Our gospel lesson text this morning is taken from Joshua chapter 22. I invite you to turn there and encourage you to do that. It's found on page 167. I'll give you a moment to turn to that to find it so that you can read along as you hear this being read and so that you can keep that open and refer to that as you hear this text being preached. There's a lot to be said as we look at Joshua 22. We looked at this passage last week and the whole passage is about the unity. God's people are to have one with another. So we looked at last week how we get unity in this week. We look at why that is something that we are to desire to have. So here now, these God's words, eternally true. Beginning in verse 1, Joshua 22. Then Joshua summoned the Rubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Vanessa and said to them, you've done all that Moses is the servant of the Lord commanded. I think back to Joshua 1 that Larry read for us. And you have obeyed me in everything I commanded. For a long time now to this very day, you have not deserted your brothers, but have carried out the mission the Lord your God gave you. Verse 4, now that the Lord your God has given your brothers rest as he promised, return to your homes in the land that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you on the other side of the Jordan. But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to obey his commands, to hold fast to him, and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul. Then Joshua blessed them and sent them away, and they went to their homes. To the half tribe of Vanessa, Moses had given the land in Bosch and to the other half of the tribe Joshua gave land on the west side of the Jordan with their brothers. When Joshua sent them home, he blessed them, saying, return to your homes with your great wealth, with large herds of livestock, with silver, gold, bronze, and iron, and a great quantity of clothing, and divide with your brothers the plunder from your enemies. So the Rubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Vanessa left the Israelites at Shiloh in Canaan. To return to Gilead, their own land, which they had acquired in accordance with the command of the Lord through Moses. When they came to Galilat near the Jordan, in the land of Canaan, the Rubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Vanessa built an imposing altar thereby the Jordan. And when the Israelites heard that they had built the altar on the border of Canaan at Galilat near the Jordan on the Israelite side, the whole assembly of Israel gathered at Shiloh to go to war against them. So the Israelites sent Phineas, son of Elias, are the priest to the land of Gilead, to Ruben Gad and the half tribe of Vanessa. With him, they sent ten of the chief men, one for each of the tribes of Israel, each the head of a family division among the Israelite clans. When they went to Gilead to Ruben Gad and the half tribe of Vanessa, they said to them, verse 16, the whole assembly of the Lord says, how could you break faith with the God of Israel like this? How could you turn away from the Lord and build yourselves an altar in rebellion against him now? Was not the sin of pure enough for us? Up to this very day we have not cleansed ourselves from that sin. Even though a plague fell on the community of the Lord, and are you now turning away from the Lord? If you rebel against the Lord today, tomorrow he will be angry with the whole community of Israel. If the land you possesses the filed, come over to the Lord's land where the Lord's tabernacle stands and share the land with us. But do not rebel against the Lord or against us by building an altar for yourselves, other than the altar of the Lord our God. When a concern of Zara acted unfaithfully regarding the devoted things, did not wrath come upon the whole community of Israel? He was not the only one who died for his sin. Then Ruben Gad and the half tribe of Vanessa replied to the heads of the clans of Israel. The mighty one, God, the Lord, the mighty one, God, the Lord, he knows and let Israel know if this has been in rebellion or disobedience to the Lord, do not spare us this day. If we have built our own altar to turn away from the Lord and to offer burnt offerings and grain offerings or to sacrifice fellowship offerings on it, may the Lord call Himself, call us to account. No, we did it for fear that someday your descendants might say to ours, what do you have to do with the Lord the God of Israel? The Lord has made the Jordan a boundary between us and you, you Rubenites and Gadites, you have no share in the Lord. So your descendants might cause ours to stop fearing the Lord. That is why we said, let us get ready and build an altar but not for burnt offerings or sacrifices. On the contrary, it is to be a witness between us and you and the generations that follow that we will worship the Lord at His sanctuary with our burnt offerings, sacrifices and fellowship offerings. Then in the future, your descendants will not be able to say to ours, if you have no share in the Lord. And we said, if they ever say this to us or to our descendants, we will answer, look at the replica of the Lord's altar which our fathers built, not for burnt offerings and sacrifices, but as a witness between us and you. Far be it from us to rebel against the Lord and turn away from Him today by building an altar for burnt offerings, grain offerings and sacrifices other than the altar of the Lord our God that stands before His tabernacle. When Phineas the priest and the leaders of the community, the heads of the clans of the Israelites, heard what Ruben, Gad and Manasseh had to say, they were pleased. And Phineas son of Eleazar the priest said to Ruben, Gad and Manasseh, today we know that the Lord is with us because you have not acted unfaithfully toward the Lord in this matter. Now you have rescued the Israelites from the Lord's hand. Then Phineas son of Eleazar the priest and the leaders returned to Canaan from their meeting with the Rubenites and Gadites and Gilead and reported to the Israelites. They were glad to hear the report and praised God and they talked no more about going to war against them to devastate the country where the Rubenites and Gadites lived. And the Rubenites and the Gadites gave the altar this name a witness between us that the Lord is God. Here ends our reading, the word of the Lord, thanks indeed, let's pray. Father we thank you for this your word and ask that you teach us from it. You taught your people from it when it was written and we ask that you teach us from it now. By the work of your spirit making your word living inactive among us, grant us ears that are wide open to hear your truth. Eyes that see well and hearts ready to be conformed to your will. We pray Jesus that you would preach to us by this your word and by your spirit make it effective in us that we might reflect you better, that we might live by your truth more accurately that you might be glorified in us. We pray Jesus in your name. Amen. We look last week as I mentioned it, how we accomplish unity and this week from this passage we see that God also gives us the answer why unity is important, why that's something that we as individual believers should desire, why that makes sense. It makes sense on the number of levels and the first level is this that it's part of God's plan that he has one people who's not divided and God orchestrates everything for this one people who are under his leadership. And so it's kind of like when you're when you have a teacher who's directing you or boss who's directing you or coach who's directing you, he gives you specific instructions and in these instructions are the desire and the things that are there so that there is unity. And so if you watch football the coach gives these instructions so that everybody on the field all 11 of his players out there on the field are acting in unity they're all doing the same play at once. That's what the coach wants that's his purpose but this purpose of this coach is not divorced from this idea of the players themselves being blessed. By this unity of action that goes all together in one play on a football field that a particular point in time in a particular quarter. It's the same way with God. God has a plan, he has a purpose and it's his purpose that we be one people, that we be a unified people but it's also to our blessing. Being unified with each other the church being unified together is beneficial to us unity is beneficial to us it has blessings for us and that's what's underlined in this passage and that we look at this morning. So first of all we say in just some quick review for us from last week we won't spend a lot of time with this but if you like to fill in blanks you can fill these in if you want to just listen that's fine too. First of all we say the main point of this passage is what you have at the front. Strive for unity in the church. This is something we're to be striving for and we see the great angst of both sides the two and a half tribes that are on the east side of the Jordan and the nine and a half tribes that are on the west side of the Jordan they both have angst over this we might not be unified. And you see that the nine and a half tribes think that this altar has been built as a symbol of disunification that the two and a half tribes on the east side will start worshipping at this altar that's by the Jordan River instead of worshipping at the Lord's sanctuary. And God had specifically said in the law of Moses that all gods people were to worship in one place at his sanctuary and they weren't to build altars all over the land to make things more convenient for them because that would lead to disunity in part that's why that was but rather there to have this one altar and to worship together and to sacrifice that altar alone. And so the nine and a half tribes have great angst when they see this altar, this replica that's built by the two and a half tribes before they had literally crossed back over to the east side of the Jordan to join their wives and kids, these soldiers. But on the other side you see the two and a half tribes have this great angst among themselves this great fear that either in their own day or in the days of their descendants that the nine and a half tribes to the west of the Jordan will disown them and will prohibit them from being unified together and worshipping at this one altar and being blessed along with the other nine and a half tribes. And so this is very clearly a passage showing us how important it is for gods people to be unified and how were to be people who strive for this as the people of God. And so at the end of this passage you see there's great joy and great gladness and great relief when both sides find out they don't have to be at war with each other that they can be unified with each other. That they can both have this understanding that this altar built is a reminder to them that it can be unified together through the generations, the descendants that follow. And so we as the people of God now are to take this as this message for what it is that we're to work for, not be unified if it happens to work out. But to be unified by intense purposeing toward that end, we're to be striving for unity, we're to take this as to be of great importance one to another. So how do we do that? This these first three points are just reviewed from last week. We'll mention them. One would do it by inconveniencing ourselves for each other. For the sake and blessing of other people of fellow church members, we inconvenience ourselves. The tribes to the east, the two and a half tribes, all the fighting men, the people of fighting age, the people who could serve as soldiers, even though they already had their land. They already had their inheritance. They by instruction of Moses, repeated to them by Joshua in chapter one, cross the Jordan with their brothers, the fighting men of the other nine and a half tribes, and they fight all through the west side of the Jordan, so that their brothers can have an inheritance of land also. So they greatly inconvenience themselves risk even their own lives for the blessing of their brothers of the nine and a half tribes, and this works unity among them. Second thing be we have unity among ourselves by not assuming the worst of our fellow church members. You see how well that works when you assume the worst of your fellow church members, the nine and a half tribes here break that about five times. They have all these assumptions about what this altar is about, and they go to their brothers, the two and a half tribes, they send their representative men, and they say to them, you've done this and this and this for all these reasons, and they're wrong on all accounts. This is very instructive for us husband to wife. It's instructive to us parent to teacher. Yeah, when you assume your kids teacher has done something that's really unfair. You know, and you go to them and you find out I remember I went once to Mr. Pollock once and I bugged at him about something. I forget whether it was with Alson or Larissa, and then I found out there was a great reason why something happened. I felt like a big jerk, and that's what these nine and a half tribes feel. Don't remind him of that, by the way. These nine and a half tribes, they must have felt like such big jerks when they find out that not only have they assumed the worst of their brothers in a very unloving way, but they've also accused them of what's 180 degrees. False. They said you're being disunified, you're being unfaithful, and the whole reason for the alter is that they would be faithful and that they would be unified. And so we keep that in mind. We don't assume the worst of each other as we deal with each other. That ends up in war, and there's no use for it, and that's one of the lessons here. See, now how do we do it by pursuing faithfulness to doctrine? Notice the nine and a half tribes don't go to the two and a half tribes and say, well, whatever you want to believe, that's okay. If you're not worship with this alter, that's fine with us. We just want to be unified with you and not at war. They say no, we have to be unified, and it has to be according to the law of Moses. It's according to doctrine, it's according to truth, and from the other side as well, the two and a half tribes say, yes, we need to be unified, and we need to be unified around what was taught in the law of Moses. We need to be unified around what God teaches us in his Holy Spirit-inspired Word. And so today in the church, we don't seek unity by kicking the Bible in the trash can, by throwing doctrine in the dumpster. We seek unity the proper way, by with humility, interacting with our brothers, of other churches, of other denominations, and between each other in the church, we operate with humility and aim for the truth, and aim for being united, not by throwing doctrine in the trash can, but by in humility arriving at correct biblical teaching together. By agreeing together as brothers, that's why we have denominations because there's been a lack of humility. Denominations are, in large part, the result of brothers who have been leaders of the church, not acting in humility. Being more concerned about being right than about getting it right. See the difference? Getting it right requires humility. Getting it right requires repentance. Getting it right requires saying, I was wrong on this point. Thanks, brother. Not being concerned about our pride and our prominence, or being the one who got it right and proving that to everybody. So, we pursue faithfulness to doctrine, and this requires humility, and so that's what we do, and that's what we see here in this passage. Now, going on, why? Why is it that we pursue unity? Why is unity so important? Why is this something we strive for? Two categories of things. Two reasons why we strive for unity. One has to do with the plan of God, with God's desire, with God's purpose, with what God is doing in the world and through history. And that's your A point there. We strive for unity because Jesus died, that's your blank there. Jesus died to make us one. We read that in Ephesians 2, in the macro sense and the micro sense. This is true. Jesus died to make us one. God saves all 12 tribes out of Egypt. He saves all 12 tribes out of Egypt, and he doesn't turn them into 12 nations. He turns them into one nation. He extracts them. He saves them from their slavery, not to sin. That's what we've been saved from, but he saves them from their slavery to Pharaoh. We've been saved from our slavery to sin, saved out of our slavery to sin, to be one nation, 1 Peter 2, 10, one holy nation, one holy nation. Ephesians 4, one faith, one baptism. God's desire is that we be one, that we all come to Sinai, together 12 tribes, different gifts, different backgrounds, all that kind of stuff. But one nation, and that we stay together as one nation, and that we don't wind up as two nations, nine and a half and two and a half, or 12 nations, one for each tribe, one for each son of Jacob, that is one for each son of Israel. And so we see this in Ephesians 2, we see this in John 1711, but we see this in this passage. God wants his people to be one nation, not 12 independent nations. These people have one covenant, one sanctuary, one altar at which the worship. This is what all a hubbub in this passage is about, whether there were going to be two people with two altars, or one altar and one people. And this is true with Jesus too. We look at Ephesians 2 and the big hubbub back in the first century was whether Jews and Gentiles were meant to be two people of God. And the answer thunderously throughout all the New Testament and in Ephesians 2 specifically addressing this issue and in all of the book of Romans is no. One people of God, Jews and Gentiles together. Jesus died to turn the two people, the two men, so to speak, into one man. His purpose Ephesians 2 verse 15, his purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two thus making peace. And then he says in him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple, one holy temple in the Lord. We are all living stones together, unified together, being made into one holy temple. Jews and Gentiles, that was the context about which Paul wrote, Jews and Gentiles, one people, one temple, symbolized by the stone temple, the shadow of the Old Testament Old Temple in those days. This was Jesus' plan, his intent, his purpose, so we are described to be one. And Jesus says so and John 1711, it's your first verse there from your Declaration of the Gospel. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me so that they may be one as we are one. Jesus dies to make one people of God, and he prays that we would be one, that we would be unified. Okay, so it's God's plan that we be unified, but second reason why we strive for unity, and that is this, be there are benefits of church unity for you. There are benefits of church unity for you, and these benefits come to you in three ways. First way, number one, unity helps you be faithful, unity helps you to be faithful. Look at verses 24 and 25 there, that's the concern of the two and a half tribes. They're concerned about being faithful to the Lord, they're concerned about their descendants to being faithful to the Lord, and key in them being faithful is being united with the one people of God, particularly their nine-and-half brothers. So verse 24, no, we did it, we built this altar for fear that some day your descendants might say to us, what do you have to do with the Lord the God of Israel? The Lord has made the Jordan of boundary between us and you, you Rubenite and Gadot, you have no share in the Lord, so your descendants hear their concern for faithfulness here. Unity will breed faithfulness, so your descendants might cause hours to stop fearing the Lord. You see, when we're united together, when there's unity in the church, we have this mutual care and accountability and all this one another stuff that we see in the New Testament that helps us to be faithful. This is why the writer of Hebrews says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together as some as are prone to do. We in America are very independent by being Americans, and we think independence is always a great thing, and God says, no, it's not you need to be unified with your brothers in the church. The best environment for you to be faithful to Jesus is being hit-clopped here in the middle of his church, whether this church, or you're in another church, to be in a church to be surrounded by brothers and sisters in Christ because they'll help you to keep you faithful. And when they see you not being faithful, they're the ones that can put their hand on your shoulder and talk to you, and be concerned about you continuing to fear the Lord, to reverence him, to be faithful to him so that you can experience blessing. As you look at testimony, you can see the unity between the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus prays to His Father, as He's aided there in God's Spirit, He prays to the Father and says, Father, please take this cup from me. I don't want to go to the cross, but not my will, but yours be done. Jesus, because He was unified with the third person and the first person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and the Father, He couldn't not go to the cross. He wasn't an independent agent, He was connected, He was unified, He was part of this overall plan to save a people. The Father chose a people to save. Jesus comes to die of people, die for that people, and the Holy Spirit then comes and gives people eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hearts to understand the gospel. All three people of the Trinity are working together, and that holds Jesus accountable, so to speak, you see it there and get testimony, to do what's right, to go to the cross, and Jesus expresses that. I can't be disunified with you, Father. I can't be disunified with you, Spirit. I have to go. I have to go to the cross, not my will be done but yours. Number two, so unity helps you to be faithful. Number two, unity helping your faithfulness keeps you from God's discipline. So you're unified with God's people, you're in the midst of them, you're unified with them, and it keeps you from God's discipline. You see the concern for this in verses 1820 and 23 in this passage. The nine-and-a-half tribes go to the two-and-a-half and they say, if you're disunified with us, if you worship another God, we're going to get discipline too, and you're going to get disciplined as well. And so there's this great concern for faithfulness. Faithfulness is aided by unity and those wrapped together to avoid the discipline of God. God had disciplined them with the whole pure incident. He disciplined them with Aiken. Aiken was the one who took plunder from Jericho when Jericho was all put under the ban and God's people were not allowed specifically by command of God to take any plunder from Jericho. Aiken takes plunder and they go into their next battle and people die. There's a great defeat. The whole community suffers because of the one person's unfaithfulness. And so this is the argument that the nine-and-a-half tribes bring to the two-and-a-half tribes. They understand that God's discipline can come to us apart from this unity around faithfulness. So there's this regular and normal condition and environment of blessing in your life through unity and its side-product of faithfulness. Jesus died that we might be one. So when we're not, God is not pleased with us acting like that, tearing apart what He died to build up. And so this means when you have another believer that's around you and it seems like they've done something that's been hurtful to you. One, you strive for unity, part of striving for unity is you don't assume motives, you don't assume the worst of them, but you go to that brother and you work for unity with that brother. You don't go the other direction and talk about that brother or that sister with somebody else. That leads to disunity. Rather, you go to that brother and strive for unity. You work things out. Jesus died that you would be one with that brother. And if you start doing things that divide yourself in another brother, you're working against the purposes of Jesus. He died so the opposite would happen and we never want to be doing things that are opposite purposes than the purpose that took Jesus to the cross. So unity keeps us from God's discipline. And then thirdly related to this, the flip side of it, the other side of the coin, unity especially as it moves us to inconveniencing ourselves for the sake of other church members leads to special blessing. Unity being unified with each other leads to special blessing. You see this in this passage that these people, the soldiers of the two-and-aft tribes, what does it go home with? All kinds of plunder, gold, silver, all kinds of stuff clothing that they wouldn't have had unless they had inconvenience themselves for the sake of their brothers. So they're inconveniencing themselves, they're giving of themselves for the blessing of their brothers, the nine-and-aft tribes, ends up with them receiving special blessing, all this plunder, that they wouldn't have had had they stayed safe and secure on the east side of the Jordan. And this is a lesson for us when we do for family, as Frankie would say, as we inconvenience ourselves for our brothers and sisters in Christ, God gives us special blessings in that act of inconveniencing ourselves for others. There's one thing I hate greatly, and it's moving, and there's one thing I hate that's the corollary to that, you know what the corollary is, getting asked to help someone move. It's great, man, when people help you move, it's really great. It's like 50 people were here, we'd only lift one box each and we'd be done. So you're really motivated, but when it's not you moving, man, that's tough, but that's inconveniencing ourselves, but I had opportunity to get asked that wonderful question a couple of weeks ago, can you help me move? And I said, oh man, don't I have something else that day? And I didn't, and I got nailed by this passage, and I got nailed by Jesus teaching, do for others as you'd like them to do for you. And I know I've moved many times, and you folks here have helped us move, and we've got seven people, and so that's a lot of space and a lot of stuff. And you folks have helped us with it, and I think, boy, I'm so grateful for the people that have helped us move, and I need to do this. And you know what, guess what? God is true to His word. I was so blessed by doing that. At a great drive there, it was beautiful. It was a beautiful day. I was in some countryside that I hadn't seen before. The interaction I had with this brother and his wife, and with his neighbors that had helped him move from another place, was just, I was so thanking God for the blessing that that was to me. But man, that was inconvenient. But God blesses us when we inconvenience ourselves for others. When Betsy and I were first here in Clayton, we moved here in November of 1998. We were exhausted. I was in the midst of taking ordination exams too, and that's exhausting, and serving as an assistant pastor up at our mother church, and trying to lead things among a small group here to start the church. And we were just kind of at Witsend, and there was an elder's wife who called her house from our mother church, and she talked to Betsy. If you know Betsy, you don't have to talk to her for more than a minute to know how she's really doing. And so Betsy talked with this woman about how we were doing, which we were just exhausted. And you know, you are when you're kind of at Witsend. So I got a call the next day from this woman's husband, the elder of this church. And this guy's an MD. He's an important guy. He's been an elder in a church for a long time, and he calls me and says, hey, it sounds like you guys are exhausted. Can I come down and help you with some unpacking and some stuff? I've got the day off. And he came down on his day off, and he helped me put together some shelves. Now the shelves weren't hard to get together, but you know how it is when you're exhausted. You can't do it. And he stood there with me, and we put this thing together, and that made all the difference. Things were different after that day. God blesses us when we inconvenience ourselves for each other. This guy, I've served on committees of Presbyteria with him all through the years. I'm on a committee of Presbyteria with him. Right now we are in email correspondence, and we're always just so happy to see each other. But there's this special bond that's between us because he came down and helped me that day when I was in a time of need. And so we see Psalm 133. Larry, read it for us this morning. It's the last line in your outline here. How good and pleasant it is. How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity. How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity. And that's the truth. You know how it is when you inconvenience yourselves for the church. And how that's a blessing to you. Whether you're doing treasury or Sunday school or trones worship, cleaning the church or whatever it is. There are lots of ways that people are serving here in the church. You know how God blesses you doing that as you're doing that. And that leads to the unity of our church. And God blesses us because of it. Let's pray. Jesus, we are thankful that you've made us one people and sometimes it's hard. Sometimes we see people that we wouldn't naturally like or be friends with. Sometimes we have people look like they're sinning against us. And sometimes they in fact are, but we ask for your help, your strength to not assume the worst. We ask for your help and your strength to cause us to inconvenience ourselves for one another. We ask that you would give us the intellectual and heart strength to pursue unity by getting your scriptures right as right as we can get them. But Lord, we pray that you would make us devoted to striving for unity in the church because that's what you died for. You've given us your spirit that we might be unified in the spirit who dwells in all of us. And if this were all there is, we would need to do it and it would be good and great and we would be participants in your plan. But Lord, you give us these benefits. With unity, it helps us to be faithful. With unity, we avoid your discipline, but we also, especially, get this special blessing from you as we do the things necessary to pursue unity in the church. How good it is to see a brother or sister and to have there be no discord between us. To be glad in our hearts for there to be no discord but rather joy at seeing this brother or sister. So cause us to strive for unity with each and every member of the church. And cause us is a denomination to strive for unity between denominations not at the expense of truth but with humility as we approach your truth, the Bible. That we may be one as you, Father, Son, and Spirit are one, to your glory, for our blessing, we praise Jesus in your name, Amen. Let's not join together in this.