E Pluribus Unum

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles with me and turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 12.
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And I know that it is something of an anomaly for me because I enjoy parts of both high church and what is sometimes considered low church in the sense of the way certain things are done.
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But I promise that giving you the title this morning in Latin was not an attempt to bring high church atmosphere into the service.
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But the title will make sense hopefully in a bit.
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But I do want to encourage you to stand for the reading of God's word.
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We're going to read 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verses 12 to 26.
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1 Corinthians chapter 12 beginning at verse 12 says this, 2 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.
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3 For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body.
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4 Jews are Greeks, slaves are free, and all were made to drink of one spirit.
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5 For the body does not consist of one member, but of many.
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6 If the foot should say, Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less part of the body.
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7 And if the ear should say, Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less part of the body.
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8 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? And if the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 9 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as he chose.
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10 If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
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11 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.
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12 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker and indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require.
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13 But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.
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If one member suffers, all suffer together.
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If one member is honored, all rejoice together.
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Father, by your grace and mercy, I pray that as this word is preached, the first and foremost, that you would keep me from error, that you would fill me with your Holy Spirit, that you would engage the gift that you've given and the desire to do it, and Lord, that it would go out forth into the hearts and the ears of the people, and Lord God, for the believer, that this message would be to them an encouragement for unity and diversity, but Lord God, for the unbeliever, however many there may be among us, that this word would be to them like a rod striking the heart, like a sword opening it up, laying it bare, that they might realize that unless we are possessors of the Spirit, we are not Christ's, and because we are possessors of the Spirit, if we are Christ's, we are called to be an active member in his body.
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Lord, out of the many, may we become one as the body of Christ, and it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.
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If you are familiar with the seal of the United States, you will recognize that it is comprised of an eagle that has its wings open in a wide span, and inside the eagle's mouth is a banner, the banner going from the left end to the right, hanging out of the beak of the American eagle, and on that banner is written the phrase, E Pluribus Unum.
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E Pluribus Unum is a Latin phrase, which means out of many, one, and the intention of that phrase, as it was the unofficial motto of the United States until later was adopted in God We Trust as the official motto, but the unofficial motto of the United States was long E Pluribus Unum.
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The intention of the phrase was to show that while there was great diversity in the United States, a diversity of states, and a diversity of backgrounds, and a diversity of where people came from and cultures, that out of that there would come one nation, and so the unofficial motto, E Pluribus Unum, and I've used this phrase as the title of my message this morning because I believe this term can also be, and I believe more rightly be, applied to the local church.
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We are many people, maybe not as many as some churches, but we still have a lot of folks, and many of us have diverse histories, and all of us have diverse giftings, yet we are called in our diversity to come together as one body, as one church, as one family.
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Out of great diversity, we seek to have an even greater unity, and today the goal is going to be to see how unity in diversity works itself out in the life of the local church.
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So looking at the text, we've already examined verses 1 to 11.
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That's where we have been.
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We've been in chapter 12 now for several weeks, and Paul said that he does not want the Corinthians to be ignorant of the spiritual gifts.
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That's verse 1.
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He says, I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the spiritual gifts, and this is likely due, at least I believe in part, that to the fact that the Corinthians are mistreating the gifts.
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Can you imagine how people might mistreat the gifts of God? Do you think people still might mistreat the gifts of God? I think so.
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Sometimes by fraudulently claiming to have gifts they don't have, or maybe by exaggerating the gifts that they do have to a level of importance, of putting other people as inferior or themselves as superior.
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And early in the book, we've noted in 1 Corinthians that there was a division among the people because of their allegiance to teachers.
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I am of Paul.
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I am of Apollos.
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I am of Cephas.
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And what was the reason for this allegiance to teachers is because they were the type of teacher that they wanted, or type of teacher that they liked, or the type of teacher that they felt like would get them the most notoriety for being associated with that person.
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Later, we see the division coming into their feasts.
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We're having a feast today, and we're going to try to celebrate in a similar fashion to the way the early church did.
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Gathering for worship, and eating in worship, and celebrating the Lord's table in worship.
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And what did Paul say about that? He said there's division in your feast.
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It's not even the Lord's Supper that you eat.
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You come together not for the better, but for the worse.
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You remember that in chapter 11.
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So there's division all through the church.
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And the reason why I believe Paul is developing the concept of spiritual gifts, and he does this from chapter 12 to chapter 14, is I believe that the spiritual gifts had become a place, again, for division.
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And I think, again, I think the reason, based on what I see in the text, is there were some who considered themselves superior in the body, or maybe even considered themselves inferior in the body, because of their particular gifting by the Spirit.
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In fact, I would even go as far as to argue, based on chapter 14, which we'll get to in a few weeks, that those who had the gifts that were more showy, and that's only, I really look for a better word, but gifts that were showy, or on display, felt themselves just a little more spiritually superior to those whose gifts may not be as much in the limelight.
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On display.
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The showy gifts tend to get the attention, and so people want to get attention, and so there's division between those who have the attention and those who don't.
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And it's into this situation that feelings of superiority and inferiority are being felt.
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And so the apostle addresses the issue of superiority and inferiority in the church, and he's ultimately going to show that within the body of Christ, there are no superiors.
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In the relationship of gifting, we all have a place.
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That is not to say that certain gifts don't do what others don't do.
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And that is not to say that certain gifts don't have an ability to do things that others don't do.
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And at certain times, one gift may have more value than another gift for the season or whatever's needed.
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I don't always need my hands for everything that I do.
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But I always need my hands.
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You understand what I'm saying? The point of this text, I believe, is that Paul is letting us know for certain that no believer can look at another believer and say, I'm more valuable than you.
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And conversely, you're more valuable than me.
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This section is about understanding our role as a diverse group called to unity as a church.
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And the unity is the main theme of the book, by the way.
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There's unity that started all the way back in the beginning of 1 Corinthians, and he's maintained this issue of division is the problem, unity is the answer.
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Not unity in error, not unity in falsehood, not unity in anything, but the gospel.
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And when we unify in the gospel, we'll be unified rightly.
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And here's the thing that you have to understand chapter 12 is all about.
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Paul is trying to get us to understand this.
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The opposite of unity is not diversity.
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Think of what I just said, because really this has been on my heart this whole week.
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The opposite of unity is not diversity.
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The opposite of unity is division.
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Division happens when we can't appreciate our diversity.
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Does that make sense? That really the theme of the whole text, because the opposite of unity is when we divide over our diversity rather than appreciating our differences.
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So even though we're gifted differently, we do not have to divide over our differences.
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We can appreciate our differences.
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We should actually praise God for our differences.
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Because in bringing us together with all of our diversity, God is making us appreciate the value we all possess.
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Do you realize we are dependent on one another? There is a dependency that God creates in bringing us together.
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So regarding unity and diversity, I want us to now look at the text.
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We're going to look at verses 12 to 26.
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And I know some of you think it's crazy that I would get through so many verses, but this is a long illustration.
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I think we can make it.
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I've broken it into two parts.
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If you're taking notes, I don't know if you do that, but if you do, there's the instruction and the illustration.
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The instruction and the illustration.
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Instruction, verses 12 to 13, and the illustrations, verses 14 to 26.
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So the instruction, verses 12 and 13.
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The illustration, verses 14 to 26.
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Let's look first at the instruction, verse 12.
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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.
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The church assembly is called the body, because that is what we are.
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We are the body of Christ.
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When Christ was in the world, He had hands, He had feet, He had eyes, He had all of those things, and He ministered in the world as a physical man.
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But now Christ is in the world in a different way.
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Christ is in the world through His church.
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The church is the hands and the feet and the mouth of Christ in the world.
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That's the illustration being given.
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Christ is on the throne.
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The church as His ambassadors.
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Is that what we're called? Ambassadors? What's an ambassador? One who represents another, right? And we represent Christ in whatever gifting He has given to us.
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In fact, if you look at verse 12, it says, just as the body is one, has many members, and the members of the body, though many are one, so it is with Christ.
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You could actually say, so it is with the church.
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Because in that statement, the church is being seen as Christ in the world.
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The church is the reference to Christ there.
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Just as there are many members in one body, so it is with Christ, and so it is with the church, because the church is Christ in the world.
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Going on to verse 13.
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He says, 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, verse 13, for in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.
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Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of the one Spirit.
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The word one is very important in that statement, because Paul is, again, stressing unity, which exists because of the work of the Spirit.
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And every believer, no matter his background, has the same Holy Spirit living inside him.
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We have differing gifts, but it's the same Spirit of God.
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Remember what I said last week? The same Spirit of God, who was in the Apostle Paul, lives in you, if you're a believer.
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And I want to address something now, a doctrinal issue.
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And I had to corral myself on this, because I said I don't want to spend the whole sermon on this.
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So I'm going to make a statement, I'm going to make it clear, hopefully, and then we'll move on.
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There is a false teaching that is very prevalent in the church today, especially in the church that is extended out from the Methodist Church into the Holiness Church, and then on into the Charismatic Movement, and that is the doctrine called the Second Blessing.
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Have you ever heard the doctrine of the Second Blessing? Okay.
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Now, there's two ways to understand that.
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Wesley taught the doctrine of the Second Blessing was that a person, after being saved, after a certain amount of time, and it wasn't always the same, after a certain amount of time, a person would receive a second blessing whereby the Holy Spirit would totally eradicate their sinful nature, and they would become sinless in thought and in deed.
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Wesley believed that a person could become, in this life, no longer a sinner by practice or by thought.
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I do not agree.
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I don't think our elders agree with that.
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That is called sinless perfectionism, and that's the Second Blessing.
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But there's another way to understand this, and this gets more to the point of the sermon.
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The Charismatic Movement adopted the language of the Second Blessing, and what they now teach in certain circles is that the Second Blessing is when you receive the Holy Spirit.
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So you get saved, you believe, but you're not filled with the Holy Spirit.
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The filling of the Holy Spirit comes later.
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That Second Blessing is normally accompanied by the gift of ecstatic speech, or what they call the gift of tongues.
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So you know that you've been filled with the Spirit if you have had the, what they, and this is the very, very particular language, the evidence of sanctification is the utterance of speaking in tongues.
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That's clearly what is taught, and that is the gift, or the Second Blessing, sometimes referred to as the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
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The problem with the doctrine of the Second Blessing, whether you're taking Wesley's approach, which is sinless perfectionism, or you're taking the more Pentecostal approach, which means it is the Spirit's baptism, which gives you the ability to work the sign of special gift of tongues.
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Either way, the problem is, they are ignoring verse 13, which says, in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.
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If you are a believer, and you have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God, He stayed.
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When He regenerated your heart, He indwelt you, and He did not leave.
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I say that because I really believe there are Christians who don't think they have the Holy Spirit.
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And if you want to write down a verse, Romans chapter 8, verses 9 to 11.
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Romans 8, 9 to 11, I'll read it to you.
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You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.
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Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.
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Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.
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It's not an option.
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It's sort of like I talked about this Thursday when I preached at Set Free.
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I preached on regeneration, being born again.
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And I said, you know, back when Jimmy Carter was running for president, he was known as the born again candidate because he identified himself as a born again Christian.
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But there's no other type.
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And I'm not giving Jimmy Carter a hard time because I know what he was doing.
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He was differentiating himself from people who were born Christians.
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Nobody's born a Christian.
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You don't get birthed into Christianity.
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You get rebirthed into Christianity.
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And with the rebirth comes the gift of the Holy Spirit of God.
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This is the blessing of the new covenant, y'all.
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Because in the old covenant, there was a different dispensation of the Spirit.
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But we know now with the new covenant, the Spirit of God no longer lives in the temple of God.
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He lives in you who become the temple of God.
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Right? So there's a new administration of the Spirit of God who comes and lives within us.
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And Paul says in Romans, if he doesn't live in you, you're not his.
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Simply stated, you simply are not saved if you don't possess the Holy Spirit.
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And if you are saved, you do possess the Holy Spirit.
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Gordon Fee, a commentator on this particular passage, says this.
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He said, The Spirit is what essentially distinguishes the believer from the nonbeliever.
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The Spirit is what marks the beginning of the Christian life, and the Spirit above all is what makes a person a child of God.
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Thus it is natural for Paul to refer to the unity in the body as in terms of the Spirit.
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What brings us unity? We all share the same Spirit.
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We were all baptized into the same Spirit.
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We have all received the same Spirit.
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That's where the unity comes from.
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And by the way, I want to, like I said, I could spend all day on verse 13.
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I don't want to, because I want to get to the next part.
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But verse 13, when he talks about baptism, this is important, because not every reference to baptism in Scripture is a reference to what happens in the labor or the pool.
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Right? Not every reference in Scripture is a reference to your physical act of baptism.
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Your physical act of baptism is what signifies what this text is talking about.
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But the baptism that's happening here is administered by Christ through the Spirit.
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He comes into us.
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He indwells us, and we are baptized into Him.
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Right? It's not the physical act.
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The physical act has a very important symbol, and we should not neglect it, but we also don't need to confuse ourselves that every time we see the word baptizo in Scripture that it necessarily refers to the physical act of baptism.
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Does that make sense? Can I move on from there? I just want to just point that out.
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People hear the word baptism, they lose their minds, because they automatically think it's referring to the act, the physical act of baptism.
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For in one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body.
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That's a Spirit work.
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He came and gave us, and that's what, that's, this is where the language of being baptized in the Holy Ghost comes from.
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Some churches believe that you can't be baptized by the Spirit until you're in the water.
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In fact, that's the teaching of the Historic Church of Christ.
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The Historic Church of Christ teaches that you can believe in Jesus, but until you go into the water and you're baptized, you do not receive the Holy Ghost.
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And they tell you that.
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They'll say, you go into this water as a sinner, you're going to be baptized.
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When you come out of this water, you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
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You are going to be changed in this water.
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And again, I think that puts too much power in the sign.
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Now, taking a step back, we do believe in baptism as an important step of entrance into the faith and entrance into the church.
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And that's why we ask somebody, if you were baptized, to be baptized prior to entrance into the church, because we believe that it's an ordinance that's required to be followed.
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And some people might read this and see verse 13 and say, well, being baptized into the body is the baptism that's baptizing us into the body.
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Where I take issue with that, and again, I don't want to spend all day on this.
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In one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body.
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I think this is the Spirit's baptism.
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I don't think this is the physical baptism.
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Because the next verse, I think this is a parallelism, which is very common in Hebrew teaching.
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It says, and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
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The baptism and the drinking of the Spirit are both there being paralleled to one another as the action of bringing us together in unity.
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Okay, so moving on.
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Paul does not allow, this is the key, Paul does not allow for a non-Holy Spirit-filled believer.
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Y'all with me? So if you're here today and you believe you're a believer, but you believe you're not filled with the Holy Spirit, there is no allowance for that.
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Either you're not a believer, or you're filled with the Holy Spirit if you are.
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Maybe you're not.
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Maybe you're not a believer yet.
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But if you're a believer and you think you're not filled with the Holy Spirit, the Bible says you are.
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And it's not a feeling.
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That's the other part that has really been damaged by the charismatic movement, is the idea that the Holy Spirit is a feeling.
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The Holy Spirit is a person living within you.
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Now, will it accompany feelings of emotion and things? It should and will.
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But guys like, what was his name, Oral Roberts, used to talk about, I can feel the Spirit's energy moving down my arm, and I can feel the energy coming out.
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The Holy Spirit is not electricity like what you have running through your house.
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I've touched a hot wire.
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I felt electricity going through my arm.
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That ain't the same.
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It's not a feeling.
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It's not an emotion.
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He is a person living in you, and his work is conforming you to the image of Jesus Christ.
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And so we move to the illustration, beginning at verse 14.
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And this has got to be the most well-known metaphor in Scripture.
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Scripture is filled with metaphors.
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People don't like the term metaphor, but they're all over.
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The Bible uses metaphors all the time.
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It's not a problem, and this is one of the most well-known.
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In fact, I wrote, when I was in university, I wrote a paper on the functionalist versus the conflict perspective in social construction.
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In my degrees in social science, I wrote a paper, and I used this illustration to define the functionalist perspective of sociological breakdown.
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When I wrote that paper, I got a report back from my teacher that says, please don't use the Bible.
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I said, this is the greatest illustration in the history of the world of functionalism.
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Functionalism states this, is that every person in a society should have a function and should function according to the functions that they are gifted in, and that way society works together, rather than trying to always compete with one another, appreciate what gifting you have and work together rather than work against.
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The opposite is conflict perspective, where everybody's going against one another.
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That's where you get things like Marxism, where it's always a conflict, and so there's no way to really function.
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You have to function in conflict, and so the functionalist position, conflict position go against each other.
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And I use this as an illustration because it's such a good metaphor.
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Can't use the Bible.
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That's garbage.
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But I do have this broken down in three parts.
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I think here's how we truly understand this text in the simplest way possible.
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It gives us a proper view of self.
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It gives us a proper view of God.
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It gives us a proper view of others.
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Proper view of self is verses 14 to 16.
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Proper view of God, verses 17 to 20.
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Proper view of others is verses 20 to 26.
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So let's just quickly go through those.
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Number one, a proper view of self.
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Verse 14, for the body does not consist of one member, but of many.
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If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less part of the body.
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And 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 part of the body.
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Notice in this instance, the foot is saying, I'm not a hand, so I'm worthless.
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This produces a sense of inadequacy for the foot, because he says, I'm not a hand.
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That's nonsense.
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And I want to say something right now, because as I was writing my notes, I said, I better say this.
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I don't want to confuse, and I certainly don't want to get into any kind of conflict here over this.
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I am, what I'm about to say, I am not preaching self-esteem.
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And I think that one of the most dangerous things that's crept into the church is the self-esteem idea of modern pop psychology.
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But I want to tell you this, having said that, one of the worst things that does happen in the church is people who sit back and think so little of themselves that they never act according to the gifts they're given, because they think everybody else is valuable, and they're not.
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They think themselves ungifted.
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They think themselves unneeded.
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They think themselves unnecessary.
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And when you think that way, you will never accomplish what God has put you to do.
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When you see yourself as ungifted, unneeded, and unnecessary, you will not contribute to the body what you should.
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Does that make sense? Again, that's not self-esteem.
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That's just natural.
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If you are a foot, and you say, well, I'm not a hand.
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Pastor Keith is a mouth.
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No kidding.
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No.
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I'm not a mouth like Pastor Keith, so I don't have any value.
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That is nonsense.
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And again, that's not self-esteem.
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That's seeing yourself rightly.
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Paul says in Romans 12, That's true.
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But I would say the converse is also true.
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We should not think of ourselves so lowly that we have no contributive value to the body.
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No one should look at the preacher or the evangelist or the elder or the deacon and say, because I'm not that, I'm nothing.
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That's a wrong way of viewing the church, and it's a wrong way of viewing your position in Christ.
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God saved you.
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God sanctified you, and God gifted you with His Holy Spirit, and He brought you here for a reason.
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So having a proper view of self is the first part.
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Second, verse 17, is a proper view of God.
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He says, Notice it says God arranged the members.
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God arranged the members.
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And this is certainly true of the universal body of Christ, but it's also true of the local body of Christ.
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You are not here by accident.
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How many times have you ever heard me say that? How many times from this pulpit have you heard me proclaim the message that you didn't come here today by accident? And sometimes I have to remind myself this, every person that's here is here because of the ordination of Almighty God.
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I have to remind myself of that, especially when drama has erupted, especially when I'm dealing with difficulties.
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I have to remember we are here together as this body under the ordination of Almighty God.
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God has brought people and He has taken people.
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Sometimes it's tough to see people leave, and I do believe sometimes people leave for the wrong reasons.
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But God never allows somebody to come or to go that He doesn't have a greater purpose in it.
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So keep this in mind.
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God brought you here.
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He arranged us the way we are for a purpose.
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And we're different than we were five years ago.
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We're a lot different than we were 10 years ago.
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And we're a shell of what we were in the sense of any semblance to what we were when I came here in 1987.
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When I say shell, that means inferior.
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What I mean is we're different, so different, it's hard to even imagine it's the same place.
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God has brought us here.
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He's arranged us here for His purpose.
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And if you ever think it just happened by accident, think again.
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We call it Sovereign Grace Church for a reason.
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Sovereign Grace Family Church because we believe in that first word pretty strongly.
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God is a sovereign God.
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Some of you were members of other churches, and for some reason God brought you here.
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And you're here right now for a reason.
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You came from other states.
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You came from other churches.
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You came from a diverse background.
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And you're here right now because at this very moment God has so willed it.
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And understanding God's role in bringing us together helps us understand that our gifts are meant to complement each other right now.
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You're needed right now.
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Right here where you are.
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And that leads us to the proper view of others, verses 21 to 26.
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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.
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Remember in the first instance it was the opposite.
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The foot can't say to the hand, because I'm not a foot, I don't belong to the body.
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Which is a way of the foot saying he's inadequate to the hand, right? Well this one's opposite.
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This is the opposite side.
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This is the eye saying to the hand, because you're not an eye, you're not valuable.
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See the first was I don't think I'm valuable.
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Now I feel like I'm so valuable, he is not.
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Instead of seeing yourself as inadequate, maybe you see yourself as more than adequate.
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All animals are created equal, but some are created more equal.
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Right? Animal farm, remember? Some animals are more equal than others.
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Some people see themselves as indispensable and all-important, and everybody else is expendable and useless.
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This person does not recognize the gifts of others, may even undervalue the contributions others make, and so he's consumed with his own gifting, and he intentionally ignores the contributions of others.
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Verse 22 goes on and says this, but on the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are actually indispensable.
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Really had to meditate on that one this week.
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The parts of the body that seem weaker are indispensable.
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On these parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow greater honor, and on our unpresentable parts, we treat with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require, but God so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it.
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Paul here's pointing to the body and the body, and he's saying there's parts of our body that feel less valuable, and actually they're the most precious, and he pushes the human metaphor here to the unpresentable parts.
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There are parts of us that never get put on display, y'all.
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Oh, couldn't get an amen on that.
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There's parts of us that never get put on display, but that's not because they're less valuable.
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Paul's point is this.
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They're actually indispensable.
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They're more valuable, but we don't put them on display because they're of a different type.
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They're of a part of the body that's not meant to be on display.
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Maybe write this down or put this in your mind.
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Visibility does not equal value.
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Visibility does not equal value.
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Just because what you do is not seen as much as what someone else does, does not indicate their value is more than yours.
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I heard this years ago, or maybe not.
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It wasn't too long ago.
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Brother Paul Washer said this.
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He said, sometimes God allows the most beautiful flowers to bloom in a place where no one will ever see except Him, and their beauty is held for Him alone.
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See, we mustn't consider ourselves higher or lower because we're on display or we're not.
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Verse 25.
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So that there be no division in the body, that the members may have the same care for one another.
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And if one member suffers, all suffer together, and if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
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The point of that verses 25 and 26 is this.
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The key to all this is understanding each of you has value in Christ.
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And that's where your value comes from, by the way.
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Your value doesn't come from necessarily what you are able to do, or what you're not able to do.
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Your value doesn't come in how great you are able to do X, or how great you're able to do Y, or how great you're able to do Z.
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Your value comes because you are in Christ.
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And thus you are valuable to the body.
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And the body works together to demonstrate Christ to the world.
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This will not happen if you think too lowly of yourselves, because you won't believe you have value to actually contribute.
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And this won't happen if you think too highly of yourselves, because we won't believe that our value is of the same as everyone else's, but that our value is more important and everybody else's less important.
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It will only come when we begin to understand that God has arranged us as we are to do what He has called us to do in this place, at this time for His purpose.
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But let me say this.
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Everything I've said today is, I hope, true.
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But there's also one additional truth that I have to say.
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God has brought you here for a purpose.
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You are here because you are needed here.
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But that does not mean that you're doing what God called you to do here.
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There are parts of the body sometimes that don't function.
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And if we are that part of the body, we are disobedient to the reason God called us here.
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It also doesn't mean that He isn't preparing to bring others here either, because I pray that He is.
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I pray that God will continue to bring more people in with various gifts and that those gifts will integrate here and that God will use them here.
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But I will say this.
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What we have right now is what we need right now.
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And if God brings us 20 new people next week and we have to integrate them into the ministry, praise God for that.
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But right now, are you doing what God has called you to do? If you are a hand, are you being a hand in the church? If you are a foot, are you being a foot in the church? If you are a mouth, I always give a little snicker to that one.
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Possibly because I think that's me, but also because sometimes it seems like the mouths have no trouble exercising their gifts.
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We are uniquely gifted as a body right now to carry out what God has us to do.
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And you are the body of Christ here at Sovereign Grace.
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That's what He goes on to say and that's what we're going to look at next week.
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He says, you are the body of Christ.
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Just very quickly, I know we can't go there today, but just looking at it, look at verse 27.
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Now you are the body of Christ.
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Now you are the body and individually members of it.
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Now you who have been redeemed, you who have been regenerated, you who've been justified by grace alone through faith alone, you who've been spirit baptized and then dwelled, you may be a hand, you may be a foot, you may be an eye or an ear, you may be a mouth, but never mistake if you are in Christ, His spirit is in you and that Holy Spirit lives in you to conform you to Christ and empower you to build up the body.
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My favorite verse of scripture is this, for by grace are you saved through faith.
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And that's not of yourselves.
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It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
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But it doesn't end there, right? For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which He prepared beforehand and that we should walk in them.
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No boasting, no boasting because it's all God.
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But also no laziness because He didn't save you just so that you could sit there.
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He saved you to be a part of His church, no matter what that part is.
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He has given His church a body and you are the body of Christ.
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Let's pray.
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Father, we thank you.
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We thank you for the body.
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We thank you that you've called us to be together.
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We thank you that in all the churches in Jacksonville, you've brought this unique group of people to this building.
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And the building isn't the church, these people are the church.
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When we have assembled together, we are the body of Christ.
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We have hands and we have feet.
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We have mouths and we have eyes and we have ears.
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God, may we be not disobedient and following through with the giftings that you've given us, seeking out the ministries that you've given to us.
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But may we always understand that no matter our gift, no matter our usefulness in the church, no matter where we are, no matter who we are, no matter what we are.
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It is all because of Christ and it's all a gift of the spirit.
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We cannot say to someone else, you are important and valuable and I am not.
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Neither, Lord, can we say to another person, I am important and valuable and you are not.
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But Lord, as your apostle says, let each one of us think rightly about himself.
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So that we might together.
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Out of diversity, be truly unified in Christ.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.