Price of Unity 1975

2nd Chronicles 7, verses 1 to 3. When Solomon had ended his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord's house. When all the children of Israel saw the fire come down, and the glory of the Lord upon the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the earth on the pavement and worshipped and gave thanks to the Lord.

Never has there been a time when we've been more concerned about the need for unity in the body of Christ than now. It's all very well for people to say, but what do you worry about unity? We already have unity, doesn't the word say? We are all one body, and we can sit around and spin theories about unity, and we can talk about the wonderful things that are happening, and yet the truth is that throughout this earth, all over this city, and in this flock, the saints of God are actually in disarray, that they may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent them. All right, now we're together here today, but are we one? And sometimes we seem to be in beautiful step with each other, but can we honestly say that we're really one? And often we agree with each other in many matters, at least superficially, but can we honestly say that we have unity? Well, the hour is coming.

When saints of God are going to suddenly wake up and find that because they were not in unity with their brothers and sisters, worldwide, city-wide, congregation-wide, they're outside the kingdom. And the door, see this isn't the 16th century, this is the beginning of the end. Matthew 24 is unfolding before our eyes.

Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famine and earthquakes in various places as the beginning of suffering. And we who say we're followers of Jesus are going to be delivered up to tribulation.

It says that. Don't think you're going to escape tribulation. And we're going to be killed and hated.

And there will be false prophets. And because iniquity abounds, the love of many will wax cold. And the gospel of the kingdom will then be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Now what kind of church is going to make it through this kind of tribulation? And what kind of church is going to actually take that gospel out throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations? Surely not this pride-infested, self-centered, nameless thing, divided, splintered, prejudice-ridden, bigotry-infected body of people that calls itself the body of Christ. You know, the people who are going to make it through the tribulation and the people who are going to take that gospel out are a people who are one. Really one.

Now granted, only God can create that kind of unity. We can't have a meeting, you know, we're going to read that book we're all talking about now, The New Way of Living, we'll get some more copies when they're available. You know, okay, so we meet in January and decide, now we're going to be one.

That's not going to happen. We can take a vote and everybody unanimously votes for unity. You know, we'll do it a thousand times and still not have unity.

God has to bring this unity. That's true. But notice how he does it.

God brings unity to the body by causing his glory to come down on the body. Wherever the glory of God comes down on the church, there the saints are in unity with each other. And wherever the glory of God withdraws from the saints, they immediately become divided and scattered.

The glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one. Now, up to the moment, we're seeing only odd flashes of this glory. Sometimes there are a handful of saints at prayer, and you walk into the room and you can feel the glory of God there.

You're at the end of your rope. There's a knock on the door. A stranger walks in, and when he comes in or she, the place is filled with God's presence.

But before very long, we're going to see much more than the odd flash of glory. There are going to be whole fellowships of believers that are just drenched in the glory of God, and that glory is going to go with those people wherever they go. It will go with them to their jobs.

It will hover over their meal tables. It will breathe upon them as they sleep. It will welcome them to each new day.

And wherever you see that glory of God resting on God's people, there God's people are in unity. That the glory which God has given to me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one. But notice when it is that Jesus prays this prayer.

Jesus prays this prayer, talks about unity, and the glory of God bringing us together at that moment when he is about to be offered up. In other words, the glory of the living Father comes down to rest upon the Son and becomes now visible as the Son is sacrificed. And the glory which the Son gives to the saints, his followers, becomes actual in their lives only as they join themselves to that sacrifice.

When Solomon had ended his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifice, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. Now what we see in this passage, if you've got what I've just read, is that first the sacrifice is prepared. The animal is slain and cut up and laid on the altar.

Then the fire of God comes down and lifts up the sacrifice, and then the glory of God fills the temple. In other words, God's glory always follows the fire. I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am straightened until it is accomplished.

And Jesus is talking about a baptism of fire, and that doesn't mean good temples, that means suffering. The most important, the pivotal point in his ministry, and the most important aspect of the whole thing that Jesus did is this baptism of fire. Without the baptism of fire, there can be no baptism of glory.

Now this baptism of fire, which was his cross, which came on Jesus, is either going to touch you and burn you and consume you and change you, or you're not reborn. I don't care who tells you, don't listen to them. Whoever tells you that all you have to do is believe that Jesus died for your sins and then go right on living your delicate, sheltered, safe, compromising, self-righteous, self-indulgent life.

And you can just trust that you're saved. Don't believe that. That's a lie.

If you're going to reach out and take hold of the cross of Jesus, which means you're going to accept a baptism of fire on your life, this means that you are never the same again. This means that you're never going to walk straight ever again in all your life. You're going to have a limp like Jacob had after the angel of the Lord wounded his thigh.

You're going to be spoiled for the world. You're going to be broken and broken again and broken again and broken again. And in this breaking comes your healing.

In your weakness, God's strength is made perfect in you. Now granted there is, so there's no misunderstanding here, there's only one sacrifice for sin, and that's the sacrifice of the Lamb, done once and never repeated. But you never come into union with Jesus, much less with your brothers and sisters, until you, with an act of your will, enter into that sacrifice of the Lamb.

Now the reason for the division and the splinter, all this schism in the body since the very earliest days, is simply because there are all kinds of people who say they are followers of Jesus who refuse to allow their lives to be put on that altar and who refuse to let the fire of God come down and consume the sacrifice. They want the goods. They want power.

They want the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They want victory, but they don't want to share in the sufferings of the Lamb. They don't want to bear reproach for his name.

Jesus, my Lord, isn't it enough, you know, that I accept your death by faith? Now isn't it enough that I reckon myself to be crucified with you? Do I actually have to have people hate me and dislike me and reject me and slander me and give me a hard time? Lord, I'm willing to offer my body as a living sacrifice by faith, but does this mean that I have to experience hunger and thirst and pain and fatigue? Listen to me carefully. If we're going to experience real glory on our lives, then we're also going to experience a real cross. We're going to put our lives on the altar and we're going to let the flame come down and lift them up in order that God's glory may fill the temple.

Now the fire of God means, first of all, broken pride. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrived heart of God that will not despise. And how many of us, you know, look to be very humble.

We put on an appearance of great humility, very self-effacing, but underneath the mask, down under the surface, that pride hasn't even cracked. You know, we haven't shed one tear for what we are. We're going on our own way, looking down our noses at other people, and we're not bending one inch.

And then we wonder why everything we touch seems to die. Would we be willing today to take our pride and put it on the altar and let the fire of God come down on that broken pride and consume it? The fire of God means spent bodies. I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

And this, my friends, is not a religious act. This is a way of life, a daily offering up of our bodies. And how many people today are trying to be Christians with their spirits and secretly pagans with their bodies? See, with their spirits, they're way up there on cloud nine, praising the Lord, having a lovely time.

And with their bodies, they're slouching, they're lying there at ease, or they're glutting themselves, or they're indulging every desire they can think of. Now, our Lord offered up his body long before he went to the cross. Every day he offered up his body to the Father.

That's why he was tired when he sat by the well. That's why he fell asleep when he's riding in the boat. And that's why he was hungry in the wilderness, and that's why he was thirsty on the cross.

Think of all the things that you have kept yourself from doing because you were afraid it might cost you a little bit of fatigue. And then ask yourself whether you're willing to take your body and put it on the altar, and let the Spirit of God come down and show you how to spend it. When we begin to do this, then, we will find that our beds and our dinner tables will no longer be the things we live for.

They will be joy. They're meant to be joy, but they will be nothing by comparison with the joy of spending the body that is refreshed and sweet and quickened with that food. But our meat and drift will be to do the will of him who sent us and to accomplish his work.

The fire of God means to have a forgotten name. Well, this is in the little book, either or, over there. But to refresh everybody, and for those who may not have thought about this before, when these leaders came down from Jerusalem and said to John the Baptist, Who are you? Notice he didn't say, What do you mean? You never heard of me? I'm John the Baptist.

No, he said, I'm not the Christ. Are you Elijah? No. Are you that prophet? No.

Well, then, who are you? Give us an answer that we can take back to the people who sent us. I'm the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord. I'm not a name.

I have no name. I'm a voice. See, now, to be the price, see, of having a voice that is able to point men and women to the living Christ, the price of this is that our name is now lost to the ear and the sight of men, forgotten by men and remembered only by God.

And this goes for the Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul. We think of their names now, but their names were nothing, especially when they were here. And there's still nothing as far as they're concerned.

And how many nameless saints that you and I have never heard of, and we won't until the kingdom is here in its glory, who have accomplished things you and I would never dream to imagine. And the question we need to ask ourselves is, Are we willing to pay the price of losing our name in order that we may indeed be the voice of God crying in the wilderness? Don't say you're willing to pay that price unless you are, because God may very well take you at your word. The fire of God means a transformed mind.

See, now, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove, demonstrate what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Now, when the fire of God gets through with our minds, our minds, my friends, are abnormal as far as the world is concerned. They no longer conform to the thinking of Channel 2 or the Detroit News or Free Press or Bill Bonds or William Buckley or James Taylor or anybody else but the one who emptied himself of glory and took the form of a servant.

See, and then we find ourselves right down in the sewage, living and working among men and women who simply can't understand our thinking. Their thinking is this way and our thinking is that way. And we don't pull ourselves together in self-righteousness and withdraw from them, but we live in the midst of this.

And we find ourselves torn and pulled constantly by people that we live with and work with who want us to go with them when we're having to follow a Lord they can't even see. It's almost like it would seem to be a curse, but it's not, it's a blessing, that our minds are now so fixed that they can no longer think from any other point of view but God's point of view, and that puts you out of joint with the world. See, and when you're thinking and acting from God's point of view, you will never withdraw yourself from the world and surround yourself by a bunch of little Christians to keep yourself safe and happy, but you're going to be right down in the middle of the whole mess and you're going to sweat it out, even as your Lord did.

It's those saints of God who are willing to feel the fire, who are going to taste glory, and who in that glory will come into unity such as none of us has ever dreamed, as the glory of God fills the temple. Are we willing to take our lives and put them on that altar right now and let the fire come? Are we willing? If we are, then let's do it. Let's put our pride on the altar with the Lamb and our bodies and our names and our minds and let the fire fall.

Let's pray. Lord God, we just know that nothing's going to work no matter what we try or which way we go or what new gimmick we come upon until we are willing, Lord God, and you've got to help us to submit to the baptism of fire. We confess to you, Lord God, that we've been pussyfooting around that place where the fire falls.

We've been dancing around the altar when we should be on the altar. Help us to get up there on the altar with our Lord, the Lamb, and join us to his sacrifice and take away from us all the dread and all the fear of death that holds us back. Grant that we, by your grace today, Lord God, may die in our pride and in our bodies and to our names and in our minds that we may indeed this day be raised up out of the waters of baptism and up out of the grave and up out of the ashes to be sons and daughters of the kingdom who belong no longer to themselves but only to you, Father.

We ask it in Jesus' name.