Walk In Unity The Spirit Provides

LaRue Baptist Church, OH

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I ask you to stand for the scripture reading this morning. Old Testament will be

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Ezekiel 11, 14 through 21. And the word of the

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Lord came to me. Son of man, your brothers, even your brothers, your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, all of them are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, go far from the

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Lord. To us, this land is given for possession. Therefore say, thus says the

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Lord, though I remove them far off among the nations, and though I scattered them among the centuries or among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a while in the countries where they have gone.

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Therefore say, thus says the Lord, I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered.

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And I will give you the land of Israel. And when they come there, they will remove from it all of its detestable things and all of its abominations.

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And I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them.

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And they shall be my people. And I will be their God. But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations,

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I will bring their deeds upon their heads, their own heads, declares the Lord God. New Testament reading is

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Philippians chapter 2, verse 1 to 11. You can find it on page 980 of your

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Pew Bible. So if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the

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Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

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Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves.

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Let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also to the interests of others.

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Have this in mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

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In being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

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Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

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In every tongue, confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Please remain standing.

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Well, that's not a good start. I didn't realize I was up. I was like, why isn't anyone going up there? Well, good morning to you all.

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It's wonderful to worship with you today. I'd ask you to open your

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Bibles. Sorry, I am asking you to open your Bibles to Ephesians, to the fourth chapter of Ephesians.

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Ephesians chapter four, verse one. I therefore, a prisoner for the

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Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.

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There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call.

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One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one

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God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

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But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

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Oh, God in heaven, I ask for your help this morning. God, I thank you for being the

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God who has saved us out of our darkness and distress and brought us to be unified under Christ.

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But we know, Lord, that in this already not yet time of life, this unity, this walking in the imperatives, walking after our calling, found in unity with one another can be extremely difficult.

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Lord, we bemoan the sin that still lingers on and oftentimes that sin can leave us so weak that we will even fall into despair and stop fighting altogether.

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So I ask God that you would help us to be grounded upon what you have done for us as we go forth into this battle of the imperatives, knowing that in here is found our true fullness of life in you.

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It's the fullness of God. So help us, Lord, in this great need that we have. May you be with my words as I preach and may the things needed to be heard by the people, may they hear it with their ears, may they hear it with their heart.

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And I pray, Lord, that it might encourage change in their lives. Lord, it might cause those who have not known you or come to know you through Christ, it might cause them to repent and believe.

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And for the saints who are before me, it might cause them to walk in greater obedience to Jesus, not to be right before you, but because they've already been made right before you and theirs is the life is found in these imperatives.

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So please help us, Lord, for we need your help. Guide us and direct us, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.

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Well, I was watching a video on my phone, on YouTube, and it was an interview of a certain trans person,

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I'm not sure what to call them, I still get confused with that. But a trans person who is a man who claims to be a woman.

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And it's fascinating hearing his, again, looking like trying to be a girl, but a man, hearing his mindset of why it is important good and right for him to be pursuing being a different gender or sex than what his biology says.

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And it's fascinating to hear, it's a lot of times it's terminology couched in freedom and life.

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I can finally live my life because this is my actual identity and I don't have anything exterior encroaching and falling down on me and forcing me to be who

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I'm not. And so there's this understanding that society and there's things outside trying to tell me what to be, but finally

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I can simply just be what I feel like I am inside. And it got me,

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I was watching this this week and it got me considering, of course, when I'm working on a sermon, it's constantly on my mind.

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And so I just think of everything in the lens of that sermon. But it got me thinking of, here we are in between Ephesians three and four, and we're going now into that land of the imperatives as we talked about a few weeks ago.

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The scary land, but the land of fullness of life. This is the land of God says do this and enjoy me forever.

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And in our Christian mind being resolute on what God has done for us, we go forward into this scary land knowing that the fullness of God is there and the imperatives and the commands.

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That's our life, it's in there. How we know to live a life that's enjoyable is found in what

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God has told us to be and do. That's our life there driven by what God has done for us in the first three chapters of Ephesians.

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That's the Christian mindset, is that God, my life is found in obeying you in Jesus.

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And it's a fascinating thing to see the very opposite from the world in which my life is found in not having to obey, not having any imperatives crouching, coming down on me.

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Instead, just freely expressing who I am from the inside. The Christian walks in a very opposite way.

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The land of imperatives, the land of commands from God is right here before us in these next three chapters of Ephesians.

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And it's driven by what God has done for us in salvation in Jesus, and it is our life.

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And this is how now the chapter begins. As he's going to, Paul is going to give a command, a command, a command, do this, do this, do this,

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I urge you, we must see that this is our life here and we're enabled by God.

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And we see this starting off in chapter four, verse one, when he says, I, therefore, a prisoner for the

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Lord. I, therefore, before he gets to the first imperative of do this, he says,

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I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord. And I think this denotes authority and power.

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And what I mean by this is he's saying, I'm a prisoner for the Lord. And he's saying that I am an apostle and that's revealed in the fact that I'm even in prison for him.

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I think Paul's denoting his apostolic ministry, that God, Jesus said when he called him out, he said, he will be my messenger, he will see how much he has to suffer, the imprisonments, and he'll be an apostle.

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And I think Paul's denoting here is that I have been faithful to the Lord, I'm an apostle of his, I'm a prisoner of his.

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It's similar to what he says in Ephesians chapter one, verse one, when he says, I, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus.

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Or Galatians one, when he says, Paul, an apostle, not for men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ.

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And here he's saying, I am an apostle, revealed in the fact that I'm a prisoner for Christ. And so therefore, the do this, do this, do this, do this, that you're gonna hear a lot after this, as Paul's saying, it comes from an authority not from man, not from within me, not from within you, but it comes from an authority from the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And so chapter four, verse one, as he's going into the first imperative, he says,

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I am a prisoner, I'm an apostle of Christ, and I'm urging you based off of the authority, not of man, but of Christ, the

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Lord. But it's not just simply authority that's being denoted there, but it's power as well.

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He is a prisoner or an apostle, the authority comes from the Lord, and who is the

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Lord? The power of the imperatives, as we talked about already. The Lord, not only is there authority there that comes forth from him, do this, and it comes from the authority of the

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Lord, but there is power there. You remember what we talked about last week? Now to him, in verse 20 of Ephesians three, now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us.

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There is a power at work in us that Christ has done. And if you remember Ephesians one, in those first several verses of Ephesians one, you remember how many in hymns there are?

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There's like a billion in hymns in Christ, because Paul's denoting the power comes forth in Christ to live this sort of life.

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And so very opposed to, very opposed to the nature that this is, these laws being enforced upon us, and it's not good for us, and it's something that we need to work against.

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Instead, the Christian acknowledges the authority and the power comes forth from Christ for these commands to be my very life.

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This is my life. And so Paul says, a prisoner,

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I therefore a prisoner for the Lord, the authority found in the Lord, the power to live this coming from the

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Lord. He says, I urge you, and here's the first imperative of the land of the imperatives,

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I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

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And so in other words, this life of the imperatives of the commands is impossible if it's not viewed as a calling coming forth from the

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Lord of power and glory. In fact, Paul talks about this, the most general way he can talk about the imperatives.

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This is like the most general thing he can say about the imperatives is to walk according to your calling.

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And then he's gonna get specific in a moment, in which we'll see. But the most general thing he can say is walk according to the calling you have received from the

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Lord of authority, from the Lord of power working in you. And Paul, he talks about walking a lot in this book.

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This isn't the first time he actually talked about walking. He's gonna talk about it more moving forward. He likes to use this word as a very general way to talk about the general nature of our way of life.

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Do you get that? That's why if you're looking at the word walking, what does it mean by walking, to walk a certain way?

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It's the general nature of how you live your life. At like a thousand foot in the air, how do you live your life?

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That is the way you walk, right? And there's a pre -walk before Christ, and there's a post -walk after the

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Lord has done his power in you. And we see this pre -walk before Christ in Ephesians 2, when he says in verse one, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.

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You see that? So what was our walk like? What was the general pattern of our life then?

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It was according to trespasses and sins, or it was one of disobedience. The pre -walk of the

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Christian before Christ is a walk of disobedience. That is how you can generally define the walk of a non -Christian.

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It is one, generally speaking, of disobedience to Christ. He says he once walked in that way.

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He says in verse one of Ephesians 2, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

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Who was our authority in that pre -Christ walk? Our authority was the devil. It was Satan himself, right?

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The mark of the walk was disobedience to God, and the authority of that walk is

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Satan himself. And he says in verse three of chapter two, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

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So what was the power of our walk? It wasn't Christ. It was our flesh. It was the desires of our heart.

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Whatever our desires said, that was the power of our walk. And then the final end of our walk is, we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

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So you wanna know the walk of a pre -Christian? It is one of disobedience. That's the general mark of a walk, of someone's walk before Christ, is disobedience.

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The authority found in that walk is Satan, whether they know it or not.

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The power of that walk is their flesh and their desires of their own heart. And then the outcome of that walk is to be a child of wrath.

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But thanks be to God, right? For those who call upon the name of the Lord, our authority no longer is

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Satan, but it is Jesus Christ, our Lord, who has forgiven us of this disobedient walk. And instead he says, and now the mark of your life, the general nature of your walk is going to be not of disobedience anymore, but obedience.

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And so we look upon the imperatives of chapters four, five, and six and we say, this gets to be the general nature of my walk now that I'm in Christ.

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Praise God for the fullness of God found there. Now, if you're struggling with your assurance of salvation, if you're struggling, it might really save.

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Usually what would drive that is because you'll look at a particular aspect of your walk and you'll say, that's not obedient to God.

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There must be something wrong with me, right? So you'll think, okay, I urge you, we read in four one, to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called.

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And you look at a particular point of your walk and you say, that's disobedient. What is wrong?

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Am I even saved? It's very important for you. And if you're struggling with that as a true believer, you see that the walk he's talking about again is the general feel, the general nature of your walk.

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Surely you can point to the particulars of sin. But we're talking about the general walk of your life is one of obedience to Christ, that even the particular aspects of sin that you see, you can confidently say,

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I brought that to the Lord in forgiveness of sins. And to go on the other side, there are people in perhaps even in this room who think they're a believer, but they're not.

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And the way they defend it in their brain is they say, they look at those particular aspects of their life and say, look at the obedience there.

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But Paul again is saying the general makeup of our whole entire walk can be said, it is marked with obedience.

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And so this is the Christian. This is the one who has been called out by Christ. He says, now your pattern of life is going to no longer be disobedience, but obedience.

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And where you see any kind of disobedience in the particulars, you bring it to the Lord for forgiveness, and he brings you on that path of general obedience.

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This is the first imperative. This is the first general imperative. You know, we talked about last, a few weeks ago,

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I talked about a voyage going off into the scary land of the imperatives, right? And this is basically

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Paul saying, just head west. This is the general location, head west. Walk according to the calling you've received.

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That's like just the most general way. Head that way, right? And then he gets very, very, well,

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I should say more specific. What does that look like? And let's look at what he says. He says in verse two, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another and love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.

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Now, if you're not careful, if you're anything like me, you'll just see a bunch of word vomit right there. Okay, I gotta do all those things.

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Okay, more specific. Okay, humility, patience, and that's what it'll be. And there won't seem to be any rhyme or reason to what he's saying.

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And there's a rhyme and reason for what Paul is saying here. He's not just word vomiting, act like this.

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But there's actually a pattern, or there's like a rhyme and reason to what he is saying here as he's getting more specific in the imperatives or the command from the

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Lord. And again, look at what he says in verse two. The drive of verse two, and you can underline it in your brain or mind, is found in the verb of verse two.

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That is bearing with one another and love. The specific command from Jesus here, or imperative, as it gets more specific, not just generally walk according to the calling you receive, but the specific command is found in the verb, bear with one another and love.

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That's what he's saying there. And then he adds, and this is how it's gonna look with humility, gentleness, and patience.

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Maybe a good way to look at this to help you to kind of organize it in your brain is act like you're telling your child, your children, to clean the bathroom, okay?

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And you tell your children, clean the bathroom. There's a verb, clean the bathroom, right? And you'll say, and do it with what?

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Hot soap, what else do you, bleach? Well, my wife hates bleach.

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My wife likes to use cleaning that she could drink while she's using it to clean. That's why she just likes,

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I'm just kidding. But she does hate bleach. I get it, it just smells like it's killing you from within.

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But nevertheless, the way to perhaps look at this, and she, no, she isn't here, she's gonna get me, is that if you tell your child, clean the bathroom, right?

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That's a thrust of the command, clean the bathroom, and do it with hot, soapy water and some elbow grease and a clean sponge.

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So if he comes to you and he says, I cleaned the bathroom, but I used mud and a dirty sock and I didn't use any elbow grease,

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I just kind of, you know how kids do that. It's like, put some elbow grease into it. Then you say, you didn't actually clean the bathroom.

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And it's the same thing here. Paul's saying the first specific imperative is bear with one another in love, and that's gonna be with humility, gentleness, and patience.

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If you don't have those three nouns, you're not gonna be doing the verb of bearing with one another in love.

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It requires humility, gentleness, and patience. If you don't use that, you have not cleaned the bathroom, so to speak.

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And he even says in verse three, with an attitude, with your dominating desire, in verse three, to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.

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So it's like telling them, your kids, you know, clean the bathroom and use these things, and make sure you do it with an attitude of you get to contribute to the cleanliness of the house.

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And this is what Paul is saying here. Have an attitude of, I want to maintain the unity of the spirit, and so I want to bear with one another.

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I wanna bear with my brother and sisters in love, and that looks like having humility, gentleness, and patience.

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Now, we're kind of looking at it from way up here, and just so we can kind of organize it, right? But while we're doing that,

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I wanna press something on you right now. Just as we're looking at this very generally up here,

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I wanna press something on you. Notice, let me slow down. Notice the first specific imperative is found in unity and love for a brother and sister in Christ.

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Notice it's not an individual affair. Notice that the land of fullness of God that we can enjoy, it's right there before us because of Christ, is found in the community of the believers.

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Paul could have went anywhere with getting specific with the imperatives. And the way, the direction, the specific direction he decides to go is the community of believers.

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What does that tell us about how we should view fellowshipping in the community of believers?

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What does that tell us about that? That if you truly, as a Christian, want to enjoy everything God has for you in Christ, which if you're a believer, you want that, it is found in your fellowshipping with your brothers and sisters in Christ.

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And the reason why I say that, because it is so simple. We're all blessed Americans. Praise God for that.

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But we can be so isolated. We can be so individualistic.

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It is just, it's just part of our DNA. The first thing I, as a Christian, I knew

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I need to read the Bible and I need to find a church and then I put a little footnote in my mind of that where I can hide away and just get out afterwards, right?

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That's just, I don't know what it was. It's just, that's just what, like that's by nature, like that's assumed.

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I don't want to have to like rub elbows with anyone. I want to find a place where I can go in the back and hide away, hear the sermon, sing a few songs and then just leave.

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There's just something there. And if you're not, and you might not be like that, but I think a lot of us are.

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I think it's just something as Americans we really struggle with. It's something to look at. And so is your mind right now, you believer in Christ, do you look at fellowshipping with the saints, not just something that you have to put up with, but the very thing used to enjoy the fullness of God and the imperatives?

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Do you see it that way? Or are you just so quickly, and it's, I get it. Trust me, I'm not trying to hurt you here.

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I'm not trying to just make you feel bad, but is it just too easy for you to get in during the service and then just get out as quick as possible?

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I'm telling you, you are hurting your ability to enjoy the fullness of God and the imperatives that Christ has provided by his blood.

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I don't think you want that. In fact, we need to be proactive. I know that my enjoyment of the fullness is found and given myself totally to the fellowship with the saints.

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It's found there. I'm gonna jump in head first and just go. Now you might say to me, you might say, well,

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Paul obviously has to be assuming the brothers and sisters around them aren't annoying.

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He has to be assuming that everyone's just perfect in that body. And of course, it's gonna be great when everyone's doing what

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I want them to do. But notice the context of that verb in verse two again.

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You remember what it was? What's the major thrust? Bearing with one another in love. What does that mean, to bear with one another?

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That means you gotta put up with them. You know, if I'm having a hard time finding my place in the Bible, the notes,

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I might say, please bear with me. Just give me a second. Because I'm kind of urging you, or I'm tempting you to get kind of irritated.

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Come on, let's go, right? I'm asking, bear with me, please. So the context of this greater enjoyment of the fullness of God, the unity with the body of Christ, Paul assumes it is to have to bear with one another.

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So it's not a matter of, well, there's just enough perfect saints around me, okay, I'll do that. The assumption is that as you go headfirst into the unity of fellowshipping with the saints, you are going to have to put up or bear with hard brothers and sisters.

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And in that, there's a fullness of God awaiting for you. You get what I'm saying here.

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And so this is the kind of mindset we need to have, is that as he's getting specific into the imperatives, he denotes the unity, the fellowshiping, the togetherness that we need to have with each other.

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And it assumes that it's going to be difficult that you must bear with one another.

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Because I think the number one reason why you get the people who either don't do any extra fellowship that they have to, they just get out, or the ones who are doing it, but they're just, they're running on empty, is because they are weary of bearing with one another, or they don't want to have to put themselves in that situation.

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But there has to be a flip in your brain that says, actually, God works upside down sometimes. And in that hardship, there is a great unity that's to be had, and there's a great fullness to be enjoyed in God.

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And of course, if you're saying, this is too much to bear, that's too difficult. Well, good, that's,

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I know what you mean. I'm right there with you. Even as pastors, sometimes it's like, yeah, it'd just be so much better just to live on an island somewhere.

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But notice what he says in verse three, the attitude of our hearts as we are just jumping in is eager, that is like a deep desire.

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You have a deep desire to maintain the unity of the spirit. That needs to be the energy that propels you forward in the hardship of having to bear with one another there is that you are eager, deeply desiring to maintain the unity of the spirit.

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Now, highlight in your mind, in your heart, in your, whatever, the word maintain. Because notice he doesn't say eager to create the unity.

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You can't create it. It's far too difficult for us. It's a difficult task, but we simply maintain what the spirit is already doing.

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So as you're considering, man, that sounds very difficult, so much easier just to go and get out and not have to get myself in that situation where I gotta bear with one another.

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Notice he says that what drives you forward is eager to maintain the unity that the spirit is doing in you as a believer.

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You don't have to create it, you can't do that. But you simply maintain what he's doing in you. And that should encourage you that it can be done.

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Not because I gotta do it, but because the spirit is doing that by nature of being in me and one another.

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We are to maintain what the spirit is already created in one another.

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And that enables us to bear with one another. You know, it's like, imagine the difference between having a family and setting them on a plot of land and saying, well, build your house and live in it and enjoy yourself.

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And they have no materials, nothing, they won't be able to do it, that'd be it. Why even try? But we're not left like that.

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Instead, we're the family that's left with a nice house and everything is furnished, everything is created for us, and we simply get to maintain and enjoy it.

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Of course, it's gonna still come with difficulty, but it's something that can be done because the spirit is the one creating the unity within us.

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So that's kind of like looking at it from way up here, right, generally speaking. Right, that's how we're looking at this, right?

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That Paul, he's getting particular with his imperatives and notice it's grounded, it's found in unity with the body of Christ, that fellowship with one another.

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And he says that the main thrust of chapter two is bearing with one another in love. It's gonna look like humility, gentleness, with patience, with an attitude, verse three, eager to maintain the unity.

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So let's look back at verse two. Let's look at that first one. Let's look at that. He says in verse two, with all humility, with all humility.

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That's the first thing you're gonna need if you're gonna actually bear with one another in love. With all humility.

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Now humility can be misunderstood sometimes. Humility, I think some people think humility is always thinking that you're not as good as the person before you, or you're always just not as good as them.

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And that's just not, that's not always the case. You know, you think of like LeBron James and a high schooler, right, playing basketball.

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It would not be humble of LeBron James to say, oh, this kid's better than me. It'd be a fake humility, it'd be weird, it'd just be goofy.

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It wouldn't be humble for LeBron James simply to say, oh, he's better than me, that's what humility is.

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Humility isn't always acknowledging that someone is always better than you. That's not what humility is.

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In fact, if you look again at the context of what's being said here, is you're having to bear with one another.

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You're having to bear with someone. In other words, perhaps this person is kind of being difficult. Perhaps he's being a little bit immature.

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Perhaps he's being a little bit not too Christ -like like you would want him. And perhaps you are more mature and are exhibiting those things.

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So humility isn't simply just between you and the person before you, in which you just gotta say, well, they're just better than me, that's it.

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There's more meat to that bone. And humility involves not just you and the person before you, but also the

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God above. And the God above is the spirit who is within you that's building unity.

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And so as you are going through a situation with a brother or sister, and it's difficult, perhaps they're not being too mature, perhaps they're being difficult.

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As you understand that the spirit is doing something, it's not all about me and my comfort.

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It's not all about whether I'm better or worse. It's about what the spirit is doing in this.

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It creates a humility in you that it's not all about me. It's about what God is doing, it's about him.

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And then through that, it creates a humility in you. It's about what the spirit is doing here, not about what I would necessarily want.

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An example that came to my head is serving tables, is serving the tables at mealtime or whatever it may be.

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So easy, so easy for that to turn into something that is, you have someone perhaps,

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I'm not saying I know a specific example, so just don't read too much into what I'm saying here. But for a church that serves a lot of tables, that does a lot of service like that, praise

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God for that, it can be so easy for you to have a situation where you're dealing with someone within the body, and there's that unity that's supposed to be had, it can be so easy for someone to not be quite acting

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Christ -like. Maybe they're not far along in their walk with Christ, but yet they're being overbearing.

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And so the humility comes, and not saying, oh, this person's more mature than me, this person's better than me, that's not what, humility is there is a

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God above that calls us to unity, that's what he's doing, and that's gonna make it this situation, not all about me.

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It's gonna make it about what he's doing that drives humility in you. In fact, if the tables aren't being served well in the church and in the time of meal,

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I'm actually gonna maybe take a little bit more delight in that because it's because for the sake of unity in the spirit that it didn't get done as well as I would like I could have been overpowering,

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I could have been overbearing, I could have been prideful, and say, no, it needs to be done this way, but instead, for the sake of humility,

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I'm gonna find joy in the fact that for the sake of unity in the spirit, this is done not as well, but unity is had.

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So this is, I think the humility involved in verse two, is in line with bearing with one another, knowing that this isn't all about you, but it's about what the spirit is doing in you and the church for the sake of unity.

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And whenever it's all about God and what he's doing, it drives humility and it drives a gentleness, we see moving forward in verse two.

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It drives a gentleness. See, when it's about you, and things happening perfectly well according to your standard and what you want, it's going to cause you to be a little bit rough, won't it?

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Whenever you want your own way, since you're not God, and you recognize that, whenever it starts to not be your own way because you're not

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God, you start to be rough. You no longer are gentle. You start to get rough with your words, with your actions.

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Since you're not God, but yet you're trying to act like God because it's all about you, pride, you then start to be rough.

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But whenever it's not all about me, it's about God and the unity found in the spirit, what the spirit is doing, it enables you to be gentle as you go about a situation that is difficult as you bear with one another, you're able to be gentle.

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And notice what comes on the tail end of that? Patience, patience. My mom had a magnet on our fridge that said,

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Lord, grant me patience, but hurry. And I always thought that was kind of funny as I, no, come on, that's a funny joke.

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That's a good one. Lord, grant me patience, but hurry, come on. It doesn't get much better than that.

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Patience, as you feel the fervor of impatience coming up in you, and we all know that feeling, don't we?

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We all know whenever we can start feeling that impatience coming up. That doesn't just happen out of nowhere, but it reveals something.

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Impatience is what God, is God telling you that you're not God and you've forgotten it.

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That's what impatience is. Whenever you're feeling impatient, just consider it's God telling you, listen, you're not

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God and you're trying to act like it. And it's not all about you. There needs to be humility here that you have lost somewhere.

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And now it's turning into a roughness and it's turning into a lack of patience. And so whenever you are, you got the impatience coming up, consider the fact that somewhere previously in my thought pattern, what

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I'm doing, I had made it about myself instead of being humble. And now I'm being rough and impatient in my behavior.

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And honestly, the feeling of impatience, it's God telling you, you are not God and you've forgotten that. Because you lack patience because you think

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I'm God and I should get what I want, how I want it right now. It'd be better. And God's saying, you're not

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God. And so whenever you realize that, you say, well, there's a patience that need to be had here.

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It's not about me. It's not about exactly how I want it to be done. So we can see how this bearing with one another in love, the humility, gentleness, and patience, they kind of come together as we interact with one another.

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And I really think humility is a huge fountain head here in which as we are humble, as we know it's not about me, it creates a gentleness in us and it creates a patience within us since it's not all about me.

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It's not like I'm God. It doesn't need to happen exactly how I want it to happen. So therefore, it produces patience and we're able to bear with one another.

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And notice he says, in love, eager. He says, bearing in verse two with one another in love.

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And so what's fascinating here is as this is working in your life, not only will you be able to put up with someone to bear with them, but you'll be able to do it with an affection for them.

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You see, that's what in love means. You're able to bear with someone and you don't do it rolling your eyes.

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I'll do it. I'll bear with them if I can roll my eyes as I'm doing it. But what Paul's getting at here is that you'll actually be able to do this imperative of bearing with one another as you're doing it with humility, patience, there's a lot of gentleness.

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You'll be able to do that as you grow in this with affection for that person that you have to bear with.

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Now that's a difficult thing, isn't it? That is extremely difficult. It's one thing to actually have to put up with them. All right.

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But here we see that unity is found and doing it with an affection for them. Since it's not all about you, but unity in the spirit and what

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God is doing in the community, you have an affection for their growth. As you see them being difficult, perhaps, you have a desire more than anything for them to experience the spirit, experience growth that produces, again, a bearing with them for the sake of the spirit and the unity he provides.

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Whenever your mind, again, your motivations is founded in verse three, eager to maintain that unity of the spirit, it produces these actions that you have, the feeling of love for someone, even when they're being difficult as you go about it with humility, gentleness, and patience.

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These are all things that are proven and grown. The muscle is built in experiences that are difficult.

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And it's completely flipped on its head whenever we say, well, I don't wanna jump in head first, as we've said already, because I don't want it to be difficult.

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People are hard to deal with. And that's, again, typically, if you look at your heart and mind, the reason why it's easy for you to just get the fellowship done as quick as possible and just get out is because you don't wanna have to deal with others because they can be difficult.

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What you need to tell yourself is God likes to flip things on its head and says, yes, it will be difficult, but in dealing with it in a biblical way, you are actually going to grow in these commandments, grow in these things, and experience the fullness of God more than you would without it.

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So we cannot look at it and be like, well, I could get burned again. I could get hurt again. This could happen.

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And so let me just try to get away without actually going into full fellowship, full unity that the command is bringing to bear for us.

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But we gotta see that even in that, even in that hardship, there is fullness to be had.

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God uses that for fullness. We don't avoid it, but we jump right into it.

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For the last few minutes, I want to, it's probably a little quicker than I would like to, but we see, and I'll allude to it next week or in a couple of weeks, but notice, and again, if you're still reserved, if you still have reservation, right?

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If you're still thinking, yeah, I'm one of those people I don't like to be around others, or perhaps, again, you're one of those people where you're enjoying fellowship and unity, but yet there's a time where it's getting difficult.

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It's getting hard. I'm getting, I'm running out of gas. Perhaps you should consider the nature of who

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God is and what he has done in salvation and doing in you. Because I think that's what

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Paul gets to in verses four, five, and six.

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This is not a good way to end a sermon, but I don't want to rush through it. So I'm gonna end there. But may we, again, as we end this here, may we have a great desire and eagerness.

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I want to display the unity that the Spirit is doing in this body, that I'm here in this local body.

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And as we consider, but I know there's hard people around me. I know it's difficult to bear with them. Instead of that being something in which, okay,

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I'm gonna try to avoid it, may that be, and I know my God, his power, and he will be able to instill a love and affection for them and draw humility out in me, gentleness in me, and patience with me as I bear with them.

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And in that, there's gonna be an experience of the fullness of God that would not be experienced without it. May we not resort in avoiding fellowship, avoiding the unity that Christ provides, but may we jump headfirst into it, confident that the

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Lord is doing this in our midst. He's the authority and he's the power. He shall do it.

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Let us pray. Oh God in heaven, it can be so easy to grow weary.

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Especially in a church that has a lot of fellowship going on in it. It can be a wearisome thing whenever people around us do not act the way we think they should act.

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God in heaven, I pray that in that we would have, even as the people of LaRue Baptist Church here, we would have a great desire, an eagerness that transcends those weariness.

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And that eagerness would be to maintain what the spirit is doing in the unity of the body, to have a confidence that he is creating a unity, that he's doing it by his power and who he is and the salvation he's brought.

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And that our goal, our joy is to maintain it even in difficult circumstances.

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I pray God that we would see that as an example, as this is an opportunity that I have before me with the difficulty of this brother and sister for me to display humility, gentleness, patience, as I bear with them and love and affection for them.

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God in heaven, I know myself included, it's so easy for us instead just to get frustrated and mad and just retreat.

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Let us not do that, but let us see it as opportunity to enjoy even the fullness of God as you're working through that for greater unity, greater growth and a greater enjoyment for you.

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Thank you, Lord, for being so kind to us that we can enjoy the land of imperatives in this way, Lord, because we know that it's driven by grace in what you're doing.