Who Are You To Judge

The Servant of Another?

Part Two

5/8/05

 

I asked this question last week and received a less than enthusiastic response. How important is unity in the body of Christ?

How important is it to the Lord that we strive for unity?

It is our duty before God to make every effort to keep unity in the body of Christ!

Eph. 4:2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. ³ Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

What are some things the Lord hates?

Pr. 6:16 There are six things the LORD hates,

seven that are detestable to him:

¹⁷ haughty eyes,

a lying tongue,

hands that shed innocent blood,

¹⁸ a heart that devises wicked schemes,

feet that are quick to rush into evil,

¹⁹ a false witness who pours out lies

and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.

What should be our attitude towards those who make a mistake, stumble, get caught in a trap?

Gal. 6:1 Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. ² Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. ³ If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

Rom. 15:1 We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. ² Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. ³ For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.” For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

⁵ May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, 6 so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

⁷ Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.

Unity is one of God's strongest testimonies on the earth.

Jo. 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Jo. 17:20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, ²¹that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: ²³I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

What do we do when a brother or sister in Christ does something we don’t agree with?

Num. 12:1 Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. ² “Has the LORD spoken only through Moses?” they asked. “Hasn’t he also spoken through us?” And the LORD heard this.

³ (Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.)

⁴ At once the LORD said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, “Come out to the Tent of Meeting, all three of you.” So the three of them came out. ⁵ Then the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud; he stood at the entrance to the Tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam. When both of them stepped forward, ⁶ he said, “Listen to my words:

“When a prophet of the LORD is among you,

I reveal myself to him in visions,

I speak to him in dreams.

⁷ But this is not true of my servant Moses;

he is faithful in all my house.

⁸ With him I speak face to face,

clearly and not in riddles;

he sees the form of the LORD.

Why then were you not afraid

to speak against my servant Moses?”

⁹ The anger of the LORD burned against them, and he left them.

¹⁰ When the cloud lifted from above the Tent, there stood Miriam—leprous, like snow. Aaron turned toward her and saw that she had leprosy; ¹¹ and he said to Moses, “Please, my lord, do not hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed. ¹² Do not let her be like a stillborn infant coming from its mother’s womb with its flesh half eaten away.”

¹³ So Moses cried out to the LORD, “O God, please heal her!”

¹⁴ The LORD replied to Moses, “If her father had spit in her face, would she not have been in disgrace for seven days? Confine her outside the camp for seven days; after that she can be brought back.” ¹⁵ So Miriam was confined outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on till she was brought back.

Was the apostle Paul a man of God? Did he have any flaws? Did he make any mistakes?

Acts 15:36 Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the brothers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.” ³⁷ Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, ³⁸ but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. ³⁹ They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, ⁴⁰ but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. ⁴¹ He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.

Paul later realized that he was wrong...

2 Tim. 4:11 Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry.

Here are some great men of God who were greatly used by God and yet did some foolish things!

Abraham is our father of faith. And yet because of his fear he had his wife lie about being his husband and said she was his sister.

Gideon was greatly used by God and yet did a foolish thing.

Jud. 8:22 The Israelites said to Gideon, “Rule over us—you, your son and your grandson—because you have saved us out of the hand of Midian.”

²³ But Gideon told them, “I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The LORD will rule over you.” ²⁴ And he said, “I do have one request, that each of you give me an earring from your share of the plunder.” (It was the custom of the Ishmaelites to wear gold earrings.)

²⁵ They answered, “We’ll be glad to give them.” So they spread out a garment, and each man threw a ring from his plunder onto it. ²⁶ The weight of the gold rings he asked for came to seventeen hundred shekels, not counting the ornaments, the pendants and the purple garments worn by the kings of Midian or the chains that were on their camels’ necks. ²⁷ Gideon made the gold into an ephod, which he placed in Ophrah, his town. All Israel prostituted themselves by worshiping it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his family.

David was a man after the heart of God. But he wasn’t the best father and he lusted after Bathsheba and fell into sin. Does that take away all that David had done? It was even after all this that the scripture says he was a man after the heart of God!

Lot allowed himself to stay in Sodom and Gomorrah which caused great grief to all his family. And yet the New Testament says.....

2 Pet. 2:6 if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; ⁷ and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men ⁸(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)

Peter, a man of God, compromised the truth because of peer pressure!

Gal. 2:11 When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. ¹² Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. ¹³ The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

¹⁴ When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?

Listen to the Wisdom of the Word in dealing with faults.

Pr. 19:11 A man’s wisdom gives him patience;

it is to his glory to overlook an offense.

Pr. 10:12 Hatred stirs up dissension,

but love covers over all wrongs.

Pr. 17:9 He who covers over an offense promotes love,

but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends.

1 Cor. 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

1 Pet. 4:8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Ec. 7:21 Do not pay attention to every word people say,

or you may hear your servant cursing you—

²² for you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others.