1 Corinthians 12:12-26 Growing in Community

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches for his three -part series,

Growing In, reminding us all of the growth of Recast Church. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning, Recast Church. I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here, and I am glad to welcome you to this gathering of the church here in Matawan, Michigan.

If you could find your seats there in the back, that would be great. We are kicking off a new year with a short series of sermons that's explaining how we grow here at Recast Church, and how we plan to grow in 2018.

That is not about numerical growth. How many of you would like to personally grow in 2018?

You'd like to be stronger, you'd like to be doing better, you'd like to be walking with God more and more. It's not a series about how to fill the seats in here.

That's not what we're about, but instead it's a series about how to fill our hearts, each and every one of us, with more love and more enthusiasm for the things that God loves and wants to grow in our lives.

So that's what the series really is all about. Last week we looked at growing in faith.

Our growth plan here, our growth model, is growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

Last week in our text we saw that without faith it's impossible to please God, but the flip side of that is equally true, and that is that our faith does please

God, which is an exciting thing to think about as we launch out into a new year. If you have faith in God, that pleases

Him, that makes Him smile, that gives Him delight. If you missed last week, you can jump in on the website or look up the podcast if you're into that kind of thing, and you type in Recast Church into the search there and you can find our podcast.

You can subscribe to that and you can see that last sermon on growing in faith and pick it up from there.

But this week we pick up another central component of growing in our relationship to the Lord here at Recast, and that is simply growing in community.

It's our conviction and belief and trust that each and every one of us needs to be growing more and more in connectedness with the others around us.

Why is it, though, that we value community and relationships here at Recast? Why would that be important to us?

Ask yourself this question. Is there anything wrong with people coming here on a

Sunday morning to take in the message so that they can personally grow? Maybe you come in, you slide in the back row, and then you quick slide out so you don't have to connect with others.

Nothing against those of you in the back row. I know how that, I sit there sometimes, too, and that can be a comfortable place to be.

But sometimes it's very easy to just kind of slide in, take in a message, or to even think of the church that way as primarily a program that I go to, or a show that I take in each week, and I'm convinced that that's not at all what

God has in mind when he uses the word church, when he thinks of his body, when he thinks of those that are gathering together in his name.

He wants more than that for us, and he's designed us, each and every one of us, for more than that.

And so this all comes down to how you view church, and I recognize that all of us come from various experiences with church.

Some of us were raised in the church. Some of us, we only went to church with our grandparents, or some of you didn't go to church at all, and maybe this is a new experience for you, and you're growing in that.

But it's easy to be drawn into very insidious misunderstandings about the church.

For many in our culture, the church has become nothing more than a place where people go to grow in their personal faith, personal faith.

You know, we like to use the word personal a lot around religious things, and so we have, you know, you might talk about having a personal trust in Jesus, and we think of our relationship with God, our relationship with faith, our relationship with religion as a private matter.

And any of you ever have any interactions with somebody who's like, that's between me and God, I'd like to leave you out of that, and I'd like to just, you know, don't talk to me about religion, don't talk to me about faith.

This is just between me and God. But I am not convinced that that's what

God desires for us. The text we're looking at this morning gives us a radically different view of the church, a view of unity, a view of unity in the midst of diversity.

We are not clones of one another, but we are unified under one head, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And we have an interdependence, a need for one another that God has brought us together in our neediness to meet those needs of others and to express those needs that we have to others around us.

And so I want you to open your Bibles, if you're not already there, to 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verses 12 through 26.

If you grab the Bible that's in the seat back, in that rack beneath the seat in front of you, it's page 558 there, an easy way to find it, otherwise you can navigate in your device or flip over in your own

Bible. First Corinthians 12, verses 12 through 26. I'm going to read this to us, again it's page 558, and as every week

I like to remind us that this is God's word to us, this is what he wants to communicate, and I am convinced that through his sovereignty, through his will, and through his plan, he has this passage for us this week, and he wants us to take this in.

So, follow along, 1 Corinthians 12, 12 through 26, God's word.

That would not make it any less a part of the body, 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 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 in 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, and 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 part that lacked it, and that there may be no divisions 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.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for this body, for Recast Church.

You have drawn us together. Even this morning, you have gathered people to praise you, to honor you.

With our voices, even now as we sing, but certainly with our lives and the way that we relate to one another. Father, beyond this connection time that we're gonna have in a little while, and beyond the conversations that happen after this service,

Father, you are building us into a community here for your glory and for your honor.

Ultimately, in a sense, practicing for the day when we will be in complete unity before your throne, where we will live on a new earth with all the hope that that entails.

Father, all the glory and the beauty without sin. But Father, for now, we are given this opportunity to sharpen one another, to encourage one another, to challenge one another.

And I pray that that would be an ongoing reality in 2018 for Recast Church. Father, I have had a just amazing sense of unity here, and it perceived an amazing sense of unity and care and concern for one another here in this church over the last eight years.

And I have no reason to believe it'll be any different this next year, but it's only by your grace that that will be sustained.

Only because you are good and you have been kind to us, that we will march forward into this next year in unity, with togetherness, with love, with care, lifting up those who are weak, celebrating with those who are celebrating, and mourning with those who are mourning.

And Father, that you would connect us even more, even as we have sign -ups for community groups in the back, Father, that you would be forging the right groups there, that,

Father, you would be drawing people together in a way that is magnificent and glorious to shine your love to others.

And I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks to the band for leading us this morning. Grateful for them.

I would encourage you to get comfortable. If you need more coffee, juice, or donuts while there's some left back there, take advantage of that.

And it's not going to be distracting to me if you need to get up from your seat and stretch out or get more stuff back there.

But I would also ask you to please keep your Bibles open to 1 Corinthians 12, the passage that we read earlier.

I recognize that some of you might have lost your place or your device got shut down or whatever, but 1 Corinthians 12, 12 through 26, that's the text that we're walking through.

We're going to be kind of marching through the meaning and the understanding of that text this morning. And just to set the stage, because I'm not preaching through the book of 1

Corinthians, I like to set a little of the context. So 1 Corinthians is a letter that's written by the Apostle Paul to a church in ancient

Greece in a city called Corinth. That's the context. That's the setting. That's what's going on here when you're reading this book.

This book was originally written as a letter in the church there. As you read the letter that was written by Paul to that church, you get a snapshot, you get a feel for what that church was like and there were a lot of divisions in this church.

You see Paul level some significant and harsh criticism against the church in the city of Corinth.

They were not doing it all right. They were real, just like us. And so they had their issues and their problems and their struggles and maybe even more so.

I'm glad that this is not the church in Corinth. Some of the issues and things that they struggled with there, I think we're doing fairly well.

Not to pat ourselves on the back, it's just they had some significant depth to the problem. And so within the context of addressing those issues of divisions and quarrels and frustrating things that were happening,

Paul talks to them and writes to them about the value of all people in the church. He talks about spiritual gifts in this context.

Really chapters 11 through 14 in the book of 1 Corinthians talks a lot about the gifts that people have to bring to the church and it's obvious that some people there in Corinth were being devalued and were devaluing each other.

They're putting each other down. They were insulting. They were actually even assuming that some people were not even necessary in the church.

And so if you can imagine a context with that kind of quarreling, that kind of division, that's Corinth. And so Paul uses for the

Corinthians and for our benefit, we have the opportunity to look in and see how he addresses those issues by giving an extended metaphor on the human body.

He uses the human body as an illustration for what a healthy church looks like. What does a healthy human body look like?

And then how does that apply to the church or how is that used as an analogy for the church?

Well, many of us are pretty good at understanding the human body even if you don't have a biology degree or you've never taken anatomy and physiology primarily because you own one, right?

How many of you have a body? Everybody go ahead and put it into action by raising your hand. That's good. Some of us express that and some of us are like,

Don, that's just dumb. Why did you ask us to raise our hand on that? Duh, of course. I'm not meaning to patronize you or anything.

The human body is a very intricate machine, obviously, that contains many different systems, many different organs that all work together in unison to sustain, that was hard to say, to sustain a human life.

And each part is unique in its function and role. You know these things. These are, I'm just rehearsing for you, things that you already take for granted that you already know.

You've got eyes, ears, a heart, toes, tendons, capillaries, bones, muscles for some, right?

Some a little bit more endowed with things like that than others. But all these things that function together to sustain you, to be able to interact with the world around you.

I don't know if you ever think about this, but each one of those things you could offer up in thanks to the God who has created you, that's given you those things.

I mean, I'm going to take your arms for granted. You take your ears for granted. You take your eyes for granted. And it's very easy to do.

But I tell you what, at the bedrock of when things get tough in life, sometimes there are just, have you ever been scraping for things to be thankful for?

You ever been in a season like that? And let me just say that we don't have to go very far to scrape for things to be thankful for.

Just the things that are functioning right and are working right are a cause to give thanks. But Paul uses the body as an illustration of life in the church and the way that we function together in community.

What does it mean that Recast Church exists? What does it mean that we're gathered here this morning? What does it mean to be a part of a local church?

Well, he's going to really, I've divided this text out into three main points. I don't do that every week, but he draws three points from the analogy of the human body.

The first is in 12, verses 12 through 14. That is the body is one unit.

So he points out the unity that is necessary in the church, that we're together. The fact that we've gathered together is an essential part of what it means to be a church, that we are one body together.

The second part is that the body is comprised of diverse parts. So we are one under the headship, the leadership, the kingdom of Jesus Christ under his kingship, but each one of us are different.

How many of you look around the room and you see different people? We're not clones of one another. We have different values and different things like that.

And so that's verses 15 to 20 about the diversity. And then the third part is that the parts of the body are dependent on one another.

There's a mutual, I like to use the word, mutual interdependence on one another. You need others, others need you.

And that's necessary in the church. And that's verses 21 through 26. So if you're taking notes this morning, the outline could simply read this way.

Recast united is the first point. Recast diversified is the second point. And recast alive is the third point.

Recast united, recast diversified, recast alive. So let's start with recast united.

Sounds like a great name for a soccer team or something like that. Maybe we should start calling our basketball team recast united.

They had a rough loss yesterday. I don't know how much they played united yesterday. But sorry guys, didn't mean to throw you under the bus there.

But better luck next week. But recast united, so we dive into this text and find out right away that unity is taken for granted in the body.

It's a necessary component of what it means to be a church. It's the same way that unity is taken for granted in our human bodies, right?

How many of you are glad that your body is unified? That your arm isn't separate from your body and things like that? You want that to be the case.

You know, your liver, can your liver sit out on the table and still function as it ought to as a part of the body?

And the answer is no, you don't want that. You want it to be in there, unified with you, doing the things that livers do, right?

Like that's what you want to have happen. And again, we're talking about a very clear illustration of something that we can grab ahold of.

Paul is using something that we can all relate to. So look at how clear verse 12 is at laying out the unity within the church.

He goes over the top repeating himself. He says, just as the body is one and has many members,

I think organs and systems, and then he states the reverse, though there are many systems in the body, they are all one.

And then he goes on to say at the end of verse 12, this is the way it is with the church. Is that what he says?

Is that what he says at the end of verse 12? So it is with the church? No, he says, so it is with Christ.

Look with me at the end of verse 12. Paul doesn't say, so it is with the church. Instead, he ends that verse saying, so it is with Christ.

You see, the church is quite simply those who are identified in Christ. That's part of what it means.

Actually, that's central to what it means to be. A church is a gathering of those who are in Christ.

That's what it means to be a local church. A local church without connection to Jesus Christ is not by any stretch of the imagination a local church.

It's not really a church if the individuals are not connected to Jesus Christ.

That's fundamental to what it means to be a church.

We need that connection. And so in verse 13, we see how all of these members are brought together to form the body of Christ.

How did we get connected to Jesus? How did we get connected to him? He says, there's one Holy Spirit, the third person of the

Trinity, who baptized, that word, whenever you see the word baptized in scripture, I want you to think first and foremost about being immersed, being surrounded by something.

When something was baptized in water, the Greek word there would have meant to just submerge it, to put it, so that there's water above it, water beside it, water underneath it, water all around it.

That's the word baptized. And so if we're baptized by the Spirit into the body, we are submerged into this thing called the body of Christ.

We are submerged into the church. That's kind of a different thought than maybe what our world teaches us, than what our culture teaches us about church being something that I attend on Sunday mornings.

Is the idea of being submerged in church, is that a foreign concept to the American mind?

I think it is to some degree. How much are we essentially tied together? Well, this is just a group of people that I see on Sunday morning, and that's it.

Is that what it's meant to be? Is that how, it's not at all what this text is saying, but you have been baptized,

He has immersed us, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, has immersed us into the body, and by doing so,

He has washed away distinction, so that the body, in this gathering of people, there in Corinth, it was an issue of Jew or Gentile, it was about ethnicity and about religious background and about what you worshiped and what you did before you came to Christ.

He says there's no more of that within the body, there's no more slave or free, there's really no more Michigan fan or Ohio State fan,

Red Sox or Yankee, Democrat or Republican, but there are just those who have been cleansed and forgiven of sins through the blood of Jesus Christ.

And we are all united through this complete immersion by the Spirit that occurred at the point of putting our faith in Jesus Christ as our

Savior. And that connection to the head assumes, by the way, when I think in terms of when did you get connected to the body, that connection assumes a connection to the local gathering of believers, by the way.

There is, Paul had no room, the New Testament harbors no room for the idea that there would be a

Christian, somebody who is spiritually connected to Christ that is not intentionally seeking out local community in Christ.

That's a given, that is an assumption, all consistently throughout the

New Testament, author after author after author, knows nothing of our modern concept of a individualized spirituality, where I could go online and take in a sermon and I could just listen to my

Christian radio and assume that I'm getting what I need out of the Christian life.

Absolutely no room for that kind of thinking in the New Testament. I challenge you to find it for me, where the notion of somebody disconnected from a local gathering of people can have a vibrant spirituality.

You can't, you know why? Because you can't challenge yourself enough. You need other people to rub you the wrong way.

We need each other for that. And as much as we like to find places that make us comfortable, some of the times that I've grown the most has been when

I am in a small group, when I'm connected with others, and we don't all see eye to eye. Does anybody know what

I'm talking about? And our culture runs from that, and we need to run to that, because that's what's gonna make us stronger inside.

That's what's gonna tie us together, is when you hit me in such a way, when iron sharpens iron, and I get the rough edges rubbed off of me by somebody else who's different than me.

We need that. And that's exactly what the issue is here, in the gathering of God's people.

So when did you come to faith in Christ? Ask yourself that. When did I become a member of the body?

When did I give my life over to Jesus Christ and take him as my head, my leader, the one who is over me, the one who will direct me?

Think about it in these terms. I mean, I don't know how well the Greek times and in Roman times they understood anatomy, but they at least had some idea that the head directs the body, and they've got, who is the head of the church?

Jesus Christ. So to be in the church is to have Jesus Christ as your head, guiding you, leading you.

I am an under -shepherd here at this church. I am not the shepherd at Recast Church.

Who is the shepherd at Recast Church? Jesus. I answer to him. I'm accountable to him.

And so he is our head. He is our leader. I only ever want to step with him. I only want to follow him.

I don't want to get out ahead of him, and I don't want to lag behind him. I want to be following hard after Jesus, and then leading him and leading us all in the direction that he's guiding us and directing us.

And so when did you become a part of the body? And it's impossible that some of us here in the room might miss this entire message because we're not really deeply connected to the head.

We're not really connected. And so this idea of connecting with others, how many of you ever tried to connect with others on your own without Christ?

Those relationships can get pretty tense and pretty tangled in a hurry. They get tangled enough with Christ, but when you're without him, man, that's a rough go.

Maybe some of you are here and there's something in your life that's held you back from coming to Christ, something that's held you back from saying,

I want in, Jesus, on what you're doing in the world, what you've done and what you're doing. Maybe for some of us, it's pride.

Maybe it's a lack of understanding. But whatever it is, I would love to discuss further with anyone in the room how you can enter into a connected relationship with Jesus Christ as a member of his body and take him as your leader, your director, as your head.

But growing in community is only gonna happen as we become connected more and more to the head,

Christ Jesus, and then begin to relate to the other organs around us. Then in that body, in that unity, in that togetherness, connect in vital ways with one another.

And that leads to the final observation about unity in the church. Paul is outright stating that you are not the point of the church, but we together in unity are the point of the church.

Us together, recast together, recast united, united in the worship of God through his son,

Jesus Christ. So many think that the church is about self -improvement or that the church exists to serve them.

That it's somehow about what we stand to gain out of it, what we can get out of it.

Or even more crassly stated, it's just about what we prefer. But Paul reminds us all that the body does not consist of one member, but it consists of many.

So when we sing a song that you don't prefer, have you ever stopped for just a moment and considered that maybe it's someone else's song?

Maybe it's there for someone else that's around you? Maybe that's why we sing that song if it's not your favorite, maybe it is somebody else's.

And maybe we could just defer to that and seek to gain what we can from a song that we don't like or one that isn't our preference.

Why don't I just ask you to look around for just a second? We're not alone in this room.

We're not alone in our journey of faith. And it really is an oxymoron to say that I have a personal faith in Christ.

If you're thinking that, let me just boldly correct you. You don't. You don't have a personal faith in Jesus.

You have a faith that impacts others around you. You're interconnected in ways whether you want to or not you are.

Did you know that? Whether it's a poor faith or a lack of faith or a strong faith or a growing faith, or a vibrant faith, wherever, whatever adjective defines your faith, it is impacting others around you.

Even if it is just a flat out lack of faith, I don't believe a word that Don says this morning,

I don't believe a word of the Bible is true. Did you know that impacts others around you? All of it. We are an interdependent people who like to pretend that we're independent, right?

We're independent. And that's like the rallying cry of America, independence and me and my iDevice, being alone, doing my thing, pretending that I'm connected to 1 ,000 people on Facebook.

You know what I'm talking about. And God has created us for a vital, life -giving connection and relationship.

So let's just kind of own that this next year. Let's own that connection with one another and be purposeful and intentional about it.

We are indeed connected to one another. We do not have a personal faith.

Nobody has a personal or private faith in Jesus Christ. Faith in Christ always leads a person who really comes to it into a kingdom practice, a practice of what it means to be subjects under the

King together. Our final destiny, by the way, is to be together with people in the presence of God and in the presence of Christ, our

Savior for eternity. You were not meant to live your life in isolation. You cannot live your life in isolation.

The Apostle Paul says it right there at the end of the verse, for the body doesn't consist of one member, but of many.

Look around you. You're connected to others. And verse 14 takes us to the next point by saying, yes, we're all unified as members of this one body, but we must also consider that we're not all the same member.

There's diversity here, and that leads to the second point, recast, diversified. The church is diverse.

When we consider the church, when we think about church living, many of us have had this experience. You've been in the church.

How many of you would say you've been in church living for more than 10 years? Some connection, some type of relationship to a church for over 10 years.

So this might resonate with you, but when we consider the church, nothing can get in the way of unity quite like diversity.

Does that resonate with some of you? Some of you are chuckling. Some of that's maybe nervous chuckle. I don't think like you think.

I don't process information the same as you. I don't lead like you lead. I don't follow like you follow.

Each one of us is unique. We're peculiar. And just to be honest, a lot of us are just plain weird, right?

We got that? No, everybody but Haley. Haley's like, nope, not me. I'm not weird. Everybody else is.

Ask yourself this question. When you think about unity and diversity, again, still sticking to the illustration of the human body,

Paul goes on and just asks some questions and thinks this through. Like ask yourself this question literally, which is better, a toe or an eye?

A toe or an eye? Well, you might have your thoughts. Your hair or your spleen? Kneecap or your thumbnail?

Okay, I don't know about you. I don't like the idea of taking any of those off, right? Like none of those. I mean, I might have my preferences.

I might have some like, okay, if you're gonna have to remove one, remove my hair, right? Like that would hurt less or something like that. But you're kind of looking at it and going, which, you know, each one has their different role and their different function.

And the foot should not say, I'm not worthy to be a part of the body because I'm not a hand.

Or the ear, should the ear suggest that it's not a valuable part of the body because it's not an eye?

Verses 17 through 18 wrap up these questions, answering those kinds of questions for us, which are better?

By letting us know the value of what each member brings to the body. Each one has value.

Each member brings a unique set of gifts and abilities that are valuable and important. And amazingly, we see in the text exactly who is putting

Recast Church together. Who's putting us together? Who has called us all here?

Who's putting the right gifts in the right places at the right time? Is it me? Is it the elders?

Verse 18 tells us that it is God himself arranging the members of the body.

It is God himself. He is bringing in what we need to survive. He is bringing in what we need to give him the glory.

So everyone here is here for a reason. And really the reason that God has chosen us to form a body together.

Verse 19 summarizes the point of diversity well in stating the obvious. If we did not have diversity, we would cease to be a body, but we would be just one big organ.

We'd just be one big eye. Which is kind of like a freaky image if you really picture that one just huge eye roaming around.

But I guess if we try to go it alone or we try to assume that everybody ought to be the same and we try to clone ourselves, then it basically says in the text that you become

Sauron, right? From the Lord of the Rings, a big eye wreathed in flame. And that's us.

That's what the church becomes. If we don't acknowledge and recognize diversity, if we try to clone ourselves and each and every individual here and everybody just has to be the eye, then it doesn't work.

So a clear application is to be glad and rejoice that God has brought together here at Recast in our community a patchwork of different people and he is building us into the body that he wants.

And I would suggest to you, by the way, that we are diverse enough that many of us would have very little in common and probably not even cross paths were it not for the common ground we have in Christ and his bringing us together in a church gathering by faith.

I think sometimes that's kind of interesting to think of the people that I've gotten to know and the people that I've rubbed shoulders with here at Recast and the people that have come in and that now care for one another.

And I wonder sometimes how many of you I saw before you ever came through these doors.

Did I ever go down the same aisle as you at Meijer? Did you and I shop at the same grocery store and we would have just cordially and kindly got out of each other's way in the cereal aisles?

I'm reaching for the Lucky Charms and you're going for your health stuff. I mean, how would that have gone? You know what

I mean? Did you know each other before? Some of you had relationships before you came in here but the reality is the thing that ties me in relationships and friendships and connection and care for you when you're hurting and wanting to celebrate with you when things are going well and the thing that ties that all together is

Christ. It's him that we have in common and that's given us the freshness and the awareness that there's others out there who are not just like us but value what we value and love the one that we love and love the one who has loved us and recognizes that we're unworthy and he's loved us anyways.

That's an awesome thing to think about the way that he builds a church out of people who have very little in common and by the end we have everything.

Things that matter most. The things that matter most are the things that I love about you. Those are the things that draw us together and bring us together in community.

The third point is Recast Alive. It is the church being interdependent and it's without unity and diversity a body cannot survive.

It can't be all one function. It can't be all one thing that it's doing. If Recast had complete unity in this body without diversity we would do one thing really well.

It'd be kind of like a body who's got digestion taken care of because boy do we have this intestine thing going here.

No way to get food in, no way to get food out, but man if food ever shows up we can digest it.

You know what I'm saying? I mean it's like that would be kind of foolish to all be one thing. If everybody in this room was an evangelist there would be nobody back in the kids department and we'd be in trouble.

Like do you know what I'm saying? It would be really tough to do a church that way. But God leads us to a diversity of gifting, a diversity of thinking, a way of,

I love it on our board when we have these, the elders don't all think the same and they don't all come from the same background and the same angle and I love that because there's a richness in our, you know,

I'd say we have a holy and sanctified way of going at it. And there's a, it's great.

I mean we dig in and we banter back and forth and we hit the different angles of a topic and it's really good and it's healthy.

But on the other hand, what happens when you have diversity without unity in a church? There's nothing holding us together but there's a ton of diversity.

Well what happens in a human body is a terrible thought when you have diversity without unity.

It's called dismemberment. That's not a pretty picture. And in the church it's division, quarreling and dividing and splintering and all those kinds of things that can be the darkest side of church gatherings.

And either dismemberment in the physical body or division in the church or splintering is a nice prospect. I don't like the idea of my arm leaving my body.

I don't like that. And I don't like the idea of divisions forming at Recast Church and I just consider over the last eight years how gracious God has been to us in avoiding that.

There's just been a sweet and a deep sense of unity here that I've been privileged to have a front row seat to.

I can't cause that. The elders can't make that happen. Give credit to God for that.

It's the Spirit drawing us together and holding us together in unity. It's not to say that we haven't had disagreements.

It's not to say that there hasn't been times where we've had to hash things out and work through things but the commitment to work through those things is a beautiful thing in itself.

That in itself is glorious and wonderful when we have the opportunity to disagree on things and still love one another.

And that's what we're called to do. So the main point of this message then comes in this final section.

Different parts working in unity with other parts are needed in order for the whole body to function properly.

The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you. Nor can the head say to the feet, I have no need of you. We need others to live and grow in our relationship with God and we need different others to help us grow.

A member can no more grow and thrive outside of the community with others than a hand can write a letter without the rest of the body.

The implication of verse 21 is that some within the church at Corinth were literally dismissing others as unneeded.

God forbid that this would ever happen at Recast Church. We all need one another in this community.

And verses 22 through 24 then spell out that although there are some members who are behind the scenes, they are still necessary and important in the body and they even receive a higher level of honor through being clothed in the physical sense.

But again, it's stated in verse 24 as a reminder that it is God who is building up this body and joining us together.

He is the one who gives out honor so that all are equal in importance.

It's not the honor that's received here in this gathering that is valuable. It's the honor that is received from the head that is valuable.

Another application point for you to just consider is who are you working for? Who are you seeking to honor?

There's all different kinds of tasks and things that get done here at the church, things that are behind the scenes that will probably never be given credit for.

People who empty the garbage and do all different kinds of things and they're not doing it so that I'd stand up here on Sunday morning and offer their name and put a plaque somewhere for them or something like that.

It's ultimately a question, who are you serving? Are you looking for the well done, good and faithful servant from the

Lord himself? That's not to say we don't say thanks. Obviously we say thanks when something comes to our attention to just offer a word of gratitude expressed for what people do here.

But ultimately I know that there are people who are serving and serving behind the scenes here at this church who the last thing they would want is for me to bring them up here and say thanks in front of everybody.

But they will receive glory and honor for the things that are done in the presence of Christ.

So now we get to the point of the entire analogy and therefore the point of this morning's message. God has brought us all together that we might care for one another.

When we talk about growing in community, this is what I mean, caring for one another.

God in his awesome and amazing mercy sent Jesus to die for us and he has saved us by his grace through our faith and trust in him.

By his spirit he has baptized, remember immersed us into the church so that we might exhibit true, genuine, heartfelt, evident, compelling,

God honoring love for one another. He's brought us together to love one another, to take care of one another, to support one another, to challenge one another and to work through issues with one another.

And what this looks like is the central cry from my heart for Recast as we grow in community in this next year in 2018 and that is that we would not have anyone here in our gathering rejoice alone and nobody in our body would suffer.

Everybody would have somebody there for them. If you're here this morning and you're suffering, I recognize,

I know how hard it can be at times to share that with others. It's a major step of faith to share that you're suffering with another.

But if you're here and are rejoicing, it can equally be difficult to share that with others.

So church, we need to be a body that fosters and develops authentic relationships with one another.

Who do you turn to when it comes time to celebrate a promotion at work? Who rejoices with you at the birth of a child?

Who do you tell when you have a major breakthrough and you walk with God and you begin to see victory over sin and you can just see the

Spirit working in your life and you want to share that with somebody? Where do you turn? On the other hand, who do you turn to when you get the notice that you've been let go?

Do you have somebody to mourn with you over the miscarriage of a child or the loss of a loved one? Where do you turn when sin seems to be conquering you?

I hope it's the same people. I hope it's the same group. And I would suggest to you that what

I'm asking of you is a supernatural calling. None of us in this room are equal to this task. We need

God's work. We need to actually ask and pray that God would draw us closer in community in this next year.

Because if we're all honest, I think most of us are just like me. You're pretty caught up in your own life.

Anybody that would testify to that? It's just reality for all, I think all of us. We get very caught up here taking care of number one.

We're so busy taking care of ourselves and this text is calling us to stop it.

The true calling to community begins with looking around this room and acknowledging there's other people.

There's people here who need you. There's people here, are you ready for this?

This is maybe the hardest one. There's people here you need. That can be hard for an

American to take on. That can be hard in our culture to say I need.

We do. The calling to us this morning from this text then is to trust others.

It's a big step, but equally to be trustworthy. That when somebody comes to you and shares, you're ready to mourn with them or you're ready to celebrate with them.

And then to be honest with each other. It's fundamental to relationship is being honest. Forge true relationships in this next year and be honest with what's going on in your life.

But also this is a call for us to be the body of Christ to each other, to be loving, gracious, kind, compassionate, encouraging, helpful to one another.

When I get poked in the eye, my hand, my head, my mouth, my entire body responds.

The members of my body set about to assess the damage and start the process of healing, right? Isn't that the way that the body is designed?

How many of you ever hit your thumb with a hammer and your body responds to that? Not just your thumb, not just your hand, not just the local area, but everything in you.

And be careful what responds. I mean, you gotta watch out for that. But all of us are, you've hurt yourself and you know how that naturally occurs in you.

So let's be a body like that. Founded on the unity we have in Christ, respecting the diversity of the different members, recognizing our interdependence upon one another to mourn with those who mourn and to rejoice with those who are rejoicing.

Jesus died for us, we cast. He died to unite a people together under his kingdom. And all in this room who acknowledge

Jesus as their king are welcome to the tables this morning at communion to remember his sacrifice for us.

He is the king, he is the head of the body. He is the director of this thing called church.

And one of the reasons we call this thing communion is a mashup of two words. And we do it each week.

It has a thing to do with community. It really ultimately is about community. We are together in the gathering of his body remembering his sacrifice for us.

And we do this because our head, Jesus Christ told us to. And he knew that when we do this thing we would be openly declaring the community that is united together in union with Christ our head that we have here together.

We express that we have community union. Put those two words together and you get communion.

And so that's what we do each week here. We take communion. You see Jesus told his early church leaders that when they gather they should take a piece of bread and a drink of wine to remember his body broken for them and his blood shed for them.

So we do this each week to remember his sacrifice that has brought us together. The thing that really is the secret spice in the sauce so to speak.

The thing that brings us alive in unity together. And it is this sacrifice that was made for each and every one of us to draw us together closer to him.

Everyone who goes to one of these four tables in the corners of this room this morning and takes this juice and cracker is physically demonstrating their trust and their need for a savior.

So look around as you come to the tables. It's very easy for us to look down at our feet or to just be kind of isolated or oh this is awkward or don't look people in the eye or anything like that.

But let's celebrate that he has brought us together. Let's acknowledge that there's other people around us. We do not stand alone.

And I don't know about you but increasingly I find that in a connected culture it's very easy to feel more and more isolated.

Does anybody relate to that with me? More and more as we're more quote unquote connected we're less and less connected.

And we need to take strides to whether that's maybe the next step for some of you in this room is to march back there after the last amen and sign up for a community group.

There's sheets back there on that back table and maybe that would be a big step for some of you. Maybe it's a phone call to reach out to somebody who's already in a community group with you that you've already connected with and you just haven't been sharing what's going on in your heart.

Maybe it's just calling somebody and getting together over coffee this week and listening to their story.

Celebrate what he has done for us. Let me encourage all of us to recognize the calling of God in our lives at the start of 2018 to grow together in community.

God has designed his church as a united gathering of diverse people who truly come alive in community with each other.

So let's commit to making this year, this a year of growing in community together and let's be a church that follows our leader into loving others, showing compassion and being the church to one another in 2018.

Let's pray. Father I thank you for the community that we have here at Recast Church.

I thank you for drawing us together and even this morning, just this gathering is a unit of people who have come under this teaching, who have come under your teaching from your word.

Father an opportunity for us to consider and contemplate growing in community in 2018 and I pray that you would make that a reality.

It's a difficult task. It's something that none of us are equal to in our flesh, in our strength. We will walk out these doors and we will just live the same as we lived last week with no change.

So we need a supernatural act of your spirit to change us, to transform us, to think outside of ourselves, to love more, to be more compassionate and to put ourselves in other people's shoes, to rejoice with those who are rejoicing, to mourn with those who are mourning.

Father I thank you for drawing us together. I thank you for the great and awesome fellowship and community that I see here.

Just even in the last couple of days seeing people gather here to put chairs up and set things up and,

Father, just people painting and doing various things around here and connecting with each other and Father I just thank you so much for the community that you've drawn us into.

I pray that we would be faithful to follow you and to honor you in this next year. I thank you as we have an opportunity to come to the tables of communion that we have an opportunity each week to reflect on the unity that we have in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

I thank you for his body broken for us and our place as our substitute, the one who took your wrath away that we deserved.

And Father for his blood, his precious priceless blood that was shed in our place.

Father we can't be worthy of this sacrifice and that's the point it is by grace alone. It is a gift from you.

We don't deserve this, but you have done this for us. So let that lift the burden off of our shoulders this week as we come to these tables remembering that it's nothing that we've done, nothing we can do to earn it, nothing we can do to pay you back, but at the end it's a gift of your love.

And as we feel loved, I pray that we would pass that love along to others that we encounter in life this week in Jesus name, amen.