Unity,

was the right book that got him. Pastor Wait might have stood in front of the communion table, trading punches with head, deacon, Ray Bryson. All morning long, had not raised fist, caught him on the chin, two minutes and 15 seconds into the fight. Wait went down to the count at the altar where most members of the Emmanuel Church had first declared their commitment to Christ. Pastor Wait's navy blue three-piece suit was almost impossible to wrinkle. But two his front teeth were so loose, he would have trouble with corn on the cob for the next three summers. Ray Bryson's hand was broken in two places. Some of the townspeople dubbed him sugar ray after that Sunday, but never to his face. Nothing in the history of this rather typical New England community on the outskirts of Boston could have prepared them for the Sunday morning Donnie Brook. That's from Charles Colson's book The Body, the first published in 1992. There was an updated version published back in 2003. It's in chapter eight, the chapter is titled, Extending the Right Fist of Fellowship. Describes a scene they have one Sunday morning at a church in Newton, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. It's a real story about real life, real events, real church. It was related to Colson by, man, my name is John DeBrine. John's a wonderful old New England Bible teacher. I've had the privilege of meeting John. He's a, I don't know how old he is now. He's a lifelong confirmed bachelor. He likes to say in his crusty New Englander way, I'm a bachelor, I'd rather want what I don't have than have what I don't want. I don't get it myself, but that's what he says. He is also a German shepherd lover, so you know he's a good man. A fight between a pastor and an officer of the church right there in front of the communion table. Our subject this morning, ladies and gentlemen, is unity. We're studying the gospel of John. We're in the passage in John. The scene is the last supper, the night before. Jesus's betrayal arrests, trial and death by crucifixion. John 17 is called by many of the real Lord's prayer. The one we do from Matthew 6 is a fine prayer. Jesus modeled for us, but some people like to call John 17 his real prayer because this is his prayer to the Father the night before his death, praise for himself. He praise for his church. Contrary to what Shaquille O'Neal thinks, and if you weren't here last week, you have no idea why I said that, this is the real Lord's prayer. And in this prayer, we find several marks of the true church. Several marks of the true church. I want to acknowledge again my indebtedness to Dr. James Montgomery Boyce for first putting me on this track of noticing in this prayer the marks of the true church. Read with me, you've got the whole passage printed in your bullets, and I hope you'll read it from week to week. We're going to be in this passage for several weeks. But I'd like to begin this morning, read verse 11 and read it out to verse 23. Jesus is praying, I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. 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. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so the Scripture would be fulfilled. I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I've given them your word, and the world has hated them for they are not of the world anymore than I am of the world. My prayer is now that you take them out of the world. That's it, you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, they too may be true sanctified. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who believe in me through their message that all of them may be one Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I've given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I am them, and you and me may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. We pray with me. Our Father, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you so much for this record of what was going on in the mind and in the heart and in the prayer of Jesus, this final prayer and these final hours. Lord, let us take this prayer to heart. Let us not mark this off on our checklist of good religious things to do for the week. We went to church, but Lord God, take this word and use it to mold us and to shape us, to break us where we're stiff necked and proud, and to heal us where we've already been broken. But use this word I pray to do in us what only you can do so that when we leave this place we're more like Jesus, the living word, than the word we got here. And I pray in His name, Amen. John 17, there are several characteristics here of the true church, marks of the true church. And this morning we're gonna look at the mark of unity. Jesus prays that one of the things that will distinguish His church is that we be unified. He prays that we may be one, just as He and His Father are one. United we stand, divided we fall. He doesn't pray that we will be uniform or unanimous, but united. We don't have to look alike, we don't have to sound alike, we don't have to worship alike. Of course, in heaven, everybody worshiped just the way we do it here, but between here and there we don't have to look alike or sound alike. But we have to be united at a very fundamental level. Ruth Graham, the late wife of Dr. Billy Graham, used to love to say, if two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary. We don't have to agree on everything, but there needs to be that fundamental underlying unity. Our founding fathers got this, folks. They understood this. As they launched the Revolutionary War, they said, gentlemen, will you hang together or we will hang separately. Folks, we're in a war. Spiritual war. We've got to hang together. We don't have to be uniform or unanimous, but on a very fundamental level, we need to be united. So what's that you need supposed to look like? I'm glad you asked. That unity is supposed to be characterized by the following. We're united by our need. We're united by our need. Our, our street where our family lives is as little unusual, it's unusual, I think, anyway, by Miami standards, in that we literally know everybody on our street by name. With two exceptions, there's a house, two houses over that now rents out to college, U.M. students. We don't know them by name. Occasionally, one of them, but not very often. And then two houses over, we've got brandy neighbors. We haven't met them yet. Otherwise, we know everybody on our street by name. That's good. We drive down the street. We don't just nod and wave. We put the windows down. We talked to one another. We know the kids' names and so forth. Kids are a great unifying factor on a street like ours. Let me tell you how our street went from being neighbors to being friends, to being a community. August 24th, 1992, if you were here, you remember. Hurricane Andrew, Bluetooth, South Florida and changed all of our lives. If you weren't around back then, if you weren't born back then, it's sort of a buzz saw timeline marker for all of us. You came out of your home. Some of you didn't have much homes to come out of. And I know that. We came out of our homes and we assessed. Everybody was still alive, praise God. Nobody has heard badly. Place looked like it had been bombed, but we were all alive. And after that, you know how it was. We were not nearly as well prepared for storms back then. At least we weren't. So somebody would go and find ice and bring it back for everybody. Somebody else would go and get propane. So we'd have grills to cook on. Somebody else would do all drive up to Pompano or West Palm Beach to find a grocery store is over there. And we lived communally for weeks until the power came back on. And that's when our neighborhood became friends. It became a community. We were united by our need. Same thing happens when Katrina hit New Orleans or, you know, I should say this, when a big storm is. I'm not talking about one of those little wimpy ones, you know, the go by name of George or Henri. I mean, what kind of self-respecting storm as a name like that? But the ones that hit hard, like Andrew hit us or Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast or Ike did the Galveston, when those kind of things hit. And then people come out and they pull together to go off and find supplies and mimple out the chainsaws and get the trees off their neighbors' roofs or out of their driveways. That's when we come together because of our need. We don't then pretend everything's okay. Its status quo life goes on. No, we know things are not okay. We know it's not status quo. We are literally out of control and without power. And we know it. So we come together. I remember after Wilma hit us, you know. And I was driving to Coral Gables and somebody had a big four by eight plywood sign out that said, cables out, send FEMA. We're not talking about little nuisance type situate. We're talking about real needs, real needs. We can acknowledge our lack of control that we're literally out of power and we pull together to remedy our situation. Yes, not a bad model for the church, folks. It's not a bad model for the church. We can come together in this place. We clean up okay. We look pretty good. Most of us, some of us. Well, some of you look okay for Sunday morning. We look like we're all together. People think. People think we come into this place to worship on Sunday mornings because we're such good people. That's what they think out there. We come to church to worship because we're such good people. That's just silly. That would be like going over to Baptist Hospital this morning looking around the emergency room and saying, well, this is a healthcare facility. All these people must be here because they're so healthy. It would be like going to an all you can eat buffet. Looking around saying, well, these people here because they're also full. Feel like looking at the line of the women's room outside the bathroom and the marbles. No, that was not gonna work. Okay, that's one analogy too many. We're not here because we're so righteous folks. We're here because we know we're not. We're here united by our need for God's forgiveness. We're not playing games anymore. We take down the front, the facade. We take off the mask and we say, God, I'm not good. I need your mercy. I need your grace. We're united by our need for forgiveness by the saving grace of God made manifest in Jesus Christ. The church we served before we came here downtown, we had an eclectic bunch to say the least. Seven years, we never had a single service where there weren't at least one or sometimes 10 or 15 homeless people. Drunk, strung out, chemically addicted, street walkers. You name it, we had them. They were sitting in the same room with people who had a lot of money. One of the ladies in the church one day told me that she had friends who lived in that area who were looking for a church. I said, well, great, we have one of those. We invite them to come. She said, well, I think they're looking for a church that's a little more socially prominent. And I put on my best, fey and wounded. Look, I said, I'm pastoring in church, it's not socially prominent. What a jolt. And I said, you know, with all due respect, they're not looking for a church. They're looking for a social club to meet some Sunday mornings. When they get past that, when they get more concerned about the condition of their immortal soul than their social stain, we'll be here. We'll be the church. You all know I have a great love and respect for C.S. Lewis. I do not just because he was a great writer, great way of word, I love him because he was a humble man. One of his essays called God in the Doc, he writes this, when I first became a Christian about 14 years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own. By retiring to my rooms and reading theology, I wouldn't go to the churches and the gospel halls. I just liked very much their hymns, which I considered be fifth rate poems, set to sixth rate music. But as I went on, I saw the merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education. And then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns, which really were just sixth rate music, were nevertheless being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic side boots in the opposite pew. And then you realize you're not fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit. There's something very liberating about being able to come to a place like this and just acknowledge my own simpleness. Had a conversation with a younger man's past week, we were talking about relative merit and righteousness in various Christians and pastors. And I just said, listen man, do you think I'm a sinner? You don't know the half of it. I could tell you things about me that would blow your hair off. I know what kind of a sinner I am. I know my sins and I'm not playing any games about it folks. I'm not here because I'm better in you. I'm better, some of you. I'm not here because I'm good. I'm not here because I'm better. I'm here because I'm called period. We're united together by our need for God's forgiveness. I'm simply a sinner's a by grace just like you if you know Christ. You know the A model, the alcoholics anonymous model, you've ever been to one of their meetings. You know somebody stands up to speak, they say, hello I'm Kent and I'm an alcoholic. And they all say hi, Kent. But sometimes they say that wouldn't be a bad thing for church. I just get up here and I say hello I'm Kent. I'm a sinner. You know I say hi, Kent. But if you came up here and took the microphone, you'd have to do the same thing. I said that in the men's Wednesday morning, Bible study morning, I'm mentioning that. Hello, I'm Kent and I'm a sinner and my friend Harper Davidson said you sure are. And I know it, I know it. I'm not playing games about it. And I'm not saying we ought to turn the church in some kind of a 12 step program folks. I don't mean that. It just means we can be honest about our sinfulness. We can be honest about who and what we are and what we're not. Our denomination friends can be so neurotic about this. A lot of things I love and admire about our denomination. We can be so neurotic about this. We in this denomination are five point Calvinists. We believe in the first point is the total depravity of man. We believe that we are radically and pervasively depraved in every aspect of our lives. And then we'll find out that one of us really is a sinner and we're just shocked. We need to get over it folks. No, I'm not going to tell you that I'm not committing in the heinous sins that run through your mind when a guy says like this, I know my mind, I know my heart. It's a lot like yours. We are united by our need for God's forgiveness. The ground is level at the foot of the cross folks. We're united by our need by what we are. We're united by our heritage by who we are. Martha Bowers taft when she was a little girl in elementary school. And Cincinnati, the great granddaughter of President William Howard Taft introduced herself to her class one day like this. She said my name is Martha Bowers taft. My great grandfather was president of the United States. My grandfather was a US senator. My daddy is ambassador to Ireland. And I am a brownie. She is proud of her heritage folks. Thursday, we had grandparents stay for Chemical Prison School. There was marvelous guys. There's so much fun. We had over 200 people here for grandparents stay. It was great. We put a slide show up that I wish I'd had the Kleenex concession for it. We sold those slides of kids with their grandparents and things they'd written. One kid wrote, when my mommy screams at me, my grandma loves me. My grandma were both in the room, you know. There's marvelous. Mrs. Crapcomb, Mrs. Brockesman put a lot of time and effort in there. We sold at EVDs for $10. We could have sold them for $50. Could have made our budget right there. It was great. And I told them, Mrs. Crapcomb gave me the privilege of speaking that morning in chapel. You all have seen me before take out the pipe I have on my grandfather, my mother's father. And I took that pipe out. I told them about my granddad. How this pipe reminds me of him every time I smell it. It's been dead for 22 years now, but every time I smell that pipe reminds me of my grandfather. Kansas Farmer, he didn't leave me a ton of money and a lot of material goods, it would have been all right with me to have. He didn't leave me a lot of material goods, but what he left me, I mean I have two things of his. I have that pipe and I have an old flannel shirt of his used to wear sometimes if I was visiting him and got cold because I don't have a lot of warm clothes. What he left me was a good name, great work ethic, sense of humor even the tough times. And a deep abiding respect for other people, for our country and for God. Yeah, I've been all right with me if he left me a lot of money. A good name, a good name who can afford. I heard it was people of God. Now we just go back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Moses, David and Solomon and Elijah and Isaiah and Daniel and Amos and Nehemiah and in the newer testament we come to John, the Baptist, Peter and James and John and the rest of the 12. It was these 12 disciples that Jesus had in mind, verses 20 and 21. The Garden of God, before he goes out to the Garden, he's praying, my prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message that all of them may be one father. Jesus prayed for those who would believe in him through the message of the disciples. Now immediately that meant the first emanations out from the original 12. It meant Paul and Stephen and the others. And this is the men that turned the world upside down in Acts chapter 17. They turned the world upside down more appropriately, they turned the world upside up through the preaching of the gospel, the simple message that God has come. Hey, all you Jewish brothers and sisters they said that God we've been waiting for the mystery to unfold for only about 2,000 years, it's here, his name is Jesus. He's come to save his people from their sins. Now all you got to do is admit, confess your sinfulness before a holy God. Come to him in repentance, receive the payment that Christ made for you on the cross. Yeah, Jesus of Nazareth is our Messiah and he's come. He's taken upon himself the curse of the covenant. His body was broken, his blood was poured out for your sins and all you got to do, my Jewish brothers and sisters, is come to the cross and receive the payment that the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world is made for you. Well that was a message that most of the Jews in that first century setting around Palestine, they weren't ready to hear it, they rejected it. There was a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to them as it is today to many people. That's the gospel message, all the stone has just changed the world. All the stone has just changed the course of Western civilization and the rest of the world growing into the biggest faith planet Earth has ever seen still growing rapidly all around the world. Over 2 billion people name the name of Christ, profess to be Christians. I don't know if they all are or not, God knows, but over 2 billion people around this planet today name the name of Christ, why? Because those 12 minus Judas, adding in Paul, those 12 took the gospel enterprise and God gave it to them and set afoot the establishment of the kingdom of heaven and his one methodology was you go preach, there was no plan B, there was no safety net if they had failed and Jesus praised for them and for those who will believe through their message, that's us and that's you who are united by our heritage. Then after the 12 and the original disciples put the whole gospel enterprise afoot then came the people we call the church fathers, Irenaeus and Polycarp, Catellan origin and the rest and then their legacy extends to Augustine and then down to the Titans of the faith, you don't hear a lot about Wickliffe and Tyndale, then someone you do know, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox and then in this country, Jonathan Edwards, down to DL Moody and Billy Graham and Francis shape these are our heritage, these are our forebears, these are the giants on whose shoulders we stand. The heritage of our faith that Peter says is of greater, worth than gold which perishes even though we're fine by fire, it's our faith that unites us so much that Paul would say as a Jew, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee of Pharisees, but he would say to Jews and Gentiles alike and Ephesians chapter 4 verses 4 through 6, there is one body and one spirit just as you were called to, one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who was overall and through all and in all, did you count all the ones? I think they're seven, do you think, God's trying to tell us something, were united, were united by our need, by what we are, united by our heritage, by who we are, we are united by our name, we are united by who's we are, verse 11 again, I will remain in the world no longer but they are still in the world and I am coming to you, 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, we've talked about this in here before, how when the Bible uses the expression by the power of your name or in your name, what it's talking about, it's not just a magical incantation or words you mumbling into a prayer, but now the Bible is talking about to invoke someone's name, it's to invoke their power, their very character, their very nature, it's to invoke the very essence of who and what that person is, to do or ask something in God's name is to do something consistent with their very nature and very character of God, it can also mean to call on someone's power, when our oldest daughter Christi was very little, she was about four and this is back in health your days when daddy could do everything, she came to you one day and asked me to reach something down off of a high shelf, I don't remember what it was, I looked at her and I said, why would I do that, great dad, why would I do that, I was expecting some sort of fanciful explanations to why I ordered her to put her hands on her hips, I'm not going to make gender comments about the hands on the hips and the pointing finger, I don't know, but seem to come very naturally to her, hands on her hip pointing finger, I said, why would I do that, she said, because you are my daddy and I am your little daughter, all right then, well played, I had no answer, I wouldn't do whatever it was, she wanted to get down off that shelf, if you know Christ is Lord, you and our brothers, you are my sister, we call in the name of our father, he is our father and we are his little children and we are brothers and sisters in Christ, we are united by our name, we are united, we need to stand together wherever we can, our session, we acknowledge that of gratitude to Bob was asked on Sunday, Bob is draft a resolution, our session is working on, we are smithing a bit, to call for our whole denomination to stand, we have a stance, we stand for the sanctity of human life, this is a resolution calling for us to stand with all Christians of all faiths and of all denominations across Christendom who also believe in the sanctity of human life to stand together, we are looking to stand with our brothers and sisters, where we can, we can't stand with them on everything, where we can, we will hang together, we will hang separately, we are looking for a place where we can agree with other Christians and other churches, instead of just looking at those things that divide us, those things are there, they are real, you can't gloss them over, we are as a reformed church, we are characterized by our distinctives as a reformed faith, we are God-centered church, God-centered faith, we are God-centered Christ-centered worship, we stand on the Bible as God's word, His word holy and inherent and infallible inspire really, we don't wink at it and do whatever we want, this is God's word, I agree with it or disagree with it but don't pretend it's something else, believe in the salvation by the grace of God through faith in Christ alone, our works add precisely nothing to salvation, we do good works as a response to God's saving, working us not as a cause of it, those things make us rather distinctive and that makes us a distinct minority unfortunately, you can't gloss those things over, pretend they don't exist but we're looking for places, we can agree with other churches, even if they're not as doctrinally pure as we are, we're looking for places where we can stand together and say that's kind of a dangerous thing to do, you open that door, you don't know what's going to come in, yeah you're right, it's dangerous, so might tell you church was safe, so might tell you this is a safe thing to do, you open the door, you don't know what's going to come in, what do you think God did, he opened the door and looked what came in, I got a pretty good precedent for that, filled by the name of John Calvin, so John Calvin says you know it's right, filled by the name of John Calvin, preached that they should be friendly fellowship for all ministers of Christ, he wrote in a letter to a friend and a mentor of his William Farrell, he wrote his words as follows, among Christians there ought to be so great a dislike of schism as that they may always avoid it so far as lies in their power, that they're ought to prevail among them such a reverence for the ministry of the word and the sacraments, that wherever they perceive these things to be, there they must consider the church to exist, nor need it be of any hindrance, the some points of doctrine are not quite so pure, see that there is scarcely any church which does not retain some remnants of former ignorance, if John Calvin the greatest theologian since Augusta himself could tell us to come together with the word and the sacraments, consider that was where the church was, I think we can do the same, I believe we can do the same, before we do, listen to me, before we do or say anything that works against the unity of the church, before we do or say anything that works against the unity of the church, and this church or any other gospel based church, you remember this in so doing, we are actively, willfully and knowingly seeking to undermine or repudiate something Jesus prayed for the night that he was led off to die, his dying prayer was that we be unified, before we do anything that works against that unity, we need to remember, we are working against the very thing that Jesus prayed for us, it's one of the marks of the true church, that Jesus prayed for that night that we would be one even as he and his father were one, it's what makes things like what happened to that church in Newton, Massachusetts, so it makes them so tragic, let me read to the rest of the story,

when Ray Bryson's right hook finally took the pastor down, someone grabbed the spring flower arrangement from the altar and threw it high in the air and raised direction, water sprinkled everyone the first two rows on the right side and a visiting Presbyterian experienced complete immersion when the base shattered against the wall next to the seat, the fight ended when the police arrived on the scene, they restored order, took down names for the report they would file, and recommended that some of the men seek medical attention, Ray Bryson's hand was broken and Mary doll's knitting needles were confiscated, the following wins they each of the deacons received a notice to appear at the Newton courthouse for a hearing, pastor Donald Wait had also been summoned on the day of the hearing, both he and Flora his wife appeared at the courthouse, they sat on one side of the aisle in the hearing room and the deacons drifted toward the other, when the court officer entered, breaking the uncomfortable silence, Deacon Brian McGuire recognized him immediately as David Goldstein, one of the stars on Temple Best Shalom softball team, for several minutes Goldstein poured over the police description in front of him, the one time he looked up he seemed to focus on the tape on pastor Wait's nose and the cast on Ray Bryson's hand, I know some of you from the softball league he finally said, removing his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose, we may have had our differences on the ball diamond, but the cause of religion in our city is at stake here, there must be some way you can settle your dispute among yourselves, no one could look at him, Goldstein continued, no charges will be pressed at this point, but I would urge you to work this out within your own church, your Jesus Christ may allow this sort of thing in his followers, but the common wealth of Massachusetts will not permit fist fights as a regular order of church service. The leadership of the manual church filed quietly out to their cars and drove off in different directions, on the back of each car was a bumper sticker declaring, God is with us at Emmanuel Church, what a black eye on the bride of Christ, my brothers and sisters, all the earnestness I possess I tell you truly, that's what amen means, let's make sure that whatever we do or say or don't do or say doesn't give a black eye to the bride of Christ, it works for the honor and the glory of God, for the building up of the body of Christ, for the advance of God's kingdom in the kingdoms of this world, listen, you want people to believe that God is with us in bumper stickers, you want people to believe God is with us and act in solidarity with your fellow Christians whenever and wherever you can, we don't have the luxury of fighting with it one another folks, not if we're serious about advancing the enterprise of the kingdom of heaven amongst the kingdoms of this world, we're united by our need by what we are, we're united by our heritage by who we are, we're united by our name as Christians and by whose we are, united we stand divided, we don't even deserve to be called the church, let's pray together.

My father, as I conclude my portion of this service of the preaching of the word, and I talk about unity in the body of Christ, I acknowledge before you all those times and all those places, all those ways that I haven't been anything but an agent of unity, and Lord I confess that before you and before my brothers and sisters, trust in your forgiveness, and I pray for each and every person in this place who knows Jesus is Lord, who names the name of Christ, that you call us this day to act according to our high calling as those who are adopted sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, and that we will work together, that we will be unified as the body of Christ, gather here at Kendall Presbyterian Church, and I pray it in Jesus name, the head of the church.