How to Mend the Unity of The Spirit

The point: Use the divinely prescribed medicines to get back unity when we've lost it.

This analogy compares maintaining spiritual unity to maintaining physical health, with three components: avoiding harmful things, cultivating good habits, and seeking medical help when sick. This framework helps organize the sermon's points on avoiding sins, cultivating graces, and using divine 'medicine' for disunity.

by refusing to implement the means ordained by God for the mending or restoration of that unity when it has been fractured. And as I tried to think of an illustration that would help you to hold these things in your mind as a working framework and sphere of reference for your own walk before God and your walk among your brethren, I thought of the simple principle of what is essential in the sovereign will of God, of course, to maintain good health. If you were to ask anyone who has any acquaintance with the patterns that are the ordained means for the maintenance of a healthy body,

7:58 - 8:42 Read in full sermon

The point: Take these three specimen passages seriously as a congregation, or risk grieving the Spirit by failing to maintain unity.

Used to illustrate the Bible's realism in not hiding the sins of even eminent saints, showing that even righteous individuals can fall into sin.

realistic in its teaching it does not hide the sins of the most eminent saints the same Bible that says that when God looked down upon a wicked world right for judgment prior to the flood that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord and yet the same Bible that marks out righteous Noah records the tragedy of his subsequent drunkenness and immoral behavior the same Bible that describes David as a man after God's own heart and has given us in the book of the Psalms many of the expressions of the various

10:45 - 11:28 Read in full sermon

The point: Take these three specimen passages seriously as a congregation, or risk grieving the Spirit by failing to maintain unity.

Used to further illustrate the Bible's realism in recording the grievous sins of a man 'after God's own heart,' reinforcing that sin is a reality even among God's people.

realistic in its teaching it does not hide the sins of the most eminent saints the same Bible that says that when God looked down upon a wicked world right for judgment prior to the flood that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord and yet the same Bible that marks out righteous Noah records the tragedy of his subsequent drunkenness and immoral behavior the same Bible that describes David as a man after God's own heart and has given us in the book of the Psalms many of the expressions of the various

10:45 - 11:28 Read in full sermon

The point: Take these three specimen passages seriously as a congregation, or risk grieving the Spirit by failing to maintain unity.

Used to illustrate the Bible's realism in not hiding the sins of eminent churches, showing that even a useful church can lose its spiritual vitality and face judgment.

dimensions of his devotion to Jehovah records the sordid tale of his lusting of his carnal illicit sexual intercourse with Bathsheba his wretched plotting for the murder of noble Uriah I say the Bible is at times shockingly realistic in its teaching it does not hide the sins of some of the most eminent saints nor does it hide the sins of the most eminent of some of the most eminent churches Ephesus was an eminent church eminent in usefulness

11:28 - 12:05 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin examines Luke 17:3-5, highlighting Jesus' realism about stumbling blocks and the responsibility of those who cause them. He explains the command to 'rebuke' a sinning…

Jesus' image of a millstone hung around one's neck and being thrown into the sea is compared to a gangland murder where feet are set in concrete, emphasizing the severe woe for those who cause others to stumble.

There's the realism. But then with that, he says, there's responsibility, but woe unto him through whom they come. It were well for him that a millstone, the large millstone that is drawn by the ox and grinds the grain, the large stone millstone be hung about his neck and thrown into the sea. It's like a gangland murder where they stick a man's feet in soft concrete and when it hardens, they throw him into Lake Erie.

51:39 - 52:08 Read in full sermon

The point: If a brother repents, joyfully and freely confer upon him the assurance of your forgiveness, letting the sin go.

Used to illustrate how a husband might literally need to ask for forgiveness multiple times in a day for the same sin (e.g., speaking sharply), demonstrating that repeated repentance and forgiveness for the same sin is a realistic possibility and not necessarily a sign of insincere repentance.

And we are to do the same. And if seven times in one day he sins against you, and some say, well, that can't mean the same sin because the repentance wouldn't be real. Well, wait a minute. I know married couples.

57:19 - 57:34 Read in full sermon