The privilege of ministering God’s Word to our local church here in Castleton, NY, again came my way recently. It was an opportunity to speak to the empowering of God’s work in God’s people in the coming of the Holy Spirit.[3] In preparation, my meditations took me to Acts 8-11. I’m grateful to God for several important truths that emerged from that study:
- The Holy Spirit creates and empowers only that which expresses God’s mind and heart. Examples of this can be found throughout creation, but especially in the Church as the Body of Christ.
- The Church fully alive in God’s Spirit goes together where God is going, and does together what God is doing. Examples abound in every corner of the world.
- The Holy Spirit is powerfully working in our world today. Hetakes one and all who come to the Father through Christ and baptizes us into Christ, making us ONE in Him. He gives gifts of grace to His people that we might build life-bridges to one another, and those who seek to know God. He takes our diversity born in creation and broken by sin, and weaves it together into a beautiful mosaic of loving fellowship.
The Holy Spirit creates and empowers only that which expresses God’s mind and heart.
Because we tend to measure everything based on what’s in our own minds and hearts, rather than in God, we can fail to recognize what the Holy Spirit wants to do with us.
Reflecting on these Scriptures recently while spending time at my kid’s cabin in the woods just outside of Dolgeville near the Adirondack State Park, I noticed my little dog Winston looking out the window at a world unlike what he has at home. I’m not sure if he was wondering where he fit in with all of it, but suddenly I was struck with the amazing diversity in God’s creation.
There on the handle of the patio door out of which Winston was gazing hung some flash cards identifying the various plant life bursting forth all around us. In that wonderful area red oak, white oak, beech, sugar maple, red spruce, balsam fir and more can be found among the trees. There are clover plants, lady’s slippers, pickleweeds, and poison ivy – and perhaps thousands more kinds of plants carpeting the wooded floor and surrounding the rocky East Canada Creek river.
It’s a wondrous place flowing out of God’s Creation in the first beginning. It reflects his great delight to create diversity, but it also tells us something else. It tells us that God unifies creation in Himself so that it becomes one ecosystem working together, one Creation that He identifies as “very good.”[4]
As God created a world bursting with different kinds of animal and plant life, planets, suns and stars, He also turned his genius to humanity. First, God created us as male and female, but that wasn’t enough. He went on over time to scatter us over the face of the earth and out of that scattering to create a multitude of languages, cultures, skin colors, and communities. Yet, at the heart of every family and nation, in all our diversity, we remain ONE humanity longing for reconciliation with our One Creator God.[5]
As Adam and Eve emerged out of the dust in the Garden, who did they “see” first? Was it not there Creator forming them? And didn’t their hearts tell them they were created as unique human beings to glorify their Creator, and then, as they noticed each other and the world around them, were they not united in mind and spirit to believe in their Creator and enjoy fellowship with Him?
From that day until now, the only unifying principle that works for mankind rests in the fact that we have ONE Creator who created us ONE humanity to reflect His own Person.[6]
God is one Being, who exists in three distinct Persons.
This is the doctrine of the Trinity[7] that is so foundational to our lives as Christians. The created order of diversity unified in God reflects God Himself who is three in one.
So, why should it be any different in the Church? Shouldn’t we expect incredible, beautiful diversity here as well? Yes, but of course, that’s only part of truth. We can’t truly harmonize our differences unless we seek oneness of heart and mind in Christ.
This is what God’s Spirit is doing and this is where He is going with us. Will we go along?
There is no division of heart and mind in the Trinity. And so, the Holy Spirit of God creates and empowers only that which expresses God’s mind and heart.
This is the only reason it’s possible for us to embrace a sweet and powerful harmony of mind, will and voice in surrender to the Lordship of Christ.
Recently, we had the privilege of witnessing one of our brothers being baptized. As he was baptized, my son-in-law Dirk, the pastor-baptizer said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father” (followed by affusion of water on our brother’s head); “I baptize you in the name of the Son” (affusion); and “I baptize you in the name of the Holy Spirit” (affusion).
The moment was a beautiful reminder of Jesus’ words in Matthew 28:19-20 where Jesus commands His followers to go, making disciples of all nations (notice diversity), baptizing them into the Name (singular) of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Tri-Unity). After baptism, Jesus said, we continue the discipleship process by teaching the newly baptized how to walk in the ways and words of our Lord.[8]
When we are baptized, we are participating in a naming ceremony. From that time on, each and every one of us bear the one Name, the singular Name of the Holy Trinity – pronounced as “Father, Son, and Spirit.”It’s what the true Christian answers to – similar to the way I answer to the name David Allen Ewert.
Though as colorful and diverse as humanity is found around the world, all followers of Jesus are ONE with other believers, bearing one Name. You and I have been born again into Christ’s Kingdom by faith, baptized by the Holy Spirit and with water, and now we are part of the Father’s one, forever family.[9]
The Church fully alive in God’s Spirit goes together where God is going, and does together what God is doing – in a broken, divided world.
In 1971 Bill Barber came up with a tagline for Coca-Cola that became a number one hit: “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.” [10]
After 54 years of trying, how are we doing?
Rather than less, there seems to be more and more “Us versus Them” in this world. Tribalism and nationalism divide us… Cultural values collide continually… Pride, fear, narcissism, misunderstanding, desire to control shatter relationships into disconnected pieces… Convictions develop along sharply divided ideological lines… All these tend to divide us and push us apart, creating invisible but dangerous gaps between us. We take refuge and find safety in staying with our own kind, and keeping everyone else at arm’s length.
This vision of unity in mind and heart for a beautifully diverse, but extremely divided world, is one the world has dreamed about for a long time, but every time we’ve tried without God to bring it into existence we have failed. Why? Because without grounding that unity in the oneness of God Himself and the oneness of his plan and purposes to unite all things under Christ, it’s an impossible task.[11]
Acts 8-11 lays out four beautiful examples of how God brings unity of mind, spirit, and voice into the lives of believers in the midst of all this sin-laden brokenness.
- In chapter 8 we see Philip moved by God to reach the seeking heart of an African man traveling the desert road to Gaza. That Ethiopian was considering a passage from Isaiah 53 and Philip was able to introduce Jesus Christ to that man from that Scripture – a tremendous act of God’s Spirit to reach across cultural and national barriers.
- In chapter 9, dangerous Saul is converted to beloved Paul by an encounter with Jesus on his mission to Damascus to hunt down Christians. The chapter illustrates how God moves his people into potentially dangerous situations to rescue and redeem those He has chosen to be his instruments of peace. Ananias and Barnabas become beautiful examples of people who fill the gaps, face the fears of their comrades, and move the whole body of Christ toward unity and peace.[12]
- In chapter 10, Peter is sent by God to the home of a Roman Centurion who heads up the Italian Cohort there in Joppa. This is a shocking and powerful illustration of God crossing cultural barriers. Peter is the leader of the Church and God shows him and us in dramatic fashion that if He, God, wants to save Gentiles as well as Jewish people, who are we to argue?
We must go where God is going and do what God is doing if we hope to walk by the Spirit of God.
Differences in country, social status, culture, and philosophy does not stop God and He will have it not stop us.
Acts 1:7-8[13] – “He [Jesus Christ] said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or dates which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.’”
The Church is the only place we can glimpse where the world is going according to God’s plan.
In the Church, we see “The End of Us vs. Them” – the end of us against them, us contrary to them, us opposed to them. In the Church, God wills it to be always and forever “us AND them,” or better Jesus Only. In the Church it is never supposed to be “Us Vs. Them.”[14]
What is the Holy Spirit so powerfully working in the world today?
The same as He’s done from the beginning, because HE, GOD, has not changed. Wherever He’s working in all our great diversity and division, we will find the fruit of His presence in “unity of Spirit.”
And The greater the diversity, the greater the miracle to the praise of His glory.
IMPOSSIBLE GAPS ARE BRIDGED BY GOD’S POWER…
Great gaps grow up between us – even between God’s people. But as God’s Spirit falls upon us and rises up within us, we are moved to actively, sacrificially bridge the gaps between people, to break down the walls, and to pursue peace to the best of our abilities. And God Himself is glorified, as we live out the Name we bear. The Spirit of God works to transform our hearts, giving us a willingness to change – to become one with God and with each other.
The Holy Spirit is transforming us into the Good News Tellers for a world groaning under strife and division!
So, in step with God’s Spirit, let’s build life-bridges to Christ!
- Seeking His gifts
- Showing them Christ
- Filling the gaps
- Keeping in step
Seeking His gifts
The Holy Spirit delights to gift us with grace that bridges the gaps – gifts of personality, opportunities of position, lines of communication, favor with others, and perhaps especially, our approach to one another when confronted with differences (“gaps”).
The Scriptures teach that the Spirit God gives each a gifting that is meant for the “common good.” This is because as believers He has baptized us into ONE BODY – the Body of Christ worldwide.[15]
Showing them Christ
We know from the teaching of Jesus in John 14, that HE is the only way to the Father, the fullness of truth and grace, and the life in the spirit for everyone who believes.[16] But we also know that speaking of us as a unified and Spirit-baptized Church, He has appointed us to go into the world and do what He did –all over the world so that his Kingdom work is done on a massive and time-consuming scale far beyond what happened during his sojourn on earth![17]
This is true for each of us today as we begin to see each other differently – as fellow believers who bear the image of Christ as essential parts of His Body. Diversity has grown among men and women worldwide, but the work of the Spirit far out-paces that diversity in His power to draw people of all kinds, from every place on earth together as one in Christ.[18]
Filling the Gaps
Are we willing to be sent by the Holy Spirit as Ananias, Barnabas, Philip, and Peter were willing? There are gaps between people seeking reconciliation with God and others, and God’s Spirit continues to move each of us in our own unique ways to bridge those gaps with understanding, love, and Spirit-inspired truth.
And so Paul, he himself rescued from division and controversy by the brothers of Acts 9, writes in Ephesians 4 that we are to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility & gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” [19]
Keeping in Step
The Spirit moves us then to bear the fruit of the Spirit toward each other, moving us ever closer to an incredible unity – a harmony “of the Spirit.”
The Spirit of God draws all of us broken, divided people together to the Father, by way of faith in the Son – moving us in step with his plan throughout all of history toward the same end: unified in mind, body, and spirit with our Shepherd King, the Lord Jesus.
“God is no respecter of persons”
The Lord Jesus Christ alone stands at the door to heaven (“Door of the Sheep”). But there He stands with arms wide to all colors, cultures, languages and tribal legacies. ANYONE, and EVERYONE, who believes in Him is welcome. Jesus receives all as we come by faith and repentance inspired by the Holy Spirit. He gives new life to all who come as the Father gave Him authority to do.[20]
He leads us to the Father’s table where we begin to taste God’s goodness and live in an eternal fellowship of love together.
CONCLUSON
God created us and delights to see the explosion of diversity among us. But He grieves over the sin that has broken us into a heap of disconnected pieces. So the Father sent His Son to take up our nature and BRIDGE the gap between us and Himself, between you and me.[21] We enter the Kingdom of God by way of Jesus Christ, led, inspired, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Then, filled with the Spirit of Christ, we too become life-bridges, working to understand and find harmony and peace with one another. [22]
An enduring picture of grace
All this was beautifully pictured for me during the Easter season at New Hope Church in 2012.
At an earlier elder’s meeting, I asked two of them to bring in a couple of rough lumber pieces and on the Saturday before Easter to lay them out on the floor of the sanctuary in the form of a cross. That they did.
A couple weeks before Easter, I went before the congregation and asked each of them to select a piece of pottery, ceramic or glass that they’d be willing to part with, but hopefully also had a story with it that represented their life.
Finally, on Easter Sunday, I invited the congregation to bring their beloved pieces in.
We spoke about brokenness that morning and how our brokenness divides us and crushes oneness of mind and heart in Christ. We spoke about God’s redeeming love and how He had provided a way for us to bring to Christ our brokenness or soul, our brokenness in relationships, and loss of dreams – to Jesus Christ, who bore them all in his body on the Cross. We spoke about the power of the Spirit of God to breathe life into dry bones and the power of Christ’s resurrection granting us new life.[23]
In a moment of consecration, I invited each person to bring their piece of crockery to the Cross laid out on the floor and break their piece on the Cross.
When the room was silent and the last piece broken, we prayed that God would redeem each and every soul in the room, bringing us to wholeness in Christ and with each other.
It was a magnificent, sweet and tender moment before God, and lives were changed. But, what happened to the broken pieces?
Linda Oltman, an artist in the congregation, and her husband John, trained in civil engineering, gathered up all the pieces along with the wood and took it home with them. A few weeks later the congregation celebrated as a 6’ high, lighted, rough cross appeared on a wall of the sanctuary.
The cross now contained the broken pieces of our lives in a beautiful mosaic of shining color. Individuals crowded around looking for their own piece, sharing the story that piece told of their life. Some began to notice that there were streams (think “streams of life”[24]) woven throughout the crockery with God’s transforming work in our lives inscribed with letter beads.
I have many enduring memories of the incredible fellowship and unity of the Spirit that we tasted at New Hope Church in our years there, but none are more precious than this one. In the adjoining picture, you will see one of our elders sitting with his little girl and explaining to her the meaning of the broken pieces.
That little girl is now grown with children of her own. How I pray that she and all of us will continue to look to the cross, lay down our preoccupation with, and protection of self-interest, and give our lives to the Bridge-builder, Jesus Christ.
When we do, we too can be Bridge-builders for life lived in sweet harmony with one another in the Spirit of God.[25]
BENEDICTION
Now may the God who gives enduring hope and growing faith by the Holy Spirit; Empower us to keep in step with the Lord Jesus; Helping us to live in complete harmony with one another; So that with one mind and one voice We may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Additional Resources
- SERMON STUDY GUIDE
- EVERY TRIBE // Joshua Aaron & Chief Riverwind // Ein Gedi, Israel כל שבט
- The Promise of the Holy Spirit – Sinclair B. Ferguson
[3]Audio: “End of Us vs Them – Dave Ewert with Kerry Mitras and Lelo Levinao”; Service: The End of Us vs. Them| June 8, 2025 | Emmanuel Reformed Church, Castleton, NY |
This past Sunday, June 8, 2025, was PENTECOST, a remembrance of the risen Lord Jesus Christ sending the Holy Spirit to take His place in and with the Church. Without Pentecost, there would be no Church built upon Jesus Christ today. What is Pentecost? 9 key things to know about Pentecost
[7]Podcast: “Knowing the Trinity,” Sinclair B. Ferguson
[9]THE CHURCH’S ONE FOUNDATION – Altar of Praise Chorale
[13] In these verses, please notice unity of mind, heart and purpose between the Father, Son, and Spirit. Is this what Jesus prayed in John 17 we would be ONE in with God and each other?
[14] “Where, if anywhere, is it possible for somebody to catch a glimpse of that reality? The staggering, encouraging, challenging answer is THE CHURCH!” – Alistair Begg
[20] John 5:24; 17:1-3; 19:10-11
[22] Is it appropriate to say that as the Son had the Spirit of the Father, we have the Spirit of Christ with us, among us, and in us? Yes. That’s why we can say that being “baptized in Jesus’ Name” is the same as being “baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Jesus said that if we have seen him, we have seen the Father, and he said all things about him would be revealed to us through the Holy Spirit given to us – whom he would send to us from the Father. (cf. Romans 8:9-17; Galatians 3:26-4:7; Philippians 1:19; Acts 16:7; 1 Peter 1:11)
[25] Song For the Nations | Artist: Chris Christensen [25]| Album: Time To Fly | 1989
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