A Bundle of Sticks

A little over 26 years ago, I was meeting in Indianapolis with several long-time ministers and wives. The time had come to protect and uphold our proven and dearly held biblical beliefs. Our prior fellowship had broken faith, spawning widespread organizational and spiritual turbulence.

A collective decision was reached to form a new association that would safeguard long-held biblical beliefs. At first, we did not know what to call this new association. About a week later in meetings, the name “United” emerged. From the beginning it was more than a label, it was an injunction, a command. It was to become our identity and represent the character of the future Church.

I served as one of the first speakers in the organizing group. Based on our then-recent experience, I focused on our need to be united in doctrine, resolve and purpose. As a new association, we were not yet organized. In fact, at that moment we were very fragile.

In my talk, I used a familiar historical illustration. I recounted a story from about A.D. 1100 of a Rusyn prince, an early ruler of what is now Ukraine. Back then, he summoned his sons who would inherit his kingdom. As they looked on, he tied together a bundle of sticks and asked each of his sons to try to break it.

The bundle was passed from one son to another. No one could break it. He then untied the sticks and passed a stick to each son and told them to break it. They each easily snapped the lone stick.

His point? The father told his sons that their kingdom would be unbroken if it stayed unified. But, he warned, if they quarreled and went off on their own, they would become vulnerable to surrounding nations and be conquered.

Upon their father’s death, the sons did not heed their father’s warning. Reflecting divisive views, some formed independent city-states and provinces. It was not long then that resource-rich Ukraine, which has few natural borders, would be overrun by Europeans from the west and Asian tribes from the east, the Ottoman empire from the south and Muscovite Russia from the north. For most of its history, a divided Ukraine would become subservient to larger powers, notably Russia.

When Jesus was praying in private for the last time, he prayed that his disciples would hold together by the very power of God: “Now I am departing from the world; they are staying in this world, but I am coming to you. Holy Father, you have given me your name; now protect them by the power of your name so that they will be united just as we are” (John 17:11, New Living Translation).

Why? As the Church—God’s assembly of called-out ones—has been Christ’s center of attention as its living Head (Ephesians 1:22-23), it has also been the target of a powerful fallen archangel. Both the Hebrew and Greek names related to Satan the devil reflect his role—an adversary. Where he is allowed, he opposes God’s purpose, and is the one who drives all hateful efforts against humanity, tempting them to break God’s eternal laws. His favorite target is the Church. Revelation 12 is a prophecy of the devil (symbolized by a dragon) assaulting the Church (as symbolized by a woman): “‘Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.’ Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child [a reference to Jesus Christ] . . . And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 12:12-17).

Our spiritual adversary knows that the best way to weaken a people is through pride, resentment and puffed-up thoughts of intellectual vanity, sarcasm and self-aggrandizement; these divide and break apart once-strong relationships and beliefs.

Since the creation of man and woman, he has been working relentlessly to that end, both collectively and individually: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations!” (Isaiah 14:12).

Once unified as “one nation under God,” the United States is being increasingly divided and divided further as people dangerously drift away from the Bible and biblical traditions. While constrained by the power of God, the devil preys where he can on the Church, working to stir up vulnerable human emotions and controversies to weaken—even sometimes exhaust—ministers and members. We have seen the fruits of this during the pandemic year, where many of us were tried and tested in difficult challenges.

Here’s a crucial point that cannot be over-emphasized: as a Church we do not fight a physical war, but we do fight a very real war—a spiritual one! The apostle Peter is careful to warn us: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

The ones often easiest to devour are ones who make a terrible choice, that of isolating or disengaging from the main body, deliberately discarding the very protection Jesus prayed for from His Father. Deceived and spiritually exposed, they are the ones who can be picked off and broken, one by one. Neglecting the spiritual principle of strength (Ecclesiastes 4:12), they unbundle themselves, only to risk being snapped in half.

James, the human half-brother of Jesus Christ, tells us what to do: “Submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7, emphasis added throughout).

We resist and come under God’s promised protection by personally submitting to God, and by stirring up and deploying God’s Holy Spirit through the spiritual activities outlined in Ephesians 6:13-19 to wage spiritual warfare. These include the protective armor of God in embracing the truth, righteous behavior, doing our part as disciples in sharing the gospel, exercising faith, and protecting our minds with God’s Word. This is the only way we can fight against an unholy adversarial spirit who is intent on dividing and scattering us.

I believe this is one of the greatest lessons we as a Church and as individuals called by a holy calling can learn and put into practice. It takes action to heed these warnings. The apostle John praises those who overcome the adversary, the one who works to undermine our incredible human potential (1 John 2:14).

The good news? As we unite in purpose and calling, God supplies us with the ability to powerfully resist the evil spiritual influence of this world. Armed with that power, we have nothing to fear, as nothing can stop us—nothing.

Let us spiritually bundle ourselves together under the protection of God Himself, where the devil does not have a chance to harm.