The Danger of Division

Maybe we've made this complicated more than it was ever meant to be. Hasn't it always been about the same thing? Lord, bring us back to simple things. You be the center of it all. My heart belongs to You. My Savior, You're the one. You're the one I hold on to. You're the pure in everything. My soul will live to say, Jesus, I love You. Teach us to discern the moment. When to serve and when to sit here at Your feet. Keep us awake to what's important. Just like Mary chose to let me be. You are the center of it all. My heart belongs to You. My Savior, You're the one. You're the one I hold on to. You're the beauty of the day. My soul will live to say, Jesus, I love You. You are the center of it all. My heart belongs to You. My Savior, You're the one I hold on to. You're the beauty of the day. My soul will live to say, Jesus, I love You. Oh, how I love You. Oh, how I love You. Jesus, I love You. Oh, how I love You. Oh, how I love You. Jesus, I love You.

For Your glory, my whole world. For Your only everything. For the honor of Your name. And if my days tell a story, let it be of Your only everything. For the honor of Your name. For my whole life, for Your glory, my whole world. For Your only everything. For the honor of Your name. And if my days tell a story, let it be of Your only everything. For the honor of Your name. For my whole life, for Your glory, my whole world. For Your only everything. For the honor of Your name. And if my days tell a story, let it be of Your only everything. For the honor of Your name. Oh, how I love You. Oh, how I love You. Jesus, I love You. Oh, how I love You. Oh, how I love You. Jesus, I love You. In my whole life, for Your glory, my whole world. For Your only everything. ♪ Everything for the honor of Your name ♪ ♪ Take it in my days, tell the story that it means ♪ ♪ I'll give only everything for the honor of Your name ♪ ♪ In my whole life, for Your glory, my whole world ♪

♪ For You own everything for the honor of Your name ♪ ♪ Take it in my days, tell the story that it means ♪ ♪ I'll give only everything for the honor of Your name ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Oh, how I love You, Jesus, how I love You ♪ ♪ You are the center of it all, my heart belongs to You ♪ ♪ My Savior, all in all, You're the one I hold on to ♪ ♪ Oh, the beauty of Your name, my soul will live to sing ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love You, my soul will live to sing ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love You, my soul will live to sing ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love You ♪ ♪ Oh, Jesus, I love You, my soul will live to sing ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love You ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love You ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love You, my soul will live to sing ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love You, my soul will live to sing ♪ Welcome to kickoff Sunday. This is the day when officially all of our ministries kick off for the fall semester. And so if you are here today and you're brand new, you're here on a great day, everything's new. And so many of you are new and we're excited that you are apart of what God's doing here. If you are new, you may not realize this. We are four campuses spread across Northwest Arkansas. So at this point, I wanna welcome all of a campuses to this service right here, and we call these one church Sundays where we all gather together in this manner. We usually do this about once or twice a month,

and I wish that we were all able to be in the same room, but it's just not physically possible and honestly would limit our mission. And so we are spread across this region, unified by our mission of reaching Northwest Arkansas, America, and the world for Jesus Christ. So wherever you're at today, you participate like you are right here in the room with us, and we're so glad that you are here. As you heard Eli on the video just a moment ago, this Wednesday night is a massive night in the life of our church and of our college ministry, specifically. Let me speak to every adult in the room, okay? If you have never been to C3 at the Greek, I would encourage you, make plans for that this Wednesday night. The other adults in the room who've been there, they would tell you yes and amen, do that. Find a place to park on campus, get to the theater. Do not sit in the theater. Bring a lawn chair, bring a blanket, sit on the grass. And here's what I'm gonna encourage you to do, watch and pray. And I promise you, as you watch, you're gonna be astounded at what God's doing and blown away and thankful for how your church is ministering to college students. Literally, we're gonna have the opportunity to share the gospel with thousands of college students.

Last year, over 3,000 of them showed up for that. And so I hope you will make plans to be there this Wednesday night as a grownup, all right? As you also heard, we have new sermon journals on the rise for you right here. Somebody told me those are cowboy colors. They're really not, but I appreciate the sentiment, okay? On your way out today, you'll receive a sticker. Every time we begin a new series, you get a new sticker, you can put it in there. And these are scratch and sniff this year. And so if yours doesn't smell, just keep scratching. Looking around to see if anybody's doing it. But we're really excited about this. And here's what I would tell you, if you're like, hey, Nick, I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm not going to use this. I got my own thing or whatever. What I would tell you is just, we don't care. Just put them back on the table when you leave today. We obviously make a heavy investment in this for our church. And so we hope that you will become a note taker if you're not a note taker. Taker, you say, well why would we spend money on this and give this to you? It's because we deeply care about your discipleship. We don't want you just to be like an attender of church, but a follower of Jesus. And any study that you look at would tell you you retain more when you write things down.

And so we've tried to make it easy for you. Every sermon title and sermon passage for the entire year is right here, and so hope you'll do that, okay? How many overachievers are in the room today? How many of you filled out every page of the booklet last year? Raise your hand. We know there are some of you. Okay, praise God, your name's gonna be entered into a raffle for a free helicopter ride with me in between the campuses. If you're new, that's a joke. There's no helicopter. I wish there was, it'd be pretty cool, but there's not, all right? I drive a car just like you drive a car. Okay, so we're excited about where the Lord's gonna take us this year. Hey, one big announcement on one of our campuses today. This is significant, and I'm so glad I get to be here at Springdale, which was the sending campus. Pinnacle Hills campus turns 25 years old today. Let's give it up for Pinnacle Hills. Congratulations to you guys. And let me just say thank you, thank you, thank you for many of you who 25 years ago, you were at Springdale and you sacrificially gave to start a place that you would never attend. And others of you are at Pinnacle who you left Springdale campus, and about 350 of you went north

and started a new church. And man, today, there will probably be about 4,000 people who will worship at that campus. And in 25 years, we did the math, in 25 years, we have seen 5,255 people be baptized. So praise God, all glory to Him. What an incredible thing that is. And so we're excited you're here today. Grab your Bible, grab your journal. 1 Corinthians is where we're gonna be today. We're gonna begin a brand new series that will carry us through this great book of the Bible over the next 11 weeks together. You may wonder, Nick, how do y'all put the sermons together? Like, you know, we got the booklet, y'all been working on this a while. What is the process? Here's the process. Every winter or spring, depending on the calendar year, myself and our other teaching pastors get away, and we usually go over to Tulsa, we rent an Airbnb, and we just work in the house and we eat, because men, what do we do? We work and we eat, all right? So that's, we spend about 24 to 36 hours doing that. I usually come to the meeting prepared of like, hey guys, this is some things that God's put on my heart. Here's some calendars that we could work through. And so at that time, Ryan Blackwell was still here, so Ryan Blackwell, Jeff Crawford, Mark Hutchinson and myself,

we go to this Airbnb, we get there in the afternoon, we go straight to work in the living room of this house. And we work and work until it's dinner time, we break for dinner, and we go eat, and we come back, and we came right back to work that night in the living room and man, honestly, more than normal, more than other years, things were just falling into place of like, okay, this nine weeks works well here, this six weeks worked well here, and we were all agreeing kind of at one heart of where we were going. We could not figure out for the life of us the very first series of the year, which is this right here, beginning in August. And we could not figure it out, we had thrown 1 Corinthians out as an option, but just could not make it work. And almost out of frustration, you can ask Jeff and Mark, I stopped us and was like, what do we feel like our people need? And so your four teaching pastors at the time, with pastoral hearts began to just lay out concerns for you in your Christian life. Now the same could be true for any church that we would have been talking about, but we obviously care about this place first and foremost, and so we began to talk about various concerns that we have for the people of God. And as we began to look at it, these quickly began to fall in line

with where 1 Corinthians is. And what 2,000 years ago, the apostle Paul was warning that church about and had concerns about for those people at that time. And so here's the subtitle of the series, we're just calling it 1 Corinthians. The subtitle is this, 11 dangers for every Christian. There are some things that you need to be aware of within this next series that are, warnings are dangerous for you as an individual Christian. Other of these, others of these are more like for your family, friend group, workplace environment. Some of these are related to like the whole church of what are some things that you don't need to be concerned about individually, but we. we collectively need to be worried about together as a church family. And I don't know if you've realized this, but the whole world is warning you of danger. You ever get that? Like you're driving up and down 49, come across a bridge and what does the sign say? So many words, when it ices, bridge may ice over quickly. Or you've got food labels that warn you all the time about the dangers of eating what it is. But man, you can't even eat lettuce right now, right? Golly, I've been avoiding lettuce for 42 years, I'm fine. Has not changed my life at all, okay? Never gotten sick from chocolate chip cookies, all right?

You got those commercials on TV, I don't know if you noticed, where it's promoting a new drug and people are at the beach and they're throwing a football and drinking Coke and stuff and they're all happy and smiling and then it describes a new drug. And if you listen closely, you're gonna die or lose a limb or something's gonna happen if you take the new drug, okay? Everybody's warning you in life about different things. Here's what the Bible is doing. The Bible is saying, as a Christian, you need to be aware of some dangers in your life. And here's what I tell you, these feel incredibly natural. They're normal to you because we have wicked sinful hearts and even though we've been changed by Christ to salvation, we're still not what we will one day be in heaven. We are still tempted by the flesh or what the Bible would call the old man living inside of us, the old woman living inside of us. And so here's where Paul begins in chapter one, it's where we will begin. Today, he's gonna talk to us about the danger of division, the danger of division. Some of you have heard me say this before, but I think sometimes in church circles,

we have a misconception that the early church was perfect and we say things like, well, we need to get back to the days of the early church. And while that is right in a certain percentage and I would amen that to a certain percentage, I would also say, have you ever read the epistles? Like, have you ever read 1 Corinthians? If not, it's PG 13 in some ways. And you're going to see that this place was full of jacked up believers who have come out of a life of sin and yet they're not all the way done with it. And so they are relationally struggling together. They are struggling with all kinds of different things. And so where does he begin? He begins with this thing called division. Let me give this caveat. The principles we're gonna talk about today, they will work in your family, bringing unity to your family. They will work in a friend group. You can take this into your office tomorrow and you can use this passage and it will bring you to a place of unity and it will help towards unity in the workplace. The only problem is that's not at all, any of those things is not what Paul is talking about in this passage. He is speaking about us. When I say us, he is speaking specifically

about the context of your church family and he is warning us against division in the church. Now, he starts the first nine verses, he gives some greetings, opening remarks. We're gonna begin in verse 10 and it's really where he gets to the goal of the entire passage and his entire message right here. Look at what he says all the way in verse 10. He says, I appeal to you, underline this, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you, what's the word? Agree, and that there be no divisions among you but that you be united in the same mind and in the same judgment, okay? It is God's desire, it is God's desire that the people of God would be one and yet this is much easier said than done. You say, why is it much easier said than done? Here's why, because you're in the church and I'm in the church and we are normal, sinful people who don't have it all together just quite yet this side of heaven. And so why is it hard to stay united and why is it easy to become divided? Because all of us are just normal people, we're just normal sinners who meet together at least once together on Sundays every single week. Why don't you write this statement down? Okay, listen to me here. It is easier to be divided than to remain as one.

It's easier to be divided than to remain as one. Some of you, honestly, you may have a genuine question. If I said it was on one church Sunday where we're kind of utilizing video across our campuses and you may say, why are we doing that? I don't understand that. Well, this is why. It is easier to be divided than it is to remain as one. That's one. I said this two weeks ago, I'll say it again right now. It would be so much more easy than you think to become four separate churches. And that's not our desire. Our desire is to be one church, united with the same mission. And so we are just, this is one of the ways that we are trying to stay united and on the same page here together. Now, I got bad news for you. I know some of you came to church for encouragement. I'll get back to that. I got some bad news to begin there with. At some point in your life as a Christian, a person who is also a Christian or a church in general, will bring pain to your life. You say, man, I don't know what to do about that. And it's honestly, it's like, what category do you put? People who are supposed to be the people of God should be godly people. What do we do when godly people don't act godly?

Or what do we do when the church doesn't do something right or makes a wrong call? And this is true of our church. This will be true of any church you're a part of in the future. Again, why? Because we're all flawed people. And so what in the world are you supposed to do? The reality is some of you are on the fringes of our church because at some point in your life, somebody in the church hurts you. Or you would say a church hurts you. Some of you are inconsistent because at some point in your life, somebody in the church hurts you. Another Christian acted like they weren't a Christian, honestly. Or some of you, if you'd be honest enough to say it, you are deeply involved by every outward measure, but internally, you're just really, really bitter. And sometimes I can see it on your face while I'm preaching. Some of you are like... Trying to force a smile to fake me out right now, right? You can see it on people's faces, right? In the midst of all of this, you're living in an imperfect church with other imperfect believers. He gives a call to unity and he gives like four or five different words or statements. I want you to write these down about church unity.

Here's what he says. He says, first of all, brothers. He's not appealing to be united with outsiders or even lost people. He is writing to you and he's essentially saying this, you're a part of the same family together. And so everybody, every campus, I want you to turn the person on your right and say, you're my family. Turn to the left, same thing, same thing. You're my family. Okay, all right, very, very good, very good. All the college students, look at an adult and say, please feed me, please feed me, okay? We're happy to do that. So he says, brothers, he says second phrase here, all of you agree, all of you agree. You may have read that and thought, how in the world? I mean, just look around there. How are we all going to agree in this room? And what I will tell you is that this is not what the Bible is saying. It's not a shallow mindset where we all think the same way about every single thing. It means we agree on the main things. Jesus is the only way to salvation. The Bible is the perfect inerrant word of God. We agree on spiritual things. We are united about the right things. And here's why Paul would say this.

If you're wondering like, why would Paul begin a whole letter to a church and he speak to them first of all about unity, here's why. If we agree on the main things, we won't let little petty things divide us. And in churches, it is often reversed. We let little petty things divide us to the neglect of the main things. He goes on, here's the third statement. He said, there'll be no divisions among you. The Greek word here for the word division is the word schismata. It refers to the tearing of fabric. Have you ever torn something? Like guys, you ever had your team miss a field goal and lose at the end of the game and you have your shirt and you just rip it like Hulk Hogan? Okay, that's schismata. There's a tearing of fabric right there. What Paul is saying is this, church, you are torn apart through division. It's what he's telling these ancient believers at Corinth. And here's the sad thing. If we take this even to modern day times, like believers and churches are often torn apart through silly things. Preferences rule the day. Well, I don't like the music. The worship didn't speak to me today. I did not realize we have come to worship you today.

Or you have preferences about the kids' ministry. the student minister or, you know, whatever. And just little preference type things. Or somebody sat in your seat here at church. You're laughing because it's you, okay? Can I just say it again? Nobody has a seat at Cross Church. You may sit where you normally sit, but if somebody else is sitting there, don't, don't be bad, okay? You know my favorite Sundays at Fayetteville campus are? I normally sit kind of where I sit over here, and that's where I sit, it's not my seat. And I normally sit over here, and my favorite Sundays at Fayetteville are when our main usher, a guy by the name of Ted Segoe, when Ted catches me at the back when I'm walking in, he goes, hey, I gave up your seat. That means it's a full day, and somebody else needed my seat, and I'm like, sweet, great. And I go and I stand on the wall during worship, and I wait to come on stage. Don't let silly things tear us apart. Don't let preferences tear us apart. You know, these are called golden calves. What are the things in a church that you can't change or else things will happen? You say, well, Nick, I don't really feel like we're a divided church,

so why are we talking about this? Well, we're talking about it because the Bible talks about it. I don't think we're a divided church either. But if we don't constantly fight for unity, we will be a divided church at some point. And so you gotta always be working for it, always be talking about it. We often say this, we don't fight here at Cross Church. Some of you came from other churches in your past where all they did was fight, and you came and you're like, oh my gosh, finally, just unity. And so I can recommend churches for you to go to, but we don't fight here. We'll have hard conversations. We will disagree in Christlike attitudes together. We will not brush things under the rug, but ultimately we will fight for unity together. Amen, church? He goes on, he says another phrase. He says, united in the same mind and in the same judgment. This word carries the idea of mending something that was broken. In other words, Paul's saying you're not together, but you need to get back together. Relationships need to be mended. I've said it this way before. If there's anywhere in the world where two people can get it wrong,

get to a place of disagreement, hash it out, forgive one another, love one another, let it be the local church. Like let us give the world an example of two people who were at odds, but are now back together, okay? The same mind and same judgment points back to the previous phrase. The foundation that we have is the word of God, cross of Jesus Christ. Here's a little Bible trivia for you. 10 times in the first 10 verses of 1 Corinthians chapter one, Jesus is mentioned. Who is the foundation of our unity? It's Jesus, okay? Now do you realize that we're all very different in this room? Like everybody just look up and down your row, like all judgy-like. Just kind of scowl up and down the row. Some of you, I've been in church for your entire life, like nine months before you were alive, you were in church. Some of you, it is your very first time ever in church. We're glad you're here. Some of you know the Bible very well. Some of you don't even own a Bible, don't know anything about the Bible. Some of you are from the South. Others of you have joined us. From the North, East and West,

welcome to God's country, amen. Some of you love the Dallas Cowboys, others of you need to get right with God. Here's how David K. Lowery, great author, writes about this passage. He says this, Paul's appeal was for harmony, not the elimination of diversity. He desired a unity of all the parts like a quilt of various colors and patterns blended together in a harmonious whole. Where else does this happen? Workplace is not as united as this place should be. I love a good quilt, anybody else? It's like the benefit of a blanket without being hot. I don't like to be hot, especially while I'm trying to take a nap on the couch. So man, I love a good quilt. And if you've ever seen a quilt, it is often made up of different patches, different pieces of cloth that are then all sewn together to make one big blanket. That is what David is saying about the church. That's who we are. Can I give you a silly picture? You guys, you're gonna make fun of me, it's fine, okay? Let's imagine that my big thumb here was just done with my pinky on my left hand. And they started talking together like, man, I'm finished with you. Well, I don't need you either.

It's dumb, right? Well, just consider from now on, we are not in a relationship together. It's fine, I don't wanna see your face ever again anyway. Ridiculous, right? That's what it's like for two people in the same church to be at odds. Does my right thumb need my left pinky finger? Absolutely, can't type, can't catch a ball, can't do a lot of things, right? They need one another. And if one person is out of the church, if one person is at odds with somebody else, we are divided people, we are not one body any longer. Now keep on reading, look at verse 11. Here's the temptation. He gives us the goal and he's like, now here's what you gotta worry about. He says, it's been reported to me by Chloe's people that there's quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, well, I follow Paul or I follow Apollos, I follow Cephas, I follow Christ. And you say, well, who are all these people? Chloe, we don't even know who she is. We believe she's a prominent woman, maybe even a wealthy one. She's got servants in that all the way Paul is in, he's a way in a place called Ephesus and it was Chloe's people, whoever those people are,

who said, Paul, there's some really weird stuff going on in the church in Corinth. They're all mad at each other, they're all doing stuff together they shouldn't be doing and you need to write them a letter and you got, that's who Chloe is. It goes on, Apollos was a popular teacher and a believer in Corinth. Cephas was just the other name of the Apostle Peter and then Jesus Christ, you obviously know who he is. Are you seeing what is happening? These believers were falling into different camps. Well, I'm part of this group. I was baptized by Paul, I was baptized by Apollos. And here's the tendency, okay, write this statement down. There's a constant temptation to fall into camps of division instead of pursuing unity. If you don't believe me, wait until something interesting happens in church at a big level and you go to your small group and you begin to discuss it together. First small group, see what I'm saying? Like just wait and there will be every opportunity you can imagine to be divided and not united. What does the church need? Men and women of God who will pursue unity. What is our future need as a church? Men and women of God who will pursue unity. At every turn, there'll be an opportunity for division over a million different things.

God is calling us to be mature followers of Christ who bring unity. Look at verse 13. He says, as Christ divided, was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the household of Stephanus. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else. I find that funny. Anybody else? Paul's like real authentic here. I can't really remember. I know I baptized a lot of y'all, that revival thing we did, but I don't remember, okay? Is Christ divided, yes or no? Did, was Paul crucified for us, yes or no? No. And here's the key verse in the whole passage. For Christ did not send me, verse 17, to baptize, but to what? To preach the gospel. And not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. Paul closes the whole section like this. Man, I didn't come here to baptize. I came to preach the word. I came to preach the gospel of Jesus to you. And so the focus, even though baptism was mentioned,

the focus is not on baptism, Paul is saying. The focus is on the preaching of the gospel. Now, I know we have many people at all of our campuses who are brand new. Literally, you always need to remember this church family. Somebody who sits next to you might be their very first time ever in church. How you treat them will say a lot about Jesus to them. And so if you are here today and you're brand new, you don't know anything about the Bible, let me be very, very clear to you. Getting baptized in water will not save you. It won't save you. In fact, even though you're attending church, and we're really glad you're here, attending church cannot save you and make you right with God. Morality. Just being a good person, it cannot save you. The comparison game. Well, I'm a lot better than my brother, man. I know what he did. Or this neighbor who lives down the street, I'm a lot better than she is. Comparison will never save you. Only Jesus Christ can save you. Paul says, I came to preach the gospel. What is the gospel? God loved you in such a way and that while you were still a sinner,

Christ died for you. That's what the book of Romans says. We often hear a message like this and think, well, man, I need to go clean myself up and then I'll come to God. It's the exact opposite. You come to God exactly as you are. He is the one who cleans you up. This is the gospel. If you will repent of a life of sin, put your faith in Jesus Christ. The Bible says here today, God will save you. God will change you. God will forgive you. He will cover your sins with his blood. Paul says, I've come to preach that message and not with eloquent words of wisdom lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. You say, what does that mean? It means Paul was saying, I've not come here to impress you with my preaching ability, with eloquent intellectual ability. I've not come here to lift up myself, but every preacher, here's what you should be looking for is that they are saying, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, the cross, the cross, the cross, and they're like tucked behind those two things. That's what you should be looking for in any church you ever attend. Do they lift up Jesus or do they lift up themselves?

Do they lift up the cross or do they lift up the church as a way to salvation? Paul says, I've come to preach the gospel. I want to close with a passage not in 1 Corinthians. It's very, very quickly. Once you just look at the screen and I wanna read to you from the book of Ephesians. Interestingly, Paul is writing from Ephesus where this church is to Corinth where the church is that we've been reading about all day. And he is writing to the church at Ephesus imprisoned while in Rome. Complicated, but you get it. Here's what he says, Ephesians chapter four, verse one. Therefore, I, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called. You say, Nick, what is this calling? Is this my calling to be a school teacher? My calling to be a father? My calling to be, no, no, no, it's not that. It's your calling to become a Christian. He's saying, live a life worthy of being a Christian. Verse two, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Here it is. This is the seven verses we studied today. Same heart, different passage. Eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.

The word eager right here means this, making every diligent effort, making an ongoing effort. You got people in your life that you're at odds with, like here in the church or beyond the church. You're making every diligent effort. You're making an ongoing effort for peace with that person. He says, you gotta fight for it to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. You say, well, what does that mean? It's actually giving us the same message that 1 Corinthians 1 gives us, is that as followers of Jesus Christ who are in the same local church together, we don't fight for unity, we fight from unity. It's very different. So don't hear me say, man, we gotta fight to get together. We gotta fight to get together. No, what I'm saying, what the Bible's saying this, we are together. You're related and you don't even know it. Like we are in Christ together. And so when we have like arguments with people in the church or we're at odds with people in the church, we're not saying, I gotta get together. We are saying, man, I'm a part of this family with that person and I am fighting from a place of unity. And we gotta get together. What do you think about like this, okay? Think about my hand right here. Every finger represents somebody

who's present in every church. Our church, every campus, other great churches in our region, all around the world. Every church has these five people, okay? Number one, I'll just call them like the thumbs up people. They come every Sunday. They're like supportive in spirit, but it stops at about a thumbs up. You're not involved at all. Don't serve anywhere. Don't give anything generously. But you love your church. It's just a thumbs up person. Others are like a pointer finger and you're just a constant critic and negative person. We all know these people, okay? And if you don't know who. that is, it may be you, okay? And you just point out everything that's wrong in the church. And listen, there is wrong in our church. I know it as well as anybody, things that need to improve, things that need to get better. But you just point out things. You say, well Nick, who's the middle finger? I'm not going there, I don't know. So skip over that. The ring finger. These are those of you who are men, you're committed. Like I'm wearing a wedding ring

because of my commitment to Meredith, my wife here. You're bought in. You're supportive of the church. You pray for the church. You're serving the church. You're giving generously to the church. Like you're the backbone of this thing. Thank you. Others of you, you're brand new Christians. You're like a pinky. And it's kind of weak, like probably the easiest to break. And it's the shortest out of them. So you need to keep growing. And here's what I would say. When we're all like divided like this, we're all very vulnerable. Like if I were to just stick out this finger and get hit by something real hard, it would break probably. Or if I stuck out my pinky, it would break. But man, when my fingers are clenched together in a fist, when divided people become one, we are a force for good in this world. When divided people come together, we reach Northwest Arkansas, America, and the world for Jesus Christ. Divided people don't care about an outside lost world. Divided churches aren't concerned with people outside of them. But we as a united church, when we band together,

we'll share the gospel to two or 3,000 college students this Wednesday night. When we're banded together, you realize last week we fed more people at Feed 479 in one single week than in any time in our history. 8,500 people fed last week and given the good news of Jesus through food. When we are united together, we look at the community that's growing in front of us and say, what part do I have to play in reaching that person? Or what part do we have to play as a church in reaching this growing area of our region? When we are banded together, we are a force for good. And so church family, what I'm calling us to do today is to not be divided, to not be singular and on our own, but to band together in unity for the sake of the mission of reaching people with the good news of Jesus. You may be here today and you would say, Nick, I am at odds with someone. Maybe they're in the same service that you're in today. You know where they sit. And you know where they sit because you always try to avoid them. You park at a separate entrance. You're at odds over something, I don't know what. Today, what does obedience look like? It means that you begin reconciliation. You make eager effort, ongoing effort.

Same could be true if that's someone in your family. If this is someone at the workplace tomorrow, you know, in your business tomorrow. Maybe it's somebody at your school who first week of school and some kid was a jerk to you and you've just kind of been at odds. What's a way you can bridge the gap? Some of you are at a place where you've tried that and you say, Nick, I don't know how in the world we're gonna get together. Like I've tried. I'm gonna invite you just to come to the altar today and just to lay that before the Lord. God, I'm seeking reconciliation with, say their name. Lord, I'm bringing this reconciliation to the altar. I've done what I can do. I need your spirit to get involved right now. There are others of you who, to be honest with you, maybe you've fallen into division within the church or maybe you've fallen into division with your own family and obedience today might look like before you even leave this place, you send a text, hey, can we talk this afternoon? Or if that person's here at church, you go find them in the lobby. Hey, can we talk for a few minutes? I just wanna get some things right. I said a moment ago, like what does our church need now? What does our church need in the future?

People of unity. And so I'm just looking across this room at a lot of families, a lot of men and women. that just as your pastor, I'm gonna encourage you and just ask you, would you be people of unity? I'm so thankful we're in a united church, not dealing with what many others are dealing with. But I'm just gonna invite you to be an anchor of that. And maybe that looks like you and your family coming to the altar today, say, Lord, we will be that for this church. We will be united. We will fight for unity in our spark. We will fight for unity within our friend group. We will fight for unity for this place so that we can continue to reach people. Be a person of unity. Today, if you've never met Christ and you hear me talk about the gospel, how God loves you just as you are, for some of you, man, that strikes you to the core, grips your heart. If that's the case, then I would not be a stretch for me to say, God's speaking to you today. And today, if you'll come to one of our staff, all you gotta do is say, I need to give my life to Jesus and they'll lead you to faith in Christ today. Can we bow our head and close our eyes as we wrap up? Our staff's gonna make their way to the front of each aisle. Again, I would just ask the Lord right now,

Lord, what is it that you are doing in my heart right now? What is it that you are speaking to me about? How is it that I need to respond? Again, if you don't know Christ and you're ready today, I'm gonna encourage you. We're gonna sing just part of a final song as we dismiss. And as soon as we begin to sing, I'm gonna invite you to come to one of these men or women who's down at the front. And all you gotta do is this, take them by the hand, say, I need to give my life to Jesus. And this morning, we will lead you to faith in Christ in a very private manner. Would you come? Others of you, man, you're ready to be an anchor. You're ready to say, Nick, I, man, I wanna be a uniter in this church. We just wanna make that commitment before the Lord. I'm just gonna ask you to come. Others of you are at your wits end. You've tried reconciliation. You've tried to do your part. Don't know what to do. I'm gonna invite you to come. Lord, we need your help. If there's anything going on in your life beyond even what we've talked about today, but you'd like prayer from one of our staff, we'd love to pray for you. You come as well.

Lord, in these final moments of our service, we give them to you. We ask that the Spirit of God would do something far beyond what any man or church could do. And it's in the name of Jesus that we pray, amen. Let's stand together all over the room. If you need to come for any reason, this is the moment right now. Our staff is here. This altar is open. Let's sing this together. ♪ In the name of God anointed one ♪ ♪ Who was and is and is to come ♪ Come on, if God's working in your heart, this is the moment. You need Christ. This is the time. ♪ Holy, you're holy ♪ ♪ Righteous one who shed his blood ♪ ♪ You prove to us the Father's love ♪ ♪ Jesus Christ be lifted up ♪ ♪ You're holy, you're holy ♪ ♪ Lamb of God anointed one ♪ ♪ Who was and is and is to come ♪ ♪ Seated on the throne of God ♪ Come on, if God's speaking to your heart, it's not too late. You come on. ♪ Holy, holy, righteous one who shed his blood ♪ ♪ You prove to us the Father's love ♪

♪ Jesus Christ be lifted up ♪ ♪ You're holy, you're holy ♪ ♪ Lamb of God anointed one ♪ ♪ Who was and is and is to come ♪ ♪ Seated on the throne of God ♪ ♪ Holy, holy, righteous one who shed his blood ♪ ♪ You prove to us the Father's love ♪ ♪ Jesus Christ be lifted up ♪ ♪ And who else is worthy, who else is worthy ♪ ♪ There is no one, only you Jesus ♪ ♪ Who else is worthy, who else is worthy ♪ ♪ There is no one, only you Jesus ♪ ♪ Who else is worthy, who else is worthy ♪ ♪ There is no one, only you Jesus ♪ ♪ Who else is worthy, who else is worthy ♪ ♪ There is no one, only you Jesus ♪ ♪ Only you Jesus, there's no one, there is no one ♪ ♪ Only you Jesus ♪ Father God, we praise you and just say thank you for all that you have done here in this place this morning. And Lord, as we have heard together today, God, would you bring us together as a church like never before, that you would use us in such a special way to reach Northwest Arkansas, America and the world for Jesus Christ. And Father, I pray Lord, that you would bring us together in a season of incredible growth, God, and reaching people like never before. Thank you for all that you do every single week in this place, God, keep moving among us.

We love you and we give you our praise. It's in Jesus name I pray, amen. Hey, God bless you, thanks for being here today. Have a great Sunday. Well, again, thank you for tuning in today. If you made a decision to follow Christ today or maybe some other spiritual decision, we would love to follow up with you as a church. And if you're one of those who just received Christ, I wanna encourage you to text us and let us know that at 479-343-8777. Again, 479-343-8777. Thank you again so much for tuning in.