1 Corinthians 12:12-31 Don't Be Dismembered

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsick preaches from his sermon series titled, First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in.

The Church as the Body of Christ and Local Membership

All right, good morning. Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsick. I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm really glad we can be all gathered together in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Hopefully, a major reason you're sitting here in these chairs is to grow in your faith.

Like, that's a big part. That's really kind of the push on Sunday mornings is that we would grow in our faith. We have community groups that meet in the week with the focus of really growing in relationships.

But really, this event that we do together every Sunday is primarily about hearing from God's Word and letting it saturate us, getting an opportunity to worship in the gathering of God's people. It's a beautiful thing.

I appreciate the cadence that God has given me in my life of routine gathering with God's people. My hope and prayer is that 2024 is going to be a year of transition for our church. And I haven't really shared this from up front, so I'm sharing with you something.

Some of you are already kind of in an awareness of this kind of concept. You know that we've gone to two services. You know that it's our goal. At least many of you know that it would be our goal to eventually get back to one service.

I've been praying that God would provide the resources needed in this next year so that we can begin the process of expanding this facility, this building, this room that you're sitting in right now is designed, expandable.

It's intentionally built this way so that we can add this direction. And so, the goal is that eventually we'll be able to get there and the elders have been setting aside money toward that end. At the current rate of giving, it seems quite possible, but pray for this, that we could be in a financial position to begin that project maybe at some point in the next year.

There's an expansion fund that's been opened specifically for any giving that you would choose to give toward that project. You know that we don't do capital, well, most of you know that we don't do capital campaigns.

We don't do big wheeler-dealer pledges and all that kind of stuff. We just believe that God's going to give as He lays it on your heart. Any money that's given that's marked expansion fund in like the memo line or anything like that or on the envelope is going to go toward that specific expanding of this facility.

I don't talk about money very often. Your giving is between you and God wanted you to be aware that that expansion fund is available. Enough about that. We're marching through 1 Corinthians and we're coming to a passage I've already preached.

It's kind of weird.

I feel kind of committed to going through every passage as I'm going through a book of the Bible, and yet I've already preached this passage twice, two times in the history.

Of this church.

It's a passage that struck me many times as I've considered what God desires for His church regarding service to one another. Now I usually march through books of the Bible, but I've done a couple of series when we were first launching as a church, a 1 -3 part series about growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service, and then in 2014 I did the same thing, kind of just re-figuring things and using a couple of different passages, but I used this one because I can't get past this passage.

Our growth map is growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service, and this passage is one that I've turned to frequently in the past to highlight the way that Christ calls us into a community, a community of people that serve one another.

That's a fairly decent definition of a church. Obviously, you've got to have Christ in there, but then that's really what we do. Let me state here at the start that I believe that the average person on the street has a pretty skewed definition of church to begin with.

Not a very good definition of church. If you were to poll people out on the street and ask them what is a church, what do you think you're going to get? How many of you would raise your hand and say, I bet building is going to be in there, like the steeple and the cathedral and the stained glass and all of that kind of stuff, some kind of brick building might very well be what people think.

But I think better of you guys, and I believe that you would not call it the building. Those of you who have been around for a while and maybe kicking it around you at least know the right answer, and that is that it's not the building.

This physical building is not the church, but we, the people, are the church, right?

Amen?

We're the church. Like, this is an empty building until the church gathers here. We're the church gathered in a building. But even as we say that, and I think many of you knew that before I stated it, what does it mean?

What does it mean that we gathered are the church? As our church continues to grow, it's important for us to keep in focus what it means to be a church. To be quite honest, Recast has been relatively loose in its structure with simplicity being one of our core values.

We've not pressed regularly for membership over the course of our history. That's been intentional, but maybe not extremely helpful. It's possible that for the sake of not offending or pressuring people into membership or some kind of formal arrangement or formal joining the church, we've undersold a biblical concept.

I think that might be true. We are going to look at a passage that speaks of membership in the church, and I would have said when we were starting Recast, I would have said, the Bible doesn't even say anything about church membership.

But it kind of does, and it does in this passage. But the way that Paul addresses membership is not like Sam's Club or Costco, where you get extra discounts and all that bulk food, yum, but more like the way that your arm is a member of your body.

A little more important connection, a little bit more vital, and I for one, I don't know about you, I think I know about you, I for one am glad that my arm is formally connected to my body. That my arm is actually in a real way attached, not just loosely connected, you don't want your arm loosely connected to your body.

You want your arm to be a member. You want it to be connected. I want my arm committed to the good of this body. You get what I'm saying? How many of you are glad that your arm is part, I'm getting some blank stares, but maybe that's a little bit strange, but I had a couple of people raise both arms, you know, we want both of our arms attached to our body, right?

So let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verses 12 through 31, through the end of the chapter, Recast as you're turning over there, I just want to remind you, this is God's holy word.

This is what he desires for us to hear. His Holy Spirit put it down in writing for our benefit to read in the gathering this.

Morning.

1 Corinthians 12, 12, for just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit.

For the body does not consist of one member, but of many. If the foot should say, because I'm not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if an ear, if the ear should say, because I'm not an eye, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body.

If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members of the body, each one of them as he chose.

If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body, the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you. Nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you.

On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. And on those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor. Our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require.

But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together.

If one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ, individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administering, and various kinds of tongues.

Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret, but earnestly desire the higher gifts? And I will show you still a more excellent way.

Let's pray.

Father, I rejoice in this hodgepodge of people that you bring together every Sunday. We come from a lot of different backgrounds, a lot of different places of education, different family orientations, different, yeah, even just down to the details of a very different kind of week.

Some stressed to the max this week, and others having a pretty light load, and some people here in between jobs trying to figure out what next steps are, and some here starting something brand new, and some here grieving loss.

All of us, all of us brought together for the purpose of honoring Christ in the midst of community. Each one of us with a role to play, each one of us with a way to be a blessing to others.

Around us.

Father, I pray that you would open our eyes to the glory and the beauty of this fellowship that you have called us into. It's an amazing thing. It's an organic thing. It's a thing that you are doing in this community to bring this body together for love, love for you, and love for each other.

And it's out of love that we've been brought together, the love of Christ who shed his.

Blood for us.

Father, I pray that we would not lose the sight of what it means to be connected with brothers and sisters here. We've gone through a few years now of just rips and tears in the fabric of our community, of our culture, of our society, of our understanding of community.

Father, I pray that you would be healing those rifts and bringing in our own hearts back to a commitment to love others, to see outside of ourselves, to put down the remote and shut down the Netflix and get together and spend time loving others.

I'm convinced that as this life is short, that we will get to the end and find that the most valuable things are the times and the seasons that we've sown into the lives.

Of others.

Father, I pray that you would raise us up to be the people that you have called us to be, the individuals in the service of the common good for others. Father, I thank you that we have an opportunity now to sing songs of praise to you in this gathering, and I pray that you would receive it as worship.

You are worthy. You are high. You are exalted. You are the Holy One. You are the Redeemer. In Jesus' name, amen. You can go ahead and be seated and get comfortable and then reopen your Bibles and re-find your place to 1 Corinthians chapter 12, starting in verse 12 and through the end of that chapter.

So that's our text for this morning. Let's not forget here at the beginning that this letter was written to a jacked-up church, a broken, busted-up church of people that had all kinds of problems and issues, just like us.

I mean, we all have our own issues. We all have our struggles. We all have our problems. And this was a church full of sexual immorality, divisions, class warfare, false teachers, you name it. It seems like Corinth was facing it.

And our section of text is found right in the middle of a larger argument that Paul is giving regarding unity within the body. He has scolded them for having all kinds of segregation, segregated potlucks in which the wealthy ate together, the poor went without, and then they took communion together like everything was all good and they were all united together, which they weren't.

And now he's addressing those who say that their gifts and talents and abilities are better than others. Can you imagine that in the church of Corinth, some people thinking that they were better? That's kind of a major theme of the letter.

These people were like spoiled brats, the wealthy ignoring the poor, everyone arguing that they are the most important and that their skills are more needed. And I think that probably, if we're honest, sounds familiar to things and conversations and things that have gone on in our own hearts.

Sounds to me like the church in Corinth was full of real people like us, like churches.

In America.

And so, in verse 12, we pick up Paul's line and he begins an extended metaphor that's going to carry throughout the remainder of chapter 12. He starts out by speaking about the human body. Even in ancient times, there was an understanding of the various organs and appendages of the human body, and Paul says that Christ is like, the body of Christ is like a human body.

We know that he is the head, he is the guide, he is the leader. He has willingly, though, incorporated members as his hands and feet, as members of him. The use of the word members throughout the text has an almost medical notion of appendage in the Greek language, and yet I don't think that it's a stretch for us to consider that what Paul is speaking about is actually membership in a local body, a local church.

I say that because the further we get into this passage, the harder it will be to do what Paul says and is suggesting without actually being connected with real flesh and blood people, connected in real relationships.

Some of us maybe have a romanticized notion about the body of Christ, as if it's this ethereal blob of people that is from ancient times all the way until now, and there's a truth to that, right? The church is something that has been manifested in the world over centuries of history, and globally, right now, there are people, well, not right this second because of the time change, right?

I mean, the time shifts, but all across the globe, people have been worshiping in different countries as the sun has risen on a new Sunday morning for them.

Amen?

And we're just a part of that, right? So we acknowledge we're a part of that, and I think in our American way of thinking, sometimes the independence gets into us in a way that we begin to question, how much does this local body matter?

I can go over there for a youth group. I can go over here on Wednesday nights. I can go down the road. I can listen to podcasts in my car. I can even buy some juice and crackers and take it myself, right?

You get what I'm saying?

And there's all of these things that we can think, and what is the importance of a local gathering of God's people? Why does that even matter? And I would suggest to you that, yes, we are in a very glorious way connected to people who worshiped in Croatia, or in Hungary this morning, or in South or Central America right now as we're meeting.

Some of those places are on the same time zone as us, and they're meeting right now. And there's a glorious connection in Christ. So when I travel around the world, Lynn and I have sang praise in multiple places where we didn't understand any word except the word hallelujah, and there's something glorious about the word hallelujah, because it was like, I know that word.

Other than that, I don't really know any other words, and I'm not getting that translated.

But are you guys getting what I'm saying?

I can't love them in Croatia like I can love you. I can't serve them in Croatia like I can serve you. I can't bring them a meal when they're sick. I can pray for them, but I can't do those things. And there is something that is vital about us being connected.

Even as far as on the other side of Kalamazoo, I cannot do for the churches on the east side of Kalamazoo for the same things that I can do for you. Are you getting what I'm saying? There is something about the local gathering that is about this body metaphor.

Really legitimately, vitally connected together, and I want you to see that, that this is about being members of one another. In the same way that your arm and your foot are both a part of your one body, Paul says that believers are to be united together.

And the basis of that unity in any real sense is our common experience of the Holy Spirit. He says that is the central thing that brings us together. When Paul speaks of being baptized in one Spirit in verse 13, it is an event that happens at our conversion.

When we come to faith in Christ, it is like we are in Christ when we receive Him and we acknowledge what He has done for us, and we are saved and redeemed and brought from enemies of God to friend of God.

When that transition happens, it is like we are drowned in the Spirit. Submerged is the word baptized. So when you see, and whenever you see the word baptized, remove the stigma of it, remove the confusion of it by just saying submerged instead.

So immersed or submerged. And so we are submerged, we are baptized into one Spirit. He is above us and beneath us and around us and even in us, drowned so to speak and dead to our old ways of life in the Spirit.

He is all around us and we were all made to drink of that one Spirit and immersed in that one Spirit. And He is the stitches that hold us all together in this one body. Even from last week, we saw that it is the Holy Spirit in the start of chapter 12, it is the Holy Spirit there in that passage who leads a person to the confession of Jesus, that Jesus Christ is the risen Lord.

The Holy Spirit brought you to that understanding. If you believe that Jesus is Lord, the Holy Spirit was at work in your life to give you that and that is our common bond, is our confession that Jesus Christ is our Lord.

In this sense, the body of Christ, if I could use a metaphor that might trouble some, we'll see how it works, but Christ is like a beautiful Frankenstein. With Christ as the head and all of us making up members of the body and the illustration works just simply because we were dead, we were dead and we were brought into life in Christ and made a part of Him and then brought in with function and purpose.

Obviously we can take the analogy too far and it gets in strange places and yes, I know Frankenstein was the doctor and not the monster, but I didn't want to call the church a monster, so some of you are ready to correct me on that, but Frankenstein's the doctor.

But Paul's primary point is going to be unity with diversity, many different parts, but all working together so that a church is a diversity of people, look around you, a diversity of people indeed, from a variety of backgrounds brought together by the Holy Spirit of God, not brought together by a common style of music, not brought together by a similar socioeconomic status, not brought together by cheering for the same football team, but go Lions, right?

But that's not what unifies us. As silly as it seems, Paul identifies in verses 15 through 17 that some in the body may decide they don't belong just simply because they are jealous of another person's role.

I can imagine that happening in a church. You know, I want to be a hand and since I don't get to be a hand, I'm taking my ball and going home. Now this doesn't usually happen as directly as that, right, it's usually not stated that directly, but can you imagine a situation in which a person working behind the scenes does not get as much recognition as they would like and particularly not as much recognition as somebody in an upfront role and then therefore they decide to quit.

A foot that wants to be a hand or an ear that wants to be an eye is obviously a silly illustration. These organs don't have a mind of their own, but it gets the point across. Jealousy over roles is like that.

Jealousy over roles in the church is like that. And according to Paul, the body needs the foot and the ear as much as it needs the eye and the hand. We know that. How many of you are glad you got all of those?

It's a good thing. An interesting observation came to me as I was studying this section this week, though. Notice that Paul immediately jumps to the assumption that membership in the body, this is vital, membership in the body is centered around purpose, the purpose and function that each one of us has to play in the body.

That's what membership is about. That's what connectedness is about. That's why God has brought us here, for the function of serving one another, each one of us having a role to play in this thing called church.

Every member a role to play, every member of the church, every single member a role to play. Membership in a body is not in terms of what we stand to gain. I can imagine a silly taking the illustration just a step further and thinking this through.

Oh, a foot shows up and wants to join the church. And they don't come to the hand and ask this. This is not the illustration that Paul gives, you know, what's in this for me, says the foot to the hand.

What's in this for me? How about a massage every Friday, because these dogs get tired. How often are you going to clip these toenails, hand? What's your plan for protecting me from athlete's foot? Tell me about your experience dealing with warts.

Are you good at that? Can you get those taken care of? It's not in a what's in it for me kind of thing, because we often, the word membership in our culture is like the 12th, what are we up to now, 13th cup of coffee free at Bigby?

It's like, and probably going to be 15, then it's going to be 20 or whatever. But that's the way we think of membership, right? Like it's an elite club. It's an elite idea. And I get benefits and sure, I'll fill out, I mean, every single time at the cash register, are you a part of our rewards club?

I know, just give me the stuff and let me get out, right? Anybody, any of you like that? The rest of you are like, I don't get it. I'm on all the rewards clubs. I don't want that. I don't want my wallet full of cards.

I don't know. What do we think of when we think of membership? Paul takes for granted that a believer will be a member of a church like an arm needs a body in order to function correctly. Can an arm be detached from a body?

Ew.

What's your answer? Yes, gross. Can it do what it's designed to do without a body? Not so much. Can a believer be detached from a local body?

Yes.

Can he or she do what they were intended to do without a body, without being connected to a body?

Not at all.

Just like an arm laying on its own on the pavement, not able to do what it's meant to do, but still an arm. Yeah, gross. Okay, is somebody hyperventilating over there? Ew, gross. Verse 17, Paul speaks to the fact that we need diversity.

We have different roles. I mean, just like the body has many different functions, many different organs, many different parts, we need a variety of different roles. If the whole body, Paul says, were an eye, he says we would be Sauron, right?

No, he doesn't say that, but I did. But, you know, the eye, see you, and then there's that thing.

You got it.

And that would be just creepy, right? We don't want to just be an eye. And as Paul points out, it would be hard to smell stuff if the whole body were an eye. Like, that wouldn't work so good. But in the same way in verse 18 that God has arranged the human body, he has also arranged us, church, and that's the illustration, that he has brought us together with purpose, much like he has designed the human body.

The design of the functions and roles and organs of the human body is the illustration that the way that this was put together by God is the way that this was put together by God. It's a glorious reality.

He decided, when he designed the body, he decided on the whole two ears and one mouth.

Thing.

His idea. Opposable thumb, his idea. Let me say at this point that anatomy and physiology is amazing and glorious. Probably in my top four classes I took in college, I took an anatomy and physiology class up at Cornerstone.

They did not have a cadaver lab there at Cornerstone at that time. I think they do now. But we had to go over to Grand Valley and get a tour there. And it was amazing. There was a Christian professor at Grand Valley.

I don't know if there are any of those anymore anywhere. But there was a Christian professor in the biology department at Grand Valley State University and he took us on a tour of a cadaver. We looked at the cauda equina where the braided nerves of the spinal cord begin to separate in the lower back.

We had a chance to observe the way that the tendons in the hand split in order for us to be able to pull our fingers straight down instead of sideways. You don't really think about that. But without those tendons splitting, your fingers don't move right.

So just amazing complexity and unity and amazingly efficient design. If you just have even just an inkling of curiosity about the world around you, start with the way that your body is designed. It is a glorious, amazing, just the complexity of it with all of the efficiency packed into this one small area.

And the God who designed that complex system of organs and appendages is the same God who has brought us together to function in a similar type of unity. Verse 18 says that God arranged the members of the body, each one of them as He chose.

He has brought us together. Now we might very well think in materialistic terms that it was an invitation from a neighbor that brought you here. Or for some it was a postcard in the mail or a web search or you drove by multiple times, saw the sign and thought, oh yeah, maybe I'll check that out.

But regardless of how we see it from a human perspective that you ended up in these seats, the eyes of faith will look back and see the sovereign hand of God bringing us together in unity. He chose us to be here.

He chose us to be together. If we depend on ourselves to hold this thing together, we hold too tightly, it will implode. We hold too loosely, it will explode. But there's power in realizing that it is God who has brought us together.

And trusting that God brought us together gives me the commitment to work through the difficulties. It gives me a commitment to work through the tough things together. If the whole church, he goes on to say, if the whole church were a single member, where would the body be?

What's he getting at there by that statement? The church cannot ever be defined and is to never be defined by a single person. We live in a day and an age of rock star preachers. We've observed some falls from grace and I would suggest to you that I've benefited greatly over the years from the teaching of some of these men and I listen to podcasts when I'm exercising and it's been refreshing to me.

I encourage you to surround yourself with solid Bible teachers. If you have any curiosity about, you know, you're kind of like, Don, who do you listen.

To?

I would love to share that with you at some point, different podcasts that I listen to, different teachers. But often churches become, in a very sick and wrong way, defined by their leaders in an unhealthy, not sick and twisted, but unhealthy way defined by their leaders.

Recast church, I'll just state this as clearly as possible, recast church is not me. Recast church is not a select group of men that lead us called the elders. It is not a vocal minority that runs the church.

We, recast, are the church. We are the church. There are many parts, but one body, and I am just a part of it like you. I'm just a part of it like you, trying to work through the gifts and service that God has given me to offer to you.

And from verses 21 through 25, Paul highlights our need for each other. We know that we need each other, we can say that, but do we really feel it? Do we really live it? Do we really believe it? Do we embody it?

We cannot say we have no need of each other. This corrects a super common problem in our individualistic society, where we are proud of our independence, and maybe even the battle cry of America is, I need no one.

This passage fundamentally disagrees with that statement. You cannot say, I have no need of you. You can't say that in the church. I have no need of you, I have no need of you, I have no need of you, no, I need all of you.

We need each other. A humility is necessary here, we see in this passage in the life of the body. Paul doesn't deny that there will be weaker parts of the body. There will be less honorable and unpresentable parts, and I find it ironic that he points this out, and yet the moment we begin to consider, and I wonder if those sitting reading this in Corinth were like, am I the unpresentable part?

What's Paul thinking? The more that we think into that, and the more we consider it, and wonder who are the less honorable, we begin to go against what Paul is driving for throughout this passage. The bottom line in all of this teaching that Paul is giving us at the end of chapter 12 is that we all need us.

We all need us. Even our unpresentable parts require more clothing and receive honor through modesty, he says. And in verse 24, there's an indication that God is the one who rewards those who lack honor for their role in the church.

Those who work behind the scenes receive, he says, they're going to receive their reward from God. Now, I certainly believe that those who work more up front will also receive their reward from God, but I think that it can be a little bit harder, it can be a little bit more tricky.

Those who work in a more up front role within the church, or a more obvious role, will need to work even harder to be sure that they are working for the pleasure of God, because there's an increased risk that we who are up front might work to receive our rewards from the people around us.

So we have to work extra hard to be sure that it is for God that we are serving, it is for God that we are using our gifts and abilities for the body of Christ. But the result of all of this should be a mutual care for one another.

I hope that you hear that shining through everything that I'm saying. We all have dignity and worth regardless of our callings, regardless of our functions, recognizing that we are vitally connected in need to one another.

And that ought to cause us to work together with less division, with more commitment to working through division, and more unity. Verse 25 clarifies that the body of Christ is to care for one another.

When one of us suffers, we suffer together. When one of us is honored, we rejoice together, and we talk about that in terms of community and our relationships with one another, and authentic relationships that you can share when you're down and have others grieve with you.

You can share when you get a promotion or when things are up and others celebrate with.

You.

And I've often said it from up front here that some of the loneliest times are when you have celebration and you're alone. Do you know what I'm talking about? Who's going to throw a party? Just myself.

That could be really a sad time and sad season in life, right? It's not just like suffering alone, but sometimes celebrating alone is the tough thing. And so we look out for one another. What's the metaphor here?

When there's suffering, when there's injury, when there's warning, when there's something bad happening, we all work together. We suffer with those who suffer, and we honor those and rejoice with those who are honored.

We look out for one another. Just like when a ball is flying at my head, my eyes track the ball, everything from my feet and neck hopefully react to try to avoid it. My hands will willingly fly up and put themselves in harm's way, hoping to either catch the ball or deflect it, right, to protect the head.

That's what a body does. We all mobilize immediately to the point of concern. We mobilize to the point of need, and we care for the weak among us, those who are struggling.

And hurting.

Right?

Amen?

Caring for each other. Together, recast, we are the body of Christ. And individually, now we're talking you, the individual. We are the body of Christ, and individually, we are members of it. In other words, we are body parts.