The real estate has been given. Everybody’s in their own place. And the Bible says that they were given rest on every side. And yet, even in the midst of that rest, there is this threat from the enemy. This this danger and we see this is a parallel for us today.

We are always in fa as a church we are in danger of the threat of disunityity because the enemy wants to do this. He wants to divide Christians knowing that unity is important to God. It it is something that God treasures and values and so he wants to pit Christians against one another. But this is why we’re called to this ministry of reconciliation. So the big idea this morning is all who find peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ are entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation.

Reconciliation. And so if you would, if you’re able to please stand for the reading of God’s holy and perfect word. This is Joshua chapter 22. And I’m actually going to back up just a little bit. I’m going to start in 2143 to help give the context.

But this is what Joshua says here. Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it, and they settled there. And the Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withtood them, for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one word of the good of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed.

All came to pass. Chapter 22. At that time Joshua summoned the Reubenites and the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh and said to them, “You have kept all that Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded you, and have obeyed my voice in all that I have commanded you. You have not forsaken your brothers these many days down to this day, but have been careful to keep the charge of the Lord your God. And now the Lord your God has given rest to your brothers as he promised them.

Therefore, turn and go to your tents in the land where you possess where your possession lies, which Moses, the servant of the Lord, gave you on the other side of the Jordan. Only be be very careful to observe the commandment and the law that Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to cling to him, and to serve him with all your heart, and with all your soul. So Joshua blessed them and sent them away and they went to their tents. Thank you. You may be seated.

Well, just as they had a danger, the danger we’re going to look at in chapter 22, spiritual dangers are are constantly threatening the unity of God’s people. Now, we’re in a battle. We’ve been talking about that. That’s important. We are in a battle.

But it’s always important to remember why we are battling. We are battling out of love for Jesus. And the danger is that Christians who have been saved, reconciled to God, brought to faith in the Lord. The danger is that those very followers of Jesus would forget who the enemy is and would begin to fight one another. That’s a danger that is always there, encroaching at the door.

I read about a church meeting where one lady stood up and said, “You know, I really think the church could use a chandelier.” and a man stood up and said, “You know, I don’t like that idea.” And here’s three reasons why. First of all, we can’t spell that. Secondly, no one here plays that.

And third, what we really need is better lighting. You know, I I’m I’m sure that a church meeting like that has never happened at Graceoint, but but that shows that it’s it’s just misunderstandings a lot of times. It’s miscues. Mis hearing other people and understanding that unity is something that we have to work to preserve. It’s not an automatic thing and sometimes it’s not an easy thing because we have an enemy.

I love how Psalm 133 puts this. How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity. It’s a good and beautiful and precious and right thing when those who have been rescued from their sins and brought into the love of God and know Jesus as their Lord and Savior have unity. They’re of the same mind. They recognize we are in the same family.

We belong to one another. We have been saved by the same Lord. We need to see what a gift this supernatural community is called the church. And never take it for granted. You know, there’s there’s so many ways to belong to a certain group in the world.

There’s so many ways to identify yourself and say this is this is my group. This is my supportive party. And yet with the church, because we all come through the cross, there should be no room for pride. There should be no room for arrogance. It should be we all come humbly looking out for one another because the Bible says we’ve been adopted into the family of God.

That’s something I’ve noticed, by the way, since coming here to Grace. I’ I’ve noticed from the beginning, it feels like family here. And that’s so important. It’s so important that the church is more like a warm family than a cold institution. Many people have been turned away from Christianity.

They’ve been turned away from the church because they said, “You know what my impression was? These people didn’t really want me to be there. They didn’t I didn’t feel welcome from the day I I arrived and and now I I don’t know that I could ever belong.” Many people today say that. And so I’m thankful that our hearts are desiring unity, desiring to love the lost, the hurting, the broken.

But the thing about it is division is on the one hand inevitable. We live in a very divided world. Amen. And Jesus himself said, Jesus is a very polarizing person. And the reason for that Jesus even said even though he’s the prince of peace he said I came to bring a sword to divide people.

Now what he said what he meant by that is that everybody has to make a decision about him. There is no neutrality when it comes to Jesus. Either I’m going to bow to Jesus and surrender every part of my will, everything I have to him or I won’t. That’s where the dividing line is. People are either with Jesus completely entirely or they’re opposed to him.

Jesus said this though that even though people are divided and and really what it comes down to is it’s differing world views, different values, we have different views in this world about what it means to be human and how we’re to live. But Jesus gave this promise. He said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Now, even in that promise, there’s this note of caution that the gates of hell will try to prevail against it. That there will be opposition to the church because if you’re standing with Jesus, that means you’re standing against so many things.

You’re standing against sin. You’re standing against problems that Jesus would be against. But God’s great strategy for the church is that it would grow one disciple at a time and that eventually love would conquer hate. Unity among believers, this is in your notes, deeply matters to God. And it was purchased at the price of his cross.

So this is how much unity is important to to the Lord. In his final prayer before going to the cross, you remember what Jesus was doing on his knees in the garden, he was praying. He was praying and he prayed even in the presence of his disciples. They saw him praying. He’s about to die.

And what is he praying for? The unity of his church that they would be one even as you, Father, and I are one. Paul calls us to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Eagerness. We want to be excited.

We want to be looking for opportunities to promote unity among the body in the power of the Holy Spirit. And here’s something you can count on. Whatever God is for, Satan is against. Whatever God loves, Satan hates. God loves unity.

He loves it when his people are brought together under one banner and one family. And so Satan hates that. And so he’s going to look for every way possible to disrupt, dismantle, and discourage unity in the church. This is exactly what we see pictured in Joshua 22. The unity of God’s people is threatened.

Now, this comes on the heels of seven years where they have been battling together. They have been working as one people, side by side. It doesn’t matter if you’re from Judah or if you are from Levi or from Issachar. We are one. That’s their mindset.

We’re battling together. We’re claiming this land. This is an inheritance. And by the way, in chapters 13- 21, that word inheritance is mentioned 50 times. So God is emphasizing in Joshua that God’s people have an inheritance.

And it’s it’s the land. The land with all its bounty is given to the people of God. This is important. We don’t purchase the inheritance. We don’t earn it in any way.

It’s given to us just as it was given to the people of Israel. And we see that Joshua after they have found rest in the land, every every part of the land has been claimed. It’s been given to them by God. And now they divide it up into 12 tribes. We live in a nation called the United States.

And we’re divided into one nation but divided into 50 states. Well, this one nation of Israel was divided into 12 tribes standing for the primarily the 12 sons of Israel. And just as Israel was called to claim their inheritance, we too are called to claim all that is our inheritance. We as followers of Jesus have an inheritance. And it’s not just heaven I’m talking about.

We have that inheritance waiting for us, eternal life. But even today we get to enjoy the peace, the joy which we just sang about of knowing Jesus. And so we need to live in that inheritance. And it it says that in Joshua 22, you can see on the map those tribes on the eastern side of the Jordan River, the tribe of Manasseh, Gad, and Reuben, they had earlier said they want to settle on this side of the Jordan. They had their reasons for settling with their cattle.

And Moses, when Moses was alive, he opposed it at first because he thought, you know, this is their way of getting out of battling and and they’re just going to they’re going to stay back here when we do all the hard work. And they said, “No, Moses, we’re going to fight alongside all the other Israelites.” And so it was allowed. And then in Joshua 1, we see they kept their word. They agreed to follow Joshua into battle.

And we we read from the beginning of this chapter in 22 how Joshua basically gives them this honorable discharge. You guys kept your oath. You fought alongside us. And so you three tribes, you eastern tribes can go back to your wives, your family, your home, and you can you can be at rest. That was the whole idea.

You’ve done what you were called to do. And not one of the Lord’s good promises failed. Everything seems to be perfect. They’re in the land finally after 47 years, they’re finally resting in the promised land. And you can bet that when things are humming along nicely and everything seems to be working so well, so smoothly, Satan takes notice and he will try to disrupt that.

In your notes, unity and love for one another is our greatest witness to the world. That’s why it’s something that Satan hates and opposes. He knows this is what God calls the church to be. And so he is actively opposing that all the time. You remember that when Jesus on the night he was betrayed, he told his disciples, “This is how people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.”

Love is the answer. Jesus didn’t say, you know, if you marshall all the right evidences, if you give all the right arguments in defense of the faith, then people will be convinced. No, apologetics is important, but that’s not what he said. And he didn’t say, you know, if you get control of all the politics, if you guys control the the social media platforms and all the all the institutions, the major institutions of our world, then then people will know. No, he said this.

This is how people will know you belong to me. It’s your love. Your love for one another and for me that is what will mark you out. Now, we’re about to begin a series on being the body in a couple weeks here. What it means to be the church.

What does it look like? And a big aspect of being the church is being unified in one truth under one Lord. Jesus said, “Our love for one another, our unity as his people is what will impact the world.” If Christians lack love for one another, then all that influence we would have had goes away. If love goes, everything else goes.

And so, we aren’t surprised that Satan wants to divide us. He wants to pit Christians against one another. He wants to find ways that he can needle in there and say, you know, this is this is something you should be jealous over, or this is a reason you should envy that person over there, or this should be something you should angrily call out in another one. All the people of Joshua’s time were at rest. And yet, here’s this danger that would potentially divide them.

It says in Joshua 22:10 that the tribes that were east of the river, we saw on the map, they built an altar of imposing size by the Jordan River. Now, this immediately sent up some red flags for the other tribes because Moses had clearly said that all sacrifices from here on out, now that the tabernacle is built, all sacrifices are to take place through the priesthood at the tabernacle and nowhere else. And here are these guys, these in their minds, these renegades. What are they thinking? They are building this massive altar.

What? They’re trying to have a bigger altar and they’re doing it on their side. What is this? It does not look good. Look at verse 12.

And when the people of Israel heard of it, the whole assembly of the people gathered at Shiloh to make war against them. Now, think about it. They have just been battling for seven long years. They’ve been at war. They know what that’s like.

This was the time they were supposed to be at rest. And already they’re at the cusp of civil war. Brothers, Israelite brothers who had fought side by side are now about to go to war against one another. And the obvious concern is that not only does this mean there’s going to be loss of life, there’s going to be huge problems. But think about how this will impact the world.

What will the watching world think when they see this? You know, they’ll turn to see this and they’ll say, “Yahweh, yeah, if he was really with the people of Israel, then why are they so quickly turning on each other? If he was the God that they claim he is, why do they hate one another? A civil war is the worst kind of war?” Because it not only brings needless bloodshed, but it brings shame on the people who have that civil war.

It’s a shameful thing when brothers fight against one another, and brothers and sisters battle one another. It’s a shameful thing and it brings dishonor to God’s name. And so, in a sense, Satan is always looking for ways to stoke the fires of civil war in a church. He’s looking for ways to divide. He wants to bring dishonor to the name of Christ.

The Bible warns about those who have been influenced by Satan in this way. Titus 3 says, “Warn a divisive person once and then warn them a second time.” Okay, you get two tries, two two warnings. After that, have nothing to do with them. Why?

Because it’s such a serious thing. If somebody’s intentionally trying to cause division, that can’t just be overlooked. That has to be dealt with. You may be sure that such people are warped and sinful. They’re self- condemned.

So because we love Jesus, because we love his church, it’s so important that for each of us personally not to say, you know, my preferences should be first. No, it’s it’s Jesus and his word and his church that should take preference over all my personal preferences. There’s so much in scripture about humility because pride is the antithesis of unity. Pride is the number one cause of division among God’s people. What happens is we we think we know how to do things best.

We think we know what is right and everybody else has got it wrong and so we need to inform them why they’re wrong and why we’re right and we need to do it in a way that makes sure they understand and and we jump to conclusions and we put others down without considering where other people are coming from. This happens so quickly and so subtly sometimes. I love Philippians 2. This is a beautiful reminder. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves.

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Others are to be more significant than me. I’m not to bring in my private agenda or my personal preferences and make that be imposed on others. I’m to look at what do other people need? How how can I serve you?

How can I bless you? What can you be encouraged by? That should be my mindset. Now, what happened in Joshua shows how quickly these problems can grow. Again, they are settled.

This is supposed to be a time of of settling in the land. And if we could just go back to slide three, point three here. Unity is established in love for God and his word. Never compromise. The western tribes understood that compromising God’s word was a serious thing.

And so there’s this zeal and the group is led by this guy named Phineas. Phineas would be the grandson of Aaron the high priest. And he’s seeing what’s happening. And so he kind of leads the charge and he basically forms a group to investigate why did they build this massive altar? What what are they getting at?

Verse 15 says, “And they came to the people of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh in the land of Gilead, and they said to them, thus says the whole congregation of the Lord.” Look, we’re in we’re in unity about what this problem is. What is this breach of faith that you have committed against the God of Israel and turning away this day from following the Lord by building yourselves an altar this day in rebellion against the Lord? See, these guys had seen that God is not one to be trifled with. God is holy.

And by the way, they had just spent 40 years in the wilderness. They had seen what God when there’s discipline, when there’s consequences. They had seen what that’s like. They had seen what happens to cities that God brings down like Jericho. And so, they’re essentially saying to these eastern tribes, after all this, don’t you fear God?

What I love about Phineas is that he has a right fear of God. He reveres God’s name. He treats God as holy. Many people today have no fear of God. The way they talk about God is is so dismissive.

They trivialize God. They treat him with contempt despite the fact that every breath they breathe is a gift from him. Matthew 10:28, Jesus warned people. He said, “Do not fear those who can kill the body but can’t do anything after that.” Here’s the one you’re to fear.

Fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. That’s the one to fear. Several years ago, there was a couple who owned a pet lion. And you know this this lion, they they brought it up in captivity since it was a cub. And one day something tripped in this lion’s brain apparently because at feeding time it instead fed on the owner, the one who loved and cared for this lion since he was a cub.

And one of the aftershocks of that time was people saying, you know, how how did this happen? You know, how did sweet Simba, you know, how did it do this? How could it have turned on the owner? And people reading about this thought, you know, he’s a lion. Lions will when they’re hungry, they will eat whatever they can get.

That’s how a lion operates. And the problem was they lacked a healthy fear of this lion. Now, as a pastor, I know that there is a certain amount of tension that I feel at times when there’s this pressure that I can feel to to want to say something that would be more acceptable, more palatable in our 21st century American culture, right? And then I see on the other side, this is what God’s word says. And this especially, I would say, comes to the four in issues like sexuality.

Now, the main message of Christianity is not don’t sleep with your girlfriend. It’s not marriage is designed by God to be for a man and a woman. That’s not the main message. Our main message is the gospel. It’s the message of how people can be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Now, many people if they’re standing behind a pulpit like this, they can think, you know, maybe so as not to offend, so as not to put people off from Christianity, maybe I can strategically avoid some of these harder demands in scripture and just kind of focus on the things that are going to be more acceptable. That’s a real tension that anybody behind a pulpit can feel. Now, here’s the problem. The gospel touches on every aspect of life. The Lord Jesus is not just Lord on Sunday morning services.

He’s Lord of 247. He He’s not just the Lord of your devotional time in the morning. He is the Lord of your sexuality. He’s not just the Lord of your soul. He’s the Lord of your body and your tongue, what you say.

And to come to Jesus is to be set apart from the world’s way of thinking and living. And really what it is is it’s to finally have a right fear of God. To understand God is Lord. God is the authority over my life. I don’t make decisions purely based on my personal preferences anymore.

I have to make decisions based on who he is. In Joshua 22, we see Phineas fears God. And and we see this because he even brings up he says, “You know what? This is reminding me in verse 17, this this reminds me of the sin at Peor. Well, what happened with the sin at Payor?

Numbers 25 talks about this. This was a stain on Israel’s record while they were in the wilderness. It was this same Phineas who back in Numbers 25 showed zeal for the Lord. See, what had happened is many of the Israelite men had been seduced by these Moabitete women and they they were worshiping idols with them and and going into bed with them. And at one point there’s one Israelite man who just brazenly in front of his whole family, he takes this mobite woman into his tent.

And it says that Phineas filled with the zeal of the Lord gets up, grabs a spear and goes after him. And it says in verse 8 of Numbers 25, Phineas took a spear and rushed after the man into his tent. Phineas thrust the spear all the way through the man’s body and into the woman’s stomach. So the plague against the Israelites was stopped. Now in our modern church age context, we would handle sin differently.

But I want to make this clear though, God hasn’t changed. God’s standards have not changed. What he believes about sexuality and purity and holiness and righteousness, it’s the same. We live in a time where we would handle the situation differently. But look what it says about Phineas.

It says because of what Phineas did, the plague was stopped. God honored Phineas. He said, “This guy actually reveres my name.” Whereas all these others were dragging it through the dirt. And so when Phineas comes and he approaches these eastern tribes and he says, “You know, I don’t know what you guys were thinking.

Building this massive altar, we cannot dishonor the name of God. His heart was in the right place. That’s what we need to see. He was fearing the Lord. That’s what we want to do.

He’s unwilling to compromise God’s standards. And the question for us today is, so what do we do when a Christian brother or sister is is backsliding into sin and compromise? Do we just say, “Oh, we need we need to give them some space, you know, just respect their decisions.” Well, James 5:20 says, “Whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death. And will cover a multitude of sins.

Now, thankfully, Phineas didn’t just charge into battle, although he was a bit of a warrior as we’ve seen. He first says, you know, let’s see what we can understand about the situation. And so, he sends this delegation. He leads this group and he says, why did you do this? Why did you build this altar?

And the people respond. These eastern tribes say, look, it wasn’t because we lack the fear of God. It wasn’t because we want to dishonor God’s name. This altar that you see here, it wasn’t even meant for sacrifices. You’ve misunderstood.

You see, this whole time they were thinking, “This is rebellion against the Lord.” But they had to ask first, “Why did you build it?” They said, “This is a memorial.” And here’s the reason. All those western tribes west of the Jordan, it was easy for them to see themselves as one nation, one united nation.

We’re over here across from the Jordan and we don’t want you guys to forget that we are part of you too. And so we built this massive memorial for you to see and for us to see to remind us that we’re all one nation. Their goal was actually unity. And how bad would it have been if Phineas though he feared the Lord, he had right motives. How bad would it have been if he had led that civil war without first confronting them and saying, “Hey, why did you build this?”

if he had just led that battle. Think of the devastation. Nation torn apart right after all that time of waiting. This reminds us that we as Christians can sometimes misunderstand the situation. We should do whatever we can.

We should go out of our way to preserve unity because sometimes I might not be seeing things right. I might have a blind spot that you can see better. And sometimes it might be that I’m not understanding what you’re going through and I need to go out of my way to preserve that. This is why gossip can be so destructive and it’s it’s warned about in scripture. Gossip is anti-UN.

Gossip damages the body of Christ. It’s like a virus. And so you can see why Satan would want us to gossip about one another. Here’s what it comes down to. If we’re going to be architects of unity, we have to major on humility.

See, pride, again, pride opposes all that unity. Pride looks for ways to battle others, to to win arguments. You know, we’ve all known people who it’s like they enter a room and they’re ready to win an argument. That doesn’t work well in marriages, and that definitely doesn’t work well in the church. We need to look for ways to show grace and understanding and humility.

God’s standards aren’t bent, but that doesn’t mean we don’t seek to understand others. And finally, in your notes, unity requires radical humility and a willingness to open our hearts to one another. So, the question is, how do we grow in humility? And I think the the right way to think about humility is it’s not thinking less of yourself like, “Oh, I’m I’m just such an awful. I’m so terrible that now I’m humble.”

No, it it’s thinking of yourself less. It’s taking the lens off of yourself. It’s focusing on others. That’s humility. And humility, I think, is fostered when we stay close to the cross.

Let me ask you, are you still amazed by grace? Does it still astound you to think God even when I was his enemy? When I was in rebellion against him, God came after me in love, he redeemed me. He came, he sent his own son whom he dearly loves and always will love and he died for me. Bible says that because of our rebellion as a human race, we were once on a collision course with the wrath of God.

That was going to be our destiny. Eternal separation from God, despair and and the worst kind of disunityity, separation from God. And God because of his great love for us, because he wanted us to be a part of his body to be long to him, he came in the person of Jesus was a sacrificial lamb of God. He was treated as if he was guilty of all the sins we’ve committed. And he bestowed on us through faith the righteousness by which we can have unity with him.

Does that still awaken love in your heart? I think this is a powerful reminder from this story how important it is to see how deeply God has loved us and to know that the more we think about how much God has loved me, the more I’m going to be able to love those around me. I’ll close with this question. Do you see yourself as a minister of reconciliation and unity in the church? This is the high calling we’ve all been called to, every single one of us, to be a minister of reconciliation and unity.

Gracious father, we call you father. That’s a gift. Thank you for adopting us as your sons and daughters. Thank you for making us one in your son. For uniting us as one body in the Lord.

Lord, we know there’s there’s many members, many gifts, man

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 5,381 words.