Every Sunday, after a week of study on a certain subject, inevitably their are many things that must be cut from the sermon for the sake of time. I always tell myself, ‘I’ll use this some other time’ but never end up going back to it. So I thought it would be good just to collect the ‘leftovers’ on Monday morning and put them into a blog for whoever cares to read them. Here goes the first addition:
Yesterday morning I preached a sermon entitled “Ont es Ensemble” (I preach in a French nation so most of my titles are in French). This is bad/slang French (should be ‘Nous somme Ensemble’) that we use here in Gabon, it roughly translates “we are together”. In our church we use this saying quite frequently. When someone does something for you and you say “Merci” (thank you), the other person usually responds “ont es ensemble” implying that it is nothing because it was done out of the love that comes from our relationship.
A church should be a place of unity, where people come together with the same mind/head (Christ) and the same vision to reach the lost. This is what we see in the early church when the bible says in Acts 2:44, “all who believed were together and had all things in common”. Unity in a body of believers is not easy to achieve and is even harder to maintain as the church grows. God brings together people from all kinds of backgrounds and commands them to love one another. This is something that has to be contended for and defended against the attacks of the enemy.
In order to disrupt the unity of the church the devil deploys a “divide and conquer” strategy. It is the same strategy that has been used since the beginning of the world (the devil has no new tricks). In order to conquer Adam and Eve, he waited till they were no longer ‘together’. If they had been together when the serpent approached them, they would have most likely sent him to an early death by way of a crushed head. Once he ‘divided’ them, he was able to more easily ‘conquer’ them. (Side note: many children employ this same strategy against their parents. If one says 'no' they get the other one to say 'yes' and the unity of the family is broken.)
The devil attacked the New Testament church with the same strategy. The episode with Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5) was an attempt to destroy the unity of the church. They were all together, but what happens when someone comes in who lies to the church and the Holy Spirit? Now we begin to question every gift and every person who walks through the door. We become the judge of good and bad, right and wrong; division begins.
The problem with the Hellenistic widows
Division destroys progress in the life of relationships. Jesus spoke about this in Mark 3:24-25 when he said, “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 and if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” If people are divided in their goals and vision they will not make progress. Imagine two people tied together at the waist by a rope. They must both decide to go in the same direction if they are going to go anywhere. Otherwise they will play a game of ‘tug-a-war’ till the rope breaks or one will drag the other helplessly around, or both will just give up and sit down.
I believe that at the root of the problem of division is the issue of pride. Pride causes us to look down on others which in turn brings division. Pride is what made Abraham think he could bring about the promise of God by his own ability and plan. The fruit of that decision (based in pride) is the greatest division of relationship known to mankind. The descendants of Ishmael (Arabs) are still fighting thousands of years later against the descendants of Isaac (Jews).
Pride also caused the division in heaven as the devil said to himself in Isaiah 14:13 “…I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God…”. This created a division in heaven and a third of the angels followed him in his prideful rebellion against the Most High God.
Pride causes us to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to. We have a tendency to come to a place where we begin to feel indispensable. “This church would be nothing without my contribution”, “My work needs me to survive”, etc. We begin to exalt ourselves and our needs and importance above the others around us and it causes division in our relationships. It was Charles de Gaulle who said, “The graveyards are full of indispensable men”.
The greatest solution to pride in our hearts is to stop thinking so highly of ourselves and start thinking highly of Christ. We need to learn to cherish Christ above all else. When you cherish something you draw other people’s attention to it. If we cherish Christ most in our lives, above all else, we will draw men to look unto Him.
In our churches we must learn to place the needs of others before our own needs. Heb 10:24-25 says, “…let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works 25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.” When we consider (think about, pray for) one another, it stirs up our love for one another.
Our personal lives and our churches will be resisted by God when we don’t deal with the pride in our hearts. Peter tells us in 1 Peter 5:5 “…be clothed with humility, for ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’” If there is one that I don’t want working against me in life, it is God. I need His grace more and more everyday to serve Him. In order to experience His grace on our lives and our churches, we must humble ourselves and cry out to Him. We must contend for unity in our relationships and churches. Don't let the devil "divide and conquer" your life.
