Romans 12:3

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Okay. Pride is something that is natural in human beings. It is ingrained in us from Adam.
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This is his sin, his disobedience and pride in wanting to be like God.
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There is nothing that we can do about it. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes it from us.
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Now by him we recognize this and as Paul says earlier our minds are renewed but that pride persists in pockets.
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But as we normally do let's start with verse 1. We're on Romans 12 3 today.
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Paul says in verse 1, he says, I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
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Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
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For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think but to think with sober judgment each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
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The first thing that I want to point out here is before we really even get into the text is
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Paul, the writer of the text, the penman.
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The reason I want to point out Paul because Paul is a perfect example of exactly what he is saying. Paul, if there was ever a
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Christian that had right to boast, it was Paul.
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In Philippians 3 4 he says this, Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also, if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh,
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I have more circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a
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Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee, a lawyer, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless.
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Paul was a Jew of Jews. He was.
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He kept the law to his utmost ability. He did the sacrifices as he was supposed to do them.
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He was circumcised. Not only that but he was a knower of the law in its whole, a
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Pharisee. Paul had every right to boast in himself as a Jew and not only that but he was also even as a persecutor of the church hand -picked by Christ on the road to Damascus.
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He is an apostle, a very special position given in the church that only 12 people have ever occupied.
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In 2nd Corinthians 11 23 or in 2nd Corinthians 11 23 through 28 he once I was stoned, three times
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I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure, and apart from other things there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all of the churches.
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There was no one, as I said before, except perhaps the other apostles who had occasion to boast in themselves as much as Paul did.
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Having suffered as much as he suffered and having given as much as he had given for Christ, can you imagine going through his life, dealing with the things that he dealt with, everything that he just mentioned, and as he said not only that but the pressure from all of the churches.
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Not only that but he writes a third of the New Testament. Now he can't boast about that because canonization was 300 years later.
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Also he's the father of modern Western literature. The way that he wrote and the way that he spoke is the reason our literature is the way that it is.
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There's not a single person on this planet that could make a similar boast as Paul.
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Pride is something that is so intrusive, so natural to us, that we don't even know when we are doing it.
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It is something that has to be literally called out. It has to be pointed out to you, whether that is by a brother or sister or whether it is by the
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Scriptures. It has to be pointed out. Now you may say something in conversation, but that's not the pride that I'm talking about.
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But the good thing is, one good thing is that as pervasive as pride is, the more conceited a person is or the more narcissistic that they are, the more recognizable it is in that person.
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When you see Paul in all his reasons and all his ability to boast, and yet what does he say?
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At the end of that section of Philippians 3 in verse 7 and 8, he says this, but whatever gain
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I had, I count as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing
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Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake
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I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain
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Christ. And in the ending of that section in 2nd
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Corinthians 11 verses 29 and 30, he says, Who is weak? Am I not weak?
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Who is made to fall? Am I not, and I am not indignant?
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All of the things that he suffered, and he holds no indignity.
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For if I boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.
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He speaks of himself this way in 1st Timothy 1 verse 15.
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He says, The saying is trustworthy and deserving of all of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom
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I am the foremost. If one of the foremost apostles, if the foremost apostle to the
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Gentile, saw no reason to boast in himself or the things that he did or the accomplishments that he made, all of the churches that he planted and the people that he discipled, then how dare any of us today think that we contribute on a level that is boastful, that we should take pride in it.
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Pride is a funny word in our culture. To say that you're proud of your work is one thing.
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To be prideful is similar but not exactly the same. You can accomplish a thing and be proud that you finished it and did a good job that you glorified
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God in that work, that's not a problem. But to think that God needed you to do it, think again.
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We're talking about a God that is sovereign and self -sufficient. God doesn't need any of us.
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Why do you think it's called mercy? Paul says something similar in 1st
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Corinthians 4 7. He says, For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive?
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If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?
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Now to him, specifically in Corinthians, as we'll get to later on in this chapter, he's speaking of gifts given because in Corinth they're arguing over who has the best gift.
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And his point is, is that you are all given gifts and if they're given to you, what right do you have to boast in them?
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Much in the same way as a homeless man is given $20 ,000 and then has occasion to go boast to everyone else who is homeless.
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You were given that money. It wasn't earned, it wasn't merited, it was given.
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How should one boast in a gift? The next thing
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I want us to look at in this verse, aside from the writer and the things that he did, and his humility, is in the very beginning of the verse where he says,
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For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you. In just 13 words,
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Paul here has one, declared apostolic authority over the people he's talking to, and he also humbles himself to the level of the reader.
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He literally says, I am no better than you are, I'm no more valuable than you are, but only by grace am
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I saying this to you. Paul recognizes that even in all that he has given to the church, in all the authority that he has, he has nothing that has not been given to him for God's glory, and that he has no reason to boast in it.
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I'm gonna read you here an excerpt from a book. It was written in 1876 by Reverend John Quincy Adams.
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Not the president. The title of the book is
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Baptists the Only Thorough Religious Reformers. Very good book.
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It's a little bit long, so bear with me. This is one of the most one of the most inveterate sins of fallen humanity is pride.
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Man thirsts for power. He loves to be elevated above his fellows and to be and to occupy a position of acknowledged superiority.
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He delights to be clothed with a little brief authority, which will enable him to look on all around him as his inferiors.
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It is the working of this spirit of arrogance and assumption that has created so many grades among men, both in the world and in the church.
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The disciples of Christ were infected with this spirit. They had imbibed it from their
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Jewish elders, the scribes and the Pharisees, and they thirsted for the possession of such a degree of power and authority as would entitle them to dictate to and rule over their brethren.
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Hence we find them frequently disputing who is the greatest. Christ invariably rebuked this spirit on every occasion of its manifestation.
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He taught them humility. He showed them that the principles of his gospel were opposed to all such sentiments of pride, and that instead of favoring the arrogant wishes of depraved humanity, it was designed to convert mankind into a universal brotherhood, all possessing equal rights, acknowledging but one head, one superior, one master, even himself.
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He taught that his church was to be an association of brethren, all its members subject to one law, and all amenable to one tribunal, the voice of the church.
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But how sadly has the teaching of Christ on this subject been perverted.
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And the professedly Christian Church, instead of presenting to us the beautiful picture of a band of brethren meeting together on a broad platform of equality, exhibits an array of gradations in authority, which vies with the most despotic governments of the world.
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Priestly arrogance and ministerial assumption of authority are exhibited on almost every hand in both the
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Protestant and Papal churches, and from the class leader to the mitred bishop, from the ruling elder to the triple -crowned
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Pope. There is a violation of Christ's declaration.
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One is your master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.
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There is a principle that has mostly gone untaught in the church. Us of the
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Reformed tradition still semi -sort -of kind of teach it. The idea is the first among equals.
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This is one of the principles that governs our church. The people that we elect in this church as elders aren't elected because they are better.
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They're elected because we're the people. They are elected because they are the people that we trust with our spiritual care.
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They have to meet, obviously, the governance of Scripture and the qualifications put therein, but because we trust them, not because they took eight years of seminary or didn't go to seminary or did this or did that.
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There is an idea of who is better at it, and we'll get into that next week, in the who has a gift for this and a gift for that, but the principle still applies, first among equals.
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In any given situation or group of men or women, even doing the same thing, there will be someone who stands out as being gifted in whatever that task is.
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Culture talks about this as natural -born leaders, people who are just gifted at leadership.
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There are people like that in the church, but it doesn't mean they're better. It just means they're better at that thing, and while they may be better at that thing, another person may be better at accounting, so that's where they need to be, but I'm getting ahead of us.
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We'll talk about that next week. Later on, Paul says in that verse, he says, "...but
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to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned."
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What we ought to be doing, rather than being puffed up and boastful about the gifts given to us, is using reasonable judgment to discern what abilities we actually have that can benefit the church, that can glorify
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God the most. We should always think of how we can benefit the church, rather than benefit ourselves.
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Now, this does play into a little bit of a difference in your personal life versus church, because you have to work.
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You have to feed yourself, but if you're gifted at ministration as far as your spiritual gift, but you're a plumber, go be a plumber.
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Support yourself as a plumber, but your role in the church is administration.
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That is how you can help the brethren the best. Paul deals, as I said before, with a similar situation in Corinth regarding spiritual gifts.
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Their issue was that they were mis -evaluating themselves based on the gifts that they had been given, rather than understanding that no gift is more valuable than another gift.
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As Paul says, each member of the body has a specific function.
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Our hands do one thing, our feet do another, our eyes do another, our tongues do another, but together they make up the whole body, as it is with the church.
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In that section, in 1st Corinthians 12, which we'll talk more in depth about next week for sure, he says in verse 12, he says,
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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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For in one spirit we are all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit.
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No one has a different spirit than anyone else, and if we all live our
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Christian lives by the same Holy Spirit, is there any difference in value?
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If we're all gifted by the same Spirit, is there any difference in value? In our
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Western culture, we value what we do. We do.
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Our culture teaches this, and it's not necessarily a bad thing to an extent, but we base a lot of what we do on merit in our culture.
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This is not necessarily a bad thing culturally. In fact, it's a whole lot better than it used to be, but this is, in fact, a part of what we would call or what used to be the
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American dream that a person from somewhere else could come here, and if they've worked hard enough and did the things that they were supposed to do, they could build a much better life here than they could anywhere else.
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Specifically true of countries with certain economic status caste systems, where because you were born here, you're not allowed to move position.
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India is a perfect example of that. They even have familial names given to caste systems so that they know where a person fits.
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One of those names is Patel. I'm sure you've met a Patel at some point in your life.
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That name comes from a serviced caste to do service, to help others.
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They're the ones who did things. In their society, it usually wasn't the most glamorous thing.
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Here, they're doctors, so they're still fulfilling that part of their culture, that part of their religion, but because they live in the
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West, they're valued much more as doctors in service to others.
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So you can't say that a meritocracy is necessarily wholly bad. The problem is, when we come to this, is that, sorry
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I'm getting ahead of myself, we usually think of this idea of merit as being good and proper.
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It is good and proper, truly, for a person to work and to earn and to gain equal pay for their work.
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It is a good thing. It's a biblical thing. The problem comes because, in a meritocracy, this pairs very well with individualism.
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Very well with individualism. I'll give you an example, not an example of individualism, but how pervasive this idea is.
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When you meet someone, what's the first thing you ask them? Their name, right? You say, I'm Josh. They say,
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I'm George. The next question that a guy asks, what do you do? Upon their reply, you make a judgment.
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Now, I'm not saying that you make a bad judgment, but you make a judgment as to their value in society, and I can prove it to you.
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If you asked George what they did and they said, I play video games all day, what kind of value in society do you ascribe to that person?
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Now, that's a tricky one because today in our culture, in America where we live, that could mean they're a bum that lives at home with their mom and they do nothing all day and contribute nothing all day to society, or it could mean that they're worth two million dollars because of Twitch and YouTube and all of that.
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We don't know, but you get my point. In the 80s, you could have said the same thing about skateboarding until Tony Hawk came along and all those guys that made the
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X Games, but if someone says, I'm a doctor, I'm a lawyer,
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I'm a teacher, I'm a plumber, I'm an electrician, you assign graded value to what that person contributes to society, and they do it to you.
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That's why we ask. If you didn't care, you wouldn't ask what they did.
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Now, there is a point of that being proper in conversation so that you can actually have conversation and say, well,
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I'm a plumber, well, I'm electrician, and go on and actually be able to talk to the person. You got to have something to talk about, but that's not what we're talking about, but we assign value to these things.
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This culminates this idea of meritocracy, culminates most notably in our elections when we elect someone.
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Now, what we're supposed to do is elect the most qualified person for the job.
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Who do we want to represent us in our local, our state, our federal government?
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Who do we want to represent us to the rest of the world? It's got to be the best guy for the job.
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Unfortunately, that's usually not how it works out. Usually, it's the person who spends the most money on ads, but that's how it's supposed to be, but as I said before, because meritocracy works so well with individualism and with our own pride, what we tend to do is when we identify ourselves with what we do, that becomes our value.
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Well, I just make pizzas. I just cut grass. I work for a bank.
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I'm an electrician. I'm a stay -at -home mom. We assign value to ourselves based on that, and lots of us struggle with that value.
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We do because we want to have in our pride more value than we have.
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Paul says that we cannot be that way as Christians. Our value does not lie in what we do.
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It does not lie in what we contribute, and here's why. Here, as the church, as Christians, as representatives, the only value that we have is in Christ.
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You and what you do in your flesh is invaluable. It's not valuable, rather.
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The pride that you have, your value lies in the one who saved you, and if we all have to rely on the one that saved us for that, then our value is the same, is it not?
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We should not think of how much more we can contribute, how much more we know.
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I don't mean how much more we can contribute as in I'm not doing enough. I want to do more. That's not what
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I mean. What I mean is I can contribute more than Steve. I'm contributing a whole lot more than that person.
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Remember the Pharisee and the tax collector in the temple? Thank you,
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God, I'm not that person. It doesn't come from what we contribute, how much more we know than others, how we can increase our value over that of another, but rather we are to recognize, as I said, that our value is in Christ, and if our value is in Christ, then it is equal across the board.
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The gifts and the talents that we have been given were just that, given.
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They were given to us by God to benefit His church for His glory.
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When we become conceited and puffed up of the talents that He has given us, as if we have indeed given them to ourselves, we in effect attempt to take for ourselves the glory that is meant for Him.
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We should only ask ourselves two questions, certainly more than that, but in this instance
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I'll give you two. What can I contribute to the church and to the glory of God in that, and how will it benefit everyone else but me?
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Not that you shouldn't benefit from your labor, but I asked that question specifically so that you can think about it without pride, not to think of yourself, and you ask, how can you contribute to the body?
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One of the things that you learn in marriage, if God is so gracious to you, is that the role of a husband, the role of the wife, in part is to give themselves wholly to the other, selflessly in service to the other.
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Do not think of yourself, and how can I benefit from making my wife happy or making my husband happy, but what can
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I give to them, and I don't care what I get back. This is the same view that you should have the brethren.
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Make no mistake, you will benefit from it, just as a husband and wife benefit from being in service to one another, but it should not be the first thing on your mind.
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Paul says this in Ephesians 4 verses 1 through 16, he says,
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I therefore a prisoner of the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the
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Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one
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Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one
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Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
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But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.
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Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.
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In saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions of the earth?
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He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.
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And he gave the apostles and the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the
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Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, who were glorified, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning and craftiness in deceitful schemes, rather speaking the truth in love.
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We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, in to Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
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To give ourselves selflessly to the body with the gifts we have been given, and fulfill to the best of our ability the roles that which that God has himself given us to play, is to fulfill our utmost calling of Christ.
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That is why we are here. That is why we are part of the body. We will endeavor, most certainly next week in our study on this subject, in the giving of talents and gifts, and what role the church and the individual play in regards to their use.
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But that will be next week. I pray that everyone gives a time of thought and a time of prayer to what has been given to you, and how it may be used contribution as a whole to the body.
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As a foot does its job, then I is. Thank you.