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A Unity to be Avoided

A Unity to Be Avoided

Genesis 11:1-9

Contentiousness, strife, factions, disputes, conflict, division; every church member...if he’s been a member for a considerable time...will likely have witnessed some of these. Reactions range from leaving the church to disengagement from the life of the church to aggressive partisanship. Some, exhausted with the strife, just leave! Some, like the lady I spoke with recently respond to these conditions by disengaging from every activity of the church except for worship. She avoided any interaction with her fellow members. She refused to attend any meeting for the discussion of church business or policy. She cast no vote on issues brought before the church. She essentially became a "visitor" at her church. For still others, the fight is on! They choose up sides: There’s the enemy and there’s us! And we’re gonna win! There are also the few...usually long-time members who can’t bear the thought of leaving the church where they were married and raised their children. They grieve over the division and just wish folks could get along!

Ministerially, the church seems paralyzed. Ministries continue, but the life is drained from them. Dutiful members still serve but the feeling of futility begins to creep in. Attendance falls off and giving follows soon after. Very soon afterwards, calls for "unity" begin to be heard. Small groups meet for prayer with "unity" as their theme. Pastors and leaders begin to preach and teach about "church unity" broadly of course, being careful not to point fingers or get "too close’ to actual persons or events. The division is resistant though and that resistance makes "unity," in the perspective of these members, all the more the overwhelming need. Members begin a desperate search for some solution that will bring about the "unity" they believe will silence all the contention. They schedule a "Revival" with a well known evangelist. They schedule a "Singing." They invite some para-church ministry to come to the church and sift through all the problems and provide them with a strategy for unity. They introduce a new ministry which they hope will get everyone on the same page again. In a similar environment, I once heard a gentleman suggest a building project....a huge one at that...with the openly stated purpose being that such a project would result in producing "unity" in the church. Perhaps even more mystifying than this, One Pastor suggested that the key to resolving conflict in the church was outreach! His reasoning was that a flood of "new members" would minimize the influence and impact of the contentious factions within the church and if enough new members came it would eventually drown out the contention of the few. I remember thinking that this suggestion was akin to saying that the solution for a broken leg is to do bench presses and curls and one-legged squats...to so strengthen the rest of the body that it would make the broken leg insignificant. But isn’t the leg still broken! At any rate, as the desperation deepens the motto becomes, "Unity at all costs." It seems that it’s at this point that any Biblical understanding of "unity" is lost. "Unity" becomes merely the cessation of open hostility.

An example of a "unity" similar to this is recorded in Genesis 11.

In Genesis 11:4, we’re told that this unity was built upon a fear of what could be understood as "disunity."

"They said, "come let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name. Otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."

These descendants of Noah, unified, together, and speaking a common language, came to a plain in Shinar and there, perhaps with the vastness of the region and with their underlying insecurity, feared that if something wasn’t done, their unity would be disrupted, so they proposed a construction project....a city and a tower...a name, as a way of maintaining their unity.

The point here is their Unity was rooted in unbelief. God had commanded Noah and his sons, immediately after the flood of waters had abated that they should " be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth" Genesis 9:1 So then their desire for unity and their method for preserving it, noble though their motives might have been, was in direct contradiction to the Command of God and was rooted in fear rather than obedience to God. God said scatter (fill the earth) and they said gather! No doubt they were unified (one) in their decision. The Lord Himself testifies to the fact, "Behold, they are one people..." Genesis 11:6a

"Unity" sought merely as a matter of circumstantial fears and rooted in unbelief is a "unity to be avoided." It is a superficial unity that cannot last. It is also a "unity" that becomes reliant upon our "working" rather than the working of the Lord. Genesis 11:3-4 demonstrates this:

"Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly..."

"They said, "come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name..."

We’ll make the bricks!

We’ll build the city and the tower!

We’ll make a name for ourselves!

I other words, we don’t want division so we better take matters into our own hands! So often this is the mindset behind our efforts to resolve conflict in the church. It might be unspoken or maybe even unrealized, but our actions indicate that it’s true. This is a Unity to be avoided.

This Unity was also idolatrous. Here were the descendants of Noah....a man who found favor with God and was found righteous in his generation; a man who walked with God. Here were the children of Noah who was preserved through the judgment of the flood. Genesis 6:8-9 yet it was a "name for themselves" that they sought. Their aspirations were to penetrate the very heavens! One in language and speech; one in purpose; one in their self-reliance, one in their labor; they elevated themselves above their father Noah and even Noah’s God and sought a name for themselves.

This is also a Unity to be avoided! To engage the people of God in a work that exalts them, their leadership or the church itself is to seek a "name" other than the name of our God and Savior Jesus Christ is idiolatry!

This was a Deceitful Unity. Genesis 11:6 describes the deceitful nature of their unity.

"The Lord said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what the began to do, and now nothing will be impossible for them."

Obviously, unity among men...even an unbiblical unity can experience a degree of success. Implied in this passage is that as one people, united in language and purpose, they made considerable progress toward achieving their goal of a city and tower. So much so that the Lord indicates that if left unchallenged, they would be encouraged by their progress so much so that even more ambitious projects would be undertaken. We know that we are not omnipotent, but success and unity of purpose has a way of deceiving us into thinking that we are limited only by our resolve to work together toward a common goal. How many churches have united themselves around a common purpose or interest? Some unite themselves around a music style or a personality, or a project, or a building. Everyone gets onboard...they are one in purpose! They speak the same language! And like minded folks flock to them in order to partner with them and be one of them! They are successful beyond their own expectations and more and greater projects are born. They think if they can but stay united nothing is beyond their capabilities! Division or disagreement is quickly dismissed and unresolved for the greater goal of a unified pursuit of their common purpose....whatever that might be!

This "pragmatic" and deceitful unity is a unity to be avoided. The reality is that we are not omnipotent. Success doesn’t rest in us alone. (Proverbs 21:30,31) It is rooted in unbelief and rests in self-sufficiency and is idolatrous. Cooperation and successful projects are not a foolproof indicator of Biblical Unity.

At last...this is a destructive Unity. Or at least it was a unity that ultimately resulted in division. Genesis 11:7-8

"Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city."

The one thing they feared, became a reality. Their fear of "being scattered" upon the face of the earth, drove them to embrace a false unity. They rejected the word and purposes of the Lord. They determined for themselves how best to sustain their unity. They trusted in themselves. They became idolatrous. They were deceived by their success and in the end, were confused, unable to communicate, and ultimately scattered over the face of the whole earth!

This is a unity to be avoided!

The Lord demonstrates His sovereignty and the reason our unity must find its foundation in Him in that what He commanded to Noah and his sons.... "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" (Genesis 9:1) He brought to pass!

(Next week’s post will consider what true Unity looks like)

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