Called To Unity

Well, good morning church. How's everyone doing? Balcony, you guys doing good? Awesome. So glad that you guys are here. I'm glad to be here with you. My name is Kyle Pitchford. I am one of the pastors on staff here, and I typically am teaching on Thursday nights. We have a thing called The Hub. It's our college young adult ministry. There we go. Some Hub folks over here and spread around the room. I've seen a few of you. And I'll just take the opportunity. We're 18 to 29 years old. We would love to invite you to come out on Thursday nights and spend some time with us, get to know some folks, and hopefully grow in your faith and spend some time worshiping together. We meet at 8 o'clock right across the parking lot by Loft Coffee, and it's a really amazing community. I'm grateful to be a part of it. And so that's where I typically am teaching, but I'm honored to be here this morning and get to share in this room.

This church has played a huge role in my own faith development. Many people in this church I have looked to, and they have poured into me, and they've guided me as I've grown in my own faith over the years. I actually started attending Twin Lakes in 2004, which it's flown by. It's been a long time. And I just absolutely love this church, but it's humbling to be up here and to share with all of you who I look up to and respect so much. And so thank you for having me.

And before I jump into the message, I also wanted to introduce my family. This is a picture of my family. They are amazing. This is my wife, Jessica. She's my best friend, a huge ministry partner of mine and big support of me. And I just love her to death. She is, I think, watching online. So Jess, kids, hi. She is just such an example of Christ to me and is gentle and patient. And I just have grown a lot because of her. And then we have Lucy, Lucy 7. And I think she's probably the sweetest soul on the planet. She just is so amazing and she loves the Lord. And then we have our goofball in the front. That's Owen. Owen is five and he is such a joy to have in our family and also loves the Lord. And so that's my family. I just thought I would show them off because, I mean, come on, I'm going to show them off.

So before we dive into our passage, though, this morning, I have a question for all of you and you don't need to answer out loud, but I want you to think about it. And the question is this. What is one of the major purposes of the church? What is the major purpose of the church? And I would imagine with this many people in a room, there are a lot of different ideas coming to mind. Some of you, maybe you've been walking with Jesus a long time and you have this good grasp on like, what is our purpose as followers of Jesus, as the church? What does it look like to live into our purpose? Where there are some of you in this room that maybe you're like, I don't know. I'm kind of new to this whole thing. First of all, we're glad you're here. Welcome. So excited to have you guys. But maybe you're not sure what the purpose of the church is. Well, hopefully today you'll hear a little bit about that.

And I definitely know that if you were just out on the street and you asked a non-Christian, "Hey, what's the purpose of the church?" You would most likely get some answers from people like, "The purpose of the church is to correct people who misbehave." Or maybe to judge people who aren't part of the church or to influence or pass laws that make people behave the way they think that we should behave. And the reality is none of that is biblical. None of those things are in the Bible. Actually, René showed us a couple weeks ago that in Jesus' final prayer for his followers, this is what he says in John 17:23, he says, "May they be one so that the world may know that you have sent me and loved them." According to Jesus, these are high stakes.

According to Jesus, the way that people will know that God is real and that he loves them is by the way we as his church are unified in love. That's crazy. In a fractured, divided, polarized, broken world, God calls us to be unified in love in order to show his love. And that's what our true purpose is as the church, to show God's love through our unity in a wildly diverse community. So how are we supposed to do that? That becomes the question. Well, how do we do that? Because I don't know about you guys, but last time I checked, it seems like everywhere you turn, people are at each other's throats with different issues, whether it be political issues, whether it be social issues, whether it be sporting events, whether it be you ride a surf, a shortboard or a bodyboard. We all know the correct answer to that, though. I'm just kidding. Bodyboards are cool, too.

But this doesn't just happen outside the walls of the church. As Christians, we fall into that same trap where we become so passionate or worked up over certain things that we just have to be right or we have to win an argument. And I'm totally guilty of this myself, where I think, well, I'm right here. And so I dig my heels in and I just will do anything to continue to be right. Sorry, I lost my place for a minute. But the question becomes, how then do we keep passion from turning into contempt or how do we keep our disagreements from dividing us? So I'm going to encourage you to grab your message notes. They're titled "Your True Purpose." That's our new study that we're doing in our summer series. It's part two, actually, of our summer study, but today is the first day of it. And the title of today's message is called "To Unity."

The reason that we're calling it called "To Unity" is if you've been with us for part one, you understand that a big theme in the book of Ephesians and the letter to the church in Ephesus from the Apostle Paul, a huge theme is this idea of unity. And that's probably because it was maybe the one time in the history of the world where the church faced a greater threat of division than we do today. I want you to take a look at this map here. In the early church in 33 AD, Jesus had died and resurrected, and every Christian on the planet was from the same country, had the same religious background, had the same culture, spoke the same language, and lived in the same city. Then you fast forward 27 years. That's not very long. And in the book of Romans, in chapter 13 alone, it mentions Christians from this same church, but it says that they're from Rome, Europe, Greece, Asia, Persia, Syria, North Africa, Egypt, and the island of Cyprus. 30 years, it explodes.

That represents nine countries, four languages, four social classes, including slave and free and rich and poor, six different religious backgrounds, including Roman religion, Athenian religion, Ephesian religion, Jewish religion, Egyptian religion, and seven different ethnic groups. Talk about a change. It's crazy. In under 30 years, the faith explodes. We have followers of Jesus from all these different places, and that's so amazing, but what seemed to be a great strength actually was one of its biggest weaknesses, because how do you get that many different people from that many different places all those different worldviews that speak different languages, how do you get them to get along? Well, here comes the Apostle Paul, and he's praying and hoping that they will because he believes that it will change the world.

And so in his final days in a Roman prison, waiting for his execution, he fires off a letter to a young church in Ephesus, and this is what he says. If you would go ahead and grab your Bibles, we're going to be in Ephesians 4, starting in verse 1, and we're just going to look at six verses this morning. And so I want to read through that so you can grab a Bible, and this is what it says. It says, "As a prisoner of the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling that you have received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There's one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called. There's one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."

Will you guys pray with me? Lord, thank you for your word. God, I thank you for this letter that we are diving into. God, may you speak to us this morning so often. Our hearts help us to receive what you have for us. God, I pray that you use me in whatever ways you will to speak through me by the power of your Spirit. I believe you've been with me in my preparation. And so I just thank you for that. And I ask that you would just grow us as a church. Help us to grow more in our understanding of who you are and your love for us, but also let us grow in our unity and love for one another. In Jesus' name, amen.

So back in March of this year, some of those students that I was telling you guys about at the Hub, about 12 of them came to me and they said, "Hey, Kyle, we've got this idea. We want to go on a road trip to Boise, Idaho." And I was like, "Okay." And I said, "What for?" And they're like, "Well, we've got this idea. We're going to go to Winter Jam." Now, I had never heard of Winter Jam. Some of you maybe know what Winter Jam is. It's basically a giant Christian concert that travels around and fills up arenas and a bunch of youth groups come and Christians come and they invite their non-Christian friends. And there's a part in the night where they get to share the gospel and the good news of Jesus with these people. And they're seeing people come to the Lord. It's exciting.

And it just so happened that my dear friend, a guy by the name of Zane Black and a friend of our ministries, he's done some discipleship, leadership training stuff with some of our team. He was the keynote speaker. And so they're like, "We're going to road trip to Boise, Idaho and we're going to do random acts of kindness in the city and we're going to tell people about Jesus and pray for people. Then we're going to go to Winter Jam and support Zane and run his booth and pray for people there if they come to the booth." And they ended up serving some of the bands and working their booth to give them a break because it's a 38 stop tour, like back to back to back. It's like four days on, three days off. Crazy.

And then they said, "And then we're going to road trip from Boise, Idaho to Portland, Oregon and do it again." And I'm like, "That's awesome. When is it?" And they're like, "It's on a Wednesday night." And I said, "I'm not going." So I didn't go with them because I had other responsibilities and things going on. And so I was like, "Oh, that sounds so fun." So me and Steve Craig, Curly, our high school pastor, and one other young adult, Ryan, we had this idea. We said, "What if we flew out to Portland, Oregon on Friday to the second Winter Jam and we just showed up to surprise the team and cheer them on and say, 'You guys rock and see how we could serve?'" And so we did that. We went and we bought plane tickets and we flew out.

And I'll never forget when we walked up to the arena. It's a hockey arena filled. Hundreds of people are outside hours before it starts waiting. And we call our friend Zane and he says, "Meet me around the backside door." I felt like we were doing something sketchy or weird, but we showed up down there and right when he let us in, he slapped this on me. Now, I know it's not that impressive. It's just a sticker. But if you can read, it says, "Winter Jam All Access." All access passed to Winter Jam. So me and Curly and our other friend, we got to go anywhere we wanted in the whole arena. Nothing could stop us.

Here's a picture of me and Curly. It's not a great picture, but we're standing way up high where no one was sitting. But you can see all the lights in the band. This is us. That's the stage right there. I mean, we could go anywhere and it was absolutely nothing that I earned. Remember, I knew nothing about Winter Jam. I brought nothing to the table. I did nothing to earn this pass. It was all because of who I knew that I received this All Access pass. And if you missed it, the whole first part of our summer study in the first half of Ephesians, we looked at your true self. We talked about identity in Christ.

And the whole first part of this letter is essentially that same thing. The whole first part of this letter is the Apostle Paul reminding the church that you and I are chosen by God. That we are loved and it is not by our works. No one can brag about it. It is all an unmerited favor of God. It's all His grace. And we're slapped with the Holy Spirit that dwells us, indwells us. We have the Holy Spirit in us that gives us full access to the Father that He's with us at all times. And again, it is all by grace. Amen? Amen. That's what the first half's about.

And so as we dive into the passage here in chapter 4 verse 1, it says, "As a prisoner of the Lord then." And I want to stop here for a second because this word "then" is important. Some of your translations might start by saying, "therefore," as a prisoner of the Lord. "Therefore," if you start a passage and it says "then" at the start or "therefore," that should be a good cue for you to ask, "What is that there for?" It's just a little trick. It means recall what was just said. And again, I just recapped for you, what was just said is that you and I are loved, not by anything we do on our own, but because of the grace and love of God. And because of that, we have the Holy Spirit in us. And now the apostle Paul is saying, "So then, because of all of that, now, this is how you live into purpose."

And this is what he goes on to say. He says, "Then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling that you have received." Live a life worthy of the calling you've received. What he's saying, and this is our first point if you're following along with your notes, he's saying, "Live out our unity." Live out our unity. He's telling us unity is not like an additional thing that we get to pick and choose when we want to be unified as Christians. It's not an add-on. It's not an extra luxury. Unity is actually who we are as the church. We are unified. By definition, as followers of Jesus, we are unified in what Christ has done for us. None of us here have earned it. I haven't earned it. Pastor René hasn't earned it. It's all grace and grace alone.

That's who we are as the church. That's what Jesus prayed for in that prayer we looked at earlier. That's what Jesus died for on the cross, so that we would be unified in love. And in Paul's final days, he's telling us to live it out. You know, in the original language, that word for worthy actually means to act accordingly. It's saying, "You've already received it by the grace of God. You've got the Holy Spirit in you. Now act like it." You know the first thing my friend Zayn did after he gave us the All Access Pass? He took us around backstage. He said, "Now follow me. I've got to show you some things." And he said, "Hey, this room right here, you can eat anything you want in this room all night." And I'm like, "This is awesome. I love this."

Then he says, "Hey, see this room? There's a ping pong table in here. A lot of the bands like to play ping pong. They get a little serious, so they might not want to talk to you if they're losing. But you can talk to the band and get to know them a little bit if you want. Hey, come out back with me. I'm going to show you the tour buses. And you can come out here." And he was showing us around. He said, "But I wouldn't hang around back here during the show. It might look a little weird that you're back here. And if that door shuts, it's going to actually lock you out. So don't come back here. But hey, let me show you where you can watch the bands from." And he took us to that view where I showed you that photo on the side of the stage. And he said, "This is front row seats."

And he's like, "You can watch all the bands you want here. But as soon as the set is over, get out of there. Because there's a whole crew of people rolling a whole bunch of equipment on and off the set for the next band. And you don't want to be in the way. Do you see what my friend Zane was doing?" Zane handed me this All Access Pass, not anything I earned. And now he was showing us what it looked like to live like we belonged backstage. And that's what the Apostle Paul is saying to the church here. He's saying, "You already have the Holy Spirit. You are already united. Now act like it." So we need to live out our unity in order to live into our purpose.

And then Paul goes on to say something about how we do that. He tells us, and this is your second point, he tells us prioritize our unity. Prioritize our unity. Look at verses two and three. It says, "Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity through the bond of peace." And it's right here that I'm like, "Wait a minute." That phrase, "Make every effort." That's hard. I don't know about you guys, but when I read that, I think that means try hard. Try harder to be unified. Or try harder to act like Jesus. And we fall into this trap where we think, "Oh, Christianity or our faith is all about being part of the church, about trying really hard." But that's not actually what it's saying.

It's not saying try harder to be unified. Rather a more accurate translation of that when that phrase, "Make every effort" when paired with to keep. It actually, a better translation is actively guard your unity. You see, we don't have to gain it, but we need to guard it. It's speaking of stewarding and caring for the unity that we have. A good question to ask ourselves then is, "Am I prioritizing unity?" Or in Paul's words, "Are you making every effort to keep your unity in the bond of peace?" Well, are we? I would encourage you to think about it. Are you making every—some of you might be saying, "Well, I make a medium effort." Some of you might be like, "I don't make that much of an effort. Thanks for being honest." But the reality is, if we are making every effort to be unified, then it would start to show up in our tone when we disagree with someone.

It would start to show up in our attitudes when we don't see eye to eye with people. It would start to show up when we hold back from gossip when the people are not around who we disagree with. If we were making every effort to keep that unity, that's what it would look like. So the question again is, "Are you prioritizing unity or are you prioritizing victory?" Like we talked about earlier, winning the argument. Or are you prioritizing unity over prioritizing scoring points? Or being the smartest person in the room? Unity is supposed to be our top priority. That's why he says, "Make every effort." Now there's still going to be times where obviously we have hard conversations and maybe we don't see eye to eye with other people.

And so the question becomes, "Well, if I really believe I'm right though, like I believe I'm right and that they're missing it, how do we then do that? How can I keep from dividing and keep the unity and make every effort to do that when I just think they're wrong?" Good question. Well, let's look at the verse again. It says, "Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love." The postures, which we are being encouraged to carry ourselves in here, are also found in the book of Galatians 5:22 and 23. They're known as the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit, it says, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy. Love's in their joy. Peace is in their, patience is in their kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness is in their self-control.

The fruit of the Spirit is what's going to help us to have these disagreements in a way that's still unified in Christ and loving. It's not the fruit of myself. It's not the fruit of Kyle when I try really hard. That's not what I'm called to do. It's an active choice to be with God and invest in my relationship with Him. It's like last week when René talked about revisiting the awe of God. That's a way that we can draw closer to Him. It's about communication with God. It's called prayer. Just like any relationship needs communication, we need to be in communication with God in relationship with Him, talking to Him. We need to spend time and stay rooted in His Word so we know what truth is. And we know how to live out that truth in love.

We need to be in community and not that you can't have friends outside of the faith. Of course you can. That's a good thing. But it's also good to have like-minded people that sharpen you and that you can sharpen them and that you can encourage and they can encourage you and they can hold you accountable and you can hold them accountable because you share the same Lord. It's good to serve each other. All of those are ways that we can surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit in us and He will develop that fruit that will help us to live out our unity and our love. And the verse also tells us to be humble. Now that's not in Galatians, but we know that humility was a character trait of Jesus. I mean, He humbled Himself to the point of death on the cross. That's what Philippians tells us.

He became human. He went to the cross for us. Jesus Himself in Matthew 11:29 describes Himself this way. He says, "I am gentle and humble in heart." Gentle and humble in heart. Talk about a missing virtue in the social media age where everyone says, "Look at me. Look how cool I am. Look at the kingdom I'm building, the kingdom of Kyle. It's so cool. You wish you were me." That's the world we live in, but Scripture says, "No, no, be humble." Chuck Swindoll says this in regards to humility and gentleness. He says, "As we see in Christ's own self-description, humility and gentleness go hand in hand. Whereas humility is an attitude of the mind, gentleness refers to the outward manifestation of a person's humble demeanor. Like humility, gentleness is a vital step towards unity because it softens our sharp edges and keeps us from scraping, cutting, and bruising those who we get close to." I love that.

And that goes for all of the different fruit of the Spirit. When the Spirit of God is at work in us, and He's softening my sharp edges, those sharp edges that often cut and sever ties with other people who aren't like me. So we need to lean into our relationship with the Lord. We need to prioritize our unity. We need to lean back in and watch as He develops that fruit in us. If we want unity, we need humility. But there's even one more point that I want us to look at, and that's the third point on your handout. We need to understand our unity. We need to understand it. We need to understand what it's based on because I think we get confused on what unifies us as the church. Look at verses 4 through 6. It says there is one body, that's the church. It says that there is one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all church.

Did you see anything important in there? It said the word "one" seven times in three verses. That is a literary tool that means pay attention. This is important. It's like a text message with all caps. That's what it is. It's saying this is what unifies us. And remember the context. There's Jewish Christians, there's Persian Christians, there's men, there's women, there's slaves, there's free people, and all of them are in this same church in the Apostle Paul saying, with all of those differences, you are unified in Christ because of Jesus and for Jesus. It's your purpose. But notice what it doesn't say. It doesn't say there is one opinion and one viewpoint, just as you were called to one political party when you were called. There's one worship preference, one language, one skin color, one interpretation of the length of days of Genesis 1, and which is over all and through all and in all.

But we make it about that stuff and fill in the blanks with your own version of that. We do that. I do that. What it does tell us is it says there is one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. That is what unifies us. Think about this. There will be a day where we will be in heaven sitting around a campfire and I know some of you are like, are there going to be campfires in heaven? Yes. And there will be s'mores, probably. Or some form of sweets, I would imagine. But we're going to be in heaven and I could be sitting with a first century Christian and a future generation Christian and we could be sharing stories about our baptisms. Say, oh man, the day that I was baptized, the day I proclaimed my faith publicly, it was so amazing. And that other Christian, oh, let me tell you about mine. I was in the Jordan River. It was awesome.

And we're going to be sitting around that campfire and we're going to be talking about, man, one of my favorite things in worship was when we were partaking communion together because it just, it always drew my mind back to the hope I have in Jesus. In the brokenness of the world, it always drew me. And they're going to be like, oh yeah, that was my favorite too. Those are the things that will last. Those are the things that unite us. We need to keep our focus on those things, not on our differences. And we also need to realize that Jesus calls us to unity, not to uniformity. There's a difference. René has talked about it many times from this stage saying, trying to create uniformity, that's the recipe for a cult. That's not Christianity. And it's often a pitfall for us as followers of Jesus as we start to think we need to tell everyone to look, act, think, and be like me. And that's divisive. That doesn't unite us, that divides us.

Instead we need to focus on what we talked about a couple of weeks ago with our beautiful differences, that the kingdom of God is as diverse as it gets made up of people from all different stories, all different backgrounds. We look different, we have different ethnicities, we have different stories, we have different political views, different social circles, different personalities, different hobbies, and on and on it goes. But we are united in Jesus Christ because of what He did on the cross and through His resurrection by grace. We are saved and united and we have the Holy Spirit in us so it doesn't matter. My difference is that Spirit unites us. And we are on the same team working towards the same purpose, and that purpose is again to reveal the kingdom of God by being unified in our love. That's the purpose.

And that's essentially our takeaway for this morning, our big idea. The big idea for us is we need to let our unity keep us focused on His kingdom, not on my own kingdom. We need to let our unity keep us focused on His kingdom, not on our own kingdom. And the kingdom of God, that phrase, and I kind of want to wrap up with this idea, that phrase, the kingdom of God, it's kind of hard for me because I often think of that as like a future thing. The kingdom of God is like, yeah, that's going to come someday. Heaven. I mean, it's what we sang about earlier, right, in that song, "Hymn of Heaven." And it is going to be a good day. My dear friend Danny Wallen, he's a pastor across town at High Street Church, he said to me, talking about the kingdom of God, he said, "It's both now and not yet."

The kingdom of God is both now and not yet, meaning there is a future aspect to it, that one day Jesus Christ will return and we will all stand before Him at the gates of the new heaven and the new earth, and He's going to say, "I've made all things new." And He's going to look to those who've put their faith and trust in Him as Lord of their lives, and He's going to say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant. Now come and spend eternity in my presence with all believers from all time. There will be no more sickness, no more death, no more sadness. It will be unbelievable." I think there will be perfect waves too. I think. Left-handers. And it's going to be amazing. We can't comprehend how amazing it will be, but the kingdom of God is also now.

What do I mean by that? Well, to help me illustrate, I think of it this way. How many of you have been to Disneyland? Okay. Quite a few of you, I figured. Disneyland, no matter how you feel about Disney or Disneyland, I'm not a huge Disney fan, but if you've been there, you can't deny the intentionality that they put into every aspect of that place is incredible. I mean, you feel like you've been transported into a different world when you walk there. The buildings and the characters and the smells, they like spray scent into the air to make you feel like you're somewhere else. It's absolutely amazing. It's magical. That's why they call it the Magic Kingdom.

But if you're like me, Disneyland's a little expensive. So I've made a tradition with my family, my in-laws live in Southern California. Every Christmas season, we go to Downtown Disney. We walk Downtown Disney, we get a coffee. How many of you have been to Downtown Disney? Awesome. Quite a few of you still. Now, Downtown Disney is not in Disneyland. It's not in the park. You're outside of the gates. And Downtown Disney is essentially an outdoor shopping mall. That's what it is. It's got stores, it's got a few restaurants, a couple hotels. It's a strip mall. But if you've been to Downtown Disney, it's not like any other shopping mall you've ever been to. Why? You're not in the park. But you get a glimpse of the Magic Kingdom everywhere you look.

It's not perfect. You're not there, but you can see it. It's not uniformed. All the stores aren't selling the same products like other vacations you go on, where you go into the tourist area and you go into each shop, and every shop has the same Pismo Beach sweatshirt. It's not like that. They're all different. There's a Lego store. And it's got Disney characters made out of Legos. It's got the candy store. They've got caramel apple pops with mini mouse ears and bows. The restaurants, normal food, but you get that napkin and it's got the picture of the castle imprinted on the napkin. See, there is a glimpse of the Magic Kingdom all around.

Do you see where I'm going with this church? For us as the church, we get to be the flavor of Jesus to the world around us. We get to represent Him. Second Corinthians says it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:20. It says, "We are therefore Christ's ambassadors as though He were making His appeal through us." You and me today, here now when we leave this place, when we're at the beach or when we're at the boardwalk or when we're at the wharf or when you're at home in your neighborhood, whatever it is, you and I get to be a glimpse of the kingdom of God. And when we acknowledge that, when we acknowledge that we have this unity and we can understand that unity and what it's actually rooted in, and when we make every effort to prioritize our unity over winning an argument or being correct, that's when we will live into our true purpose and live out our unity and love. And we will represent Jesus to the world who so desperately needs Him.

Will you guys pray with me? God, thank you again for who you are. God, I thank you that you love us, that you chose us through your grace, that we did nothing to earn it. But you said, even though I'm not worthy of it, you said I was worth it. Thank you, God. God, I pray for us here as a church that for anyone in this room that doesn't know you as their Lord, I pray that they would investigate and that they would come to know you as your Lord because you love them. And God, for those of us who have already put our faith in you, may we continue to be more and more unified and remember what truly matters, that we get to be just a glimpse of your kingdom to the world around us. And so, God, we ask that you would work in us by the power of your Spirit to unify us more and to help us point people to you. In Jesus' name, amen.