Why don’t we wrap this time up? Yes. If you could assign a spokesperson for each group, I’m going to ask you to answer at least one of them. Assign a spokesperson for each group.
I see the groups, the clusters. Well, thanksgiving to God that Peter, Bekah, and all the little ones that we haven’t seen in so long, they’re here and got to finally meet their littlest one. Wow. Wow. So thankful that they’re here.
So thankful that sister Faith is here after fighting sickness, but she’s doing much better. Praise God for that.
Okay, let’s start with a word of prayer.
Father, thank you for all the ways that you’re gracious to us. Thank you for the blood of Jesus that forgives us of all of our sins. Thank you that you bring people who are far off like us back together in Christ.
Lord, it’s our own sin that separates us, our own inadequacies and immaturities and wrong things that were said, wrong conversations. Forgive us, Lord, for all, every careless word.
We thank you that in Christ we always have a second chance. We always can make things better.
We can always be changed and become more mature, and we can learn how to bless one another in various places where we are.
So, Lord, we pray that you would bring the body of Christ together in this place and around the world, around Jesus, who is exalted, who is the head of the church worldwide. We ask that you would come and speak to us now. Thank you, Lord. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
So the first question I’ll ask this group that was right up here, one of the metaphors for church.
Do you have a spokesperson, maybe Ron’s little cluster here? What is one of the metaphors for church? The body? Yes. Yes. Amen. Amen. We are one body. What about the cluster in that section back there? Another metaphor? Unified. Unified. Okay. Okay, great. We are one body that’s unified. Any other metaphor for the church? Yes. Tim? Temple. We are the temple of the Lord. Yes. That’s number two. Do we have two more in this section? Sophia? Yes. Yes. Household. Yes. We are members of one household. Household of God. Last one. It’s similar to the temple. Yes.
The dwelling place. So when we gather in churches, Jesus called it a house of prayer. This is where the presence of God is invited.
And we are temples of the Holy Spirit. And this is a temple of the Lord. We invite his presence every time we gather.
And it’s not one person you’re listening to. you’re listening to King Jesus, who is the head of his church. By his spirit. May he speak today.
Okay, well, next question is, do you feel like the church worldwide is one? Yes or no? No. Okay. If not, why not?
Any answers? Doctrine. Doctrine. Theology definitely separates us, which I think when we get to heaven, we’re going to be reprimanded by the Lord for elevating certain human interpretations of Scripture too high and dividing the body of Christ unnecessarily. I think the leadership will be reprimanded for that. I think.
What other things would divide us? Yes, Jim? Yes. Language, culture, ethnicity. Yes. Yes. I mean, it makes sense. If you are an immigrant and you speak only your native language, it makes sense.
You gather with those people on a Sunday, but by the second and the third generation, does it make sense that we artificially divide by ethnic group?
Because I think on Sunday, the vast majority of churches are gathered around an ethnicity, a predominant ethnic group. And is heaven going to be like the Korean corner and the Chinese corner and the Hispanics in the other corner? Is it going to be like that? Or are we all going to be mingled together into one?
There’s great diversity in the body of Christ, but there’s also unity in the body of Christ.
What else? What other things may divide us? Anybody? World issues? World issues? Politics? Yes. Yes. Catastrophes? Wars? Yes. All these things divide us.
And not too long ago, you used to be able to talk civilly about current events. No longer. And is it because of certain personalities, or underneath it all, who’s. Who’s really at. Who’s really working the crowd for us to be divided so much that you can’t even bring up the topic of politics?
I think Satan at the core, he’s hard at work in our society. Current events to divide us even further.
Anything else? Okay, well, that’s a great starting point. We won’t talk about HCC in here, whether we’re one or not, but dividing walls. Maybe God will use this message to start bringing all the walls down that may exist between us.
Ephesians 2:11. Therefore, remember that at one time, you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands.
Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
11 Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— 12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. (Ephesians 2:11-16, ESV)
You’re once far off. I don’t think there’s any Jewish people here.
So when he’s talking about those who are far off, he’s talking about every single person in this room. It is a privilege that God chose the Jewish people and interacted with them in world history to reveal his character.
They observed certain commandments and regulations and ordinances, and all of this was a preparation for the fulfillment which came in Christ. And now we don’t. We’re not people of that old covenant. We’re people of a New Covenant.
And now, through faith in Christ, all of that we read in the Old Testament points to something about Jesus and something about the Christian life that we’re supposed to understand and live out.
But prior to that, it was the Jews, the nation of Israel, and all the rest. This is perhaps the biggest dividing wall of hostility that has ever existed, and it is a privilege. But that privilege became something that maybe became pride in the Jewish people, that they thought they were so special that they had a hard time interacting with other nations.
And instead of having a heart to share with the other nations and share about their God to the other nations, they just built up a wall and said, you can’t come in. We don’t want to pollute ourselves. And so you stay out.
And this was a dividing wall of hostility. And the Gentiles, like, look at the description here. It’s like they’re insulting us, the uncircumcision. Like, that’s how they characterize us as Gentiles. You don’t go through what we do. We’re all circumcised.
We’re all pure in that sense, because they thought the act of circumcision was a special thing, but that was just a pointer to something that God would do spiritually.
But that’s how they looked at us. You are uncircumcised, heathen. You are the other. you’re not my neighbor. I don’t care about you. I only care about our tribe, the ten, the twelve tribes of Israel. That was a dividing wall of hostility.
Even how they looked at the Samaritans, like, how could you intermarry and pollute us?
We may have some Koreans, Chinese, or Mexican parents who just want their children to marry within their tribe because they don’t want to pollute what they consider pure. That mentality even exists to this day.
The Jewish people looked at Samaritans like, “you’re like a half-breed, you’re like a dog. We don’t even consider you human because you had pure blood in you. You were one of us, and now you married somebody from another religion, from a pagan nation. We don’t want to interact with you anymore.” So.
But now in Christ, as we read, where is that verse, verse 13? But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:13, ESV)
So all of us in this room, all of us Gentiles, because Jews, Gentile just means non Jew. So that’s every other nation under the sun except for the Jewish, the people, the nation of Israel, every one of us is a gentile. We’ve been brought near through the blood of Jesus. And so what separated us was not ethnicity. What separated us from God was sin.
And through the blood of Jesus, now in Christ, now we’re in Christ. That phrase appears all throughout the book of Ephesians.
Now that we’re in Christ, we’ve been brought near. And so that’s the first reconciliation. We were once divided vertically with God, but now in Christ by the blood that he shed.
Now this vertical relationship, there was a wall that separated us from God. That wall has been torn into. Now we have direct access by the Spirit of God to interact with our father because of what Christ did.
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:13, ESV)
And so this vertical separation has been dealt with through the blood of Jesus. The Gentiles, all of us, have been brought near to God in Christ. Hallelujah.
But that’s not all. Sin also separates us from one another. And I think that’s the bulk of what we read in Ephesians 2. He says in verse 14, for he himself is our peace. And that’s an interesting phrase.
And then he goes on to explain, what does it mean that Jesus is our peace, who has made both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, the Jewish wall against the rest of the world, against the Gentiles, against the heathen, against the pagan nations, against the uncircumcision, this thick wall that existed between Israel and the rest of the world.
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility (Ephesians 2:14, ESV)
Because of their sinful perspective, they did not understand God’s heart. God’s heart was for the world. God’s heart from the beginning was to save the world.
But because the nation of Israel didn’t quite understand, like, why am I sacrificing these animals? Why am I observing these ordinances? Why am I observing these feasts and these rituals? They didn’t understand there was a spiritual significance, that now when Christ comes, the meaning is revealed.
And now in Christ, we have a different way of interacting with the world, where one in Christ, Jesus himself, is our peace. And now the dividing wall that separates people from one another, all walls. May all the walls come down in Jesus’ Name.
May all the walls that separate man from man, woman from woman, tribe from tribe, ethnic group from ethnic group. May all of these walls come down in Jesus’ Name. And I pray that that’s what he does, begins to do. Through this message, imagine peace with goddess in Christ, but imagine peace with our fellow man also in Christ. What divides us. And we covered some earlier, Jew and Gentile. Jesus was a Jew. He wasn’t a Korean. He wasn’t a Chinese. He wasn’t a Mexican. He was a Jew.
But we read in John, chapter one, that Jesus came to his own. The jewish people and his own did not receive him. They rejected him. And now, after apostle Paul started preaching to the Gentiles, he was apostle to the Gentiles. Now we understand the full mystery that the two Jew versus non Jew, which is the whole world, was supposed to come together as one in Christ, the two becoming one in Christ. That is the message of the gospel. Not just you and me, God, we’re okay, right?
No, the full gospel is not just you and me, God, we’re okay. But now me, black and white, we’re okay. Jew and non-Jew, we’re okay. Korean and non-Korean, we’re okay. Every division that’s just man-made, all the walls may start coming down in Jesus’ Name.
As I said, it makes sense that first generation, for example, I’ll just speak about Korean since I’m a Korean. It makes sense in the beginning, when Koreans immigrate, you don’t understand the language. So on a Sunday, you will naturally gather with people who speak your language.
It makes sense why these ethnic churches, back several decades ago, were created. But there’s still a wall, I think, that separates Korean first gen with second gen and second gen with third gen. Like I’m a second gen. So I have a little difficulty interacting with the first gen. I understand the culture. I understand the respect. But just because you’re one year older, I don’t just treat you as if you know everything and I should be silent. But that’s Korean culture. There’s that kind of a dynamic when you interact with older Koreans.
And so even my children, who’s third gen, I don’t want this Korean-like cloud to infect our relationship. So I’ve told my boys, yes, I’m your father. But when I send you off to college and when you’re growing up to be an adult and you are growing up into becoming men of God, like when they’re 25, 35, 40, 50, am I going to talk down to them? Am I going to act as if I’m above them?
Am I going to assume that I know better in every decision for them and have that hierarchy in interacting with them? Or should I release them to the Lord’s hand, saying, Father, I’ve done my best, now you’re their Heavenly Father, why don’t you grow them up in the Lord?
And I’m already seeing it happening with my boys. And so as time goes by, like we are, we’re on the same level. I’m not above them. We’re almost like peers.
We’re almost like friends, even though there is an honor and the respect that they will give to me. But I don’t put myself above them, and I think that’s just the way it’s supposed to be.
I don’t see age. That’s just, I don’t see age. You could be 30, you could be 60. I should still treat you with respect. I should still honor you. I should still have the Spirit in me and humble myself before you.
No matter what your age is or what your background is like, I should be able to do that if I’m filled with the Spirit of God.
So ethnicity definitely divides us, Jew and Gentile, and every other ethnic division that we see in society today.
Theology divides us. You have conservatives who are a little bit old covenant, feel they have a lot of regulations, a lot of rules, a lot of traditions that they follow. You have the charismatics on the other side, a little bit more spontaneous, led by the Spirit.
We kind of don’t like to be put in a box or put God in a box. All of that is like, we need both. We need the conservatives to keep us grounded. We need the charismatics to remind us that we need to be in step with the Spirit. We don’t choose one and say the other side is completely wrong. No. At least for us, we’re trying to walk the middle road. We need to be grounded in Scripture. We need to have good theology. But that’s not it. That’s not everything.
We need the Spirit of God to do a new work and to be led by the Spirit, to be sensitive to the Spirit, and be gifted by the Spirit.
So we need our charismatic brothers and sisters, the Pentecostals. We need Presbyterians. We need all of us to come together in Christ.
Like Catholics. Catholics just means universal. And so in the truest sense, I’m a Catholic. Like the Catholics – they are waiting for the Presbyterian brothers and sisters to come back home because they think we came out of them.
And in a way they’re right because there’s only one church and really we should all come together in Christ. Maybe Protestants would say we disagree with certain practices. If you cleaned up those practices, we could fellowship more. We could come together more. The Catholics will look at Presbyterians, but look how divided you are. You have the Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, and just keep splintering and splintering and splintering. Is that better? Like we need to just come together. Like, I wouldn’t mind fellowshiping with a Catholic brother or sister or Presbyterian or charismatic.
It doesn’t matter. As long as we see Jesus as supreme, as long as he is the head of the church, then I can fellowship with you.
We divide over silly things. Like at our church, we do adult baptism by immersion. We’ll go to the ocean. We’ll go to a baptistery indoor. But some do sprinkle baptism. And do we say, because you do sprinkle baptism, because we think you’re so wrong, we can’t fellowship with you?
You have the cessationists who say the Holy Spirit and the giftings and the things that we read about in the book of Acts, the supernatural elements, primarily do not happen at the same frequency. There are no more apostles today, they would argue.
And then you have the continuationists who say everything we see in Scripture, the book of Acts, it ends with a word of an adverb, like unhinderedly. It’s like the book of Acts is still going. Like, we’re still in the book of Acts.
We’re still the same church that Christ died for and the Pentecost birthed and ushered in. We’re still in the book of Acts. But just because you say you’re a cessationist, do we say, okay, that’s a different religion and we’re not going to fellowship with you?
There’s a lot of methodology differences. Like some people say, I only believe proper preaching is expositional verse by verse. Calvary Chapel has made that famous. And that’s a great way to teach the Bible.
But when I interact with certain people from an expositional preaching world and paradigm, they think that if you don’t preach that way, you’re a false teacher. Because they’ve seen the abuses and they’ve seen people taking verses out of context, and so out of a godly desire to protect the church, they say we should just stick to the Bible, and that’s a good grounding and anchor for us.
But to say that you have to do it this way, and if you don’t do it this way, you’re doing it wrong. I have a problem with that mindset.
Like, shouldn’t we just say, okay, I did expositional preaching for a time. I needed to do it because I needed to unlearn things and relearn things. I needed to go through that season. It was part of my journey.
But to say that I should stay there and always fully manuscript everything, and that’s. And anything else is unsafe, shouldn’t we just gather and say, okay, you have your preaching style, and it works for you, and people who gather under you are blessed. That’s great.
But if there’s a different preaching style, are you going to say that’s bad? Or shouldn’t we just say, as long as the Spirit of God is there and Christ’s name is exalted, then we’re one? Let’s not divide over these things.
Right now, there is a popular pastor who got burnt out from the church, and then he wrote a series of books, and he got famous. And now a lot of his churches, especially in southern Cal, are reading his books. His name is John Mark Comer.
And I looked into them a little bit, and I find it’s a little odd that churches are lifting up the name of John Mark Comer, and they’re saying, let’s study his books on a Sunday, and let’s quote his books. That one I’m a little. I have a little discomfort with.
Because we’re not here to elevate any person. We’re not here to quote anybody, any Christian writer’s books. We’re here to look at Scripture inspired by the Holy Spirit and lift up only one man. His name is Christ Jesus. Yes. Amen.
We divide over lifting up a human, a human pastor, a denomination. Like, we understand theology. We got it right 100%. Everybody else is wrong. I’m gonna just gather with my tribe.
And I’ve noticed among Koreans, and I can say this because I’m a Korean, I kind of understand why Koreans gather with Koreans. I was in a completely white suburbia in Philadelphia, and so I would literally look in the mirror and complain and say, why am I Korean in this all-white neighborhood? I just had problems growing up.
I didn’t feel like I belonged. And then I went to California, and I saw all these Koreans and said, oh, this is great, I’m gonna gather with Koreans. And I just ended up being stuck in this Korean bubble of sorts.
I understand, like if these Christian leaders that established these organizations or these denominations, if they’re mainly of a certain ethnic group, maybe predominantly white, let’s say. And as a Korean or a minority, you might feel like, okay, you’re invited to the table. But I don’t feel like I’m an equal.
I feel like there’s still a gap, and I feel small inside. And so I can understand why Koreans would say, let’s form our own Korean thing. Timothy’s here from KCM.
I’m conflicted because they gathered all predominantly Korean students on these campus groups, 400 or so in Southern California. And there’s something great about that because Koreans, we’re very relational beings. We do know how to make people feel like family. I think that’s a great strength. There’s also a lot of hierarchy.
There’s also these other things that I wish were not there and so I’m conflicted. It’s great to see that many Koreans gathering. The other side of it is, okay, why are there so few non-Koreans there? Does that promote unity in the body of Christ to have only Korean campus-age students, college-age students gathering in one place and going to their predominantly Korean churches on around these eight campus groups? I don’t know.
I just wonder, does that agree with what Jesus is praying in John 17, that the church is one? Or does that seem to artificially, because it’s comfortable, divide the body of Christ among 2nd, 3rd generation Koreans who are English speaking?
So we no longer have a reason necessarily to gather around Koreans because we’re all speaking English. But it’s comfortable. I understand that we share culture. We can have kimchi at a fellowship. And so a non Korean might feel out of place to smell something so foul fermented.
So I understand why it happens, but I just am wondering, is it right? Should we keep doing this?
I think we divide over educational level, socio-economic level. If you go to a certain school, there’s a certain level of self-importance, and we carry that into the church. And people who don’t have that educational background, they might not express it, but they feel the wall; they feel it.
Like you’re all nice dressed up, fancy car, and big name school. And the other person is just struggling to put food on the table.
And we call them my brother, my sister. But we carry this air of self-importance. And then in certain cultures, you idolize a bunch of these together. You idolize education. You idolize family background. You idolize job title. You idolize church title.
You know how many church titles there are in Korean churches? So many titles. So many titles, they don’t exist in Scripture. But Korean churches have invented so many titles because Koreans love it. All of these things, knowingly or unknowingly, we’re putting up walls like, you’re different from me. I’m better than you.
I look down on you. We don’t say it. I think intellectually, we don’t even agree with it. But the air is there. It’s unspoken.
I’m preparing our church to grow because these walls should come down. All of these walls should come down. A person should just be able to come off the street, and we love them, and we don’t judge them, and we don’t, like, keep a distance from them because we say we don’t understand what you’re going through.
Is that the heart of the Father? Is that Jesus’ heart for the lost?
Personally, don’t we size people up and we put up walls?
I grew up in Philly with an identity crisis as a Korean among a sea of white people. And so I just had to hang on to a few things that I thought made me special.
So when I was young, I got picked on, but I thought, okay, my parents are really smart, so I’m smart. It’s in the gene pool. And so when someone’s mocking me, I have nothing to say to them except I’m smarter than you. I don’t know what else to say.
As a little kid who’s being picked on, I thought just because of IQ, intelligence, that I’m somehow better. That’s a wall that we put up between us. I was a violinist, accomplished in my time. Concert master, regional, state orchestra. I competed. People knew me in the neighborhood because they saw me playing a solo. I was a little bit famous in this small, little town, and that’s something I put up. I’m more cultured than you. I’m disciplined. I practice every day. I’m better. It’s a wall.
I got a black belt at age 15, so I thought, I’m tougher than you. If we get in a fight, if it comes to that, I will put you on the ground. I thought, I’m better. It’s a wall. I’m just putting up a wall. I’m protecting myself. Then I go to college, I start lifting weights. I bench press 300 pounds. I’m stronger than you. I’m stronger than you. So if we fight on the basketball court, I’ll meet you outside. I’ll put you on the ground. These are just walls we put up.
I think even having a common background can divide us. And this might sound familiar to some of us here. Same school, same church background. Good or bad, largely homogeneous Korean. Strong Asian hierarchy. Trauma bonding. Because we went through a lot of trauma together, whether we acknowledged it or not. And anybody who is not part of that history feels the wall. Like you have all your stories that you tell from ten years ago, 20 years ago. How is a newcomer feeling? They can’t participate in that. They don’t know what we came from.
Some people think it was a good past. Some people, like me, think it was largely bad. So that wall needs to come down. It needs to come down. We’re not defined by our common past, because that wall, if it stays, every newcomer will feel it and say, there’s a bubble I can’t really get into. I’m not really part of this. A lot of times it’s just our unsanctified selves that create walls. You’re unsanctified, I’m unsanctified. I say something, you say something, somebody is hurt. They don’t say anything. They hold a grudge, they leave.
We didn’t even know. It just came out. It just blurted out. It was just a comment. We just didn’t even think about it. But it really hit us.
And so it’s immaturity on both sides. Like, it’s immaturity on the part who said it because they didn’t understand the audience. They were not careful with their words. They didn’t understand what that person was going through.
It’s also immaturity on the receiving side. How come I can’t bear with one another? How come I can’t forgive that person?
How come I’m harboring this grudge and I can’t deal with it? And so I’m going to separate from this person, and I’m just going to. It’s just between me and God. But this person, it’s almost like, is he your brother? Is he your sister? Or did you just cut, you know, strike, do an x across his name?
In my book, he’s not my brother, not my sister. I don’t have to fellowship with him. It happens all the time. And it’s immaturity on the giving and the receiving end, and it creates a wall.
And Jesus describes all of this as sin, hostility, like, you hate that person, they’re not of you, they’re not with you, they’re outside. Jesus came to break down all these walls.
Verse 17. And he came and preached peace to you who are far off and peace to those who are near.
17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. (Ephesians 2:17, ESV)
So he’s preaching to the Jews, even to this day, Jesus is your peace. He’s your Messiah. You have to believe in him. And to this day, there is a veil. Although many Jews grow up reading big sections of the Old Testament, they just cannot see how all of it points to Jesus.
So to this day, Jesus is preaching peace to the Jews, those who are near, and he’s preaching peace to the rest of the world, all of those who are far off in Christ. Now welcome home. You’re in Christ. And now he says, for through him, verse 18, we both have access in one spirit to the Father.
18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. (Ephesians 2:18, ESV)
So if you’re a Jew, if you understand who Christ is and he is your peace, then you have access to your Heavenly Father.
If you don’t recognize Jesus for being who he is, the peace, the savior of the world, then although you’re praying and going to the synagogue week after week, you have the access to the Father.
The vertical relationship, there is a dividing wall. It’s a veil. Only in Christ is the veil lifted.
And now for the Koreans and for the Chinese and Hispanics and Filipinos and whites and blacks, all of us gentiles who once were far off, now we are brought near, and we have access to the Father through one spirit.
Verse 19. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
And also verse 22, in him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22, ESV)
The key phrase is Jesus Christ himself being the cornerstone. If you’re building a building, the only way to keep two walls together is to put at the corner a cornerstone. It holds the walls together.
You can ask Peter, because he’s an engineer, he’ll tell you all about why that math and the physics works. But you need a cornerstone at the base of the two walls to hold the walls together.
And Jesus is saying, I am the cornerstone. So why do we talk about Jesus all the time here? It’s because he is the cornerstone. Without him, we’re just two walls laying side by side. But sooner or later we’re going to crumble, we’re going to tumble. Only if Jesus holds the two walls together will we be built up properly. Into what? Into one body. your body is your body. There’s not two halves of your body. you’re not, unless you’re an amputee. You don’t have somebody else’s body or organs. It’s all you. It’s all unified.
It’s all one. That’s Jesus. He’s trying to communicate. We are one body. He also says we’re members of the household of God. And so whether we’re biologically related or not, when I look at you, if you’re in Christ, you’re my brother, you’re my sister. Even if we have a completely different family background, that is what a Christian is. We see each other as siblings, and Jesus is our older brother. We have the same Heavenly Father. We’re supposed to have this mind, this mind of Christ. And so I come to serve you.
I’m not better than you. I come low. I’m here to serve. I’m here to connect with you. And like all the walls are separated, they should come down in Jesus’ Name, and I should see you as you are, as God sees you. And I should be tender, I should be gentle. I should deal with you properly. Members of the household of God. Holy temple in the Lord. First Corinthians six says, we are also. Our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. That’s why we don’t commit sins against our body. Sexual immorality.
We don’t do those kinds of things because we understand even in our physical body, we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. How much more? When Christians gather, this is a holy temple in the Lord.
So everything that happens in the world, let us stay in the world. All the worldliness, all the immorality, all the pride, all the arrogance, all the chest thumping, let’s keep that out in the world. But in God’s temple, we’re holy. All of what the world does, they do. But here we don’t do that. We don’t live like that.
We’re different. This is holy temple in the Lord. We see each other with purity. you’re my sister. you’re my brother. We don’t look at you in a certain way, that the world objectifies men and women. No, we don’t look like, we don’t look at each other like that. We don’t see people like that. We see them as God sees them. She’s my daughter now. Why don’t you protect her? Why don’t you keep her pure? Treat her that way?
Lastly, we’re a dwelling place for God. If God doesn’t show up, the Spirit of God is not here. If Jesus is not here, we’re wasting our time.
This is where God, he should be welcome here. We should always invite him here. We shouldn’t just do our own thing and just ask God from heaven. Just zap us and give us what we want, and we can figure it out, and the elders will figure it out. No, we shouldn’t do life in church this way.
This is a dwelling place of God, and Jesus is the head. There’s no body, there’s no neck.
We’re not moving the head and asking the head to do what we want. No, we’re all members of the body of Christ. Jesus does what he wants to do in this place. He is in charge. He is a senior pastor. He is a lead pastor. There is no senior pastor. There is no lead pastor. That’s a human.
We’re just a pastor. We’re just a shepherd. We’re just teachers. We’re just evangelists. We’re apostles. These are all lowercase, but we have one capital ‘T’ teacher. We have only one Father in heaven.
We have one head who is a church, and he has his way here. And so we just have to ask him.
We want to reach out to the people in Bellflower and to the ends of the earth. How, Lord, who, Lord, when, Lord? It’s all up to him.
We want to meet people, minister to people at the ranch, people who are out of prison. Who, Lord, how, Lord, when, Lord? We just have to keep asking him, just be in step with him. We don’t go ahead of him.
We don’t presume like we know what he wants to do, and we just ask God to baptize our plans. No, we wait on him. He is the head. There’s no neck. We’re not moving the neck the way we want it to move. No, he moves the way he moves, and we just follow, just one body, moving as one.
That’s what God wants, all of us to be so connected to the head, so connected to this metaphor of one body. We move as one Hill Community, and church worldwide moving as one.
What is the one way that the church worldwide can become one? I can only think of one way. We lift up the Name of Jesus. We lift up the Name of Jesus because when Jesus is lifted up, he will draw all men to himself.
Everything else we lift up, even biblical truth, even theology, it will divide. But you lift up the Name of Jesus high. He is the head of the church. That is the only way that the church can become one again, as it was in the early days when Jesus walked this earth.
Okay, let’s pray.
Father, forgive us for all the walls that we build up around ourselves, to protect ourselves, to elevate ourselves, to say that we’re better and that you’re different. I know better. You don’t know as much as me. Forgive us for a wrong perspective, for an air of superiority, of self-importance.
Forgive us for bonding around silly things like school and background and culture. So silly. Lord, this is not the church of God that you envision. You envision one church, one body, one baptism, one faith, one Lord. There’s only one church, only one body.
Forgive us for artificially dividing the body of Christ in ways that are comfortable for us.
How will we reach the world if we’re so siloed, if the walls are so high, that people who look different, who talk different, who think different, can’t feel like this is home for them?
This is a temple of the Lord. This is a dwelling place for God. This is the Lord’s living room. Household of God. We’re members of one body.
1 How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! (Psalms 84:1, ESV)
We pray that all dividing walls of hostility between Jew and Gentile, male and female, ethnic dividing walls, theological dividing walls, methodological dividing walls, may they all come down in Jesus’ Name.
We lift up the Name of Jesus because only in Jesus can the church be one. Help us, Lord. Prepare us, Lord, to reach the world for you. Prepare us, Lord.
We want to go out and make disciples of all nations. Prepare us, Lord. We cannot go out like this. We need to have a perspective change.
We need to really become together as one, even at a small micro level. We need to become one in Christ that we can call people who are far off to come meet their savior and come meet their Heavenly Father and have that dividing wall come down, that person far off coming near in Christ.
Thank you, Lord. We thank you for Your Body that was broken for us and Your Blood shed. This is why in your flesh, this is why all hostility has been done away with the vertical and the horizontal relational dividing walls.
All have been dealt with, and we celebrate what you did at Calvary every time we partake in the Lord’s Supper.
We thank you, Lord, for who you are and what you’re doing in this place.
In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.
