Unity

Our Gospel lesson text this morning is taking from Joshua chapter 22 as we get back to to Joshua and invite you to turn there in your Bibles or if you've brought a Bible from home to turn that turn there and there or If you've if you're using the Bible, it's in your seat. That's found on page 167 I'll give you a moment to find that so that you can read along and Keep your eyes on that as well as we Hear this God's Word being preached

Joshua chapter 22. We've just been Heading through this section of Joshua chapter 13 through 21 where the land is distributed among the tribes after all the The warring is done and God gives us people rest in the land and Now we head forward in Chapter 22 With some final things with Joshua and the people having come into the promised land Joshua chapter 22 beginning in verse 1. This is God's Word. It's eternally true Then Joshua summoned the Rubenites the Gatites and a half tribe of Manasseh and said to them You've done all the Moses the servant of the Lord commanded and you have obeyed me and 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 Now that the rest Or now that the Lord your God has given your brothers rest as you 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 Manasseh Moses had given the land in Basin 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 Manasseh 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 Gellalaw near the Jordan in the land of Canaan the Rubenites the Gadites and the half tribe of Manasseh built an imposing altar there by the Jordan and When the Israelites heard that they had built the altar on the border of Canaan at Gellalaw 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 Eliaz are the priests to the land of Gilead to Ruben Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh With him they sent ten of the chief men one from for each of the tribes of Israel each the head of a family division among the Israelites plans When they went to Gilead to Ruben Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh they said to them 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 possess is defiled 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 they can son of Sarah acted unfaithfully regarding the devoted things did not wrath come upon the whole community of Israel He was not the only one who died first sin Then Ruben Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh 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 burn offerings and grain offerings or the Sacrifice fellowship offerings on it may the Lord 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 Jordan a boundary between us and you you Rubenites and Gadites you have no share in the Lord See 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 burn offerings sacrifices and fellowship offerings Then in the future your descendants will not be able to say to ours 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 burn 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 by building an altar for Brook 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 LA's are 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 LA's are the priests and the leaders returned to Canaan from their meeting with the Rubenites and Gadites in 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 the Gadites lived And the Rubenites and Gadites gave the altar this name a witness between us That the Lord is God Hereins are reading the word of the Lord Thanks indeed, let's pray Our God and Father we are grateful that we have Union in you Because of Jesus Because of Jesus all who believe in you Lord are brought into one and our one man Members of one body and how good and pleasant it is When brothers dwell in unity

Teach us about the unity of us your people the church This morning through this your word Jesus preached us and by your spirit grant us Understanding that we might live in a way not only that pleases you, but that reflects you To each other and to the world We pray Jesus in your name Amen When you're in a family together, there's a certain amount of unity that you have or that you that you should have in this reflex And and directs the way we treat each other Many of you know I'm a fan of the show the middle and recently on that show Sue the middle child who's a freshman in high school Was having trouble getting from one class to another class because they were on opposite ends of the high school So one of her solutions was that she put all her books everything she needed for the whole day in her backpack And this made her backpack stick out you know about this much behind her And at one point she stops in her race from one class to another she stops and she loses her balance and she falls backward and Her backpack is so tall that she's on her backpack and she can't turn over It's too heavy, so she's like a turtle on flipped over on its shell and so that Sue and her older brother who's a cool kid football star who's embarrassed about his freshman sister Sue Gets home with his sister Sue they get off the bus and they talk to their mom and he says mom I can't believe this. I'm so embarrassed Sue is so embarrassing and she says why what happened and and they they recount the story and what had happened during the day after Sue fell on her back a crowd gathered around Sue and All the kids instead of helping Sue Pull out their cell phones and they take pictures of her stranded on her back like a turtle and then of course they text those pictures to all their friends and so Axel has received this text a hundred times over and the title under the picture is turtle girl Well the mom gets upset with the older son Axel because she finds out that he had actually been on the scene And instead of helping his sister he shot down the hallway so he wouldn't be embarrassed by her and when the mom finds this out She tells she tells her son Axel that she flipped your sister That you need to flip turtle girl over and so They she emphasizes for us this aspect of When you have a brother or sister there are things that you do for them regardless of the cost and That's what we see with Ruben Gad and a half tribe of Manasseh in the book of Joshua You see Ruben Gad and a half tribe of Manasseh. They already had their land Before the rest of Israel crossed over the Jordan with Joshua They had fought for their land when Moses was still living in his last days and they took this land that was East of the Jordan And so they already had their inheritance But Moses had specifically instructed these two and a half tribes that those who were Men of fighting age Were to not stay back in the land of their inheritance east of the Jordan But they were to cross the Jordan with their brothers the other nine and a half tribes and they were to fight With their brothers along side of them until all the territory of the promised land was taken Until their brothers of the nine and a half other tribes had their inheritance their possession first and at that point and that's what we saw from what Frank read to us in Joshua chapter 1 At that point when all that warring was done when all that work was done They would be free to go back to the land of their inheritance and So that's what we see in this passage. We see John for releasing the soldiers the fighting men the men of fighting age from these two and a half tribes Who came over to no advantage of their own? They already had their land and it fought alongside their brothers of the other nine and a half tribes So that their brothers could have their land of inheritance And so the book of Joshua one of its major themes is this theme of the unity of the people of God We are as the people of God to be Unified We're to be together not apart from each other and we are to and here's the point of this whole chapter this whole Passage as it was the point for the second half of chapter 1 We're to be people and if you like to fill out blanks in an outline here you go You can start you don't have to fill out blanks. You can just listen if you want to we're to be people who strive for unity We're to strive for unity in the church Not just have unity if it happens to happen But to strive for unity to work for unity to expend effort for unity And we see this in verses 24 and 34 in the very intent of the soldiers of these two and a half tribes Why do they build this altar? It's all for the purpose of unity They don't want to ever and they don't want their descendants ever to be disunified or separated From their brothers of the nine and a half tribes They don't want there to be a time in the future where the their brothers West of the Jordan might say we have no part with you See we're divided by the Jordan River. We're also divided from you as a people Rather we are to strive for unity in the church Paul makes his point in Ephesians 2 in regard to Jews and Gentiles who believed in the first century They want to be two churches. This is a serious issue in the church in the first century Paul deals with it in Romans as well There isn't to be a Gentile church and a Jewish church in each city of people who both believed in Jesus but had different backgrounds Rather there's to be one church Jesus died that he might make the two Gentiles and Jews one man one body And he furthers that image at the end of that passage and Ephesians 2 by saying we're all one temple Being built up together into a mature building Together not two temples not two separate buildings not two separate churches, but one So we're to strive for unity in the church So the first part we talk about is how How do we strive for unity in the church where there can be a lot of things that we do but there are a few things that are shown to us Here in Joshua chapter 22. So how do we do this? How do we strive for unity? What are things that we can do? in order that unity might happen in the church First a in your outline We get unity in the church by inconveniencing by inconveniencing ourselves for the sake of each other for the sake of the blessing of others beside us So we strive for unity in the church by inconveniencing ourselves for the sake and blessing of our fellow church members This is what Moses This is what had said to the two and a half tribes. This is what Joshua re-emphasizes to the two and a half tribes before they cross the Jordan in Joshua chapter 1 That they were to inconvenience themselves Not for their own sake Here are these fighting men. They already have their inheritance on the east side of the Jordan and they are given the task of fighting perhaps losing their lives For the sake of their brothers They weren't going to gain anything by this their brothers were going to gain something but they wouldn't they already had their inheritance And so we're told to inconvenience ourselves for the sake and blessing of our fellow church members This is what Jesus does in the gospel We're told by Paul and Philippians 127 to Live our lives in a manner conduct our lives in a manner worthy of the gospel Well, here's the gospel Jesus was very conveniently and happily located in heaven But we didn't have our inheritance And so he inconvenienced himself so we would have it How did he inconvenience himself? He was born as a baby He lived in this life He dealt with with colds and people mistreating him and and sickness and People being harsh and disbelieving him and spitting upon him and dying on a cross while people were mocking him That was very inconvenient and he didn't have to do it He was not bound to do it. He didn't need to save anyone But he did it He inconvenienced himself for our benefit for our blessing And so you conduct your life in a manner worthy of the gospel inconvenience yourself live a life of inconvenience in yourself especially for your brothers and sisters and Christ That's what Jesus did He inconvenienced himself for those who would believe Second thing and this brings about unity You see that you see how that works with Joshua How could you be in those nine-and-a-half tribes knowing that your brothers from the two-and-a-half across the river had come in To fight beside you to potentially lose their lives So that you could have an inheritance How could you be disunified with them and that happens in the church when you do things for your brothers and sisters and Christ that are inconvenient for you for their sake for their blessing That builds unity Second thing we do to build unity in the church How do we build it? How do you build it by not assuming the worst? By not assuming the worst of your fellow church members Yeah, you know the living translation the Bible is not a great translation. It's not a translation It's a paraphrase, but I do like how Ken Taylor there who did that phrase first Corinthians 13 when he talked about love and he said this love means not assuming the worst of another I think that that's involved in love that we don't assume the worst of another sometimes things seem like We've been mistreated Sometimes it seems like someone's been against us But the lesson here from this text is don't assume the worst of your brothers See how the nine-and-a-half tribes do that? And they actually arm themselves to go to war They actually go out to almost Cause all this death and all this chaos and all this heartbreak among families who lose loved ones because of this war Why? Because they assume the worst that their brothers look at all the times they assume the worst of their brothers It's verses 11 and 12 Verse 16 verses 18 and 19 verses 21 through 29 we find out they're wrong Okay, so we get down to number one. We don't assume the worst of our fellow church members So first first rule when it seems like somebody has done something that well when you've been made mad By a brother or sister in Christ. Here's what you do first number one if it seems they've wronged you assume they haven't Have that be your assumption. Don't assume they have wronged you assume they haven't wronged you Have that be your substance until proven otherwise Assume that they haven't and that you just don't yet see the whole picture and have all the facts This is indeed the case. See the all the assumptions that are made verses 11 and 12 The nine-and-a-half tribes prepare for war against them They assume their brothers have done wrong Verse 16 they assume that the alter That has been built by these two-and-a-half tribes had is an alter in rebellion against the Lord They assume that their brothers are in rebellion and that this alter marks it You know the deal with that God said worship me only at my temple And so if you built an alter somewhere else in Israel that was a huge no-no And God would discipline you for that Part of God uniting his people was that they would worship in the same place Okay, so for right now was there at Shiloh it would be in Jerusalem When later when David conquered it so that's why there's this big hubbub there was to be one alter And it was to be at the tabernacle And so when this alter is built in another place and these nine-and-a-half tribes assume that they're those two-and-a-half tribes are going to worship there and It was a showing of disunity but also a showing of disregard for the law of Moses Okay, so that's the the background for that verses 18 and 19 The nine-and-a-half tribes assume that their brothers are quote turning away from the Lord But we read then in verses 21 through 29 that the motives The motivations for this alter are exactly the opposite And here's the gospel truth Jesus is judge not you So quit judging Jesus said Matthew 7-7 judge not lest you be judged You don't have all the facts That's why you're not judge Being judge is not your job

Don't judge your brother God hasn't given you that seat He's given Jesus that seat And that seat will be exercised in judgment Someday in the future But it's not our job to judge It's not our job to condemn We forgive and it makes sense Jesus knows all things so he judges justly We don't know all the facts We don't know all the circumstances We don't know the motivations of our brother or sister in Christ When he did X or O

Jesus does so he'll judge justly and accurately We don't know those things And so our judgments are inaccurate And they destroy relationships when we make them So it's good news that Jesus is judge and that he will judge accurately He will look in the right book When we come before him at his great throne and he'll look and he'll see That you if you believe your name is written in the book of life And he'll make an accurate judgment and say you belong in the new heavens and the new earth And he'll also judge rightly when unbelievers come before him Judging justly as scripture says according to each one's deeds and words

So if it seems you've been wrong It seems someone's wronged you assume that that person hasn't wronged you Secondly, number two Treat them as if they haven't wronged you So assume they haven't wronged you assume that there's some facts out there that you don't know

Assume that there's something that's going on that you don't realize Okay, like the taco commercial you know the taco commercial for 4G It's AT&T or T-Mobile I forget which it is and the people are eating the talk They're having the taco party outside that guy's office And the one guy comes and he says oh, so you have an taco party here, aren't you Yeah Yeah, and they all look up at him a little bit confused and and he says you think that would be something I'd want to know about I like tacos right you invite a bill you told me bill creeps you out man And And then the message comes up and finds out that he was invited to the taco party He says oh Don't judge you may not have all the facts yet Second thing treat people as if they haven't wronged you Okay 21 through 29 we find out that all the things to the tea To the the dotting of the eye and the crossing of the tea All the things that the nine and a half tribes accused the two and a half tribes up the two and a half tribes were guilty of exactly the opposite The two and a half tribes were guilty of wanting unity They were guilty of wanting to be faithful. They were even guilty of wanting their descendants to be faithful to the Lord And wanting their descendants to be unified with the nine and a half tribes So treat your brothers and sisters when it appears they've wronged you as if they haven't. Don't pick up arms. Don't start building a case. Don't start getting ready to fit into don't build up your speech of how you're going to tell them off next time you see them. Don't go to war and of course here's the gospel. Jesus didn't treat you according to your sins. Psalm 103 10. See the gospel's there in the Old Testament. God has not treated us according to our sin how our sins deserve to be treated. That's the gospel message. Jesus didn't sit up there in heaven and say they don't deserve for me to come down. He could have. He would have been absolutely 100% correct. We didn't deserve for him to come down and to take care of our debt in sin. But the gospel tells us he did. He treated us not as we deserve to be treated. He treated us well when we deserve to be treated in judgment and condemnation and impunishment. And so you treat your brothers and sisters in Christ that way. Even if it's found out if you could get all the facts and it's found out that they really have wronged you. The gospel says to you and to me to treat them not as their sins deserve. Treat them well. They're your brothers. You're not their judge. Okay. Third way that we develop unity in the church. First of all we inconvenience each other. We inconvenience ourselves for each other. Secondly that we do not assume the worst of our fellow church members when it appears we've been wronged. And then see we develop unity in the church by pursuing faithfulness to doctrine. Faithfulness to doctrine. We see the references to doctrine in verses two and five. Why are the nine and a half tribes upset? Because there's doctrine. You worship the Lord only at the tabernacle. There's only one altar. This is not up for debate. The spirit of God wrote this by the hand of Moses. He was very clear. He left instructions in scripture about how to worship and what you would be disciplined for if you strayed in worship. And so the fight over here is really a thing of doctrine. But before we say doctrine doesn't matter we have to get our logic in order and we'll talk about this here. We want to be unified. We want to be unified around doctrine. Everything done according to the teaching of scripture needs to be done. These people said all of scripture at that time was written by Moses and we see these emphasis here on doing what was according to Moses. Now first of all what is doctrine? When we say that what does that mean? That's your number one in your outline. Doctrine is what the Bible teaches on various subjects. So when we say doctrine that's what we're talking about. What does the Bible teach about Jesus? That's all doctrine. Jesus is the son of God. That's doctrine. Those who believe have their sins forgiven. That's doctrine. God exists in three persons. Father, son and Holy Spirit. That's doctrine. The Bible teaches these things, Bible teaches lots of stuff on various subject matters. So many evangelicals unfortunately like the slander the term doctrine and they say something like no creed but Christ which is logical buffoonery will explain in a second here. So many Christians say we just believe in Jesus and don't want to bring all these other beliefs in because that will just cause division. And evangelicals like to slander the term doctrine as if it were about what men say apart from God's word but that's not what doctrine is. Doctrine is not man's musings something that's independent from scripture. Rather in much the contrary doctrine is the pursuit of what God's word teaches us. Doctrine is us digging into the scriptures and saying what does God say about Jesus? Is he God? Does God's word teach that? Is Jesus really fully a man? Does God's word teach that? Are our sins completely forgiven or do we have to do something else after we've believed in Jesus? We dig into the scriptures and we come up with doctrine for that. And we say and we see Paul doing it all the New Testament writers do it with the Old Testament. They prove from Old Testament doctrine what the gospel is and how Jesus fits into that. And Paul says no you're not a member of the church by faith in Jesus and circumcision. This is what Galatians is about. You're a member of the church by faith in Jesus period. That's doctrine. So here's the deal. We have the obligation to pursue doctrine, the correct teaching of scripture because according to this passage and all the books of the New Testament are blessing from God depends on us knowing and doing doctrine, the word of God. You see that in this passage? The concern of the nine and a half tribes is they're not obeying doctrine. And if they don't, they don't accurately follow what God's word teaches. Not only will they be disciplined, but we will. Just like with Aiken, when Aiken sinned, remember he took some of the plunder from Jericho? When Aiken sinned, it affected the whole community. It didn't affect us him because we went in bad or eye. The next city and we got trellis and we lost people and we got humiliated. It affected all of us. One man sin. What was the doctrine? What was the teaching that God had given them? Don't take any plunder from Jericho. See them were united together. Doctrine matters and we need to be united around doctrine. It's not when you go into the city of eye or when you go into the city of Jericho. Well, if you want to take doctrine, if you think that's what got, or if you want to take plunder and you think what that's what God word says, go ahead. But if you think God's word says you do take plunder, go ahead. It'll all be okay because that's what we think. Everybody be independent. Don't agree. Doctrine divides. No, get your doctrine right. Decide on it and act according to it or expect to be disciplined. It's the case with Aiken and that's why the nine and a half tribes are concerned. If you guys start worshiping some other God or if you guys on the other side of the Jordan start worshiping some other altar that is in the face that is flaunting God and what his word declares should be done. And if you do this, it will not only affect you, but it will affect us. We have to be united not just in name, not just because we're relatives of Jacob, but we have to be united around doctrine around what God's word says. The gospel itself is doctrine. It's the teaching of what the whole Bible says regarding God, sinful man, Jesus, and salvation. All those things are doctrine.

When we say the word Jesus and understand that this doesn't mean lunch box, that's doctrine. It's because when we say Jesus, we know what that means. Son of God, the one who died on a cross. The one who claimed that he was the way the truth and the life. That's all doctrine. We've defined that through searching the scriptures and agreeing together as the church and things like the apostles creed and the nice and the various creeds throughout the history of the church. These are pastors who have come together. Those who have studied the word and said, this is what we can agree on. Jesus is God's son. That's doctrine. That Jesus lived a perfect life is doctrine. That Jesus bore our sins and his body on the cross is doctrine. That forgiveness is based on Jesus' death and that that forgiveness is obtained through faith is doctrine. See how no creed but Christ is a ridiculous state. If you say Christ, it's full of all this doctrine. It's full of all this creed. So we're unified around this. This is what Christians have unity. We say Jesus and we all mean the same thing. We say Jesus and we're all worshipping the same person. We define who Jesus is and we worship Him and we define Him not by our own inclinations, but by what God's word the scriptures have said is true about Him. To say Christ and to know that word doesn't mean lunchbox or preparation, nature, whatever is to have and to believe a host of doctrine. So many, this is number two, many and this is historically pietism and it's the sin and to propose unity by means of dropping by dropping doctrine. These are minimalist. They're at least a handful of national denominations in the United States that have gone this way. Let's be unified by dropping our doctrine. When I was a student at Whitonburg University, there was a host maybe 12 Lutheran denominations in the nation and two of them still believed that the Bible was true and ten of them didn't and the ten you didn't all came together and they formed the ELCA. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is right there on campus while I was a student there at Whitonburg which was a Lutheran school. They said none of us believe this so why are we divided and so they obtained unity by dropping their doctrine? We don't believe there's a hell, we believe everybody's going to heaven. So why are we fighting? And so that was the start of the ELCA. There were two faithful Lutheran denominations. One of them is the one here in town, Missouri Senate and Wisconsin Senate that believed the Bible's true and so they stuck to their guns and good for them. But we don't drop doctrine for unity. Paul in Ephesians 2 says here's why we're unified because Jesus has brought every person whether Jew or Gentile into his church. And because this is the case because Jesus intent is to build one man, we should not have two churches here in Ephesus, we should have one. We should be united around this fact that Jesus brings everybody together on this truth. Now number three, the writers of scripture and God is the ultimate author of each book, always say the opposite about how we accomplish unity in the church. They always say the opposite about how we accomplish unity in the church. That is, number four unity of the chiefs are getting the teaching of scripture correct. Not by putting it in the trash can. We look at scripture and we don't say this doesn't matter. The Holy Spirit wrote this, it doesn't matter. God inscript created it and then left it in our hands through the centuries. People have died for this but it doesn't matter. We don't say that. We don't put God's word in the trash can. We don't say, ooh, I can choose what's important and what's not. We're not the selectors. God's the selector and he selected all of this except the title, the title stuff in the table of contents. He already selected what's important and it's all of this stuff. He gave us all that we need, second Peter one for life and for godliness. So we see what's correct and this is the intent that we see in this passage verses 18, 23, 25 through 29. Both sides cite we need to agree on the law of Moses and on this basis two and a half and the nine and a half have unity and they rejoice in this unity. Again, Jesus knows this and lives by this and by living by all of this correct doctrine living a perfect life. Jesus is a spotless land. Jesus doesn't say well, parts of scripture don't matter. Jesus gets it all right and he obeys all of God's laws perfectly and therefore he can go to the cross perfect. He doesn't have to die for his own sins. He's free to die for ours. Jesus gets his doctrine correct and he lives by it. If he hadn't, he would have sins and he would have died for his own sins on the cross. So is doctrine important? Are being saved absolutely dependent upon him understanding what God taught, what was there, what was sin and what was not sin and living his life according to it. So that's the how on the unity. Next week we'll pick up with point two. We'll talk about why. Why it's important that we have unity in the church. Okay, let's pray. Father, we thank you that you have in Jesus placed us all in him and we are one body, the church. Cause us to do what you've shown us here that we can do to have Jesus intent that we be united, that we all be one. Cause us to do what we can do so that that can happen. That we can be a means of that happening. Cause us to inconvenience ourselves one for another. Cause us to not assume the worst of our brothers and sisters and cause us Lord to be patient with each other as we talk about and teach and learn about what the Bible says and help us to be united as we approach your word the Bible and love for each other and love for you and humility toward one another realizing perhaps I've gotten it wrong here and I can learn something from my brother over there. But cause us not to toss parts of your Bible into the trash can but to rather be diligent to learn it all that we might be united by it. We pray Jesus in your name. Amen.