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Aug 14, 2016

I Am Not Alone

I Am Not Alone

Speaker: James Gallaher

Series: Sabbath

Category: Sunday Morning

Do you feel like you are walking through this life by yourself? God created Adam with many needs, one of which was aloneness. He created us needy, and He created the ways He wants to meet those needs in us.

Have you ever considered why the Olympics create such a sense of pride in us? It goes deeper than you might think. So deep that it is woven into the fabric of our DNA, a part of the Creator’s design in our life.

Genesis 2:15 “It is not good for man to be alone;”

Before sin, before any separation from God, our heavenly Father allowed a very real condition to be experienced, aloneness.

Then He declared that it was not good and provided the solution by creating “a helper suitable for him.”

The power of this unity cannot be understated. Read at Genesis 11:1-9.

v. 6 The Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.”

Babylon should stand both as a warning and as an encouragement for the church.
- A warning, because success doesn’t mean that God is blessing something.
- An encouragement, because together there isn’t anything we cannot accomplish.

Take a closer look:
- vs. 1 “The whole earth used the same language” = Language
- vs. 4 “Let us build for ourselves a city” = Vision
- vs. 4 “Let us make for ourselves a name” = Identity

The power of unity was not inhibited by the lack of godliness amongst the people. God forbid the church ever use worldly success as the main indication for determining God’s involvement.

The problem Babylon had was they were doing things for themselves and wherever self is involved destruction is sure to follow.

This is the main problem facing the church today: Once self is no longer being served in unity, it seeks only to serve itself.

Paul warns of this in his second letter to Timothy.

2 Timothy 3:1-5  But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.

The appearance of godliness, denying the power of godliness is the problem. We celebrate the strengths of those who are willing to go it all alone in their faith. We begin to avoid anyone that doesn’t agree with my way or my thinking until we end up like the people described in Judges.

Judges 17:6  In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.

We drift until we become islands, separated by vast amounts of water, content to connect periodically missing the need for the unity God intended for His church to have for one another.

The enemy wants us burning bridges, destroying relationships, highlighting differences until at last we are alone. He knows he cannot destroy a unified church.

For us there is safety in numbers; there’s peace knowing I’m surrounded; there’s rest knowing I’m not alone.

John 17:22-23  The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.

Psalm 133:1  Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity!

Paul tells us how to find that kind of unity in a fractured world:

Romans 12:3-10  For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith; if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor;

The church is in need of unity now more than ever. In a world that thrives on independence, we are being called to set aside our preferences and our pride, that we might be perfected in our unity thus revealing the Father to this world.

If together we go with God’s Word as our road map, then there is nothing we cannot accomplish.
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