, right? Counting the cards, the whole thing. I'll tell you the last five books of the game. But here's what I'm going to tell you. In spades, what happens?

Some of you never played. Okay, basically what happens is you have something called a trump card, right? It doesn't matter what's laying down on the table. It doesn't matter.

If you have the trump card, if you're holding what is, you know, a trump card in the game, when you put it down, it beats everything else. Listen to me. Does our opinion beat everything else or does our unity in Christ beat everything else? That's what we got to get today. Can we disagree without dividing? Are we willing to grow in that today? I mean, some of us it's like, man, these secondary issues of politics and different things, they matter so much. What I would say to us is, what matters more? Does his praise matter more or do our politics matter more?

Like, does us agreeing on every secondary and tertiary issue there can be or is there something in the gospel that is supposed to unify us and trump all of that because we are to be on mission together? Now, I want to make sure you understand. This is not the willy-nilly don't have an opinion, okay? I've named a bunch of stuff.

I'm going to name it a bunch of stuff. I have an opinion on everything that I'm going to name today. And by the way, I think I'm right about it all. You know why I want to just go ahead and say I have an opinion?

Because the scripture tells us, we're going to see it today, be convinced in your own mind. Be convinced when it's secondary, when it's not black and white, when it's something of an open-handed issue rather than a closed-handed issue. That don't mean don't have an opinion. I've got an opinion. I have a conviction.

I'll tell you what that is. I may even try to persuade you if it's in good faith and good nature. I'm not going to hold it over you and I'm not going to divide with you because you don't agree with me. And that's what I want to get into here today, Romans chapter 14.

Here's what it says. As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but do not quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything while the weak person eats only vegetables. Guys, just write that down next time your wife gives you some salad or whatever, okay?

Just a little proof text there. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains. And let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?

That just about sums it up. We are servants of God. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?

It is before his own master that he stands or fails or falls and he will be upheld for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day as better than another. Okay, they're probably talking about religious holidays here, maybe days that are carried over from the Jewish calendar.

Very hard to know, okay? You start talking about eating meat. We immediately think, is this meat been offered to idols?

You start thinking about these days. Is this pagan religious ceremony? Is it Jewish religious ceremony? The answer is we don't rightly know, okay? But there's something going on here where Paul is trying to say some are going to eat meat, some are not. They're both going to do it out of conviction.

Some are going to have these certain days and another, listen what it says, one person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced, that's the point, in his own mind. This passage is one that we have got to get and continue to grow in and we are growing in this, okay?

I've had a lot of conversations with people. These kind of conversations are hard, but I feel like we are growing in this and we need to continue to grow in this. I don't know if you guys knew there was an election this year, okay? And here's what's going to happen.

I want you to know what's going to happen. That election, this is what I'm thinking. By the time we get close to that election, I'm not going to be talking about all this stuff because I've learned even in the Christian community when things are whipped into a frenzy, often we can't hear what we need to hear. Such a megaphone on both sides. So let's talk about it now, okay? Let's talk about this concept of can we agree to disagree on some things that are secondary or third-tier issues?

Well, that's certainly what he's getting into here. What he's saying is Christians are not clones. There is differences of opinion and these are actually theological in nature. A lot of examples I'm going to use today are not even theological in nature. They're more cultural norms and politics.

But even these are, I would say this is even weightier. I mean, this is theological. Can you eat that meat if it's been offered to an idol? Maybe.

Or can you eat that meat if it's, you know, or can you observe this religious holiday or that religious holiday and what the Bible I think is trying to get us to see is we can disagree on many things, cultural norms, politics, even theology, and we can do so without dividing in a way that hurts each other and hurts our movement. This is sort of, it's attributed to Augustine. People will say, but you maybe even have heard this before.

Very good. Write this down. In essential things, unity. In non-essential things, liberty.

And in all things, charity. Now Mercy Hill, you'll hear me say this a bunch of different ways, okay? Sometimes I'll say, that's a black and white issue.

There's a gray issue. Or I'll say, that's tier one. These are tier two. Or I'll say, that's closed-handed. This is open-handed.

And what I'm trying to get at in that is that there are a lot of things that are tier one, black and white, closed-handed. It means we don't, these are not up for debate for us to be in fellowship with one another, okay, in terms of the Christian church. You know, right here at Mercy Hill, it's like, man, we're not agreeing to disagree over the divinity of Jesus. We're not agreeing to disagree over the role of men and women in marriage. We're not agreeing to disagree that God has created every single person in the image of God, okay?

From the womb all the way to the tomb. We understand, okay? These are things that are, however you want to call it, black and white, tier one, closed-handed, okay? They're things that we're not going to say are up for debate.

If you want to look at a list of some more of these things, and generally speaking, actually, I would say even in the research I'm going to give you, there's a little bit of wiggle room for some of this stuff. But generally speaking, churches will have, especially if you're newer, some of you guys might be your first rodeo, okay, with church. You know, a lot of times the church will have a statement of faith. We have a statement of faith. It's called the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

It was adopted in 2000. And so that's what it is, the Baptist Faith and Message. It's actually a statement of faith that I really love. You know why?

Because it majors on the majors. It talks about what is closed-handed, being closed-handed, and it kind of leaves many of these other things to be things where Christians should be able to agree to disagree. You're going to read through, if you want to, if you care about it, go read through the Baptist Faith and Message. Here's what you're going to not find.

You're not going to find whether it's okay or not to eat meat or to esteem this day over another. You see what I'm getting at? Like what he's saying, it's not in the essential camp, and so therefore you're not going to see it there. And I think for Paul, that's the same way. You know, it's not as if Paul didn't know there were things that were worth dividing over. He told us to divide over false teaching in Galatians. He told us to divide sometimes when there's cases of open immorality and someone will not repent in the church.

It's not that we never divide. I mean, that's not what we're getting at. What he's saying is some are eating meat.

Why? Let's assume for a minute it's something about idolatry. I don't know that, okay, but a lot of people have said that. What he's saying is some people will eat it because they know that an idol is nothing.

Other people will not eat it because they're kind of feeling like, well, somebody's going to think I'm approving of the idolatry. What he's saying is I'm not saying there's one that's right or wrong. I actually think that Paul is saying one's weaker and one's stronger. He is kind of tipping his hand, right? But I think his point is that's something we can agree to disagree on.

Same thing with the religious liberty in terms of the holidays and stuff. It's like, well, I think if you pin Paul down, he would probably say, eat meat and don't worry about all these festivals and all that kind of stuff. I think that's probably what he would say, but you know what? That's actually not what he says. I think that's probably his opinion, but you know what? Just like I gave my opinion on something earlier, opinions about worth a dime and all of us have it.

We've all got one. I think what he's saying is don't adopt my opinion on this. Adopt the higher tier level of maturity, which is it's okay to disagree on that. You can be in the same community group and disagree on that. You can worship together and disagree on that. That's the unity that I think we're going to have that ends up speaking into the world that Jesus ended up talking about.

Clear, tier one, close-handed, black and white. Man, that's fine. We're unified around those things. And the other things we don't allow ourselves to be divided over them. I think sometimes people in the Christian church would say, man, the ferociousness, the weight that I give my convictions on lower tier issues is spiritual maturity. Well, one pastor said it like this.

I thought it was really good. Spiritual maturity is not just developing strong convictions. It's not that it's not that. I want us to have strong convictions. I have strong convictions. I want you to have strong convictions, but here's what it says.

It is learning to show restraint in the weight that you give those convictions. Man, I've got an opinion. You've got an opinion. I'll tell you what it is.

You tell me what it is. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're wrong. We can still stay unified because after all, we're not talking about the very nature of the deity of Christ or what he wants from his church or the trinity. You see what I'm getting at? And there's a lot of those issues that are that way, that are closed-handed. But when it's not that, we need to be charitable with one another. And I was thinking about this, just some of the different issues that we might need to raise here together that we can think about like this. There is clear and then there is, man, a little bit great. We've got to be okay with each other. All right, so you think about, I mentioned earlier, made a little joke, Calvinism, Arminianism, just the nature of salvation. Man, I know some of you guys here, you study those things, you think about them, you all that. Clear.

Jesus is the only way to be saved. Not exactly clear enough to where we can maybe have some debate about it. Exactly how the ordering of all that stuff happens. That's why at a church like Mercy Hill, you'll have elders that believe one way about it or believe the other but can still stay locked tight and lock step with each other in mission because it ain't got to be one way or the other. We have close-handed, we have some more of the open-handed way of thinking about those things.

A lot of things are that way. Y'all, I mentioned earlier, you know, the Bible is so clear. Every single person bears the image of God. Man, there is none that are more esteemed more than the other, whether they are wealthier, whether they're a different race, whether they're man or a woman. Every one of us, our intrinsic worth comes from the same place that we were created in His image.

But I'm going to tell you, there has got to be charity in the way that people begin to see what is racism and what is not racism. You cannot lose the image of God in man, but there is massive debate politically, cultural norms, and we're going to have a whole sermon on that so you guys can come back and talk about that and think about that. Man, some people it's like, man, okay, some people are like, I don't drink, but do you look down on brothers and sisters that do? Tattoos used to be a big thing, not that I have an opinion about that, okay?

I know. People keep asking, when's the big reveal happening? One of our staff was like, you need to just go sleeveless one day in the pulpit. I told them our church would double that weekend and we just aren't ready, you know, and we're not really ready for that, so we need to, you know, being a little bit funny, this isn't funny at all. Do you know in the last election there were Christians that said out loud, you can't vote in a way that's different than me and still be a Christian?

Said that out loud. And what you think is, what I'm talking about is Republicans and Democrats, which I obviously am, but I heard people on both sides saying that then about each other, whatever side you landed on. I mean, this stuff is crazy. It's like we want to say, hey, look at the unity of the church.

Man, are we practicing this type of unity. Eating meat and religious days. Man, these are things that we can agree to disagree on.

I'll give you some other things. You know, women, what type of judgment do you feel about how others dress? Where's that line from which something goes from, I don't really like it, to immodest and how do we judge that and is that something that somebody can think about one way and somebody else can think about another way? Could you sit in a group with somebody who thinks differently about that than you? You know, I think about, here's an example.

I think about this in 2020. Guys, I think about one of the most touchy cultural issues. I'm going to use this very specifically because I want you to really hear me here. It doesn't matter if you agree with me on this because my opinion is an opinion. Okay? What matters is can we agree that you can disagree on it?

And, you know, I think about 2020. All right? This is just, and I said, I'm tipping my hand a little bit on here because I'm trying to make a bigger point about being able to agree to disagree. You would just about have to break my knee to get me to kneel during the national anthem. Okay?

That's just me. But here's the thing. If I can't sit in a small group and worship next to a believing brother or sister that feels the exact opposite way than I do about that, I have a theological problem.

They don't have a political problem. You understand? The weight of that problem would be on me. I'd want to throw it on them. Well, have you thought about this? And how could you not do that? But the reality is, wait a minute, if I couldn't be lockstep with them in the mission of God that transcends nations, if I couldn't do that, then the problem rests with me. And I know what some of you are thinking when I give that example, and I give that example understanding that a lot of emails are probably coming, and that's fine.

My email is bobbyherringtonatgmail.com. Okay? So you guys can just send them on whenever you want. But here's the deal.

I raised that example because I wonder if there would be people in our church, college students, different campuses this weekend. Here's the thing. There are people right now that are thinking, I don't think I could do that type of unity. And here's what's crazy about it.

They're probably looking at it from both sides. I couldn't do that type of unity coming this way. I couldn't do that type of unity coming this way. You know what I want to tell you today?

You can. And you know why? Because it's not about our opinions. It's about whose service we have been enlisted in. And that is where there's a lot of opinions, there's a lot of things set up to divide us, but the great unifier is what God has done in all of our lives if you are a believer. And that's where I want to finish this in terms of the scripture here. Read verse four and then skip down and we'll read seven to nine. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls.

Now I just want you to skip down because I'm making one big point from this passage today. For none of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord. And if we die, we die to the Lord. So then whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again that he might be both Lord of the dead and of the living. I hope you're catching what he's getting at here.

But here's what he's saying. The basis of our unity is not that we all think the same way about every single issue that there is. Christians are not clones, okay? The basis of our unity is this. Our unity comes from our place in God's service. That he has pulled us from death to life. That he has brought us into his family, okay?

That he has made us servants of the living God. Why can I agree to disagree with you about the way you voted or about the thing that you're, you know, this political issue over here or even this theological issue over here? You know, why can't me and you agree to disagree about the way that we think the end of the world is going to come, okay? It's not because our opinions, one over the other, it's because we have both been enlisted into the service of a king and that begins to transcend.

Listen, you get saved. Our differences are not demolished. They are transcended.

We begin to think about something that is higher. One pastor said it like this, a little bit of a long quote, but I think it gets to the point. Paul has been on stretching that Jesus is Lord of the weak. Now here's what he says about the weak. The teetotaling, Sabbatarian, vegan Jews, okay? It's about right from the scripture here. And then he says the strong. What's he talking about the strong? Wine sipping, Saturday shopping, bacon munching Gentiles, okay? One day I'm going to ask Paul exactly the strong weak thing if he meant to order it that way, you know, I don't know. But here's what it says.

I think this is really good. If God has justified them, they cannot condemn one another. If God has raised them up, they can't put each other down. If they belong to the Lord, they belong to each other. If everyone calls him Lord, they must call each other brother and sister.

If God has accepted them, they must accept each other. See, what Paul is doing in this passage by going to the gospel is rooting our collective unity, not in a political party, not in wealth, not in class, not in race. He is rooting it in something that transcends all of those things, and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If you're newer and you don't know what the gospel is, let me tell you the best news on earth, okay? Jesus Christ came to this earth to live the life that you and I never lived. We sinned in our life, he didn't. At the end of our life, we deserve to die. And what I mean by die is, yes, die, but also die for all eternity in a place called hell.

We talked about that last week, we talked about that last week, right? And instead of that, Jesus comes, lives the life we didn't live, and then dies for us on our behalf. He goes to the cross, he takes death, he's not deserving of death.

Why did he do it? So that we could change places. The great exchange in his resurrection, three days later, he offers you the opportunity to walk in the newness of life. Being rich in mercy, he sent Jesus to die for us, to be reborn into his family, to be placed in his service.

And you know what that does or what it should do, what I pray it will continue to do in our church? And I'm telling you, I mean this for me more than anybody else, okay? Because this is hard for all of us. Every one of us just want to group up with the exact people that have all of our exact same opinions, okay?

That's common to man. But what the Bible is saying here is, there is something that transcends the fact that somebody may disagree with you on the second amendment. There is something that transcends whether you're going to send your kids to public school, or whether you're going to send your kids to private school, or home school, or charter school, or the thousand other ways you can go to school now. You understand? Like these are things where Christians are always at danger of dividing.

And what the Bible is saying is like, no you're not a clone, disagree on that. That's fine, disagree on it. But don't divide.

Why? Because you've been bought with a price, and they've been bought with a price, and you are both in the service of one who is higher than you. You're both in the service of the King.

Our unity is not built on who is right. Our unity is built on who we serve. The Christian that we disagree with, we've got to understand, Jesus Christ shed his blood for them just like he did me. And he has a mission just like I do. And that will begin, I think, to help us come to a place where we can practice Christian unity together. So here's what I want to call you to do.

Maintain unity in the church by not demanding uniformity of opinion. You know, I said this earlier about football or whatever. Y'all, I love sports, okay. And one of the things I love sports, one of the reasons my kids play sports, it's not because I want, you know, got their pro or got, you know, got to go to college or something like that.

I did all that, okay. The biggest thing you get from sports is learning how to work toward a common goal with people you disagree with. You know, it's like, man, when I was playing football, it was like, honestly, you and I can disagree on a lot of stuff. But if you love this team and you can help us win, I'm in. I'm with you. I got your back, man. And we're a team together.

If you're with the team and you can help us win, then we'll ride together. And we'll kind of figure some of this other stuff out. And, you know, it's not a perfect analogy.

There's not perfect analogies. But a little bit, I think that kind of applies over to the church. Man, we may not agree on every single thing. I gave you what we need to agree on. That Baptist faith and message, we need to be pretty close on that, okay. You know, other things that are big things, I mean, but the reality is, we're not going to agree on every single thing.

And the Bible doesn't speak to every single cultural norm and political issue. It just don't, okay. Or don't tell you exactly where to land on it. And so what I'm saying here is, man, we need to, a little bit like that sports analogy, understand that there is a common goal. We've been called into service and we have a mission. And man, if you're down with that, you're down with the family, you're down with the mission, we agree on the essentials, man, then let's go and let's ride together.

I would say it like this. If Paul is willing to lay down opinions about theological truth, how much more should we be willing to lay down opinions about political and cultural norms? Doesn't mean that we're not convinced. Man, I'm convinced in my own mind. I just told you, I got a thousand opinions and I think all of them are right, okay. We all have opinions. What I'm saying is, true unity is the ability to see that Jesus is more valuable than those things.

Can I be super vulnerable with y'all, honestly? What I see in the Christian church and what I personally have fallen into at times in my life, I think sometimes we want to build unity in the church by on these secondary and tertiary issues, speaking in a way that tries to cast a wide enough net that no matter what somebody thinks about it, they secretly can think that you agree with them. That you say things in a way that people are like, well, I hear him, but I heard him say this. And so I run to that thing and I grab onto it and I say, well, maybe he does agree with me then so I can be here. I'm taking a chance here this weekend, but I'm going to tell you, I don't think that's the basis of Christian unity. Christian unity is a little more like, no, no, no, me and you, we disagree on that. That's okay. Like I think of this, you think that.

I've used the example before. I mean, you think about North Carolina, what's going on right now? Is school choice a good thing for minorities or is it a bad thing for minorities?

Is school choice a good thing for parts of Greensboro that are having, or is it a bad thing? I have an opinion on that. You have an opinion on that, but I'm going to tell you something. If the way we land on that divides us and throws us off mission, we are immature.

Maturity is to be able to look at that and a thousand other things like that and say, man, I'm going to be convinced I'm all mine. I got no problem talking about it. Let's talk about it. But if it starts to become divisive in our, no, no, no, we're not going there because we have a mission.

And so that's what I hope we're doing today. The point is not, do you agree with me on my opinions about all this stuff? The point is, can we all agree that there are things that we should be able to agree to disagree on and continue to move forward in the mission? So I'll conclude this way. All right, let me give you three quick things.

I got four minutes. All right, three quick things that I think will help our church practice this and do this well. The first one is this, speak in a way that honors each other when you don't agree. Okay. I'm going to tell you, that's real hard to do on Facebook. You know, if it's like, man, I'm a keyboard warrior and I'm a creator of memes, it's like, well, I mean, I'm not, I'm just not sure we're going to, you know, the things that are, that are charitable don't seem to get the following, you know, on Facebook or whatever.

Right. And I don't mean to harp on that, but I'm just saying like, man, what if we, what if we learn to speak to one another in a way that helps us have things land softly? You're talking to a guy, listen to me, you're talking to a guy who that does not come natural to. You want to talk about somebody who has read the emotional intelligence types books and has thought about that kind of stuff about how what I say lands.

I mean, I've had to learn that stuff doesn't come supernatural to me, but I think it really matters, man. We are agreeing or disagreeing on a tertiary issue. And okay, this is what I mean. You don't say, how could anybody ever believe X? I mean, you've just painted it like, well, how can anybody ever disagree with you? You know, or somebody would say, well, how dumb do you got to be to believe, you know, like what if we replace some of that language with, Hey, I know this is just my opinion. I could be wrong, but here, let me speak plainly about what I believe.

Seems a little more charitable to me, doesn't it? I mean, what about this? What if you say something like this, Hey, I can see what you're saying. I don't think I'm going to get all the way there, but I will, I will think about it more. You know, that's the way that we can be charitable with one another and, you know, in the things that we disagree about. Number two, watch out for how consuming your opinions are.

Okay. And I think this is pretty good for us to think about, you know, you know, the Bible says in the book of Psalms, David said, Psalm 16, Psalm 69, it is zeal for the Lord's house that has consumed me. Has zeal for who's in the white house consumed you, right? Has, I think about like, has zeal for the way you're schooling your children consumed you.

Has zeal for a new way of eating, like a new diet kind of thing. Is it, you see what I'm saying? We all have met that person. That's like, man, they've gotten so wrapped up and whatever their new thing is, they can't ever do anything other than talk about it. And if you're like, that's never happened to me. Well, you know, maybe you, okay.

I mean, you might be the one, but you know, you, you get what I'm saying, right? Sometimes we, sometimes what we're consumed with just comes out and how much we want to talk about it. And so I would say, let's watch that. And the third thing I would say, final thing I would say, y'all let's practice unity in group. I don't know about you.

There ain't been a lot of things in my life that I got very good at without practicing. Let's practice unity in group. Remember that everyone in your group, you know, we're, we're certain they are blood. If they're a believer, okay. If they're a Christian, they're a blood bought believer that is on mission with you together.

You may disagree with them on different issues, but can't we be lockstep and can't we practice being lockstep with one another in terms of attacking the mission. All right, let's pray. Father, we come before you right now and we just ask that you will move in our church and bring unity in our church, even despite differences of opinion. God, I pray that there will not be cultural and political issues that tear at us and divide groups and, and those types of things. God, we know that the winds of culture are against us. And Lord, I just pray that you will give us a spirit of unity that comes from the maturity of understanding that we don't have to agree on every single thing to be unified in the gospel. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen.