Last week we had our first ever Fellowship Sunday. If you weren’t here you missed out on some great food!

We looked at Mark 2 and we looked at how Jesus said he came for the sick not the healthy. We also looked at the simple fact that we are all sick and need a Physician but so do others and we have to have them meet our Physician Jesus. This week we continue our series: Tough love


Before we dive to far into our message hear this:
1.God has a message for you not the person that is not here.
2. Let God speak to you not me.
3. If God asks you to live differently today do something about it. Remember that little changes are what creates growth in Jesus

Have you ever had an enemy?

:3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Cor. 10:10-17 I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Nothing should separate Christians.

The Christmas song Silent Night has long been a cherished part of our shared culture — in 2011 it was even granted UNESCO cultural heritage status. But the power of the carol was never so clear as on Christmas Eve 1914, when fighting on the battlefields of World War I stopped - and a lone soldier's exquisite voice made history. "It was impromptu, no one planned it," Stanley Weintraub, the author of Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce, told Daybreak South's Chris Walker.
"It has to begin with something, and it did begin with elements of shared culture. If it hadn't been for shared culture, certainly there would have been no Christmas truce." Weintraub said it started with German officer, Walter Kirchhoff, a tenor with the Berlin Opera. "He came forward and sang Silent Night in German, and then in English. In the clear, cold night of Christmas Eve, his voice carried very far. "The shooting had stopped and in that silence he sang and the British knew the song and sang back." Gradually the troops crawled forward into No Man's Land, said Weintraub. The song had a deep impact on many of the soldiers. "Soldiers … wrote home the day after to their families, to their wives, and to their parents, saying, 'You won't believe this. It was like a waking dream.'" "They recognized that on both ends of the rifle, they were the same."

We should not be divided because of:
1. Country
2. Race
3. Our theological leader

1 Corinthians 1:13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

You can’t divide Christ when he lives in all of us

1 Corinthians 1:18-31
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

:18-19For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

God is still a mystery to those that don’t believe

Jesus’s death on the cross is enough

1 Corinthians 1:26 -31 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Tough:
1. Not everyone wants unity
2. Some think they are better than others

Love:
1. We are to be the administrators of unity
2. You are to lower yourself to others

Jesus our example:
1. He went to Jews and Gentiles
2. He was born in a stable and died on a cross