Men, the title of my sermon this morning is, Unity Through Sound Doctrine.
Unity through sound doctrine.
This chapter talks about unity, obviously as Christians we want to have unity, meaning
that in our church we don't want it to be filled with strife and bickering and fighting
and we don't want to be fighting against each other, we want to be fighting the Lord's battles,
fighting the good fight and so in our church we want to have unity.
Well how do we achieve unity today?
There are a lot of wrong ideas about how to have unity but I'm here to tell you from the
word of God this morning that unity is best achieved by having sound doctrine.
And let's see what the Bible says, look down at your Bible there in verse number one of
chapter four it says, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you that you walk worthy
of the vocation wherewith you're called with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering
forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond
of peace.
So right away in this chapter he talks about this goal of having unity and one of the things
that obviously we're going to need in order to have unity is humility, right?
Because the Bible says only by pride cometh contention.
When people have big egos and pride takes over they want to always be right and argue
and show everybody how much better they are than someone else and this could lead to a
lot of fighting and strife.
So he's saying look you've got to have lowliness, verse two, meekness, long suffering.
In order to have unity you have to forbear one another in love meaning putting up with
people not just fighting every battle but somebody does something that you don't like
you just let it go, you just move on, forbear it, get over it.
And then in verse three he says endeavoring to keep the unity and that use of the word
endeavoring shows us that unity is not going to be easy, it's not going to be automatic,
it's going to take effort, it's going to take work.
We have to endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
When we get to verse four we start to see the source of the right kind of Christian
unity in a church.
Look at verse number four, it says there is one body and one spirit even as ye are called
and one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of
all who is above all and through all and in you all.
Now according to these verses the source of our unity, the things that unify us are
the fact that there's one body, one spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism.
These are the things that unify.
See the first couple letters of unify are uno because of the fact that being unified
means that we are all as one, we're in agreement.
How can we be as one?
How can we work together as an effective team, as a unit?
It's through having one Lord, one faith, one baptism.
So unity comes from believing the same things.
Now here's the thing, the Bible says one baptism.
What does that mean?
I mean if we've been baptized, the vast majority of people in this room have been baptized
I'm sure.
How many baptisms is that?
You could say well I was baptized, you're baptized, three, four, five.
One baptism is referring to one kind of baptism.
The same baptism that I had is the same baptism that you had, okay?
Now there are other baptisms out there.
If we were to go outside of our church and go to other churches, there are other bogus
baptisms out there and if we just had a church where all kinds of baptisms were happening
then that would not lead to unity in our church, would it?
Now we could unify around something else.
We could unify and say hey we're all Chinese, it's a Chinese church and we don't care what
you believe but as long as you're Chinese you're welcome.
And we could all be unified around being Chinese.
Now we couldn't because we're not Chinese but I'm saying theoretically a church could
be unified and say hey we all love heavy metal music.
And that's what unifies us, right?
Or we all love Chinese food.
We're not Chinese but we kind of wish we were because we love Chinese food.
We could unify around all different manner of things.
We could all have some political view and say hey we're all Fox News Republicans here.
Hey we all love CNN and we all love President Joe Biden or something.
We could all rally around all these different things but look the kind of unity that God
is looking for, the kind of unity that the Bible is preaching is unity around the right
doctrine, about the right faith, right?
So we're going to have one body, one spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith,
one baptism.
Let's just start with one baptism because it's so simple, it's so easy to think about.
We believe that baptism is by immersion.
If you read the Bible when people are baptized they go underwater and they come up out of
the water.
And the Bible says we're buried with him by baptism into his death that like as Christ
was raised up from the dead even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Jesus when he was baptized you know it talks about how he came up straight way out of the
water.
When the Ethiopian eunuch was baptized they went down both of them down into the water
and he baptized him, right?
So being baptized is being dunked underwater.
Also it happens after you're saved because the Ethiopian eunuch asked the question, what
does hinder me to be baptized?
And Philip said in him, if thou believest with all thine heart thou mayest.
And he said I believe that Jesus Christ the son of God and of course they went down both
of them into the water and he baptized him.
So here's the thing about baptism, there's only one right baptism and that's after you
get saved getting dunked underwater in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost
because Jesus Christ commanded us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every
creature.
He said teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and
the Holy Ghost.
So a right baptism is getting dunked underwater after you're saved, after you've believed
that is, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
But what do we have out there in this world?
A counterfeit baptism that's a baptism by sprinkling, that's kind of like that kind
of baptism, just a little trickle or a little sprinkle.
How is that being buried with him by baptism into his death?
How is that going both down into the water if it's just this little kind of, you know,
sprinkle thing, you know, here I'm going to perform some baptisms right now, all right?
So get you guys all, you're in the splash zone, you're all getting baptized.
But the point is, you know, that's not a biblical baptism.
It's not a baptism at all.
It's a fraud, it's a counterfeit.
Now if half our church is into sprinkling and half our church is into being baptized
by immersion, we're not going to have unity, are we?
Because we don't have one Lord, one faith, we have two baptisms, three baptisms.
All these different, because not only is there the sprinkling baptism, there's the pouring
baptism where they, you know, let me demonstrate now, where they basically just pour water
on somebody's head.
But here's what's so dumb about that too is that the Bible says of John the Baptist
that he was baptizing an anon near to Salem because there was much water there.
How much water do you really need for these sprinkling and pouring type baptisms?
You don't need much.
Now here's the thing about the Jordan River is that the Jordan River is not exactly the
Amazon.
It's not exactly the Mississippi.
It's not exactly the Nile River, okay?
It's a small river.
Now there are different times of year where it overflows all its banks and different things
and so it's kind of a seasonal thing, but it's not a monstrous river.
And so apparently John the Baptist had to go to a certain part of the Jordan River for
it to even be deep enough for him to effectively dunk people.
Because think about it, you go out hiking and you'll cross rivers and they're just kind
of shallow.
And it's not really effective to baptize someone in one foot of water or two feet of water.
The more water you have, the easier it's going to be.
So especially if John the Baptist is baptizing a lot of people, he doesn't want it to be
like a deadlifting workout every time he baptizes somebody because look, I've baptized somebody
in like a foot of water before and this person was huge and it was like all of my might just
like trying, it's like raised to the lightness of his right, you know, you're trying to like
lift some huge person because the water makes it easier to lift the person up because they're
kind of somewhat buoyant being in the water as opposed to just, if there was no water
and I just, you know, I'm trying to just lift someone off the ground, that's pretty hard.
Especially when they weigh like 250 pounds or 300 pounds and you're just trying to just
deadlift them.
John the Baptist is baptizing thousands of people and so he wants there to be much water
there so that it can just be a quick little thing.
You know, it's not like he's just running out of sprinkling.
That wouldn't even make sense.
You're never going to run out if you're just sprinkling and pouring.
You know, it's that he needed it to be deep enough.
That's why he had to go to a certain part of the Jordan River where the river was deep
enough at that time of year so that he could actually dunk someone.
And again, there's a whole mountain of evidence.
We could go through all the different things about them going down into the water, buried
with them in baptism.
He baptized because there was much water there.
That's what the Bible says.
That's what the Bible teaches, okay?
This idea of sprinkling and pouring, it's a false doctrine that comes from the Roman
Catholic Church and a lot of the Protestants have just continued on with that and picked
up on that.
But not only that, we practice believers baptism, meaning that we baptize people after they
have believed on Jesus.
We don't baptize babies.
And here's the thing about that.
There's not a single baby in the Bible who ever gets baptized.
There's no instance in the Bible of a baby ever being baptized.
And we do have a verse that says, if thou believeth with all thine heart thou mayest.
And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God.
You know, that's a prerequisite for baptism.
So we don't sprinkle babies, we don't pour on babies, we don't dunk babies.
We don't baptize babies.
We baptize people who are old enough to understand and make that decision for themselves and
believe on Jesus and follow him in believers baptism.
You know, we also believe that baptism has nothing to do with your salvation.
Whether you get baptized or don't get baptized is not what determines whether you go to heaven.
It's whether you believe on Jesus that determines whether you go to heaven.
And so it's not for salvation.
And then we could talk about the fact that it's in the name of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost.
Because there's a false doctrine out there that denies the Trinity and teaches a Jesus
only baptism.
It's called oneness Pentecostalism.
And so that's another false doctrine.
So even just on this one point, you know, he gives this list.
One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.
Even if we just grab one of these points, just baptism, you can see how not everybody
in the world has one baptism, do they?
Because you got the East Orthodox Church dunking babies, even giving them a triple dunk where,
you know, you've got pouring, you've got sprinkling, you've got infant baptism, you've got believers
baptism, you got Jesus only baptism, you got Father, Son, Holy Ghost baptism, you got
baptism that people believe is part of salvation.
And then you got the truth that it's not part of salvation.
It's just symbolic.
And so when the Bible says one baptism, he's saying, look, yeah, of course, there are a
bunch of other baptisms out there.
But in order for you to have unity and your local church, these are the things that you
need to rally around one Lord, one faith, one baptism.
We've got to have the same Lord, same God, same faith, same baptism, otherwise we can't
have unity, right?
You say, well, I'm into sprinkling, then the Presbyterian Church is down the street, okay?
But here, this is a Baptist church and so we have one baptism that allows us to have
unity in the local church.
And that's just one example.
Like I said, we could grab any of these other points and we could go off on the same tangent
and talk about that.
Let's keep going through the chapter though as we move forward here.
It says in verse number, let's jump down to verse number 11.
It says, and he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors
and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying
of the body of Christ till we all come in the unity, notice that word, of the faith
and of the knowledge of the son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature
of the fullness of Christ.
So the Bible says that part of the reason why we have teachers, prophets, apostles,
evangelists, why do we have pastors and teachers?
To edify the body of Christ, to perfect the saints till we all come in the unity of the
faith.
Okay.
So we just talked about what the unity of the faith means, right?
It means that we have one Lord, one faith, one baptism on the big things, the main doctrines,
the essential things.
We believe the same thing.
Okay.
Well, how do we get there?
How do we get to where we all understand what a right baptism is?
How do we get to the point where we understand what the right faith is?
Well, pastors and teachers expound the word of God to us and they get us to that point
by, by looking at the scripture with us and showing us verses that we've maybe never seen
or thought about.
Hey, look, he's baptizing an anon near to Salem cause there's much water there.
And then a little light bulb goes on your, Oh, okay.
That doesn't really make sense for the Presbyterians, does it?
You know?
And as you're going through these things in the word of God as a teacher or a pastor,
you're helping get everybody on the same page, right?
People out there that think that salvation is by works or something.
And then the pastor gets up and he's showing them all the scriptures about how it's by
faith and it's not by works and, and he goes through and teaches them these things.
And the end game, the goal is getting them to unity, getting us on the same page, getting
us to unity.
You see, if I just got up every week and preached a really motivating sermon or a really encouraging
sermon or just a really a practical sermon about your life every week, and I never got
into doctrine, I never talked about baptism, I never talked about salvation, I never talked
about the deity of Christ or the Trinity or any of these things, then what would happen
is people would have all different beliefs because people would come in here from all
different backgrounds and have all different opinions and ideas and they don't necessarily
know what the Bible says about things.
And so, you know, maybe they'd get helpful teaching about how to live their life or encouragement
or motivation or things like that, and we do need those things, but if there's no doctrinal
preaching being taught, there's not going to be unity because we need pastors and teachers
to teach the word of God clearly so that we can get unified around some sound doctrine,
right doctrine, what the Bible actually says, right?
You're out reading the Bible on your own and then the pastor's preaching to you and so
you're learning and getting more and more knowledge and tightening up your doctrine
and as we all get right doctrine, we have something in common now, don't we?
We have unity.
Now here's the thing, if we all have the same Bible and we all have the same Holy Spirit
and if we all are sincerely wanting to know the truth and God says that if we ask for
wisdom, he'll give it to all men liberally and it braid not.
If God promises to give wisdom, if the Holy Spirit's ministry is to guide us into all
truth, if we're all indwelled by the same Holy Spirit and we're all reading the same
Bible, then in general we should reach the same conclusions.
If I am 100% sincere, 100% open to the truth and I've got a King James Bible in my hand
and the Holy Spirit inside me and so do you, one of us isn't going to come to believers
baptism by immersion and then the other one's going to come to sprinkling a baby.
It's not going to happen.
People that are sprinkling babies have another reason why they're doing that.
It's not because the Holy Spirit revealed that to them through reading the Bible.
No it's because of the fact that they are maybe idolatrous of some ancient theologian.
They have some ancient Protestant heroes or ancient church father that they've kind
of made an idol out of and they've set that man and his teachings over what the Bible
says or maybe they're just somehow wanting to fit in with their denomination or whatever
cultural things that have drawn them to that Protestant church or whatever.
But look, at the end of the day, if we actually care what the Bible says and we're just looking
for the truth, we're not going to be a baby sprinkler.
It's just not going to happen.
Why?
Because the Holy Spirit's not going to lead you into that and the Bible doesn't teach
that.
So the idea is the more I read the Bible and the more you read the Bible as sincere spirit
filled Christians, the more we're ultimately going to agree on.
Now here's the thing, you know, I could pick someone in this room that I agree with on
a lot of things.
You know, maybe somebody who's been in the church for a really long time and so we've
known each other for a long time and we agree on a lot of stuff, okay?
And you know, I hesitate to just pick someone, but you know, I could just pick somebody and
just say, hey, you know, we agree on a ton of stuff, right?
And here's the thing about that.
Let's say brother Madison, you know, hey, me and brother Matt, you know, he's been here
for years.
We agree on tons of stuff, okay?
What if brother Madison and I would have met up 25 years ago, okay?
So think about where, where you were 25 years ago and your beliefs, your doctrine, your
ideas, and I'm thinking about where I'm at 25 years ago.
I think we would have agreed on a lot less 25 years ago.
You know, if you would have talked to me 25 years ago, you know, my beliefs would have
been quite a bit different.
I was 25 years ago, I was 16 years old and I was going to an NIV preaching church and
I was just kind of a teenager who hadn't read the Bible yet, even one time cover to cover.
Now here's the thing, I've learned a lot in the last 25 years.
You've learned a lot in the last 25 years and I guarantee you that we agree on more
now because we've both been reading our Bibles, studying doctrine, learning, and now we can
agree on more stuff.
We'd have more unity.
If I would have talked to him as a teenager, you know, we probably would have had a lot
less doctrinally in common, okay?
You know, if I talked to myself from 25 years ago, I would have slapped him around a little,
you know, and disagreed with stuff.
The point is that the more we learn the Bible, the more we study, the more we grow in grace
and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the more we're going to be brought
together in unity, okay?
So sound doctrine is the right path to unity, okay?
So the Bible says that pastors and teachers need to teach us the Bible so that we can
come to that unity, so we can arrive at that destination of unity.
It says in verse 13, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge.
Now notice how unity and knowledge go hand in hand.
Here's what I'm saying.
The right path to unity is to learn more.
If I learn the Bible and you learn the Bible and we both know more Bible, we're going to
be wrong about less things, meaning that we're going to agree with each other on more things
because we're both getting more right in our beliefs and doctrine.
So we come to the unity, we come to the knowledge under the measure of the statue of the fullness
of Christ.
Now, this may seem like a really basic truth that I'm giving you, but in reality, this
is the opposite of what most of Christianity teaches today.
They say that in order to have unity, we must put aside doctrine.
According to them, the right way to have unity is to just not talk about doctrine.
Like here's how we can have unity.
Let's just not bring up baptism.
Let's just not even bring it up.
Let's just pretend that we all agree on stuff and don't be that guy who brings up baptism
around a Presbyterian or something.
You know what I mean?
We just put all that aside and just forget about all that for the sake of unity.
So what you'll have today is you'll have these big liberal mega churches that do just preach
encouragement, motivation, nuts and bolts of how to live your life.
And I'm sure they're teaching a lot of true things.
I'm sure they're teaching a lot of right things and giving people good advice and people who
go there, you know, they're probably implementing biblical things that they learn at that church
that make their life a little better in the now.
But guess what?
At the end of the day, though, it's the spiritual things that matter most.
And it's the job of the church to actually teach doctrine.
That's the right kind of unity.
This kind of unity that says, well, we just won't talk about anything.
That's a fake unity.
It's not real unity.
It's just a nothing burger of a unity that's just based on something shallow, like, hey,
we all go here because it's all by our it's by our house.
That's why a lot of people choose the church.
It's by my house.
And I like the music unity.
We have unity.
We all live in this neighborhood and we all love the music.
Okay.
But is that really what the church is supposed to be?
Is that really the kind of unity that God's prescribing?
Okay.
And look, when you go out knocking doors, so when you learn a lot about the way the
world works, you learn a lot about churches, you learn a lot about different denominations
and you'll get in a certain neighborhood where everybody goes to that big church on the corner,
the big giant fun center church, and everybody in the neighborhood kind of goes there and
you'll talk to people and sometimes you'll talk to 50 people from the same church.
You know, you keep going to that same neighborhood week after week.
You talk to 50 people who go to that church and they believe like 20 different things.
Some of them are saved.
Some of them aren't even close to being saved.
If somebody walked around our church and asked everybody what it takes to get to heaven,
you know, 90 some percent of the people are going to give an answer that's right on.
Whereas you go to these big liberal funds, there's, they're not all even giving a consistent
wrong answer.
There's like a bunch of different wrong answers and some right answers.
And you're, you're thinking to yourself, well man, like this person's not saved from this
church.
This person's not saved.
Do you know for sure if you die today, you go to heaven?
Oh, I hope so.
I'm a good person.
That's not the gospel.
It's not salvation.
And you know, you'll talk to people.
It's just not saved, not saved, not saved.
Then you run into somebody that is saved and just gives you a rock solid testimony of salvation
that goes to that same church.
And you're asking yourself like, how can this person go to this church where like nobody
else on their street has been saved when they're so rock solid on the gospel and here's how
they can do it.
It's because when they go to that church, they're never hearing anything wrong about
the gospel because they're just not hearing anything.
You know, I remember when I was first married, you know, my wife, she'd heard all this preaching
against the liberal churches and stuff.
And she said to me one time, she said, man, I almost want to just go to one of these liberal
churches one time just to like, just kind of see what it's like and just kind of, kind
of laugh at it or just kind of like, I don't know, you know, just out of curiosity.
And I told her, I said, you would be so disappointed because if you go there, it's not even, you
wouldn't even have the fun of like hearing some wild wrong doctrine because chances are
you're just going to show up and just hear nothing.
It's like, be good, love God, don't sin, keep God number one.
I mean, I can't count how many sermons I heard in liberal churches are just like, put God
number one, keep God first.
And you're just like, okay, like what?
I don't know what that means, but okay.
There's never anything specific.
Like how can anyone argue with that?
God's number one, amen.
Who's going to argue that?
Well, actually, it's like, well, obviously God's number one, you know, it reminds me
of this bumper sticker that was on my aunt's car when I was a kid.
It just said, protect freedom.
And we were always trying to figure out like, what does that like, what is this a right
wing bumper sticker?
Is this a left wing bumper sticker?
Is this, you know, is it, what is, is this conservative?
Is it liberal?
Is it, what do they want?
What are they saying?
Like, but it's kind of just a bumper sticker that everybody can kind of get behind.
Nobody's just like, end freedom in the US.
But that's how a lot of these churches are.
It's just our God's an awesome God.
Amen.
You know, it's like, how do you argue with that?
You don't.
So then it's great because we can have unity.
Except what is unity worth if there's nothing there?
If there's no commonality of doctrine, there's, you know, that's not the Bible's kind of unity.
But the liberal churches today, that's their way to get a big crowd is just by not talking
about doctrine, keeping the message as vague as they possibly can to just kind of bring
everybody in, keep everybody happy.
Nobody really knows what the church believes.
But what's the fruit of that?
The fruit of that is that half the people aren't even saved or even worse.
And we go around and talk to them and nobody knows what the church believes.
Nobody cares what the church believes.
You know, they just, everybody just assumes that it believes what they believe.
The saved guy just assumes that the church is teaching salvation by faith.
The unsaved guy just assumes that it's what he believes.
And everybody's happy.
But that's not a biblical right unity.
We need to have the unity of the faith, the Bible says, okay?
That's what unity is based on, the faith.
Now jump down if you would to verse 14.
Why is it important that we have this right unity that's based on sound doctrine?
It says that we henceforth, henceforth means from here on out, that henceforth we be no
more children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight
of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive.
You know, the Bible tells us there are all kinds of deceivers out there and false teachers
and that if we don't get educated in the faith, if we don't go to church and learn sound doctrine
and study our Bibles, study them on our own, listen to the teaching and preaching of the
church, you know what, then we're going to be just tossed to and fro with every wind
of doctrine.
All these deceivers and charlatans and phonies are going to come along teaching some wild
new crazy doctrine and we will just fall for it because we don't know any better and that's
what God doesn't want to happen.
But rather instead of being tossed to and fro with every wind of new doctrine, the Bible
says in verse 15, but speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, which
is the head, even Christ.
So we've got to be educated so that we don't fall for these things and it's my job as a
pastor to educate you about the Bible and to encourage you to read the Bible on your
own so that you don't fall prey to the deceivers.
Now keep your finger here in Ephesians 4, let's go to Romans 16.
Romans 16, there's a verse in here that's often quoted, but I want to point out something
about it that you may not have thought about.
Romans chapter 16, Romans chapter number 16, and let's back up to verse 16.
It says, salute one another with a holy kiss, the churches of Christ salute you.
Now obviously in our culture we don't greet people with kisses, but in a lot of places
like in Europe and in the Middle East and you know, they do this.
But here's the thing about greeting one another with a holy kiss is that you have to physically
be there to do it.
You can't write a letter or make a phone call or do it online in a chat room, right?
So you know, the Bible teaches that we are to be assembled together, that we are to physically
assemble together and it says, now I beseech you brother in verse 17, mark them which cause
divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you've learned and avoid them.
Now what's the opposite of unity?
Division right?
Division is literally the opposite of unity.
And the Bible says, mark them which cause divisions.
So these people are breaking up the unity, but how are they causing division?
They're causing divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you have learned.
Contrary to the doctrine which you have learned.
Now how, here's what I want to point out about the verse.
How can you mark them and avoid them that have deviated doctrinally, contrary to the
doctrine that you've learned, the right doctrine that you've learned from the Bible?
If you didn't learn the doctrine from the Bible, if you didn't learn doctrine from the
Bible, then how can you mark and avoid those who are teaching something contrary to what
you've learned?
How can someone teach me something contrary to what I've learned when I didn't learn anything?
So the person who hasn't been taught doctrine, they don't know who to mark.
They don't know who to avoid and therefore they end up just falling prey to the charlatans
and being tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine.
And you'll see people like this that just get tossed to and fro.
One week they believe something and then a month later they believe something totally
different.
And then they join this group and they join that church.
They're just all over the place because they haven't been rooted in sound biblical doctrine.
They fall prey to whatever the trendy teacher is that comes along and teaches some wild
new doctrine.
It says, for they that are such, that means people that cause division contrary to the
doctrine that you've learned from the Bible.
For they that are such serve not, we're in verse 18, our Lord Jesus Christ, but their
own belly and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of whom?
Who gets tricked?
The simple people who've learned the Bible don't fall for it, but the simple, they can
fall for it.
And that's who gets to see because they use fair speeches and good words.
So they make it all sound really good so that if you didn't know better, you'd fall for
it.
But guess what?
You do know better.
That's why you're not going to fall for it.
That's why I'm not going to fall for it.
That's what God wants.
He wants us to know the Bible so that we don't get sucked in to these divisive false teachings.
Now go back if you would to Ephesians chapter four with that in mind, while you're turning
to Ephesians four, I'm going to just read for you something from Hebrews along the same
lines.
This is from Hebrews chapter 13.
You don't have to turn there, but in Hebrews 13, it says in verse eight, Jesus Christ,
the same yesterday and today and forever.
Jesus Christ never changes.
As a consequence, the Bible says in verse nine, be not carried about with divers and
strange doctrines.
Now in Ephesians, Paul talked about being tossed to and fro, and here we're talking
about being carried about kind of the same idea, isn't it?
It's almost like Paul wrote Hebrews.
Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines, for it is a good thing that the
heart be established by grace, not with meats that have not profited them that have been
occupied therein.
We have an altar where they have no right to eat, which serve the tabernacle.
So he says, don't be tossed to and fro.
Don't be carried about with divers and strange doctrines.
Be established in grace, not in meats, which have not...
Now what does he mean not in meats?
What does that mean not in meats?
Well, the next breath he says, we have an altar where they have no right to eat, which
serve the tabernacle.
So when he talks about meats, he's talking about being sucked in to a Judaizing doctrine
that says that the New Testament Christian needs to participate in the meats, drinks,
divers, washings, and carnal ordinances of the old covenant.
Because remember the whole book of Hebrews is being written to whom?
The Hebrews.
And he's explaining to them how Christ has fulfilled the law and how we're no longer
under the meats, drinks, divers, washings, carnal ordinances.
Those things were only imposed on them until the time of reformation in Hebrews 9.
I'm not going to spend the whole sermon on that, but the idea is that the tabernacle
or, and obviously, you know, the temple is a continuation of the tabernacle.
The whole system of meats and drinks of the old covenant are done away in Christ.
The ceremonial law is done away in Christ.
And so he's saying, don't get sucked into a Judaizing doctrine.
That's the literal point that he's making in Hebrews 13.
It makes sense that he would say that to the Hebrews because they're going to be the ones
that are the most susceptible to backsliding into that or falling back into those patterns
and into those things that are not part of the new covenant.
And let me tell you something, there's a hardcore Judaizing doctrine.
It seems like always in every generation trying to pull Christians into the same trap.
This is always a thing.
It's always something that pops up and we don't want to get sucked in by it.
We don't want to get pulled in.
And you know, here's an example of a divers and strange doctrine that could suck in those
that are simple, those who haven't studied or those who haven't learned.
And this goes to show you just how if you are uneducated in the Word of God, if you're
not studying your Bible, if you're not going to a church that actually teaches doctrine
and actually studies the Bible with you, you're going to fall prey to even radical, radical
changes in the faith.
And you'll just be like, oh, okay, just kind of go along with, you know, things that you'd
say no, nobody's going to fall for that.
How about this?
How about just changing the name of God for the 21st century?
I mean, that's a pretty wild change.
That's pretty radical.
I mean, here we are in America and we've been worshipping God in America for hundreds and
hundreds of years.
You know, we've sent missionaries all over the world preaching the Word of God.
We've had churches and pastors and Christians.
I mean, folks in America, how many millions and millions and millions of saved Christians
have been reading the Bible and evangelizing and doing missions and preaching and praying
and talking to God in prayer and God's talking to them through the Word, you know, and then
all of a sudden somebody just comes along in the 21st century and just says, oh, by
the way, God's name isn't what you think it is.
It's actually a totally different name that you've never heard of.
Nobody's going to fall for that.
Really?
Because guess what?
Millions of people are falling for it right now.
And now all of a sudden we have this strange new word that nobody has ever heard of in
the English language until now.
All of a sudden it's all about Yahweh.
Who has never heard the word Yahweh before right now?
Put up your hand if you're just hearing it for, yeah, a few people.
It's brand new to you.
Well, guess what?
When I was a teenager, I had also never heard the word Yahweh in my life, which is interesting
because I grew up in a Baptist church.
I went to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.
My grandparents were saved Christians on one side.
On the other side, my grandmother was saved and read the Bible every single morning.
And you know, we talked about doctrine.
We talked about the Bible.
We talked about the things of God.
We went to churches that preached about, they preached for the right things.
They preached against the wrong things.
I mean, look, we grew up around religion, grew up around Christianity.
We grew up around these things.
And I remember sitting as a teenager in my living room, flipping channels on the TV.
You remember cable access television?
Who knows who, who grew up and you watch sometimes cable access TV, cable access TV is where
just like that was really low number of people that put up their hand.
Cable access TV is this way for like anybody to get on TV.
It's like you want to be on TV, anybody can be on TV.
You just, you go down and so there's weird stuff on cable access, really amateur stuff,
weird stuff.
I don't know if you paid a little bit of money to be on there or I think sometimes you had
to pay a little money or maybe you just got like approved, but it seems like pretty much
anybody can get on there.
So there'd be a lot of wild things on there.
So one day I'm flipping channels on the TV and all of a sudden I land on cable access
TV and there's a black preacher on there and these are the first words I heard him say,
Jerusalem belongs to the blacks.
I was like, what, what is this guy talking about?
You know, it was just like, I never, I didn't understand what, what, excuse me?
So you know, I was just, so then I was kind of like listening to the guy for a few minutes
because I'm like, we were just kind of laughing like this is crazy stuff.
And he was like, he was basically one of these black Hebrew Israelites.
So he's basically teaching like black people are the true Jews and you know, who knows
what I'm talking about?
A few people, man, a lot more people than know what cable access is.
Interesting.
It's amazing what people know and don't know.
But this black Hebrew is like guys talking about all this stuff.
And so we were just like, wow, this is crazy.
Like we never heard of this.
And then when it went to like the end credits of this program, it showed a black Jesus hanging
on the cross, like just a, just a like Nigerian looking Jesus hanging on the cross.
And it's, and it's, and it was like Ben Yahweh, this and that.
And they kept talking about Yahweh, Yahweh.
And we didn't know what that was.
Like we didn't know that Yahweh is even talking about the Lord or we didn't know what it meant.
You know, I think, I don't know if I was watching with my sister or my brother, I'm pretty sure
my brother Clint was there.
I don't remember.
But we were, you know, watching this cause somebody was there to kind of laugh at it
with me cause we watched it for like a while.
And we're, so some of that word just stuck in my mind Yahweh, but I didn't know what
it meant.
I didn't know who it was.
I'd never heard it before, but it just stuck in my mind as that, that guy who said Jerusalem
belongs to the blacks.
He was into something called Yahweh.
I don't know what that is.
Then like 10 years went by and I never heard that word again.
And by the way, my friend, there's no physical description of Jesus in the Bible because
it doesn't matter what he looked like.
Okay.
But pretty sure he wasn't Nigerian, okay.
And look, he probably wasn't this blonde haired white guy of the Catholics either.
He probably was neither black nor white.
You know, he's probably just a brown dude, but you know what?
I don't care what color he was cause that's not the point.
If God cared, he'd put it in the Bible, wouldn't he?
So quit getting fixated on race.
You know, the only race that matters is the human race.
Who cares?
But the point is, I'm just telling the story just to illustrate to you how I'd never heard
of Yahweh at all.
And when I heard it, I didn't know what it was.
I didn't even know that, Oh, they're calling God Yahweh.
I just, I was like, I don't know what that is, but you know, I just, I don't know.
For some reason it stuck in my mind.
Ten years went by.
I got into my twenties.
I've still never heard of Yahweh, but now all of a sudden I ask in 2023, Hey, who doesn't
know the word Yahweh?
And less than five people put up their hand.
Where did this word come from?
That word was not on anybody's lips in the eighties or nineties, except on the nineties,
it was on cable access TV that one time.
And I'm sure you could dig out some obscure references to it in some academic journal
somewhere, some atheist academic in some university, I'm sure has been talking about Yahweh for
years, but I'm talking about amongst Christians, amongst evangelicals, amongst Baptist.
And look, I've been to a lot of churches.
When I was a teenager, I went to Baptist churches, Presbyterian churches, non-denominational
churches.
I was just out looking for friends and Christian friends.
I'd go with my friends to their church, their youth group.
I've been around my friend.
I've been around religion my whole life.
I never even heard of this name except that one time on cable access and until I got in
my twenties, then all of a sudden you get into 20 and into my twenties and all of a
sudden, you know, this becomes a thing like, Oh, this is God's true name.
This is the real name.
It's actually Yahweh.
And now all of a sudden you have a somewhat mainstream Bible version now that has just
come out.
It's pretty much like the first mainstream Bible version that didn't come out of like
somebody's basement or something.
It's called the legacy standard Bible and you know, the 7,000 times that the, the Lord,
the name, the Lord is used in the old Testament, you know, they're swapping out all those occurrences
with the word Yahweh so that if you get this legacy standard Bible, it's a mainstream Bible
version that a lot of people are using now for the first time in history in America,
first time in the English speaking world, people are reading Yahweh is my shepherd.
I shall not want.
So here we go.
I mean the whole world, the whole stinking world is saying the Lord is my shepherd.
I shall not want.
And then all of a sudden it's Yahweh.
Isn't it amazing that the devil is able to pull this off, that he's able to introduce
to you this foreign word that you've never heard of, that nobody's ever heard of until
recently.
And now all of a sudden it's like, Oh, well yeah, it's Yahweh.
Folks, what, what are they going to deceive you about next?
What is it going to be?
I mean, if they can change the very name of God, if they can get you to accept a new Bible
version every five years, every five years, you get a whole new Bible that says something
totally different.
Well, you know, it doesn't change anything big.
Well, no, but it just, it just introduces a new name of God that no one's ever heard
of.
I mean, are we just going to pretend that we've heard of this word before 20 years ago?
Because you know, maybe, maybe you might've heard of it like I did in some weird chance,
but I'm telling you churches and Christians and God's people have not known this name.
This is a foreign name unto them.
And all of a sudden this comes out brand new doctrine, divers and strange doctrine, and
all of a sudden people just by the millions are just eating it up.
Scary.
And you know what's so funny?
You know who's eating this garbage up?
A bunch of Calvinists who claim to be the most doctrinal and educated and traditional.
And that's funny because it's the Calvinists who are eating up this legacy standard Bible
with talk about a strange doctrine.
This word Yahweh is unknown unto Christianity.
It's brand new.
Well yeah, but it's a true name.
Really do you have a tape recording of Moses hearing that name on the Mount?
Because last time I checked, there's no tape recordings.
You know what we know about God, we know from the Bible.
And let me ask you this.
Why didn't the Holy Spirit reveal this name in the 1500s or the 1600s or the 1700s or
the 1800s or the 19?
All of a sudden the Holy Spirit's like, well let's give him the true name.
Let's give him the right name.
I know they talked about Jesus in the 1500s and Jesus in the 1600s and Jesus in the 1700s
and Jesus in the 1800s and Jesus in the 1900s, but no, it's Yeshua now.
Now at least Yeshua's a real name.
It's a foreign name in a foreign language and we need to stick with the name that's
in our Bible because the Bible is the final story.
At least Yeshua is a real name.
Yahweh is not even a real, that's a made up word.
That's not even a real word.
But people have no trouble accepting it, do they?
Oh, it's, oh, you don't want me to say Jesus anymore?
Oh, I'll just switch to Yeshua.
Oh, it's not the Lord anymore?
It's Yahweh?
Okay.
Folks, if they could get you to swallow that, they could get you to swallow anything.
If even the name of God isn't sacred, what is?
And then you wonder how people are going to get sucked in someday by the Antichrist or
something.
Well, pretty easy to see how that could happen.
You got a bunch of shallow churches, shallow teaching, nobody's rooted and grounded in
the faith.
They don't have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and they're susceptible to this.
Let me hurry up and finish here.
Go back to Ephesians four where we were there.
And the Bible says in Ephesians chapter four, verse 14, that we henceforth be no more children
tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and
cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive.
But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, which is the head,
even Christ.
So we don't want to be children tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine, but we
want to grow up in him, right?
As we grow in knowledge, which is the head, even Christ from whom the whole body, tell
me if this sounds like unity, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every
joint supply of according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, make
an increase of the body onto the edifying of itself in love, right?
So the way that we're working together as one body, as one unit is by growing, gaining
knowledge, educating the flock so that we all know what God's name is.
We know how to be saved.
We know what baptism is.
We know what the Bible is and we can believe the same things.
Look, we right now believe most of the same things.
Now look, obviously I'm not saying we're ever going to agree on every little thing, but
big things like the name of God, the name of Jesus, like how to be saved, how to be
baptized.
These are the foundational things.
Okay.
Obviously on little finer points or gray areas that none of us are really sure about anyway.
I'm going to have my opinions.
You're going to have your opinions, you know, that's not what we're talking about because
we don't need to agree on every little thing in order to have unity, but we need to agree
on the important things to have unity, the essentials.
That's what we need to have unity.
The longer we exist as a church, the more preaching we hear, the more Bible reading
we hear, the more unity we're going to have.
The exact opposite of what the liberal churches are teaching, which is avoid doctrine for
the sake of unity.
Don't sacrifice unity for doctrine, but here's the thing, when you sacrifice doctrine, you've
sacrificed real unity because real unity comes from having a strong, solid foundation in
doctrine.
Now let me just close on one thought and you know, for sake of time, I don't have time
to fully develop all of these points because each of them is kind of a sermon in and of
itself.
But I want to throw this out there is that a big part of why people don't understand
what I'm teaching right now is that they think that we're supposed to have unity with
all Christians in the whole world.
Okay, look, when the apostle Paul is talking to the Ephesians about having unity, he's
talking about having unity in their local church and it should kind of be common sense
that we can't have unity with every saved Christian on the planet.
How could we?
We're not at the same location.
We don't even know each other and there are all different doctrines out there, all different
beliefs out there and all different things going on.
How can we be unified with all Christians?
So the only way to be unified with all Christians, if we let, let's pretend for a second that
that's the goal.
We must have unity with all of the Christians.
Then we would basically have to put aside every single doctrine except salvation.
Because what do you have to believe to be saved?
You have to believe right about salvation.
You could be wrong about other doctrines and still be saved as long as you believe right
about salvation, right?
Somebody could be right on about salvation, but then have other wrong cause they haven't
been taught, they haven't learned or they've been influenced by wrong traditions and so
forth.
In order to have unity with all Christians, you would have to put aside every single doctrine
except just salvation.
Now you understand what these liberal churches, that's what they're doing.
Only salvation matters and that's why they don't want to talk about anything else.
They don't want to teach anything else because they want to have this unity just on one point.
Not even, not, not one God, one spirit, one faith, one Lord, one baptism, one, you know,
because hey, you know what?
You could be saved and have wrong views on baptism.
It's possible.
Now, most people have wrong views on baptism usually aren't saved because baptism is this
kind of a simple subject in the Bible.
But there are people out there that are saved that have wrong views on baptism.
But well, we got to have unity, so let's just put aside baptism, you know, put it all aside.
That's wrong, okay?
What God wants us to have is unity within our local church, and I could point to you
a lot of scriptures that talk about, oh, if a brother walks disorderly, have no company
with him.
You know, if I'm not supposed to have any company with a brother who walks disorderly
and not after the tradition which he received from us, how can you say I'm supposed to have
unity with all believers when God says that there are brethren that we shouldn't even
hang around with?
Why?
Because of the fact that unity in our local church is actually an achievable goal.
It's an achievable goal if we all show up to the same physical location three times
a week and we've all got the same Bible and we're all studying and we're all getting the
same teaching and preaching, you know, we can have unity because we're going to believe
the same stuff.
Whereas what about the church that's using a totally different Bible version?
You've got the legacy standard Bible and they're talking about Yahweh.
Let me ask this.
Do you think that anybody who is saved, anybody who is actually saved owns a legacy standard
Bible?
I would say yes.
Do you think that anybody saved gets sucked in and says, oh, Yahweh is the real name?
Absolutely.
And how do I know that?
Because the Bible says that the simple are susceptible to those kinds of deceptions.
Okay?
Those kinds of deceptions and things are going to get people who are unlearned and haven't
been taught.
Now, I don't believe that a real saved Christian will ever apostatize on the gospel.
No saved Christian is ever going to get sucked into salvation by works or something, you
know, but on these other issues, they can be wrong on these things.
And so look, like I said, when I was a teenager, my family went to NIV churches for five years.
Okay, so here's the thing.
There are saved people down at the NIV church.
There are saved people at, uh, you know, John MacArthur's school.
There are saved people who have that legacy standard Bible on the shelf.
There are saved people.
And okay, but am I supposed to try to be unified with people who don't even have the same Bible,
don't have the same baptism, don't have the same, uh, teachings on so many things.
It's not going to work.
It's a fool's errand to try to have unity with every saved Christian on the whole planet.
But because of this universal church doctrine, like we're all part of the church, you know,
instead of a local church doctrine that talks about local congregations of born again baptized
believers, it leads to this wrongheaded goal of we've got to be unified with everybody
in the whole world who's a Christian.
No, my friend, we need to have unity within our local church.
Is our church the only good church?
No, there are lots of other great churches out there and they need to have unity within
their church.
We have unity within our church and maybe we can even find common ground with other
churches and have a sister church where, hey, we believe most of the same stuff and we can
have a sister church and we can have unity with you.
But trying to have unity with every Baptist church, every evangelical church, every saved
Christian is absurd.
And the only way it would work is to just stop teaching 90 some percent of the Bible
and only teach about salvation because that's the only thing that we all consistently agree
on.
No, my friend, I want to teach the entire Bible and then our church can be unified on
lots of things.
And then when somebody comes along and tries to present you with the Bible of the month
club membership, when somebody tries to present you with new divine names that you've never
heard of, you know, uh, that your father and grandfather never prayed to that name.
They never stated that name.
They don't know what that name is.
Okay.
We need to strive and endeavor to have unity, yes, by being humble, forgiving, kind, letting
things go, not holding grudges.
But you know, the thing that's, those are all the things that could sabotage the unity
that we want to watch out for, you know, all the grudges and strife and bickering and
fussing and pride and ego.
Okay.
Those are the enemies of unity.
But what is the thing that gives us unity?
It's one Lord, one faith, one baptism.
It's the pastors and teachers edifying us with doctrine so that we're not children anymore
tossed to and fro, but we all are rock solid on doctrine.
And you know, that's why if somebody knocked all of our doors, first of all, we don't all
live in the same neighborhood because we come here from all over the city.
Who here is from San Tan?
Who here is from Chandler?
Who here is from Gilbert?
Who here is from Peoria?
Who here is from surprise?
Who here is from Glendale?
Okay.
Anybody from Glendale?
Okay.
That's the, Oh, is that Glendale?
Ah, yeah.
Okay.
No, I'm just kidding.
So we had several.
So every single place I've listened so far, we've had people from there and it's far away.
That's far flung, right?
Surprise and San Tan.
I mean, what are they an hour and a half apart?
Okay.
People from all over the place.
Okay.
We're not all from the same neighborhood.
Look around.
You see people that are red, yellow, black, and white.
We're not all Chinese.
Okay.
We all are from different backgrounds, different income levels, different cultures.
Some people here have been Christians since they were a little kid.
Other people got saved in their adult life.
We've got singles, we've got families, we've got all types of people.
What is it that unites us?
It's the doctrine.
It's what we believe.
It's our faith and our church has great unity.
If someone could somehow knock all of our doors, it'd have to do a lot of driving to
do it.
They're not going to get 50 different answers on salvation.
But you know what?
If I knock the doors of Grace Community Church in Tempe, I will get 50 different answers
on salvation because I've done it.
Oh, you shouldn't say that.
That's mean.
I've done it.
If I knock the doors of all the people who go to that cornerstone, the one with all the
weird perverted suggestive billboards on the 202, I'm going to get 50 different answers
on salvation.
I've done it.
I've gotten the 50 answers.
You're not going to get 50 answers here, my friend.
And not only that, we don't just only agree on salvation.
We agree on baptism too.
We also agree on lots of other things.
Most of us agree even on things like end times and Israel.
But hey, if somebody doesn't agree on those things, no problem.
But the bottom line is we have unity on the essentials.
I'm just saying we have unity even on a lot of non-essentials.
But the essentials when it comes to the Trinity, salvation, King James Bible, look, King James
Bible is essential, my friend.
You know, that's a big one.
And so we need unity through sound doctrine.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for our church.
And Lord, what a blessing it is to get together and assemble with like-minded people with
whom we can rally around soul winning and the right kind of Christianity that's taught
in your word.
Lord, of course, none of us is perfect and our beliefs aren't perfect, Lord.
But help us to keep growing and learning until we all do come to that unity.
And Lord, help us to strive to always learn more and study more so that we can have more
unity around true biblical teaching.
In Jesus' name we pray.