Biblical Christian Unity

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. Will you please turn over in your Bibles with me to Mark chapter 9. Mark chapter 9, and we'll begin this morning's reading at verse 38. Mark 9, verse 38, and we'll go through verse 41 this morning together. Mark chapter 9, beginning at verse 38. If you're using your pew Bibles, you'll find that on page 892. Hear now God's perfect word.

Now John answered him, saying, Teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us. But Jesus said, Do not forbid him, for no one who works a miracle in my name can soon afterwards speak evil of me. For he who is not against us is on our side. For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in my name, because you belong to Christ, assuredly I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward."

Prayer for Illumination

We'll end the reading of God's Word there. Let's pray together. Father, we have read your Word. And it is perfect and true. Lord, not just subjectively true, but objectively, words on a page, propositionally true. But Father, we need now your Holy Spirit to work in our hearts, that we would understand it, believe it, and live it. Father, I plead with you that you would help me a weak vessel. The words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart might be pleasing and acceptable on your side and that you would use this time for the building up of your kingdom. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Sermon

There's a story an RP elder told me one time. We were sitting at lunch and he said, you know Brian, there was this guy who went to And as this guy went to heaven, Peter, the apostle, started giving him a tour of heaven. He said, here's the throne room, and here's the kitchen, and here's the dining room. And they walked by, and he said, shh. They walked by a room. And the guy asked Peter, he said, what's in that room? Why is the door shut and locked?

He said, that's where we keep all the RPs. We don't want them to know that anybody else is up here. Sometimes we act like that, don't we? We get cliquish. We get into our own little silos, into our own little grain bins, into our own little bubbles, and we act like we're the only ones who have a monopoly on Christ. A monopoly on truth.

And Jesus, in our passage today, teaches us about what it means to be unified in Christ. What does it mean for us to find our unity in the person and work of Jesus Christ? And so this morning your call, my charge to you, is that you would pursue Jesus-focused unity. That you would pursue Jesus-focused unity. The question we have to ask, if that's the charge for us this morning, is how do we pursue unity with other Christians? We don't go to the same church with them. Sometimes we don't even eat with them. How do we do this?

Well, first we need to realize that the focus is on Jesus and not on us. Look at what the Apostle John, the disciple John, says in verse 38. This is the only time in the book of Mark that John is singled out for saying anything. Here he talks to Jesus and he says, Teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us, casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us. Notice the first person plural.

We saw. We stopped him. He doesn't follow us. Two times he doesn't follow us. Who is the us here? He's not part of one of the twelve. What's this guy doing? We saw this guy. He wasn't with you at the Mount of Transfiguration. He isn't one of your twelve. And yet he's out casting out demons. We stopped him, Jesus. Do we get our gold star today? They've missed the point. The disciples aren't Lord. The disciples aren't the Master.

Their focus was supposed to be upon Jesus Christ. It is Jesus who is to be followed. I do need to warn you, right? Some people take that when I say, it's Jesus who is to be followed. There's a set of heretics who will say, well that's right, I only read the red letters in the Bible. It's just Jesus that I'm going to follow.

I don't need to worry about anything the disciples said. Who do you think wrote these words down? It was the disciples. This is Mark, listening to Peter, writing down his sermons. Trying to drive a wedge between the disciples and Jesus' teaching is a classic trick of heretics, and I need to warn you, that's not where we're going. Why do you think God inspired the disciples to write the Gospels? Who did you think Jesus commissioned to go out and to teach the whole world everything that Jesus had commanded? It was the disciples. So we need not drive a wedge in between these when I say it is Jesus we listen to. It is Jesus who is our master. And the irony of this situation is really fun. We're still in chapter 9.

I know we've been in chapter 9 for a few weeks now, but if we were just reading through this, you just have to look up a few paragraphs, and the disciples couldn't cast out a demon. They didn't have it in them. They weren't strong enough. It was only Jesus who was able to command this unclean spirit to come out of this boy. And here are the disciples and they're pointing to somebody else and they're saying, he's not with us Jesus. We stopped him because he was casting out a demon in your name. So how is this guy who's not part of the twelve able to do this? Because he has faith in Jesus Christ. Because he believes in Jesus Christ. Yeah, he's not part of the inner twelve. But he has faith in Jesus, who he is and who he says he is. God's power is not limited to the 12 apostles.

As part of one of the things that we're going to see when he comes to the Great Commission, is he is going to tell them, no, it's not just meant to stay with you 12. But you are meant to go to all the nations, teaching them to obey all which I have commanded you. They are to be multipliers of the work of Jesus Christ. It was never meant to be that you looked at just these 12 and you went, okay, the buck stops there and nobody else gets to work for Jesus Christ. That's not how the economy of God works.

Yes, Jesus had commissioned them to cast out spirits in chapter 3 and 6, but Jesus' person and power were never meant to be relegated to just the 12. I know what some of you might be thinking already, maybe some of you aren't, this is just my anticipation of what you might be thinking, right? Oh, does that just mean that we're able to, all of us are able to cast out demons and we're all able to do the miraculous works that the apostles did? No, I think there's a reality to the apostolic age and the signs of that age.

We don't need to say this and then dump ourselves and become a charismatic church. I don't think that that's what it's saying. But we do need to be Bereans. The Bereans are more noble than the Thessalonians, because why? When they hear the words of the apostles, they test them against the scriptures, whether or not these things are true.

But at the same time, we need to not be so overly skeptical about everyone else that we start thinking that Jesus' power and ministry is only within these few walls. The danger in some churches is that we end up having turf wars with other Christians.

I'm not saying that doctrine doesn't matter. I'm not saying that teaching doesn't matter. But if we so get hung up on our distinctives that we cannot love other Christians, by this they will know that you love me. Do you have love for one another? Now there are some people who ask a decent question here. Teacher, verse 38, we saw someone who does not follow us passing out demons in your name and we forbid him because he does not follow us. So don't forbid him. For no one who works a miracle in my name can soon afterwards speak evil of me. Is Jesus' name just like magic? Is it like hocus-pocus?

Some guy is just able to go to someone he thinks has an evil spirit, and he's able to say, by the name of Jesus, come out. And it's going to be guaranteed that, boom, it's going to happen? That's how some people treat the name of Jesus. They'll sing songs about, I believe in the power of the name of Jesus. But in all reality, they believe in a superstition of their own making. Jesus' name is powerful, but this man was casting out demons in Jesus' name because he believed in the person and work of Jesus. He believed in Jesus. He believed in who Jesus said he was and had shown himself to be.

And there's a chasm, there's a world of difference between believing in what Jesus said, believing in who Jesus is, and just superstitious pseudo-Christianity. You know that superstitious pseudo-Christianity I'm talking about, don't you? The type of people who think just because I wear a cross, I'm saved. Or people who think, well, I'm good because I sleep with a Bible underneath my pillow.

Or maybe even people who will just say the name of Jesus and they think that they're being good followers of Him, even though they never crack open His Word. They don't commune with His people. They don't follow after His commandments. There is power in the name of Jesus, but that power is for those who believe.

This is shown in some really fun places. In the book of Acts chapter 3, this is just after Pentecost, Peter and John, this very same John, they go to the temple. And there's a man who's brought there, and he's been lame for a long time, and they bring him, and he starts asking Peter and John for money, and Peter looks at him and he says, I don't have money. Gold and silver I do not have. But what I do have I freely give unto you in the name of Jesus Christ.

I say, get up and walk. And he gets up and walks. Why was Peter able to do that? Because he believed in who Jesus was and he was filled with the Holy Spirit. But then it also goes to the Apostle Paul, right? The Apostle Paul is in a Gentile land. He's walking around in Acts chapter 16. He's going throughout this area, and there's this girl who keeps following him. This demon-possessed girl who's following him around. And she's kind of really undermining the work that they're trying to do. And Paul turns around, and he casts this unclean spirit out of this slave girl by the name of Jesus. How does that work?

Because he believes in who Jesus is and what he said, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit. But then, one of my favorite stories, I'm actually gonna flip there, because I want to read it to you. I love this story, Acts chapter 19. Keep your Bible, your finger in Mark 9, but in Acts chapter 19, this is, God loves a comedy. Acts chapter 19, verse 13 to 16.

Then, some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists, that's Jewish people who cast out demons, some of the Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves. To what? To call on the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, we exorcise you by the name of Jesus whom Paul preaches. Also, there were seven sons of Siva, a Jewish chief priest, who did so. And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you? Then the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped upon them, overpowered them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. Right?

This is God saying, I'm not going to be mocked. You're not going to make a mockery of the name of the only begotten Son of God. It's not magic. It's not superstition. Do you believe in who Jesus is? You believe in what he taught? Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? That's what this is getting at. So as we understand that this is what's going on here, how do we forge a unity with one another, with other Christians? Well, look with me at verses 39 through 40.

But Jesus said, do not forbid him For no one who works a miracle in my name can soon afterwards speak evil of me. For he who is not against us is on our side. Notice the focus here is Jesus Christ. For no one who works a miracle in my name can afterwards speak evil of me. For he who is not against us is on our side. This same scenario actually happened in the Old Testament.

When Moses was the ruler of God's people and they were in the desert, there was this interesting situation that came up in Numbers chapter 11. I'm going to read that to you. A young man ran and told Moses and said, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. So Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, one of his choice men, answered and said, Moses, my lord, forbid them. Do you see the parallels, the similarities? They're prophesying. You're the only prophet. What's going on here?

Verse 29 of Numbers 11, Then Moses said to him, Are you zealous for my sake? Oh, that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them. The exact same verb for, you gotta stop them, in the Greek translation of Numbers 11, is the same verb used here in Mark chapter 9. You gotta stop them. Hold on.

He's taking over, right? This is an usurpation of authority. And Jesus says, no it's not. No it's not, right? This is somewhat normal. For God's people, especially leaders, to feel as if they've got to have a turf war, they feel like it's only them, it's all by themselves. This is how Elijah felt, right? After he had fled from Jezebel, he cried out to the Lord, I'm the only one left. And it's God who had to tell him, no you're not. I have hundreds of prophets left who haven't bowed the knee to Baal. You're not the only one left.

See, in an army, there's a uniform, there's a flag, and there's an anthem. The question is, what is our anthem? Is it the praise of the Lamb? Is it that we sing the glories of Jesus Christ? Is it that we follow after Him? Paul himself knew this well. In Paul's life, right? Paul, we think of Paul, and we're like, man, this amazing missionary. He goes and he does all these amazing things.

But as he is in jail, cuffed to a wall, he writes to the Philippian church about people who thought that they could start a turf war with him. And in Philippians 1, 15 through 18, he said, some indeed preach Christ from envy and strife, and some also from goodwill. The former preach Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely supposing to add to my afflictions, to my chains. But the latter, out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel."

Okay, what is he saying here? He's saying some people are preaching the gospel because they're good. Right? They want God's glory. They're doing it great. Other people are preaching the gospel because they don't like me at all. And they're doing it just because they want to gobble up other churches.

You know what the Apostle Paul says to that? Verse 18. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached. And in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice." Because you see, Paul realizes it's not the messenger, but it is the King of Kings. This is about. It's not about Paul. It's not about him holding on to some imaginary Bishop Rick, you know, all the churches underneath his control. It was about seeing the name of Jesus Christ high and lifted up, going to all the nations. So he says, you know what? If they want to preach Christ because they think they're going to get under my skin, let them get under my skin. It's about Christ, it's not about me. So what keeps us from being united? Right, what keeps us? What keeps us from being united to one another? Well, we have to follow the biblical Christ. I need to warn you, there's a false unity. And the fourth point is beware of a false unity.

Many people will use Psalm 133 or passages like this, and they'll say, see, yeah, we need to be united with one another. The big $5 theological word for this is ecumenism, right, ecumenical. We need to be more ecumenical with one another. This is kind of like from the word ecclesia, you know, church, and then we want to be one church.

While that's a good, place what often dissolves into a spineless ecumenism, where people don't actually stand up for the truth, they just want to be joined together so much that they're willing to just push all doctrinal differences to the side and give away even core tenets of Christian faith. This is what Paul was not afraid to point out in Galatians chapter 1. He says, how have you been bewitched, Galatians?

Somebody came to you and they're preaching a different gospel. And I'm telling you, even if we or an angel of God should come and preach another gospel to you, let them be accursed. This is the same Paul who just said, I don't care if somebody else is preaching the gospel, great, as long as it's going out. But now he's saying, but if it's not the true gospel, God's curses be upon their heads. Because they're actually ripping apart the church. It's scary, right? Because this is what Matthew, Jesus himself, teaches in Matthew chapter 7, verse 22 and 23. There's going to be false followers, teachers, churches, and even exorcists. Who at that last great day are to come to Jesus and they're going to say, 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. Why would Jesus say that? Right, that's the tension in the text. How could someone who said, I've done these great things in your name, I've cast out demons in your name, I call you Lord, Lord. How is Jesus going to say, he's casting them away, but I've never known you? The last part of verse 23 is important. You who practice lawlessness. Many who are big, huge drum beaters for ecumenical unity are also some of the biggest ones we've seen who practice lawlessness, who teach lawlessness.

You might not like the word ecumenical, and that's fine, that's a big word. How about we just use the pop word of today? Just be tolerant. Be tolerant with one another. But the problem is there's a difference between bearing with one another, being tolerant with one another, and doctrinal where it's secondary and tertiary issues. And being tolerant with errant doctrine. Being tolerant where somebody is saying that something is not a sin and it is a sin. Our culture is filled with people who give lip service to Jesus. But in all reality, it's a Jesus of their own making. It's not the Jesus that we read in scriptures. It's certainly not the teaching we read in scriptures just this week.

I don't know why I'm shocked at this. You're going to see an RP Witness article probably this month where I say I need to get off YouTube, right? Because there's these things that get sent to me, right? There's this podcast that I'm watching where it's between eight people. It's meant to be kind of one of those round table type podcasts, you know, you get a whole bunch of people together to hash out their issues.

And so they get eight people together who call themselves either Christian or Jewish. And so you have four who are what I would call liberal Christians, and four who are, three of them are evangelicals and one is a Jewish lady. And they get together and they start arguing and hashing out things about biblical doctrine. And what becomes very, very, very clear is the four people who are arguing against much of what the evangelicals are arguing have never actually picked up their Bible and read what Jesus said himself.

It's what they want Jesus to say. It's who they want Jesus to be. But it's not the God of Scripture. We live in an age where people will claim the name of Jesus all over the place. They might wear crosses, they might say they go to church, and yet they're ignorant of the biblical Jesus, ignorant of the teachings of Jesus. I mean, there's cultural examples of this all over the place. Go pick up, no, I don't want you to pick up a book by this guy, but Robert Rohr, who's this guy who wants to say, he makes up an idea of who he thinks Jesus is, and it's a lie. You can go pick up the novel that was on New York Times bestselling list, The Shack, and go see.

This is, literally people say, this is what I want God to look like, and this is who I think Jesus is. But it's a God of their own making. It's the idol of our hearts. That's not how we build unity with one another. Yes, we want to be heavy on the idea that we want to love Jesus Christ and love one another and be united with one another. If they're not against us, then they're with us, right? Great. But we have to be able to determine who's with us. And how we know they're with us is do they follow Jesus Christ? The RP testimony is very helpful here.

Chapter 25 on the church, it writes in paragraph 14. This is the official teaching of our denomination. Divisions that separate believers into denominations mar the unity of the church and are due to error and sin. It is the duty of all denomination, which are true churches of Christ, to seek reconciliation and truth. Such organizational unity, however, should be sought only on the basis of truth and scriptural order." Did you hear that? This is the official teaching of our denomination. We say, you know what? Denominations are a result of sin.

They mar the unity of the church, and we should do everything we can to knock this stuff off. But at the same time, we need to be very careful that if we're going to show unity with one another, it's biblical unity. And we're not giving away the scriptures, giving away the true Christ, just because we want to get along with one another. So how do you show your unity to other Christians? How do you forge this unity?

Well, lastly, you show your love of Jesus. Verse 41. For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in my name, because you belong to Christ, assuredly I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward. There's a special place in heaven for you, Bill. You get my cup of water every Sabbath morning. Is that what this is talking about? Well, yes. It's a great sign of love. Thank you.

But this is showing us hospitality and this graciousness to preachers of the gospel. There is a danger in Reformed circles, especially in our type of Reformed circles, where people become, like, TR, truly Reformed, and really they're just cage-stage jerks. They need to be put into a corner for a while and just said, just chill out, practice on the disciplines of grace, work on prayer and fasting, reading your Bible, and love other people in the church. How about you do that for a while before we let you teach a Sunday school class or start a YouTube channel?

I gotta say, I was one of those guys. Always ready to pick a fight. Always ready to go toe-to-toe, right? Every doctrinal difference was going to be a battle to be won. And then the Lord sent me to a broad evangelical school to study church history where I had to be surrounded by Lutherans and evangelicals and e-free people and etc. to realize, oh, I'm not the only one with a corner on the truth. This is why I thank you all that you send me to conferences every year. My wife and I try to go to more broad conferences than just RP conferences.

We try to go places where we have to rub shoulders with people we might not want to join churches with. There might be, okay, I hope you don't throw me out of the church with this. We have Reformed Baptist friends, and we love them. There are people in many churches who are gospel-believing, Jesus-loving churches, and there are doctrinal differences enough that we're trying to get over hurdles But I hope that when you drive by our house someday and you've watched the pastor of a local church with his family walk into the parsonage, you don't think, oh, the pastor is betraying us. No, you should have friends. And all sorts of evangelical churches all around us, all sorts of reformed churches all around the area. I hope that you're able to develop those bonds in churches and you don't feel so cliquish, so turf-orish that we have our colors on and it's our gang and you follow us or we're really going to go after you. No, that's not the way of the kingdom, right? What do we do?

Well, I was encouraged recently hearing the testimony of a guy who was talking about how he came to know the Lord. And he's embraced covenant baptism, but as he was talking about his testimony, he gave a great, just, my parents, they're Baptists and they taught me the Bible. And I just stopped him and I encouraged him, I said, thank you for honoring your parents. Even though you might disagree with them on certain doctrinal aspects, it is keeping of the fifth commandment for you to still honor your parents. I hope you go home and you tell them that. You thank them for reading the scriptures with you, for loving you. So many people want these doctrinal fights.

Do you know what somebody asked Whitfield when John Wesley died? They said to George Whitefield, the great Reformed revivalistic preacher, what do you think of Wesley? You know the guy who had wrestled the Methodist church out of his hands and divided over Reform versus Arminian?

They said, do you think he's going to be in heaven? Do you think you'll see him in heaven? And Whitefield said something along the lines of, oh no, he'll be so close to the throne of grace that I won't dare to be able to see him. When Billy Graham died, it was a similar question that was asked of R.C. Sproul. Do you think Billy Graham will be in heaven? And R.C. Sproul quoted Whitfield here. He said, oh no, he's going to be so close to the Lamb that I'm not going to be anywhere near there.

I'm not saying that we are lockstep with everybody, but what I am saying is that we must realize that there are those who have given us a cup of water and that we might not be able to be in the same denomination of them, but we still can love them. We can love, I can't believe, I'm almost shocked that this is like a controversial statement.

We can love other Christians who are even in denominations that we might not like all their teachings. They might even sing hymns, and we can love them. Some of you in here are not convinced wholeheartedly of all of our distinctives, and there's a place for you here. There's a place for us to love you and to grow with you here.

We can pray for other Christians. This is how we form church unity. We can rejoice when we see other churches have gospel success. We can praise God when we see baptisms. Yes, even adult baptisms. We can praise God and sing His praises when we see other Jesus-loving, Bible-believing congregations outside of our own grow. Praise God, the Kingdom of Heaven is expanding.

We can encourage those who are being persecuted for Christ's sake, even though they might not be reformed. In your job site, you might find Christians whom you are friends with, who do not go to a denomination that you might be able to in good conscience go to, but you know that they love Jesus Christ. You can encourage them, and you can pray for them, and you can love them. Be on the lookout for how you can give a cup of water to others.

Not because of who they are, but because of the master who they follow. We're just one rank in the battalion. We're not the whole army. Show kindness and hospitality to the servant who is to show kindness and hospitality to the master. When you show hospitality, when you give that cup of cold water, that might be all you have. You might not be able to have a feast. But when you do it for one of his ambassadors, you do it for the master himself. That's a great way to serve.

I'm going to just put this here. If you get a hold of Wycliffe Ministries, they're the Bible translating ministry. If you've got a spare bedroom in your house, you can literally be put on a list where you can host Bible translators. If you want to hear some crazy stories, and be really encouraged, just ask them to put you on that list, and every once in a while, they'll send somebody who's translating into Chinese or into Hindi or some real obscure language, and you'll find out stories of Jesus Christ and of what He's doing through the world.

Don't be fooled. God is no respecter of persons. His power was not limited to the 12, but our desire for unity is based on who Jesus is. So how do you forge church unity? Go show your love for other brothers and sisters in Christ. Invite them to your homes. Care for them. Pray for them. Give them a cup of cold water.

Closing Prayer

This is how we show that we're not against one another because we're for Christ. Don't forsake biblical teaching. But when it's a secondary or a tertiary issue level. Care for them, encourage them. Let's pray. Father, we pray that we would be people known not for sectarianism, but that your Spirit would give us wisdom. That as we read your word, we would determine in our hearts where the boundary lines we must draw, where we can say, I can't have fellowship with someone. We need your spirit for that. It's a hard decision.

But Lord, that you would also give us a spirit of charity that we would love wholeheartedly those who profess Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, who keep to your promises. God, please help us. to love one another, to love you most of all. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.