Amen, thank you Nikki. What a beautiful testimony and. What God does in a heart, the son of the living God. Pursues a rebel heart, convicts that heart of sin, convinces them their need of a Savior. They respond, God saves him and. Then offer praise to the Lord for what he's done. Thank you for that. Testimony this morning. Open your Bible to Romans 15. Romans 15. And here, as I mentioned, we're looking at. The goal. We come to this point and. And we're looking at Paul's conclusion to what he began in chapter 14 and verse one, Romans 14, one and Romans 15, seven are kind of like bookends that sort of hold this thought together all the way. Through those verses, the apostle has introduced his subject He's argued his point and now he's giving his conclusion. And as he begins to wrap things up, he gives instructions that every member of this team, team church, we might could say, he's giving instructions that all of us should understand. These are instructions that all of us need not only to grasp, but need to be working out daily in our lives If we're going to live in the kind of harmony that God intends for us to live in as a body of believers. We're going to begin reading in verse one of chapter 15. And listen to what the Apostle Paul writes here. After the 23 verses that deal with our reception of one another, He says, we then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the week and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification. And listen to the example of Christ, even Christ, please, not himself, but as it is written. The reproaches of them that reproach thee fell on me. And he's quoting this passage from the Old Testament. And he's quoting the passage and he's saying here that the reproaches that fell on thee. Now, who's the thee? He's talking about God. And the reproaches that fell on thee. fell on me. The reproaches of them that reproach thee, that thee is God. These reproaches from people about God. Christ is saying they fell on me. He took those. For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Now, the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like minded one toward another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore, receive ye one another as Christ also Received us to the glory of God. Want us to look today at. Being like minded, though different. He's spent a whole chapter talking about our reception of one another, even though we're different and now he's wrapping it all up together and he's going to tell us why we ought to do that. And we're going to look at this, as I mentioned earlier, around the topic of our like mindedness, our unity, what God intends there. Let's pray and ask the Lord to help us. Dear Lord, we need your help today. We need the clarity of your spirit to open up our eyes. and cause us to understand what You are telling us today through Your Word. We need tenderness in our own hearts to receive what You have for us today. And we pray that You'll give to us in these moments now an openness to receive from You. Give us a concentration to focus on What You want to say to us as we look into Your Word today. And we pray that You'll give us a will to respond to what You desire us to learn today. Give me clarity, Lord, as I open Your Word today. And may Your Spirit teach us. And we'll thank You in Jesus' name, Amen. I want you to notice this morning three different aspects that relate to this like mindedness, this unity that we have. And the first one you see in verse five, and it's a prayer, it's a prayer for unity in our differences. Now, the God of patience and consolation grants you to be like minded one toward another. There's no question that the emphasis here is on unity. You see it in verse five, the like minded one toward another. And we see it two different times in verse six, where he speaks of one mind and one mouth. So he says, be like minded one toward another with one mind and one mouth. So there's no question that the emphasis in these verses that we're looking at here is an emphasis on oneness, an emphasis on like mindedness, an emphasis on unity. And what does it take for a group of people from different backgrounds and different maturity levels who see things differently in some of the positions that we take. What does it take for a group like that to have a sense of oneness? Paul has, in a sense, been answering that question all the way through Romans 14. Maybe we ought to first mention what it does not take, what it does not require in order for a group of believers, different backgrounds, different maturity levels that lead us to different positions that we take on certain things. What is it? What is required for that group to have a like mindedness about them? Well, here's what it does not require. It does not require that we all arrive at the same conclusions regarding our positions. It doesn't require that we can have a like mindedness about us, even though we may view certain things in different ways. You'll note that Romans 14 begins with two groups of people. Remember, it began with the strong and it began with the weak. Those were the two groups of people. The weak person, remember, was the person whose conscience was registering something as sin that the Bible did not specifically say that about it. And the strong person is the one who has who has a maybe we could say a less sensitive conscience about that particular thing. But if you remember last Sunday night when we were answering some of the questions that we had about Romans 14 that you submitted, we were clarifying that we're not talking about a degree of spirituality here. We're not talking about someone who the strong is not saying here is the spiritually strong person and over here is the spiritually weak person. The difference is there is the way that our conscience is registering. Someone may have a strong, be a strong believer here in the sense that his conscience is not registering this is wrong. But over here, the same person over here is it would be considered the weak person because his conscience here is registering this thing to be sinful. We're not talking about degrees of spirituality, but we are talking about two different groups of people. There's a strong and then there's a weak. And you see that those two groups all the way through chapter 14. And when we get into chapter 15, we still have the same groups of people. We still have a group that's called strong and we still have a group that's called weak. And that's why when Paul opens up in chapter 15, he says we then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves. We still have these two groups of people. And every local church has these groups of people. And our unity does not require that one of these groups goes away. It doesn't require that. It doesn't require that one of these groups changes their positions. You'll note all the way through, as we've been talking about this subject for months now, Nowhere is Paul telling a group of people you've got to change your position. All the way through, Paul has been giving us instruction on how to live in harmony within those differences that we have. Now, it may be that our position needs to change. It may be that we have taken a position about something And we may say, my conscience doesn't bother me about that. And so that's OK. And the fact of the matter is our conscience ought to bother us about that. If we are taking positions that are not in line with the scripture and we feel like we're OK there because our conscience doesn't bother us, something's wrong with my conscience. I have not fine tuned my conscience within the confines of the scripture. And there's the position that I may be taking on something is a faulty, wrong position because it's outside of what the scripture is teaching. Remember, the conscience is like a sundial. And if that sundial only registers correctly in light of the full sun. You put it in shade and darkness and it doesn't register. You cast a little shadow over some of it and it's not going to register correctly. You've got to have the light of the full sun. And for my conscience to be registering rightly. It's got to have the picture of the full sun. So there may be it may be that my conscience does need to change. It may be that my conscience is not in violation of the scripture, but my conscience is grasping something that the scripture does not necessarily say it's taking. It's not a violation necessarily, but it's taking positions further down the road. Now, what God really tells us in his word. And it may be that my conscience needs to be retrained. And that's a very challenging thing. And it takes a long time to do that. But it may be that that needs to be the case in our lives. But the point I want to make here is that's not what Paul is telling us in this passage. He's not saying here, OK, now this group's got to change. We started with two groups. He's in chapter 15 now with two groups. And he's telling us this is the way we live in harmony. And so this is the prayer that we see in verse five, that the God of patience and consolation, you notice that same words you see in chapter 15 in verse four. where he says the things that were written before were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort. Those are the exact two words, same words that you see in verse five. Word comfort is translated consolation in verse five. But it's the exact same word. We get that through our understanding of the scriptures. And now Paul says, now, may God give that to you. May God grant that to you, that you are going to be like minded one toward another. You're going to have a spirit of oneness about you. Even though you're different. And we ought to all pray for that in our lives, we ought to all seek that in our lives that we would be like minded even in the midst of our differences and our differences remain. We can and we must. Have a spirit of unity. If we're going to honor God. But I want you to notice that Paul also reminds us here of the purpose of this unity, look at what he says in verse six, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Where is Paul going here? What is the purpose of the like mindedness? And that's what we see in verse six. So do we do we have what Paul's saying here? Paul's saying here, listen, may God, the God of patience and comfort, the God of patience, of endurance and the God of encouragement, make that God give you a like mindedness. Even though you don't see things always exactly the same. May God give you that kind of like mindedness in order that when you see the word in verse six, the word that that's a purpose where it's the word in the Greek text that we would translate in order that. May God do this for this purpose in order that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify God. You see, we could look at Romans 14 and Romans 15, and it would be easy for us to conclude that the ultimate purpose of these chapters is unity. In our differences. But I want you to see the larger picture that Paul gives us here. We ought to have this mindset and we ought to pray this way and we ought to seek a spirit of oneness. Not simply because it's nice and it's easier to live with one another that way. We should not have the goal for us is so that we can live in harmony because it's so much easier to live when we're not fighting. Now, that's true. But that's not the ultimate goal here. The ultimate goal, what Paul is really striving at here. Is so that we can with one mind and one mouth do something. You see what he's saying? It's not simply so that we can just get along with one another. There's a much bigger picture involved in this. The ultimate purpose is so that we can worship together in harmony so that we can glorify God, the word for glorify, the word glory there is the word that has the idea of our praising It has the idea of our worst. It is what Nikki, a sense of what Nikki just saying to us. Here is what God did. The son of the living God did this, he pursued my rebel heart, he convinced me that I was a sinner and he saved me. And he saved other people just like that. And he brought us all together. And now we have opportunity with one mind and with one mouth to give this God who did this in our lives, to give him praise and to give him worship and to give him glory. And it's hard to do that. I cannot do that if I'm fighting. with my fellow brother. We get our word doxology from this word. A song of praise, that kind of attitude, that's what we're talking about, and God is not honored when his people are fractured by divisions. That does not honor God. When a Christian family is fractured and mom and dad are fighting, that doesn't honor God. When the kids are fighting among themselves, are fighting with mom and dad, that doesn't honor God. There's not a spirit of unity, there's not a like mindedness in that home that doesn't honor God. It doesn't honor God when in the church there's not a like mindedness. But instead, we're fractured by divisions. And this is this one is upset with this one or this group with this group, or there's this tension that's going on because there's not a like mindedness. We've magnified differences and we've promoted the differences that we may have. Rather than rallying around what God has done and is doing in our lives. And let me tell you. If we want to live in a spirit of like mindedness. That is a battle. You are going to have a unified home unless you are willing to do battle to have that. You won't do it. If you approach your home in a casual kind of way, you are not going to have a unified home. If you approach the relationship that you have with your spouse as a well, whatever, you are not going to have a unified home. You're going to have to do big, big battle to have unity. And the same thing is true in a church. We have to have we have to, as individual believers, do big battle in order to live together in harmony in such a way that truly is going to honor God. Because while each of us has We have this sin nature inside of us that loves to please itself, right? That's what our sin nature does. It loves to please itself. It's always looking out for itself. And when you see blessing in somebody else's life, your sin nature says, well, why doesn't that ever happen to me? Our sin nature is always rising self to the surface. It's always making self the consideration. And on top of that sin nature, we have a godless world out there that's telling us we ought to live that way. We ought to have it our way. We deserve it. And so we've got this sin nature that's by its very nature is promoting it ourselves. We've got a world that's encouraging that in our lives. In addition to this sin nature that we have, we got this flesh that's in full agreement And every single time we pamper ourselves or we choose to please ourselves in this way, our flesh loves that. And our flesh says, keep it coming. And so we've got a nature that's promoting self, we've got a world out there that's encouraging that, and every time we stroke ourselves, our flesh is loving it. And then we've got a devil that's just fanning those flames in our lives. That's why if you're going to live in harmony with your spouse, you are going to have to do big battle to make that happen. And if you if mom and dad and the children are going to live in a home where there's unity and Christ is truly honored in that home in a genuine way, everybody's going to have to do big battle. And if Bible Baptist church or any local church, if we are going to live together in harmony with like mindedness. We've got to do big battle. Because our flesh is telling us something completely different, the devil is telling us something completely different. But God is not honored when we are fractured by our divisions. But He is honored when in the midst of that diversity, we can stand shoulder to shoulder and we can lift with one mind, one voice to God. You often see a spirit of unity manifest itself in a local body of believers by the way they sing. And you've seen that. You've been in places just like I've been in places. And the singing of the church family was like you are at a funeral dirge, right? There's no heart. There's no joy. You're just kind of eating your way through this thing. It's just some mechanical thing that you stand up at this time and you do. But there's no life there, all the life has been sucked out. By the self-pleasing. It's like a leech that just sucks and sucks and sucks and sucks for its own good. And a church that has a lot of leeches and everybody's just sucking out the life, consuming everything upon themselves. There's a life there. And when the body gathers and the body tries to sink, it's all a mechanical routine. And the reason it's so is because this one has just sucked out all the life toward themselves, and this one's done the same thing and this one's done the same thing. And do we not see that in our homes? You take a husband and a wife and that that that husband is a leech and he just he is just sucking every little bit of life out of his wife and everybody in that home. For his own good. Or the wife is doing that or the children, they're just sucking out from everybody they can. For their own good. There's no harmony there. There's a lot of fighting and bickering because it's not happening the way we want it to. But. When we begin to look at other people and we begin to minister to other people and we begin, instead of trying to suck everything out of them, instead, try to give everything that we can, and there's a whole different picture that comes there. And when we gather together, even though we may not dot the I and cross the T exactly the same, there are some areas where we have to do that. And it's our joy to do that. When we look at the gospel of Christ, when we look at what God has done for us, when we look at the promotion of the word of God, God's preservation of his word for us. When we are taking doctrinal truth and we can rally around those things, we ought to be doing that. But the things where one may draw this line over here and one may draw this line, those are not the things that we build. Fortresses around. No, we can live in harmony. Just just just like a symphony. That symphony is made up of a lot of different instruments. And when those instruments are all like minded. They are following the mind of the conductor. The end result of that is something very nice and very beautiful. But if they're not doing that. If there's a hundred self wills. And every instrument is playing its own melody and it's doing its own thing. There's a lot of chaos in all of that. And we understand that. But when there's a like mindedness. When there's one mind. And there's one heart, what a beautiful sound that is. And you go to places that that church may be the most immaculate place in town. It may have all of the luxuries there. And those people stand to sing, and it's just hollow. Or you can go to a place, and that place may be one of the most modest church buildings you've ever seen in your life. But there's a group of believers together in there, and they stand up to sing, and they just raise the roof. It has nothing to do with the acoustics in the room. It has nothing to do with the kind of building that's there. It has everything to do with what is going on inside. It has everything to do with a like mindedness. There is a spirit of unity among that group of believers. And when they sing, they sing. They sing from their heart. And what a picture that is to a watching world. You let a believer come in, come in, come in an assembly like that, and that believer listens just to what they are, the way that they are singing. And that believers looks and says, I don't know what's going on there. I don't know where they got what they got. But I love to have that. And then you take that same lost man over to an environment over here and let him see that hollow mechanical. And there's nothing that draws his heart there. There's a big, big difference. So Paul then. Gives us this prayer For a unity amongst our differences, he gives us. A purpose, here's why, so that we can, with one mind and one voice. Glorify God. And then he ends in verse seven, giving us a picture. It's like he says, let me let me just paint you a picture here. Listen, where for? Receive ye one another like this. Here's the picture as Christ also received us. To the glory of God. Paul wraps up the whole thought now and wherefore in verse seven here takes us all the way back to chapter 14 in verse one. For we're exhorted there to receive one another. And he says, OK, now Christ is example. How did Christ receive you? How does Christ receive any sinner? He receives us freely, he forgives us all of our sins. He never reminds us of what we did and where we were wrong. Instead, we come to Christ, just like Nikki sang to us this morning. He convinces us of our sin. And we respond to that. And He does such a work in our hearts that we want to give Him praise. We recognize I am a sinner and Jesus died for my sins. Because of my sin, I'm headed to hell, separated from God, and I have no hope to gain heaven apart from what Jesus Christ did for me. Man, when somebody really grasps that, you can't help but praise God. You can't help but have a song in your heart that God did for me what no one else could do for me. And it completely changed my destiny. It changed my future. It changed me not only right now. Or maybe I should say not only down the road in the future, it's changing me right now. So our oneness is dependent upon our doing for fellow believers. What Christ has done for us. And that's exactly what Paul says now, now, listen, wherefore, receive you one another just like Christ received you. For the strong to receive the weak, he's got to stop despising the weak, treating him like a nobody. Quickly dismissing. With no tolerance, the position that he holds. And for the weak to receive the strong, he must stop condemning, he must stop judging, as the word the word is there, it's the word that means condemned. He must stop condemning that person that holds that doesn't hold the same position on this particular thing that he does. For even Christ, please, not himself. Now, we have to continually remember, is it. Was it Ken Carrier who was a fellow, I think it was Ken Carrier, maybe it was someone else from the wilds, just two choices on the shelf. Pleasing God or pleasing self. That's the way it is in our lives. If I'm going to have a self-pleasing life, and that's the direction I'm going to go, I'm going to be a person who doesn't know much unity, no matter what environment I'm in. But if I have the mindset that I am going to please God in my life, then the fact that someone else draws a line differently than where I would draw a line, that's OK. The fact that my brother mentioned several different examples, but the fact that my brother may just he he is not going to play rook with me. He just does not do cards. Well, that's OK. We can live together in harmony and I'll never play rook with him, and that's OK. Or a host of other different things that we could. That we can live, God intends that we live together in harmony. And what has to be going on in our lives, in each one of our lives, we have got to have a growing, vibrant relationship with God. We've got to be nurturing our own heart with God. And we all know that in our lives. When we're doing that, When we're nurturing the relationship with God, the way God intends, we live together in a lot more harmony. But when we're not doing that and we're going our own way, life is tough in every aspect. Now, let's ask ourselves this morning. Are you living in a spirit of oneness? I mean, is that really what you're striving for? Are you striving for that in your home? Are you striving for a sense of unity? Are you striving for a like mindedness in your home? Are you striving for that in your church? Or is there some bent that you are just insistent on here? And they are going to take your position, or you're just not going to get along. Well, that will not be that way. We ought to be able to receive. One another in. Even though we may live. With differences on some on some particulars, let's pray together. Your head about and eyes are closed. Let me just ask you this morning. Does this harmony jolt you? I mean, when you are out of harmony. Between you and another believer. Does that just really? That's just hard for you to live with. Whenever we are out of sync. There ought to be in our lives as a believer, a red flag that is just constantly waving. And everywhere we turn, we can't get away from that red flag. And we are not able to worship, we are not able to glorify God with one mind. We can't do that with one mouth, and when that is not true for us, when we are out of sync, Whether it's with a spouse or someone else in our home, or whether it's in our church family, there ought to be huge, huge red flags. And God pity any of us who may in a position to be in a position where we just are, we're just accustomed to living that way. That's just life, and it just doesn't bother me. Well, it ought to bother us. Something is deeply wrong if it doesn't. So we ought to be a people when. There's no harmony. That it quickly arrests our attention. And we're not willing to live with that. Dear Father. Would you minister to our hearts this morning what we've considered? All of us know the challenges of our flesh. And the desire to please itself. And we pray, Lord, that you would. Convict us. And may we respond. To what you're wanting to do in our lives in regard to our selfish ways. And may we live together in harmony. In a way that truly honors you. Bless our invitation time as you see fit and we'll thank you in Jesus name.