How can we get unity in the body of Christ and change our world

Welcome to episode 316. I'm going to talk about unity in this episode and the 3 things that's holding the church back from unity, and the one thing that I believe that we need to do if we're going to come together as a body of believers. But before we get started, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I want to jump right in and I'm going to start with the negative. Before we get to the positive. And the negative is there are 3 things I believe— and remember, math is not an exact science, so I may come up with 4, or you may go, "Well, wait a minute, that may be an extra." But there are 3 things that I believe are holding the church back. And one of the things, not everybody that says they're a Christian is a Christian. So when we're starting to talk about the unity of the church and coming together as a body of believers, Not everybody that says they're a Christian is a Christian, and I'm going to take you to Jesus' words. Remember, we are going to get into the word of God and allow the word of God to get into us, and we're going to go to a couple of scriptures in Matthew. We're going to make this point pretty clear. Let's start with Matthew 7:21-23. Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. Now we've talked about this multiple times if you're a frequent flyer here in this podcast, but we're not going to dive into that. I just want you to hear the words of Jesus saying Hey, not everybody's going to make it. So with that in mind, let's go to the parable where Jesus' disciples asked him, Lord, in the end times, what's all going to be happening? And I think Jesus said there's going to be 10 virgins because the math is so much easier. Because when you start doing— having to do math as you're driving, or if you're doing your yard, or if you're working out, it's a little bit tough to do math while you're just listening or while you're watching. Jesus makes the numbers pretty simple. We're going to go to Matthew 25, and it's the parable of the 10 virgins. We've talked about this before. Listen to what Jesus says. Now the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now 5 of them were wise and 5 were foolish. Now that's Matthew 25:1-2. Jesus is setting up the— he's giving us the numbers, he's setting up the story. And there's 10 virgins, 5 are smart, 5 are dumb. But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight a cry was heard, 'Behold, the bridegroom is coming! Go out to meet him!' Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise answered, saying, 'No, lest there should not be enough for us and you, but go rather to those who sell and buy for yourselves.' And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us! But he answered and said, Assuredly I say to you, I do not know you. Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming. Now that's Matthew 25:5-13. And I need you to picture, not everybody is a Christian. Jesus, in his own words, God said that himself. So half of the church are not the church. The real church has no problem with unity. I believe the real church, the church that— and we're going to find out, in my opinion, what the real church is. We can't worry about with those people, whoever those people are, that don't believe the word of God. You can say whatever you want to say, but it's your belief. The second thing that makes unity difficult is we are all part of the same body, but we're not exactly the same. How many different members are there in a body, or how many organs, or how many different functions or systems are there to make a body work. And you can look at yourself and you can see fingers and toes and eyes and nose and ears and hair and skin and heart and let you get the idea. There are many different organs, there's many different systems, there's many different functions in one body, in your body, that all has to come together for the body to operate. And we are not all the same, we are all different And it's God that places you in his body. And it— we've talked about this before— when you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, right at that time, the Holy Spirit, I believe, grabs you. I've got to picture everything, but the Holy Spirit grabs you and baptizes you into the body of Christ. And once you've been baptized into the body of Christ, that's where you are. And I want to read in 1 Corinthians 12:18 But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as he pleased. God puts you in his body where he wants you, not where you want to be. You don't get to choose to be the mouth or the eyes or the nose or the finger or the toes. You are there where God placed you. God made you. God knows why he made you. It's your job to figure out what part of the body you are and then to bring glory to God based on where you are in God's body. You are building— we are building God's kingdom, not your kingdom. And the last thing that makes it difficult for us to come together in unity— we are all at different ages, we all come to Christ at a different time, we don't all hit it at the same exact time, and we're not all growing at the same pace— we all have started the same exact way. And Jesus taught this in John 3 to Nicodemus, but I just want to concentrate on John 3:3. Jesus answered and said to him, most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And Jesus said, look, we've got to be born again. Well, that means that you've got to be a baby in Christ. You've got to be a baby in the spirit. We all start the exact same way. We all start as babes. And we all— now I had 29 years of garbage in my head, so it took me a lot longer to get all that crap— and I know I probably shouldn't say crap— but get all that out of my head. That put me, I think, behind most everybody else. If you got saved at 8 or 9 or 6 or 12, you did a whole lot better than I did. And so I had to get all of this garbage out of my head. And with that, we're going to go to Romans 12 in the next episode, probably. But we have got to renew our mind. But the one thing, and this is the thing I want you to see, you may not even believe that it's in the Bible, but this one thing that I believe that if we're going to come together as the body, and this is— I jump up and down— is why I believe the word of God is so important. I want you to meditate on this because I'm going to close with this and let you just think about it. Let this percolate in your mind while you're working out or while you're going until the next episode. When you read this, You're going to say, that's in the Bible? Yes, it is. And we're going to talk about this in the next episode. The one thing that I think will bring the church together and the one thing that we have to have in order to be in unity, and it's this, it's found in Psalm 138:2. I will worship towards your holy temple and praise your name for your loving kindness and your truth, for you have elevated your word above your name. And I want you to think about what that just said at the end, that God has elevated his word above all his name. And we're going to see in the next episode that at the name of Jesus, every knee is going to bow and every tongue is going to confess. Those in heaven, those on earth, those in hell, or the— everybody, everything that God's created is going to declare that Jesus is Lord. But right now, I want you to think about what we just talked about, those 3 things that are holding us back. Not everybody that claims to be a Christian is going to get in. So that means half of the church that calls themselves the church is fighting against the real church. We're all different parts of the same body, so we're not all going to have the same function. So if you look at somebody, we're not all built the same, we're not all have the same functions. We're going to talk about that, and we're not all at the same level. Some of us are still babies, some of us are a lot more mature, and some of us have gone way out ahead of everybody else, and that's okay. But we need to bring everybody together, and the thing that's going to bring everybody together— I just believe this, and it's why I'm here— it's the Word of God. We have got to have the Word of God in us And we've got to start getting the Word of God every day into our hearts, into our minds. Let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for your Word. I thank you that you have elevated your Word above your name. And Lord, that takes nothing away from your name. Your name is powerful. Your name makes demons flee. Your name is so powerful, and it is in your name that we ask things. But Lord, it is your word that grows us, and we thank you for your word. God, we thank you for everything you're doing in our lives, and I pray that this listener or this watcher of this video will just dive into your word, Lord, that they would be motivated to get into your word and allow your word to get into them. God, we thank you, we love you, we ask this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.