United We Stand — Answering The Call - A Redeeming The Time Blog

United We Stand

By Grant Gaines

Remember the Titans is my favorite movie. I love the football action, the character development, and most of all, I love the internal battle the team goes through as the Virginia high school football program has to deal with the first year of racial integration in their school and on their football team. If you’ve seen the movie, you remember that the integration of black and white players didn’t go very smoothly at first – players were getting in fights with one another, people felt like there was favoritism being showed, and cliques were very clearly defined.

Head coach Herman Boone knew that his team couldn’t win a game let alone survive a training camp unless they came together under the united purpose of being a team of brothers who had each other’s backs. So in a desperate measure, Coach Boone woke his players up at 4am to go for a long run through the forest where they would eventually end up at the sight of the Battle of Gettysburg.

What Coach Boone said to his team at that cemetery changed the trajectory of his team’s season. The way he crafted his message was so good that I would do it injustice to try to recap it. Instead, take two minutes to watch his speech by following this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-ribYfC1AM

While Coach Boone was speaking specifically to his football team on that day, he very well may have been speaking to believers all over the world. Just as the TC Williams Titans had no chance standing against their foes on the football field unless they played together, the same could be said about us. Unless we stand up as a united body of believers, our world, our country, and our families will continue to quickly decay like a fallen autumn leaf.

In fact, “unity” is one of the key themes of the Bible. And it all started way back in the beginning of creation in Genesis 2.

Genesis 2 tells the in depth account of God making man on Day 6 of the creation account. Before sin entered the world Adam walked alongside and worked along with the Maker of the Heavens and the Earth with nothing separating the two. Of course, one short chapter later Satan and sin entered the scene and the perfect unity between the Creator and His creation was violently ripped apart.

But that’s not the only relationship that was hindered when sin entered the world. Man’s unity with one another quickly unraveled in Genesis 4 when Adam and Eve’s oldest son Cain murdered his younger brother Able. Talk about a family feud!

Then we arrive at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 where the disunity among mankind reached its peak. Sure, the men were all working together on a united purpose. However, the united purpose was a sinful one as they wanted to elevate themselves above God. But because God is a jealous God (meaning that He won’t share the glory, honor, or praise that is rightfully His with anyone else – Exodus 20:5), He scrambled the people’s languages, “…so they [could] not understand each other” (Genesis 11:7, NIV) and, “…scattered them from there over all the earth…” (Genesis 11:8, NIV).

God’s most prized and precious creation-mankind-was now living in disarray with their Creator and themselves. The disunity had officially ravished man from his source of life-relationships.

This is where we are today as a country and as a church. We are still being bombarded with the consequences of Adam’s sin in Genesis 3 against our Creator and the high cost of separation from our fellow human beings all over the world.

But fortunately for us, God didn’t put a “period” at the end of the Bible right after the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 when man was separated from both God and each other. Instead, the Lord, who 1 Timothy 6:16 (NIV) describes as living in, “…unapproachable light…” sent the Light to us. That’s the story of the Gospel-Jesus came to the earth as the Light of the world (John 8:12) so that He, as the Unapproachable Light, could approach us who are in the darkness because of our sins in order that we might be brought back into a right standing with our Creator and our fellow humans.

And God didn’t just want to restore our relationship with Him; He desires that our relationships with others also be reestablished. That’s exactly what we see when the apostles first received the Spirit of God in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost.

Similarly to the account of the Tower of Babel, a group of men were united together under one purpose. This time, however, it was a noble purpose-“[The apostles] all joined together constantly in prayer…” (Acts 1:14, NIV). In response to their prayers and Christ’s promise from earlier in the book of Acts, the Father sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in His followers’ hearts.

Do you remember what happened to the group of men at the Tower of Babel when God came down? They all had different languages and made no sense to anyone so they all scattered across the world. In Acts 2, however, when God’s Spirit came down the apostles all began to speak in different languages that other people from “every nation under heaven” who had gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost (Acts 2:5) could fully understand. Rather than being driven away and scattered as they were in Genesis 11, the people came together and worshiped God in Acts 2.

God’s love through us has the power to accomplish God’s ultimate desire-unity. Unity with God and unity with others. Sin separates while love bonds. Sin scatters while love brings together. Sin drives us away while love draws us near.

God wants you to live in unity with Him and others. How are you doing in that area today?