Immanuel Baptist Church

1 Kings 11-14

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This sermon was preached by Rev. Chris Roberts during the evening service on August 30, 2009.

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Ephesians 4:4-6

Download Sermon

This sermon was preached by Rev. Chris Roberts during the morning service on Sunday, August 30, 2009.

One way to teach people unity and cooperation is to put them in a situation where they must work together or fail. In a real world scenario, no army will win the day if its soldiers fight against one another or collapse in disarray, each soldier or unit doing their own thing with total disregard to the orders of the commanding officer. One of the major components of military training is to drive in over and over the recognition that I am not just one soldier, I am part of a unit and part of a greater army. Alone, I will not survive. Together, we just might make it through the fight.

But we live in an age of individuality. Unity and community are not upheld as they once were. People are told to find their own way, to make their own path. Even truth gets this treatment as subjectivism reigns: Find out what is true for you. Meanwhile, we grow more and more polarized. Republicans and democrats, black and white, Methodist and Baptist, Southern Baptist and Missionary Baptist, on and on go the divisions between people. There is something to be said for individuality and there is a time when division becomes necessary, but as 21st century Americans we are becoming much better at cutting people apart than bringing people together. The problem is most appalling when it is found among otherwise faithful Christians.

We have found so many things to divide us. Racial prejudice. Socioeconomic barriers. Generation gaps. Secondary matters of theology. Differing political views. Sometimes we take small things and magnify them, making them matters of faith, excluding all who do not look or act like us. This is not the church of Jesus Christ.

We have already seen from Paul an extensive focus on unity. That focus continues on through verse 16 of chapter 4. Paul does not want Christians to be content with division. When it happens it is an abnormality, a distortion of what Jesus is doing. As far as denominations go, it does not mean we throw them out but we must learn to emphasize things as Paul does so that faithful Christians of various sorts can learn to work together and truly love one another.

There is a price to be paid for disunity. When we cut one another we show the world a divided Savior. It says Jesus has brought no peace, that Christ has filled no one with love, that there are multiple bodies of believers, one for us and one for everyone else. Hear me again – there are times when division must take place. We cannot compromise with sin. But be warned that sin is not defined by your preferences. It is defined by God and is revealed in his Word.

Hear Paul’s emphasis on the unity of the body. It is a unity that springs from the oneness of God and his work. Ephesians 4:4-6.

In these verses we see the oneness of God. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are three, but three in one so that Christians are monotheists. We see in these verses the unified work of the Spirit, the Son, and the Father as the Spirit binds us together, the Son is Lord over the church and the Father is the ever-present ruler of all things.

Think about the implications of worshiping a God who is three-in-one. How can we reflect that sort of glory? We can scarcely conceive of a God who is three-in-one, and we will never really understand how it could be. There is but one will of God and one overall work though it take many tasks to bring about that work and will. The work of God is to lift himself up as the greatest display of glory in creation and in doing so he is also exalting his people as the demonstration of his glory.

We are called to reflect God to the world, to shine his glory. Do we show his unity by our unity, and are we united around the purpose of bringing glory to God? Do we seek to make him known among the nations? Are we joined together to accomplish the work of proclaiming Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through our witness and through our words? Sadly, this is often not our goal. We become fixated on preserving a building, an organization built on our ideals. Perhaps we seek to preserve racial or socioeconomic “purity” or a certain manner of talking or presenting ourselves or desiring to be known more by our theology or methodology than by our God. A host of competing ideas conspire to entice churches from their true mission. Satan is not threatened by a church whose identity is to be seeker sensitive or old timey or the white church or the black church, but he will rage against that church which dares to strive to glorify the living God.

Paul wants Satan to rage against us. He wants us so faithful that all the demons of Hell will come pouring out after us. This is why later in the letter he tells us how to deal with those demons. But even in all this is goal is not to stir up demons but to lift up Christ. And so he works to bring the churches into unity. In verse 4 he writes, There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call…

Christian, you have been drawn by the one Holy Spirit to membership into one body of believers, unified to one common hope. There is not a variety of hopes and dreams and goals for the church. Paul speaks of this hope in Colossians 1:5 as being hope laid up for you in Heaven. It is the hope of Romans 8:23, we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies, the hope mentioned back in Ephesians 1:18 where Paul reminds us of the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints… It is the hope in the coming of Jesus Christ, in his return to bring his earthly mission to a close. The tender shepherd, the prince of peace, the lion of Judah will someday wipe every tear from our eyes and will make all things new. R. C. Sproul says it this way, “There is the same ultimate goal: the consummation of the kingdom of God. We may argue over the specifics of that consummation and when it is going to come, whether it will be pre, post, or a-millennial. But ultimately there is only one hope: the triumph of Jesus, as the King of kings and Lord of lords.”. This is why we cry out Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus! We cry out as one body, one people, one church of Jesus Christ, looking with expectation to the day of his coming.

While we wait we look upon him as our Lord, our leader. Verse 5 tells us, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. As a church, what directs us? Are we ruled by pragmatism, seeking to do anything that works, reaching out for any method that will accomplish our personal goals? Are we ruled by a desire to please, watering down the gospel to fit the humanistic sensibilities of the world? Or are we ruled by Christ, following the one true Lord of all things, holding to the one true faith, brought together by the one act of proclaiming the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ through baptism?

When Paul says one faith and one baptism he means the significance and content of these are the same for all believers. There are not multiple true faiths. All true Christians share the same faith and proclaim that faith through baptism into the one name of Jesus Christ, our one Lord.

We cannot give in to the individualization of our day, forming for ourselves whatever faith and practice seems to work for us. God has declared what his followers must believe and do. Having Christ as Lord means obeying his commands. There is just one Lord and either you follow him or you do not. The church is made up of those who faithfully follow Jesus Christ as Lord, proclaiming one faith and baptizing people into one name.

One Spirit joining us into one body with one hope, led by one Lord in one faith and one baptism, we are under one Father, as Paul says in verse 6: one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

There are many voices today trying to argue for a plurality of gods, or at least a plurality of personalities. To borrow a phrase from Al Mohler, we become a nation of Hindus with millions of gods. Pick whatever idea you like and worship it. The chief characteristic of mainstream American Christianity is pluralism, the idea that there are many ways to God, many paths to the ultimate reality. Pick what feels good to you. Some claim that all gods are the same. Why so much division between Jews, Muslims, and Christians? We all worship the same god anyway, right? It is true that there is only one God but not everything called god is Him. There is one true faith, one true body, one true Lord, one true God. Everything else comes from the evil one. Paul has told us how people come into fellowship with God. It is not through Islam or the law or meditation or working to eliminate poverty. Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:18, For through him [that is, Christ] we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. Christ is the only way.

But what does Paul mean in 4:6 that God is Father of all? This phrase has two possible meanings. I think Paul means that God is Father of all by creation. As the source, he is the originating factor of all things. The great missionary William Carey is known as the father of the modern missions movement not because he is in some way the parent of modern missions but because he is the originating source. He started the movement. The second possibility is that God is Father by generation or adoption. This cannot be since the only Son of God by generation is Jesus Christ, and the only ones brought into the family of God by adoption are those who enter through Christ. Paul speaks of this in Ephesians 1:5 when he says that God predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.

As Father, God is in a position of power and authority over creation. He made it, he gets to shape it. Creation is not free to follow its whim, it must follow the will of the Creator. You, O man, are not free to chart your own path. You must follow the path set by the one who made you. People go all over trying to make their own way but in the end it is folly. Jeremiah knew this when he said in Jeremiah 10:23: I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps. We also find this in Proverbs 16:9: The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. We walk, but we do not direct our steps. God is in control of that which he has made.

For Christians, this is a source of comfort. We are not charged to find our own way in this world, we are charged to follow his way. We are unified by the purpose of his will. The focus of Christians is not individual fulfillment but Christ exaltation. We further gain comfort by the reach of his authority. At the end of verse 6 Paul says that God is over all and through all and in all. There is nothing left untouched by him. He stands in control over all things. He works his will through all things so that in the end even his enemies have played into his hands. And he is in all things, there is nothing hidden from his sight. Christian, when we set our eyes on his will, we know that he has the power to accomplish everything he has purposed.

As we come to the end, two brief points of application. First, be unified in Christ and with Christ. Strive for unity of the body. Jesus has not made peace between man and God and among men so that we can continue our bickering under the banner of the cross. Show the world that God’s love means something by loving your brother for whom Christ died. And do so while being ruled by truth under the Lordship of Christ. Unity is not achieved by ignoring those things that really matter. Too many people today are throwing truth out the window, agreeing with one another about nothing, and calling it Godly unity. What they have is a monstrosity with nothing of God. Jesus is the prince of peace and there can be no unity without him or without an understanding of who he is, what he came to do, and why he came to do it. Be united with your fellow believers and be united with the truth. There will be times that we disagree on secondary matters, important matters but not the central truths of the faith, but even those secondary disagreements must not drive us apart. Let us be unified in the one faith of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Second, share Jesus with the lost. If our purpose really is Christ exaltation, we must make him known among those who know so little of him. They might have heard about him all their lives but until they receive him they will never know him. And as we said, he is the only hope for peace. The greatest peacemaker is the one who will share the love of Christ, explaining to people the depth of their sin, the futility of their effort, but the infinite value of the Son of God to wipe away every stain and turn the foulest sinner into the purest saint. Let us, Immanuel Baptist Church, be united around the mission of exalting Christ before the world.

The following is our menu for the Wednesday evening fellowship meal on September 2nd.

Pork chops
Mashed potatoes
Black-eye peas
Turnips
Cornbread,
Dessert

The meal will begin at 5:30 in the fellowship hall. Those unable to attend can still come at 6:15 for the prayer time and Bible study.

Cost for meals is $5.00 per adult or $3.00 per child.

Our next meeting will be on September 8th. Our guest will be Kim Houser from Wilson’s Funeral Home. She will be talking about pre-need advanced planning.

Hope you will plan to be there. Bring your Bible and a covered dish.

We need to stay involved with all that is going on at Immanuel. See you this Sunday.

Martha

Ezra 3:8-13

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On August 23, 2009, Immanuel celebrated its 109th birthday through a church Homecoming service. Music was led by Rev. Ken Brookins with Rev. Randy Kuhn bringing the sermon.

Rev. Brookins grew up at Immanuel before going into church music and serving for twenty-five years as music minister of Highland Park Baptist Church in Panama City, FL.

Rev. Kuhn was the pastor of Immanuel from 1984-1992. He is currently pastor of Howard Carlisle Baptist Church in Panama City, FL

Because of the length of the service it is being made available in two parts. Below you can access the sermon portion of the service.

Download Music

On August 23, 2009, Immanuel celebrated its 109th birthday through a church Homecoming service. Music was led by Rev. Ken Brookins with Rev. Randy Kuhn bringing the sermon.

Rev. Brookins grew up at Immanuel before going into church music and serving for twenty-five years as music minister of Highland Park Baptist Church in Panama City, FL.

Rev. Kuhn was the pastor of Immanuel from 1984-1992. He is currently pastor of Howard Carlisle Baptist Church in Panama City, FL

Because of the length of the service it is being made available in two parts. Below you can access the music portion of the service.

On September 6th at 9:45 am we will begin a new Sunday School class for college students and young adults. This class will be led by Auston Conrad and will meet on the second floor behind the sanctuary, across from the youth area.

Come one come all to our soul-winning refresher course Sunday, August 30th at 5:00 pm. Bring your favorite Bible for witnessing and your paper and pen for notes.

This time will be led by Monroe Morris and Chris Roberts and will meet in the Adult III Sunday School area.

Our Night Baptist Women will meet Thursday, August 27th, at 7:00 pm in the home of Mildred Brannon.

Homecoming is almost here! Homecoming, coming home, as we look for those with roots at Immanuel to join with us once more for worship and celebration and lifting up God in his Word. What we will do is an echo of a much greater event we look forward to at the coming of Christ. The glorious homecoming of the saints as we finally leave our pilgrim land and go to the place that has been prepared for us, surrounding the throne of God in Heaven and joining together to celebrate forever the good things of the Lord.

What we do this coming Sunday is celebration. It is a recognition of God’s glorious work in the last 109 years of our history. Our history is what it is because of the strength of God’s hand at work through us. As I wrote last week, his work continues. He is still active and he is still raising up people to faithfully follow and serve him.

Many of those servants are raised up to go on the mission field, serving in places with names like Puntarenas, Shinyanga, Kalanga, Taipei, and Panama City. The fruit of their work demonstrates the ongoing work of God to bring people to himself from around the world. But these workers need support and this year the International Mission Board has not received enough money to send all those ready to go to the mission field.

As part of our celebration of God’s work we will be taking up a special offering to support the International Mission Board. Many of you already give generously to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions but we want to take another opportunity to support the work of these missionaries. Please consider making a contribution to this special offering in addition to your regular offering.