Polemics - Discernment - Ecumenicalism
Randy Peterman · Oct 25, 2015
Defense of the Faith, No. 41
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926518567066

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right, so ecumenicalism. How many of you are familiar with ecumenicalism, if I use that term? Sometimes it's ecumenism. You'll hear it both ways. For whatever reason, my brain really likes ecumenicalism. More syllables is better. I don't know why.

The best illustration I can think of of ecumenicalism is if you were to imagine a race car with four different size wheels at different inflation rates with five people trying to steer the car going 200 miles an hour towards a turn. If that doesn't sound scary to you, then I apologize that car analogies are something that I do well with. For those of you who are not familiar with cars and car analogies, this one's a humdinger. Because if you have different sized tires, you have different rotation rates.

And if you have different inflation levels, you have different abilities to stick to the track. And if you have multiple people trying to fight for the steering wheel, well that's dangerous, right? My dad actually has a story, and unfortunately it's a true one, of driving with a farmer and his wife and my dad was sitting between the farmer and his wife in a pickup truck. The wife didn't like how the farmer was steering and she constantly, all the way to town, leaned over my dad and kept trying to counter-steer for her husband. So my dad only rode with him once.

That was all the times he needed for that to not be a good idea. But ecumenicalism is often the idea that we're going to bring all these things that are not synchronized together in some so-called meaningful attempt to bring unity. And as the subtitle says, they're unity through ignoring disunity. And that intentional ignoring is often a false sense of comfort.

There is a Catholic writer named Peter Kreeft who wrote a book called Ecumenical Jihad. And Ecumenical Jihad said that all people of faith should band together to aggressively evangelize or take out those who don't believe. so that all that are left are people who believe and then we can hash out our differences and figure out who's right. That's one way to create unity is to make a super cluster of religious sects and then take out the non-religious. What we want to take a look at today are several strategies that people take towards ecumenicalism, as well as several prominent groups that promote ecumenicalism.

And then, what is biblical unity? Fundamentally, if we can't talk about what the Bible says, and the Bible doesn't have a better suggestion, then this is kind of a waste of class. So we want to land on the scripture and have that be our focus. So the first attempt at ecumenicalism is the just Jesus idea. We're going to narrow everything down just to Jesus. We just need to find in the church people who believe in Jesus, and we're going to ignore all of our differences.

But one of the problems with that is that truth and doctrine, like Ephesians 4.25, is a non-concept because unity replaces truth. What happens if unity replaces truth? Any thoughts on what that means? If unity replaces truth, What if instead of focusing on Christ, we focus on unity? We say just Jesus, but we're really focusing on unity. We don't have unity anymore. Politically correct, but there's no truth. Okay, go ahead, Crystal. Well, an element of amoralism? Okay, there's amorality. That's definitely a problem.

But if we sidestep truth, what does it matter that we're unified in? If we're unified in error, hey, at least we'll agree. We can smile and sing Kumbaya and be wrong together, right? So we definitely want unity. But while Jesus may be the unifying concept, what does a legalist want everybody to believe?

That they have to be righteous, right? Like, I've got to be righteous and I've got to obey the law and I've got to do it by my own strength. And how about the charismatic? What does a charismatic person want everybody to believe? They want to have the emotional side of Christianity with the experience being the dominating side of things. And then the liturgist, someone who maybe comes from a traditional church. You can put that in air quotes. What do they want everybody to embrace? Tradition, and they want to seek the perfect structured church service. What is the most best possible liturgy and church structure and order.

And those three don't really have the same focus. They'll say Jesus, but the focus is on one of those things. So they might centrally agree on Christ. But after that, what they have as the priority is not the same thing. So it would be a very shallow and temporary unity. Because they don't have the same thing that they're concerned with. So after you run into the just Jesus version of ecumenicalism. Another format is the dialogue format.

How many of you, and I don't like to bring up too much politics during church, but how many of you are familiar with the coffee party? Have you heard of the coffee party? So the Tea Party came out in this very anti-government spending. And the predominantly democratic or liberal counter group was very focused on dialogue.

We just need to bring everybody together and let everybody toss about the problems, and then we can come to agreement. And then political division will go away. And that sounds really fantastic, but entirely optimistic, right? This doesn't look for one person or each person to switch views, so conversion from one idea to another, but instead for both parties to understand each other and possibly to redefine words to be able to agree on the same propositional statement.

We're looking for agreement through discussion and redefining things. How many of you, we talked about this a little bit when we were talking about logical fallacies, how many of you have run into Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons who say, we're Christians. They say, oh, we're Christians. But they define the word Christian actually quite differently. So the definition isn't the same.

But if we can talk about things and come up with a propositional statement where we agree with the words, even though they don't mean the same thing, then we can have unity. Isn't that wonderful? I'm going to try not to throw up in my mouth, right? That's just bad stuff, right? So I've got an example here, and this is one that we've seen in various documents. The first propositional statement is, all men are born sinners. Can we support that from Scripture? Yeah, I think we can. How about, all men will eventually sin.

That's a different statement, isn't it? But there are groups who, for various reasons, because of what they'll call the age of accountability, will say, OK, you're not born a sinner, but you've become a sinner. And so those don't agree, right? So they'll come up with a third statement that will be slightly more vague or less specific. And it'll say, all people sin by not setting a starting point both groups can sign off on it.

Are we unified yet? Did we reach unity? Or did we just come up with a great sidestepping of the key issue? Dialoguing to bring unity doesn't necessarily bring unity. It can bring ambiguity. But everybody agrees with it, so it's OK. Not literally, but that's the strategy. There's another opinion, and this is not an active form of ecumenicalism, but there's a third kind of nuance to it, and that is that experience or time or culture will erase some division. Can anybody think of things throughout history that there was division and then after a time that went away or was lessened?

We just replaced it with something else, right? I think you'd be hard pressed to find any major denominations today that would be promoting slavery, for example, in the United States. But historically, people use the Bible to promote slavery. And I think that's erroneous.

But the idea is that, well, if we let time and culture shift, the problem goes away. How about feminism and views of gender in the Bible? There are some folks who just try to, let's not bring it up, and let's just let the culture kind of define how we deal with gender and roles. And after a while, enough conservatives will just simply die, and the problem will go away. That's the theory. I don't think it's a biblical idea, but it is at least a theory.

So how many of you have heard of Evangelicals and Catholics Together? Anybody familiar with that organization? It was more prominent 10 to 15 years ago, but it's still around. There are a lot of famous authors who signed the ECT doctrinal statement, the Evangelicals and Catholics Together doctrinal statement. J.I. Packer and Pat Robertson Not theologians who are often quoted at Holly Hills, mind you, but theologians nonetheless. The ECT Doctrinal Statement includes statements like, All who accept Christ as Lord and Savior are brothers and sisters in Christ. Evangelicals and Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ.

What does that sentence or those two sentences do? Those being juxtaposed together, what does that create? Do we have any problems with the first sentence? The first sentence I actually feel is relatively safe. All who accept Christ as Lord and Savior are brothers and sisters in Christ. No concerns with that from me, personally. You'll notice it is broad. It's very carefully worded to be broad. But the second sentence is interesting.

Evangelicals and Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ. What did they do logically with that? They skipped over the Gospel. They didn't define the Gospel. carefully hand-wove some things, or hand-waved some things, and it's like, ta-da! Does anybody feel like that might be dangerous? I feel like that's maybe a high-risk move. I've got some quotes from the Catholic catechism that are here in the next part of the paragraph. And I'm going to read those out loud, because I think they matter a lot.

Article 841, the plan of salvation, also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place among whom are the Muslims. These profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us, they adore the one merciful God mankind's judged on the last day. So does that sound like a good Christian doctrine there? Well, unless you take the biblical concept that even the Jews acknowledge that God is God.

There we go. They're biblical. I could be part of this, I'm sorry. The Catholic Church practices what's called replacement theology. They believe that the Church and Israel are one group that throughout history had a different name. And since they believe they're descendants of Abraham by way of the Old Testament covenant, and Abraham had Ishmael, And Ishmael is also a descendant of Abraham, and the blessing flows through Abraham through Ishmael as well, that Catholics and Muslims are on the same playing field. Now the fact that the Muslims say that anyone who believes that Jesus died on the cross is a fool seems counterproductive, but hey, Don't look that direction. And later in Article 846, the Roman Catholic Church is necessary for salvation. So how is it that you can be a Muslim and be saved, but the Catholic Church is necessary for salvation?

I find that problematic. We'll just say that. It also means, how can Protestants sign this document saying we agree with Catholics? Or even better yet, how can a Catholic send a document saying they agree with the Protestants when there's no agreement whatsoever on these particular documents? So there's a real issue there.

It always amazes me that the Muslims talk about a merciful God when they are such a violent, One of the things that Dad sent me this week is that when he was at the Doha airport in Qatar for a long layover, they have constant blasting of propaganda, Islamic propaganda, with a movie of the history of Islam, complete with beheadings and throat slittings. And this is the merciful God. in the airport. Yeah. Well, I think they would counter that with God wiped out Canaan and feel pretty good about that.

But I don't... It's one of those things where the idea that the Catholic Church would embrace Islam as co-heirs in the heavenlies is really shocking, especially when they would also at the same time reject the Protestant Church because they reject the Pope as their leader. Amongst many other things that they reject. The issue with Islam is an entirely different subject so I don't want to get too wrapped around that.

I have Muslim co-workers and I'm finding it interesting to have conversations with them because we're in a mostly pagan workplace. And so to have someone else be spiritual is actually somewhat intriguing to them, even if we disagree on theology. They're like, oh, I can at least talk to you about religion and you won't report me to HR.

So anyways, ECT and their focus is on bringing unity through definition and then jumping to conclusions. This reminds me of the educational system, the dumbing down of the educational system, where you don't follow, you know, learning and certain practices and getting into the details of, you know, how you create a bridge, you do the mathematical equations and stuff like that.

But you get together as a group and you figure out as a group how you're going to do this. And you don't care whether your equations are right or wrong. I mean, it's all in unity that you're trying to figure out how to do this project. And it's destroyed the educational system as far as I'm concerned. And this is kind of the same thing. If we compromise on what is true for what is... what feels good, or what appears like unity, that's a problem. The good news is that not all of the education system has gone that way. They've really tried to do that with a lot of the systems. There's compromises.

The good news is the government funded a report that says all the standardized tests are causing issues. So we have new standards that they'll create that don't cause issues, right? Let's move on to the National Association of Evangelicals. They were formed in 1942. And below is their statement of faith.

This is the whole thing. So I'm going to read it out loud. Normally I wouldn't read out loud that much material. But this is the whole thing. And the faculty and students at Denver Seminary have to agree with this statement of faith. So we believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative word of God. I don't think there's anything particularly problematic with that statement, so that's good.

We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in his virgin birth, in his sinless life, in his miracles, in his vicarious and atoning death through his shed blood, in his bodily resurrection, in his ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in his personal return in power and glory. We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.

Did anybody notice any missing statement there or some nuance about salvation? This is kind of the Calvinistic, the Holy Spirit has to regenerate you before you Well, maybe that's the thing. It's slightly ambiguous. What do you have to believe to be saved? Let's ask that. This class, I feel like we should have a pretty solid number of people who can say the gospel. Anyone want to volunteer that? Go ahead. Jesus Christ died for our sin. Jesus Christ died for our sin. He was buried, and he rose again. OK. On the third day, according to the scriptures, right? 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4. Yep.

But this sidesteps what's required to believe for salvation. It's carefully not stating that. We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life. I actually think that's an important bullet point, having this week had a discussion with a guy who's Lordship Salvation, who really by what he says, wants people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, and never seems to talk about the empowering of the Holy Spirit. We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost, they that are saved under the resurrection of life, and they that are lost under the resurrection of damnation, and we believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ. So there is that unity principle, and it's focused on Christ. All unity has to come through Christ, so while that is a possibility, I don't think it's as specific as it could be. So what's missing from this statement besides the Gospel?

Is there anything else that's missing in here? There's a lot of stuff. Where does Holly Hills fall in the doctrinal statement sort of things? What do we have going on in Holly Hills? Our doctrinal statement is it tries to be terse and thorough at the same time. So that's kind of a fun problem to have. But thorough is probably better than hand-wavy and broad as far as doctrine is concerned. The next group we have here, and this is one that I grew up with.

My grandparents supported Billy Graham, on my dad's side at least. Billy Graham's crusade does something that is unfortunate. When they come in, they gather the Catholic Church and as many of the Protestant churches that will come in and work with them to put together the crusade. Then they tell the people that come forward, go find a good church. I pat them on the back and say, go find a good church. Except we just discussed Catholic theology. If you come and you see various people around you, and you can imagine, alright, this is not very fictional, but imagine with me, that you came forward at the Billy Graham crusade, and someone hands you a piece of paper so you could sign your name and fill out the information so Billy Graham can keep in touch with you, and they're Catholic, and they say, come to church with me, if you're a babe in Christ and you know nothing, and all you've heard is the gospel, it's probably likely that you're going to connect with somebody. You're going to feel like, wow, I was spiritually born right now. This is a really big deal. I'm emotionally charged up. And you're going to connect with this person.

And you're not equipped to know what a good church is. But they're going to tell you to go find one. And that's a real problem. Because spiritual growth, in many cases, is lacking as a focus in a lot of churches. And they've not been equipped to know what that is. They don't know what a good church is. So does the Billy Graham Crusades typically partner with the Catholic Church? Yes, they do. Do they what? Say that again. Do they partner with the Catholic Church? They partner with the Catholic Church, yes. And Protestant churches. So there will be a mixture of those.

Excuse me. Another section here, Religious Tolerance. How many of you have been really tempted to rear-end one of those cars with those co-exist bumper stickers on it? Is it just me? And I know that's violent and terrible, but it's a joke. That's a secular movement. We're going to talk about tolerance and coexistence or whatever else.

But the whole idea is instead of ignoring doctrinal differences, they're going to ignore the entire swath of differences between religions. Which is, to me, pretty radical. I mean, we talked a little bit about the difference between Islam and Christianity, but what about Hinduism? Hinduism has a lot more in common with atheism and evolution than it does with Christianity or Islam. OK, that seems like a pretty important difference there.

But we'll all just coexist, because really, what does that bumper sticker say? Who wants to summarize that bumper sticker philosophically? It's all lies. None of them are true, so get along, idiots. That's what they're saying. which is why I have to walk in this or drive in the spirit and not rear-end it. The bumper sticker is a silly one because by definition we all exist. And we are all there together. So there you go. It's a ridiculous bumper sticker all the way around.

And most of them are rather mutually exclusive. Communism is not going to coexist with Christianity, with Islam. The differences are not minor. It's not like, you know, sometimes we split hairs on certain things, and that is a tendency of human beings, but this is not just splitting hairs and minor details. This is the foundation of each worldview is ignored.

And the last section I've got here is one I kind of, I almost didn't put in here, I almost took it out, but there are lots of communities and cities that have community Bible studies. And what ends up happening in a lot of the community Bible studies is this idea that we're going to just talk about high-level doctrines, we're not going to get into deep nuance where the differences are, probably talk a lot about love, maybe do special studies on marriage or parenting or whatever else, and the attendees agree to disagree, but we're just going to come hang out together. That doesn't mean that believers coming together who disagree on things and having Bible study is the worst thing ever, but it can be part of an approach to ignoring those doctrines and ignoring those differences for the sake of coming together, but not for resolution.

So after all of that, let's talk about the biblical view of unity. I think that's obviously what we need to land on, is what is it that the Bible says. So let's take a look at Colossians 3, verses 12-17. This is only one of multiple places where unity is discussed. Before we dive in, let's ask one important question. Why are there scriptures over and over again that discuss unity?

Because it's important. Okay, it's important. Crystal? Because it's something that is outside of anything a human can know outside of Christ. It's not inherent in the flesh. The flesh is divisive. Any other thoughts? We're supposed to be unified under one head.

The other thing that I find slightly encouraging, at least from the sense of we're not alone in this book, is that they were wrestling with issues of division in the Church all over from the get-go. And so the Apostles, inspired by the Holy Spirit, had to write these letters, sometimes gently and sometimes firmly, like in the book of Galatians, talking about division and separating error from truth. So when we look at Colossians, it's one of only multiple places in the scriptures where we can see these divisions cropping up and then how the Apostles deal with them. So Paul writes in Colossians 3, So as those who have been chosen by God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone.

Just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.

So where is it that the body gets unity? Where does it start with? Psalms, Hymns, and specific Psalms. Well, Paul here is talking about unity because we were chosen by God. He starts out with that. Hey, you know that jerk across the pew from you? Not in this church, mind you. No one's a jerk in this church. But the jerk across the pew that you're having division with, they're chosen.

OK. Well, first of all, God loves them. God chose them. And then he says, put on a heart of compassion and kindness and humility and gentleness and patience. He hasn't gotten to dialoguing yet. Bearing with one another and forgiving each other. So, how do we have this kindness and compassion and this patience and this gentleness? By walking in the Spirit. By walking in the Spirit. Ephesians 1 through 3. Ephesians 1 through 3.

Let's read Ephesians 1 through 8 because that's good. We're going to try to spend as much time as we can in the Bible for this part of the class. Ephesians 1, you're saying chapters 1-3? But the thing is that Ephesians 1-3, if we look at Ephesians 1-3 and just kind of scan over what's here, what does Paul do in Ephesians 1-3? How does he address this problem of the church in Ephesus needing some information? What does he do in Ephesians 1-3? who they are in Christ.

They start off with that as the foundation. Now he's going to correct them on marriage and correct them on spiritual warfare and coming together to stand against Satan and all of the other elements that are Ephesians, but he starts out by telling them In Ephesians 1-4, just as he has chosen us and him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.

And he keeps going, of course, because this is a massive run-on sentence. One of the beautiful things in that massive run-on sentence The unity of God the Father, the unity of God the Son, and the unity of God the Holy Spirit is emulated and expressed so that the believer understands what that unity is. That unity has a model, has an example in the Godhead. But when we come together in the body and there's division and we start out with the you are positionally secure, this is who you are in Christ. That's an okay starting point.

It's doctrinal, it's provable through scripture, and it's explicit and clear, so we can discuss that. Now, when the division comes, our foundation is the scripture, not our rationalizing things and our pontificating That's one of my favorite things to see Christians do, is the extrapolated deep dive. Well, we're done with the scripture, but I think this is how this is applied, and they go off the deep end. It's very easy to do.

I was really good at it. I'm probably still good at it, and I just don't know it, and the Lord's going to show me where those places are. But we have the character in where we talk about the Godhead and who God is, we talk about His work in the church and bringing those people together.

Galatians 5.16, if we're not going to do the things of the flesh, which cause division, we walk in the Spirit. So we have unity because of who God says we are, and we go back to those things. So when we talked about and worldviews in the earlier part of the class this year, one of the things we talked about doing is going to the root issue, the root division. But we have to start in agreement on who we are in Christ first, and then move forward. How about evangelicals and Catholics together? So we're Protestant. I would say that we're not actually Protestant. We're just biblical Christians, right? That's the coined term. Does the Catholic Church teach Ephesians 1 through 3? Literally. Do they say that we are fully adopted and fully secure in our position once we believe the simple gospel and that we don't have to go to their church building to be saved?

No. So we can't come to agreement on these root issues here And that's a critical point where, if you're going to have unity, it has to be on the text of the scripture. It needs to be reliant entirely on what is revealed, not on high-level derivative statements. It needs to be at the root of the issue. So, unity is first by God's choice, and then by approaching things from the character, as Paul described, that he says we have in... I'm missing a page. That's special. Here, I'm going to grab the handout we have. My printout at home is apparently special.

The principle of being bound together is something that we are bound together in Christ and we are tied together in Him. What do you notice about verses 15, 16, and 17 thematically? What is one word that shows up in all three of those verses? And they're not marked in your handout, so I'm sorry, because that would mean you might need to look it up in your Bible. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. I'm sorry, did I say it was in all three of them?

Actually, it is thankfulness. So thankfulness is a strange theme for unity, or is it? So what does thankfulness require? Submission. OK, submission. Knowledge. Knowledge, OK. So let's think of a scenario where you've been thankful. Were you alone? as a party when you're thankful? No. So at least two parties are involved, right? And you had to recognize that there was a need, or a scenario where somebody bestowed upon you. And then you had to, that recognition of the other party comes within the recognition of their act of service, or their generosity, or their giving a thing. then you have to apply that humility to say thank you. So there's this quality of thankfulness that comes in here that has to do with a very honest recognition of the relationship that you have with another believer. Even where there might have been disunity on something, the Lord has made us chosen. He's given us the spirit to implement these character attributes or these these noun ideas.

There are a list of nouns of things that you're doing. Let's read that list of nouns again, just for fun, because when you think of them as verbs, and I'm blaming Craig on this, because it took Greek class. I actually care about nouns and verbs now, and I apologize for how nerdy that is. But it is fantastic. Let me read this list and think of them as nouns, not verbs. So we're reading this, not the whole passage again. So as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Not verbs, nouns. What does a noun do versus a verb? See, so nerdy. What's a noun? How does a noun compare to a verb in this context? name of a particular place or thing. It's a name of a thing. But it is an overarching description of a concept, whereas in a verb, it's what you are versus what you do. And that's a much more succinct answer than I was thinking of. But if we put on a heart of compassion, it's not be compassionate. Paul doesn't say, be compassionate.

He says, put on a heart of compassion. That fills a whole strata or quality of thinking and behavior. Putting on compassion, putting on kindness and humility and gentleness and patience, those are full concepts and ideas that spread out. It's not just, hey, go be nice to one another. Be kind. Random acts of kindness. Another one of my favorite bumper stickers. How about not random?

Paul doesn't want random acts of kindness, does he? He wants very consistent kind behavior, empowered by the Spirit. When we talk about the character of God, we talk about the fact that compassion is His character, that kindness is His character, and they are not just His behaviors, but they are His character. And so what Paul is saying here, it seems, is that He's saying, have the character of God. Which is what we're trying, what he's growing in us. What he's growing in us, albeit slowly.

And the last sentence in this cluster of verses, he says, whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. In word or deed, whether it's the noun or the verb. Whether it's what you're saying, it's whatever you're doing. Giving thanks through him to God. We're doing it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that right there, excuse me, that right there is a challenge to the flesh. I need a glass of water. It's a challenge to the flesh, but not a challenge to the spirit. If we have humility, oh man, this is not good It's empty. Otherwise, I think. Yeah, we still are giving water.

Yes. All right. Philippians 2 1. Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joys complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. That's a good one. Yeah. I agree. Oh man.

What's really interesting about the talk about unity, Mike's going to be talking about, I think from John 17 this morning, which is Christ's prayer and that we would be one in Him as He is the Father. Right there is where it begins. It's not just Jesus, it's all in Jesus. You might say.

How many times in scripture did you see Jesus going to the Pharisees and saying, we need to sit down and discuss this and see if we can't come up with some kind of statement that will bring us together. I can't remember once he did that. Pharisees and Jesus together. Or the Sadducees or any of the other religious people. How easy that would have been. easily done that and come away with this ecumenical thing where everybody was in agreement. But agreement was not his purpose. So let's ask one last question here, unless other people have comments. Is the point of this class to say that we should be separatist? No. OK. It's definitely not that.

While we're talking about division between error and truth, it's important to recognize that the unity comes in Christ in submission to the Scriptures and the work of the Spirit, not through ignoring truth, not through ignoring the Scriptures. When I was in high school, there was a guy I went to church with who was really anti-theology and anti-seminary, because he went to seminary and he learned theology. He said, we don't need to talk about doctrine because doctrine divides. And that was his theory. If we don't talk about doctrine, we won't be divided.

I guess that's technically a possibility, although humans are good at finding other areas of division, whether it's hygiene, or clothes, or some other thing, music, I guess. But if instead we talk about the doctrine and we come together in unity, with the purpose of the scripture being our authority, that can be unifying. And the spirit will work in our lives and unify us and bring us together. Not through ignorance, not through looking the other way, but through the scriptures and God's word. The elders have, on multiple occasions, had to sit down and spend months looking at God's Word together and talking about certain doctrines and hammering it out to one agreed-upon statement based on deep study of God's Word.

Patiently, working together. trying to figure out, is this the right word? Is this the right way to say this? Is this what God is trying to reveal to us? And I think that's an important quality at Holly Hills, that the elders have that humility and that patience to do that. But that's the same thing that we should be striving to apply in our lives as believers, abiding in Him.

All right. That's all I have prepared. Are there any other questions, thoughts, things you wish I'd have said? Things you wish I didn't say? Sometimes there's those. All right, nobody's raising their hand so we'll close in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for your revelation of who you are and who we are in you and that we can be united in the scriptures and not through fleshly means but by spiritual means, by the word and by your character working out in our lives. We thank you and we praise you for this truth and we thank you for this time together. We do pray as believers that we would seek unity in biblical ways so that we can continue to grow in you as a body and as a light to the world. In Jesus' name, Amen.