Sermon: Unifying Behaviors

Examples From Scripture
#1657A
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 11-Jun-22; 42 minutes

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I stated in my Pentecost sermon (which I am aware many of you did not hear, it is not absolutely necessary for you to have heard it), but I titled that Pentecost sermon, "Mystery of the Church" and it was about unity in the church and what the church's purpose is. But I said in that sermon with every right, godly, selfless act, we promote unity in the church, unity with each other. This is a sound biblical principle because when we behave in accordance with the mind of Christ, we draw closer to God. It cannot help but happen. And we also then draw closer to those who believe and act in the same godly way.

So when we show outgoing concern toward one another, we do nice things, we show love, perform acts of love for one another, say good things to them, upbuild, encourage people, then we are cannot help but to improve our relationships both with God and with other people. It is just one of the side benefits of doing righteousness, that we grow closer to one another when we act with that outward godly love toward them. You could call it a spiritual law. It just automatically happens. Goodness unites people.

If you will, please turn with me to Colossians the third chapter. In my sermon last week, I spent a good deal of time in Ephesians 4:1-6 and then I went through most of that chapter after that point, but Colossians 3, verses 12 through 15 is a parallel passage to Ephesians 4:1-6. I do not know if you are aware that Colossians and Ephesians were pretty much written at the same time and sent out. So their content parallels each other. There are different things in each book, but if you look at them and you compare them side-by-side, you could tell that Paul was thinking about the same things when he wrote to the Ephesians and to the Colossians. So these verses in Colossians which will read now is very similar to those verses in Ephesians.

Colossians 3:12-15 Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful.

So, here in this section, as well as in Ephesians 4, Paul calls upon us to treat each other with mercy, with kindness, with humility, with meekness or gentleness. Not as we are so want to do, ordering people about or trying to get your own way. But no, we should treat them with a great deal of humility, thinking of them as greater than ourselves, and doing what we can to help their lives—or even just their day—go a little bit smoother, a little bit better. To help their attitude, to help them in whatever way possible that we see that we can do.

The apostle Paul encourages us to put up with each other because some of us are kind of weird—me included. And you need to have people put up with you a little bit because you have your little quirks and idiosyncrasies and you say things that you probably should not say. And you know, we are human, we make mistakes and Paul says be a little bit forbearing with your brother. You know, your brother sometimes stumbles and I bet you do too. So forbear with them, help them along, do what you can, and if they offend you, forgive them. Most of the time, it is some slight that we perceive that was never intended, but we need to, we would say, be the man in the conversation or whatever and take it the right way. But be the Christian and say, "okay, that's fine, I'm sure that was a slip of the tongue" or he really did not mean it or he did not know how that would affect me and just go on.

But he says most of all we need to grow and we need to act in love for one another. And the reason he gives us this instruction is because love is the glue that binds us together. Just think of the opposite and you can see how true that is. If you are not acting in love, you are acting in hate or some other form of the opposite of love. And as soon as you start acting that way, you are driving people apart, you are making people go away. They do not want to be around a person who is angry or a person who is cursing or a person whose sins are right there for you to see. And so you would withdraw from such people.

But if the same people are instead showing love for you and others, well, you are drawn to them. It immediately begins to form a oneness within whatever group there happens to be. It could start as small as two people, a husband and a wife, and then add some kids and then add the rest of the extended family and your church brethren and all those people, and pretty soon you have a great deal of people that are, in at least one sense, united. They are one in one way or another.

And he says (Paul again) that when we do this, when we show this love and begin to grow together and begin to adhere to one another because of the mutual love we are showing for one another, it allows the peace of God to reign—over us, within us, among us—and that fosters oneness too. Suddenly we are in not an antagonizing situation, but we have peace. And we can use that peace, as James 3:18 says, to produce the fruits of righteousness because they grow in peace among those who make peace.

And finally he says, all of this, when it gets down to it, produces deep gratitude—gratitude to God, gratitude toward each other. When you feel gratitude toward one another, well, that just makes the environment so wonderful and a lot of growth can happen in that particular environment.

The apostle assures us that if we live up to our calling by responding in obedience to God's instruction in putting on the new man and loving our brethren, we will not just grow in godly character, that is wonderful all by itself, but we will also begin to produce unity. The oneness that Jesus Christ wants to see.

The principle that I am talking about today, again, just to restate it for you, is that Christlike speech and behavior builds unity within relationships.

So today we are going to take some time to look at a few examples from Scripture of godly people creating unity through their righteous actions. And they are all through the Bible. I could have probably taken a dart and thrown it at the Bible and found it had pierced three or four of these examples. But we will see that this formula, if you will, this principle works not just among God's people (it should work best among God's people because we all should be doing the same things and having the same goals that way), but it also works among friends and neighbors and coworkers and anybody that you come in contact with. So it may be a good thing to put in the back of your mind, if you have a situation at work or at school or whatever about how you are going to solve it, well, this is a principle that might just work. I will give you a little hint of what I am getting to at the end of the sermon that this does not always work among people out in the world, but it is a good thing to try, at least, if you have some kind of friction with another person.

Before we look at the examples, let us remind ourselves about why this is so important for us. Let us go then back to John 17. This is Jesus' prayer at the end of that Passover evening. As I mentioned in this Pentecost sermon, this was the last time He had to formally address His disciples and so He is giving some very crucial information to them because He was going to go, He was going to leave, and He had to leave them in the best situation as possible. And so He had this to say,

John 17:20-23 "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me [in the same way you have loved Me]."

This passage, if you remember, played a key role in my sermon last week. This was actually the springboard verse that I used to get into my subject. It states the simple fact that Jesus Christ, who is our High Priest and the Head of the church, greatly desires and prays for our unity with Him and the Father, and therefore, with each other. Unity, He says in verse 23, is vitally necessary to make us perfect in one, to complete our spiritual course. And He also mentions that it is also necessary to witness God's love and the work that He is doing through Jesus Christ, and thus through us, to the world. This plays a huge role in the function of the church and the church member. We need to be unified in the way we follow God and unified with each other so that we can make the greatest strides with the time and the resources that we have.

In my estimation, then, the oneness of the body of Christ, the spiritual body (I am not talking about each one of the individual corporate groups that are out there, but the oneness of the body of Christ), should be a higher goal than we have heretofore considered it to be.

Now, I know we have people here from different groups and I mentioned in my sermon that it is above my paygrade to figure out how the churches are going to be united, but we can be united with each other outside the lines of the groups, the organizations that we have. And I think in this case we are doing just that, we are not letting the organizational boundaries keep us from fellowshipping with one another. And that is good, because we are one body spiritually in Christ. So we need to continue to widen our relationships out among the body of Christ because we are all His servants and God Himself, or Jesus Christ as the Head of the church, will work out the details that we do not have the wisdom to do ourselves. So like I said, I think we should put it higher on our priorities than we have before.

Let us look at some of these examples. I only have a short time. Let us go to Genesis 26. Each of the patriarchs did something in his life that I could have used as an example in this sermon. But I chose Isaac. I chose this one from the life of Isaac because it works well. And yes, that pun was intended. Let us read verses 12 through 14 and then we will jump down to 16 and go through most of the rest of the chapter here.

Genesis 26:12-14 Then Isaac sowed in the land [He has gone to the region of Gerar where Abimelech was king. And he had a little trouble, let us just say.], and reaped in the same year a hundredfold; and the Lord blessed him. [That was not the problem.] The man began to prosper, and continued prospering until he became very prosperous; for he had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and a great number of servants. [And here is where the problem begins.] So the Philistines envied him.

Genesis 26:16-25 And Abimelech said to Isaac [remember he is the king of the region], "Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we." [That is how much God had blessed Isaac.] Then Isaac departed from there and pitched his tent in the Valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. He called them by the names which his father had called them. Also Isaac's servants dug in the valley, and found a well of running water there.

But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, "The water is ours." So he called the name of the well Esek, because they quarreled with him. Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that one also. So he called its name Sitnah. And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, because he said, "For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land." Then he went up from there to Beersheba. And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, "I am the God of your father Abraham; do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for My servant Abraham's sake." So he built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord, and he pitched his tent there; and there Isaac's servants dug a well. [There is a lot of wells being dug in this this chapter.]

Notice what is happening here. Isaac has been forced to move every so often. I do not know how many years this took place over. But he would go to one place and settle and they would obviously need water. He had herds so he had to water them. So they dig a well and pretty soon the Philistines would come and claim it. They would fight over it. I do not know if it ever reached any kind of striking of blows but at least they quarreled over these things. And Isaac decided that rather than fight, he would take a non-aggression approach and he would go somewhere else. "Okay, they want this well. Let's go guys. You guys are pretty good diggers by now. We will dig another well." And so they would go to another place and they would fight over that one and go to another place. And finally he found one that worked. But then God wanted him to move somewhere else. So he moved somewhere else and they dug another well.

This is where we are now. Just remember what Isaac did. Isaac did not put up a fight. He does not stand toe-to-toe with them and trade insults. He does not retaliate in any way. To keep the peace, to do what is right, to do what God would want him to do, he simply moves on and digs a new well a few miles away. But notice what this non-aggression, this peaceful approach to what was going on ended up doing.

Genesis 26:26-32 Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar with Ahuzzath, one of his friends, and Phichol the commander of the army. And Isaac said to them, "Why have you come to me, since you hate me and have sent me away from you?" But they said, "We have certainly seen that the Lord is with you. So we said, 'Let there now be an oath between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you [let us call it a peace treaty], that you will do us no harm [They still think he is mightier than they are and maybe they are acting from a defensive position. But they are serious about this.], since we have not touched you, and since we have done nothing to you but good and sent you away in peace. [They flipped the script on him. You know, they were doing all the peaceful things when Isaac had been the one backing up the whole time.] You are now the blessed of the Lord.'" So he made them a feast [He is making a feast for them!], and they ate and drank. Then they arose early in the morning and swore an oath with one another; and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace. It came to pass the same day [you think this is a sign?] that Isaac's servants came and told him about the well which they had dug, and said to him, "We have found water."

You can think of water as a symbol of the Holy Spirit or just as an overall symbol of the blessings of God. And every time Isaac did something that was right in making peace with his enemies, God blessed him with water. Even though he had to go away from it, dig another well, God blessed him with water. He kept blessing him with water. In that area of the world, as arid as the southern part of Judea is, water was gold. And if he had enough water to water his flocks and as herds, he was a rich man. So this is showing God's stamp of approval on Isaac's method and He blessed him with water. And I think Isaac got the point that God was truly with him and now he had peace with his neighbors.

Let us go to another one. Let us go to the the book of Ruth. Ruth was an outsider in Israel. Remember she was a Moabitess so she was not of the people of Israel. She could not claim a tribe except she had married into the tribe of Judah through Elimelech's son that she married. So she was of Judah, but she was still an an outsider when she came back from Moab to Bethlehem. But we know from the first chapter that Ruth was committed to God. She was obviously committed to Naomi, her mother-in-law. But she said, your God is my God. And so she had come to the conviction that the God of Israel was the true God and she considered herself part of the family, part of the tribes, but she still had to overcome the biases that were against her. She was a Moabitess coming in to Israelite Judean Bethlehem.

She was, as in many cases, when somebody who is different comes into a crowd that is pretty homogeneous, they have to face some time of acclimating and the people acclimating to the person who is somewhat different. I want to read chapter 2, verses 5 through 12. She is in the land. She never came back to the land. She was always from Moab. So she came into the land and her mother-in-law was not able to work. Evidently she could not do the backbreaking work out in the field that her younger daughter-in-law could. So she did that.

Ruth 2:5-12 Then Boaz said to his servant who was in charge of the reapers, "Whose young woman is this?" So the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered and said, "It is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. And she said, 'Please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.' So she came and has continued from morning until now, though she rested a little in the house."

Then Boaz said to Ruth, "You will listen, my daughter, will you not? Do not go to glean in another field, nor go from here, but stay close to my young women. Let your eyes be on the field which they reap, and go after them. Have I not commanded the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn." So she fell on her face, bowed down to the ground, and said to him, "Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?"

And Boaz answered and said to her, "It has been fully reported to me, all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and have come to a people whom you did not know before. The Lord repay your work, and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge."

Let us go on to chapter 3, verse 8. This is when Naomi counseled her to go lay herself down at Boaz's feet, a symbolic action saying, "Please marry me." Actually, I do not think it was quite like that, but it was a way that they would be able to say without actually saying that she was offering herself as a potential wife for Boaz, who was a single man at the time.

Ruth 3:8-11 Now it happened at midnight that the man was startled [I bet!], and turned himself; and there; a woman was lying at his feet. [one of the great verses in the Bible] And he said, "Who are you?" So she answered, "I am Ruth, your maidservant. Take your maidservant under your wing, for you are a near kinsman." Then he said, "Blessed are you of the Lord, my daughter! For you have shown more kindness at the end than at the beginning, in that you did not go after young men, whether poor or rich. And now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you all that you request, for all the people of my town know that you are a virtuous woman."

Her virtue, that is, her doing what everyone considered to be good and right, especially her service and support of Naomi, won the Bethlehemites over. And especially Boaz. I mean, Boaz seems to have been the big man in town and she impressed him very much by her nobility, her service, her selflessness, her help of Naomi, her hard work that she did out in the field. So it was her righteousness, her virtue that culminated in a marriage union. What was the outcome of her loving acts that she did? It was a union of her and Boaz. And they got Naomi as an extra because she came along with Ruth. But it is not only that it culminated in a marriage union, but it culminated in a marriage union that produced the line of David, or continued the line from Judah down to David and ultimately to Jesus Christ. So all kinds of good things can happen to and for us, not just short term, but long term too, very long term. Because what Ruth did, in one way you could say, ended up with Jesus Christ our Messiah and all that He did.

Let us go to the New Testament and look at a one or two more. First we will go to Acts the 16th chapter. This is Paul and Silas in Philippi. Now, they were there preaching the gospel, obviously, and Philippi was one of the places that went to. Remember the Macedonian in the dream said, "Hey, come on over here" and Paul listened to that dream and went to Philippi.

Acts 16:16-22 Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out saying, "These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaimed to us the way of salvation." This she did for many days. [I am sure the first time this was good.] But [you know after the 500th time] Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." And he came out of her that very hour. But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to the authorities. And they brought him to the magistrates, and said, "These men, being Jews, exceedingly trouble our city; and they teach customs which are not lawful for us, being Romans, to receive or observe." Then the multitude rose up together against them; and the magistrates tore off their clothes and commanded them to be beaten with rods.

I think this was overly dramatic. But they were all fed up about what Paul and Silas were saying, and this was all out of greed, by the way. Like it says here, these people were afraid that they would not have the profits anymore so they decided to work up the crowd and punish Paul and Silas for the audacity to cast out that demon. So he tore off their clothes and commanded them to be beaten with rods. Now remember Paul and Silas were Roman citizens. This was illegal, highly illegal.

Acts 16:23-34 And when they had laid many stripes on them, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to keep them securely. Having received such a charge, he [the jailer] put them in the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. [I mean, they treated them like they were master criminals or something. They put them in the strongest, the most fortified place of the prison and then put their feet in the stocks so they could not run.]

But at midnight [notice the reaction of Paul and Silas here] Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. [captive audience] Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were loosed. [not just Paul and Silas', but everyone's] And the keeper of the prison, awaking from sleep and seeing the prison doors open, supposing the prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself. But Paul called out with a loud voice saying, "Do yourself no harm, for we are all here." [We are just singing hymns. Come join us.]

Then he called for a light, ran in, and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. And he brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" [That is a big leap from where he is going to do hari-kari on himself to what must I do to be saved.] So they said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household." Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes. And immediately he and all his family were baptized. Now when he had brought them into his house, he set food before them; and he rejoiced, having believed in God with all his household.

Here we have a situation in which everything was going against Paul and Silas. They were just doing their job in preaching the gospel, but they get false charges thrown at them, they get beaten, thrown in jail, and how do they respond? With joy! If you sing the right hymns, you should be joyful. And they were praying to God and they were in one sense or another preaching the gospel, and God responded. God responded with the earthquake that freed everyone. There is a clue for you. The gospel of Jesus Christ frees people from all the things that enslave them. And then they saved the jailer's life. They preached the gospel to him, gave him what they could give him and to all his house too. And they baptized everybody in the whole household.

So what did their goodness, what did their outgoing concern do even though the circumstances were against them? They brought good and that turned into unity and increase in the body of Christ. For all I know that jailer was as carnal as carnal could be. But by the end of the night he was the son of God and it was through the righteous, godly, outflowing, loving way of Paul and Silas with these people.

Back to Luke 18. We have got to give an example of Jesus Christ here. This happened repeatedly throughout Jesus' ministry, but I am just going to pick this one. It says here:

Luke 18:35-43 Then it happened, as He was coming near Jericho, that a certain blind man sat by the road begging. And hearing a multitude passing by, he asked what it meant. So they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. And he cried out saying, "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!" Then those who went before warned him that he should be quiet; but he cried out all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought to Him. And when he had come near, He asked him, saying, "What do you want Me to do for you?" And he said, "Lord, that I may receive my sight." Then Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; your faith has made you well." And immediately he received his sight, and followed Him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.

So here we have an example of Jesus Christ doing what He always did. He always acted in love. He always acted in humility. He always was worthy of His calling, you might say, giving us the example of how we should be with one another. And the result, which we see there in verse 43, is that this once-blind man followed Christ. He became a disciple and the people who saw it, this act, not just Jesus' healing, but the man's response, was a witness towards everyone who saw and they were amazed that this beggar on the side of the road, this blind man, could not only receive his sight, which was something that was unheard of outside of Jesus of Nazareth, but that he immediately turned around, if you will, and followed Him. And so they praised God for this. Now they were glorifying God together.

Peter says in Acts 10:38 that "Jesus. . . who went about doing good and healing." So much is in that little phrase—that He went about doing good and healing. That was His normal mode. For us it is often hard to do. We have to gin it up in us to do something right and good, you know, we do not like to serve or we do not like to put ourselves out or whatever it is, because we are human. But Jesus did this all the time.

Now, what is ironic is that you would think that Jesus doing this throughout His life, not just His ministry, but you would think that there would be a whole lot more people at the end of His ministry who would be considered His disciples, and you get to Acts 1 and you find out it is only 120 people. You would think He would have thousands thronging after Him because of this principle. But it is ironic that rather than producing unity, the gospels show that Jesus' good work actually produced a great deal of hostility and division among the Jews, especially the entrenched religious authorities who thought that He was coming there to root them out and take over their positions. They were just simply self-seeking and corrupt. So self-seeking and corrupt that even their Creator's goodness could not touch them.

This is why I said earlier in the sermon, this does not always work because sometimes people are just so stubborn and so selfish that as much good as you could do to them will not crack their shield, whatever it is that they keep people away from them with. So we need to do it because we never really know who is going to react and who is not going to react. But I just wanted to give you a little warning that even in the life of Jesus Christ, as good and righteous as He was, there were some people that just would not give in. So this principle is not a magic wand, but it works most of the time, especially if you have someone who is receptive to you and will make the change.

Let us finish in Romans 5. Because there was a greater work Jesus was doing. He did say during His ministry that He came with a sword, that He did come to divide people up one from another because His message was very stark in comparison to what was normally being preached by the Jews. It was something that caused division among people and that is just a necessary thing when something so different comes into play. But I want you to see His greater work and how it is going to work towards ultimate unity.

Romans 5:6-11 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled [that is, brought into a right relationship] to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

Romans 5:18-19 Therefore [the concluding statement], as through one man's offense judgment came to all men [speaking of Adam], resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man's righteous act [that of Jesus Christ] the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous.

So Jesus Christ's far greater act of selfless goodness, that is, in His life and His death, sets the stage, not just for the unity of the church, but ultimately for the union of most of humanity with God. That is how far this principle reaches. Jesus Christ, in His work, shows us the way. If we want oneness in the church of God, which God Himself wants, He desires it greatly, we must follow the example of Jesus Christ and the heroes of faith to ensure our behavior always promotes unity with our brethren.

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