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Matthew Porter: Welcome to Key Life. I'm Matthew Porter, executive producer for Key Life, and we are in day two of our journey through a sermon from Steve called Harmony in the Band. Yesterday, Steve teed up the idea that we have to get it together before we get going, pulling in powerful Scripture from both the Old and New Testaments.

If you missed it, hope you'll take a listen because Steve makes it crystal clear that unity in the church is a big deal to God, and that lack of unity interferes with us completing the mission given to us. Once again, all of this is brought to you by The Vault Project, our ongoing effort to digitize and preserve classic sermons from Steve going all the way back to the early 70s.

You can access and support this work for as little as five dollars a month. Find all the details at keylife.org/vault. I'll tell you more about the project shortly, but for now, let's dive back into our sermons for this week. It's called Harmony in the Band and it's from 1988. Here's Steve.

Steve Brown: It has to do with parity. It has to do with the fact that we simply can't get unified enough to strategize for the whole world that those who have never heard might hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Maybe when you were in high school or college you read Sartre's play, No Exit. You remember there were three people who were being ushered into hell on this particular occasion, quite surprised that this wasn't the kind of hell they expected. You will remember in this room there were no windows, there were no outlets, and they found much to their consternation that they had no eyelids. They were faced for all of eternity to face one another, and that was it. Sartre was making the point that hell is other people.

Ladies and gentlemen, hell is other people unless you understand the principles and you can put them together. George Whitefield, a man of God used greatly by the Father in an explosion of God's grace in the Great Awakening in our country, was asked one time the secret of his power. You need to know that he reached across doctrinal lines. He refused to be sectarian. He stood on the courthouse steps in Philadelphia and he said, "God, how many Methodists are there in heaven?" Silence. "How many Presbyterians and how many Baptists and how many Anglicans?" and there was no answer. He said, "God said there are only Christians in heaven."

Whitefield was asked why he was used in such a great way and this is what he said: "The partition wall has for some time been broken down out of my heart, and I can truly say that whoever loves the Lord Jesus Christ, the same is my brother and my sister and my mother." The question before the house is how do you deal with other people?

Just as an aside, you folks at Key Biscayne are better than anybody else that I know about dealing with this text in a proper and biblical and loving way. I know of no church in America more unified than this church. You ought to come to our elder meetings; they are absolutely wonderful. If you've ever been an elder in another church, the reason you don't want to be an elder in another church is because you don't have that kind of time. You stay there discussing the color of the pews until midnight and people really get ticked at one another about it. In five years in this church, we've never had a session meeting, maybe one exception, that's gone beyond 9:30.

I wish you could have been in there last Tuesday night. We had a very divisive issue with which we dealt, and I want you to know the love and the unity with one another was absolutely incredible. You see that in the congregation too. You see it among the deacons and the women in the church. You see it in the staff as we laugh in staff meetings. God has done a wonderful work in this place.

I love it. I love coming back to this church from being away at other churches because I know that we're not the same. We're not cookie-cutter. I don't expect you to live my lifestyle. We're not demanding that sort of thing, but we're unified because of Jesus Christ. The reason I'm going to take so much time on this text is simply because if Satan's going to attack, he's going to attack at that place, at the place where we have a reputation, at a place where we are being faithful.

Without further chitchat, I move the previous question. First, I want you to see the imperative of caution. You'll find that at 18:15a: "Moreover, if your brother sins against you." Please note that the phrase "against you" qualifies all that Jesus is saying in the rest of this text. Jesus is not declaring open season on sinners in this text. He is not giving a boon for busybodies. Jesus is simply saying that if your brother or your sister has something against you, the qualifying phrase and I don't want you to miss it.

The church, ladies and gentlemen, and if you haven't discovered this you will, often attracts neurotic people. Don't think that's bad; that's good. We're all neurotic in one way or another. This is a healing land, ladies and gentlemen. This is the place where people come to be accepted and to be affirmed and to grow and to heal, so we're all folks who are sinners who are neurotic in one way or the other. The danger is that the neurosis spread to other people, that the neurosis becomes a sickness in the church, that those who can't be affirmed or accepted any other place will then use the church as a place where they wield their weapons, their neurotic weapons against their brothers and sisters in Christ, and that simply can't happen. Jesus says don't give those folks reign.

Jesus says this: "I am not declaring open season on sinners. This is not a boon for busybodies. You must qualify everything that I am saying with the phrase 'against you.'" Recently I got a letter from a man who was highly critical of our church. You need to know that I love to write caustic letters. It's one of the great emotional releases of my life.

I learned quite early in this church that if I want to send those letters I can't show them to anybody on the staff or any of the elders or they'll stop me before I get it in the mail. I type them myself, lick the stamp, put it on the envelope, and walk to the post office and put it in the mail before anybody can stop me. We got a letter, pages of criticism by the fact that we laugh in our worship services, that we don't conduct proper, reformed, tight worship services, that we do a lot of things that really are not glorifying to God. In this letter, this particular man said as a ruling elder in another state, and he named the church, "As a ruling elder in so-and-so, I feel it my responsibility to share my concern with you."

I wrote him back and I said, "I have no idea why you as a ruling elder in another church feel a responsibility to share your concern with me. I as a ruling elder at Key Biscayne certainly feel no responsibility to listen to anything that you say." I want you to know he was probably shocked at that from a pastor, but it's important that we very quickly identify neurotic areas and that we, as lovingly and as kindly as possible, make sure that they're dealt with. Jesus is not declaring open season on sinners.

Lawrence Spivack on Meet the Press one time received a letter from a woman who said, "Why don't you smile just once? You're always sour." This is back in the days when he was the moderator of Meet the Press. One Sunday he really worked. He didn't usually listen to those kind of letters, but on this particular occasion, he worked at making a very warm smile to the cameras. When he got off the set of Meet the Press, there was a telegram waiting for him from the same person with one statement. It read, "Don't do it again."

There are people around like that who will find something wrong with something everywhere. If you're looking for something wrong, you're going to find it. Good heavens, if you're looking for something wrong, you're going to find it. If you're looking for something wrong with me, you'll find a lot. If I'm looking for something wrong, I'll find a lot wrong with you. If you're looking for something wrong with this church, there's plenty here that you can go after with a vengeance, but Jesus qualifies it by saying "against you."

I remember one time as a young pastor, and it was a very immature thing to do, and as I've gotten older I know how immature and silly and sinful it was, but I was serving a church in Boston and I'd been there six months. I wrote up my resignation and called all the elders together. We met one evening, I put the resignation on the table, and I said, "This is my resignation. For six months, you've been looking at me. You've been deciding whether you like the things that I say and the way that I live and the ministry that I conduct. You've been examining my family and making certain ascertainments about my family. You have been measuring me in the balances and I want to know whether or not you have found me wanting. Over those six months, I've been looking at you. I've been watching your demeanor and your ministry and your walk with God, and tonight before this meeting is over with, we're going either decide to have a marriage or break the engagement."

That was stupid. One of the reasons it was so immature was because if we had really been honest and I'd looked at all the bad things that were wrong with them and they looked at all the bad things wrong with me, we never would have had the kind of successful and loving ministry that we had together in that church for so many years. If you're looking for something wrong, ladies and gentlemen, you're going to find it. The point is just this: this passage is not meant for you to go after your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Matthew Porter: Thank you, Steve. That was Steve Brown in a sermon called Harmony in the Band from way back in late 1988. If you're just joining us, we're going through that entire sermon and I trust you're enjoying it as much as I am. Tomorrow, we'll pick up where we left off today and Steve will explain the necessity for confrontation. You heard me, so be sure to tune in to discover what that's all about.

As I mentioned earlier, the special teaching this week comes to us from The Vault at keylife.org/vault. The Vault is our solution to what could have been a big problem. We have thousands of sermons from Steve that were recorded on cassette tapes and before that, reel-to-reels. That's great, except that over time those tapes degrade and eventually will be lost forever unless we intervene. That is exactly what we're doing, investing a lot of resources to digitize, restore, and curate these timeless messages of grace. Get all the details and learn how you can help at keylife.org/vault. That's V-A-U-L-T.

When you think of prayer, do you think of something that's pretty and proper? If so, you might want to rethink that. At least that's what Chad Bird says. We recently spoke with him on our talk radio show, Steve Brown, Etc. Chad's new book is called Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms. If you ever struggle with prayer or with feeling like you can't be 100% honest with God, you need to hear this conversation and we will send it to you on CD for free.

Just call us right now at 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That's 1-800-539-5433. You can also email Steve at keylife.org to ask for that CD. Or if you want to mail your request, then just go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses for the US and Canada. Again, you're just going to ask for the absolutely free CD featuring Chad Bird.

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