No One is Everything

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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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1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 27.
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We're going to read down to the end of the chapter.
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The Apostle Paul writes, Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.
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And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, and ministrating, and various kinds of tongues.
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Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts, and I will show you a still more excellent way.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your Word.
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I thank you that even now we have the opportunity to study the Word together, to glean insights from it.
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But more importantly, Lord, to be moved to action by it.
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Father, I pray that today would not just be speaking words into the air that fall on deaf ears and move not our hearts.
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But Father, that I would pray that the Holy Spirit would speak through the Word today, would convict our heart of sin and righteousness, would drive us away from the things which we ought not, and drive us toward the things which we ought.
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Father, I pray from the elders to the deacons, from the members, husbands, fathers, men, women, children, Lord, that the Word of God would convict us today to drive us ever closer to conformity to your Son, Jesus Christ.
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Move us to trust your Word to see that we are, in fact, now the body of Christ and individually members of it.
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And I pray, Lord, that you would keep me from error.
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For I am fallible.
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But your Word is not.
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May your Word go out.
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May your Word penetrate hearts.
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May your Word change lives.
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And I pray it in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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The Advent season is a time when the Church focuses her attention on the arrival of Jesus Christ.
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That's what the word Advent means.
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It means arrival.
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We focus on His first coming primarily in the season of Advent by looking at the subject of Christmas, and that's what we're going to be looking at just over a week from now.
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We'll be celebrating Christmas, and we will be, as one of the brothers earlier mentioned, experiencing the time-honored tradition of giving gifts.
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Many of us will be gathered together with our families, distributing beautifully wrapped packages filled with toys and trinkets, which were carefully chosen with each recipient in mind.
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It's a fun time.
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It's associated with laughter and joyous frivolity.
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In fact, I've always thought about this on Christmas.
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I think about Matthew 7, and even though the context of this is Jesus is talking about how even bad fathers give good gifts to their children, and how much better God is giving good gifts to His children.
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I always think, you know, He's giving, at least in that statement, the reality that fathers do give gifts to their children.
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It's not a bad thing.
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And in giving gifts to our children, we are, in a sense, modeling our Father in Heaven, who gives gifts to His church.
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And that's what we've been studying these last few weeks.
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We've been studying spiritual gifts.
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God gives gifts to His children.
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Spiritual gifts, which are intended to be used for blessing the church.
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Paul began in chapter 12, verse 1, focusing on the fact that there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit, and similar to how on Christmas morning, each one of my children will open gifts, but they'll all be different, because they'll be each one particularly chosen for that child.
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God gives us gifts that are specifically and particularly chosen to give to us.
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Every believer is gifted by God, but not every believer has the same gift.
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And every believer is gifted for the purpose of building up the church.
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But not every believer builds up the church in the same way.
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So today we're going to look at this text, and this sort of finalizes the chapter, but it doesn't finalize the subject, because this subject goes on through chapter 14.
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The subject of spiritual gifts, starting in chapter 12, verse 1, goes all the way through chapter 14.
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But this does bring this chapter to a conclusion, and I've outlined it in three subheadings.
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I don't always do this, and I certainly don't always do alliteration, but when I do, it's special, so it's a special day.
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They don't all start with the same letter, though.
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I'm not quite John MacArthur on that yet.
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But I at least give them an alliterated sense, because we're going to look today at our identity, our diversity, and our priority.
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Our identity, our diversity, and our priority.
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We began with the identity in verse 27.
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Paul says this again in verse 27.
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He says, Among mankind, there is a premium which is placed on the idea of identity.
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Who am I? It's a very real question people grapple with, especially in their early years.
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What am I? is an even more profound existential question that comes into our mind, and sometimes the question of why am I, not just who or what am I, but why am I, has even more depth, because it gets us to our sense of purpose.
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And when we're growing up, we're often searching for identity.
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When I was a kid, I wanted to be the funny guy.
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I don't know what you wanted to be when you were a kid, but when I was a kid, I wanted to be the one who made people laugh.
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I told my dad once I wanted to be the presidential joke writer.
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And he said, you can't do that because you're not funny.
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Other kids want to be intellectuals, to be known for their smarts.
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Others for their muscles, to be known as being tough.
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Others for their beauty, to be known as being graceful or elegant.
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Other people want to be known for being socially adept and popular, but everybody wants an identity.
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In adulthood, people find their identity often in what they do.
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Right? In fact, that's often how we meet people.
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You meet somebody, shake their hand.
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Hi, my name is Keith.
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I'm a pastor.
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What do you do? And it's just the natural rhythm of life.
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We ask somebody what they do because often that's how we find our identity.
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What you do is actually code for who are you in this world, in this life? Who are you? And other times it's not often in what we do for a living.
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Maybe it's our relationships.
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Well, I'm her husband or I'm his wife.
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Yeah, I'm not her husband.
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I mean, yeah, you understand.
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Well, I find our identity based on our relationship with someone else.
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I'm X's son or I'm X's father.
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I can't tell you how many times people introduce me.
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Nobody ever introduces me as their friend.
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This is my pastor, Keith.
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It's always.
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It's never just this is my friend, Keith.
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It's my pastor.
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So it's very much an identity that I sort of roll with.
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But identity can be a dangerous concept too.
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Nowadays, we have something called identity politics.
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You ever heard of that? Identity politics is where a person is identified with a certain group.
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And so they're expected to behave like that group.
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Like maybe you're a part of a certain race or a certain ethnicity.
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Maybe you're a part of a certain gender.
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And because you are, you know, they made a big deal recently because of how many women voted Republican.
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And oh, shame, because a woman is not supposed to do that, right? That's called identity politics.
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And it's dangerous.
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But probably the most or worst way rather that identity is dangerous is that it causes people to either feel superior to others or inferior.
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Identity causes us to feel like we're better or we're worse than someone else.
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And someone whose identity is tied up to a more affluent economic class or to a career which is considered more prestigious than another career or to a family which is more socially prominent than another family.
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Find their value in those things.
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And likewise, someone who's less affluent, less education, or maybe they're not as socially prominent, find their worthlessness in that.
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I've told this story before, but I'll never forget.
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I was asked to speak at a funeral.
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And when I went, there were other ministers in the room.
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And when I went in and introduced myself to the other ministers, they said, where did you go to school? And when I told them, the man who asked the question, I said, well, I went to Jacksonville Baptist Theological Seminary.
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He literally stuck his nose up in the air.
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I've never seen that happen before then, but he stuck his nose up in the air, turned around and walked away.
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And he didn't talk to me for the rest of the time.
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I was less than he thought I should be.
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And he was the superior and I was the inferior.
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How we see our identity in this world can have a tremendous impact on how we see ourselves and how we see others.
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And sadly, the sense of importance and identity doesn't stop at the church door often.
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There's often a real sense in which superiority or inferiority finds its way into the church.
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And we find ourselves comparing one another to one another.
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Oh, man, he's so spiritual and I'm so not.
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Or, oh boy, she is so worldly.
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Look at how pious I am.
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They're so gifted and I'm so not.
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Or I'm so gifted and they're so not.
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And it's often an unfortunate extension of the world's mindset which creeps into the church.
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And I believe that the church at Corinth had an identity problem.
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They were concerned with identity from the very beginnings of the book.
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You remember from the very beginnings of the book? Some say they're of Apollos.
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Some said they are of Peter.
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Some say they are of Cephas.
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Some say they are of Christ.
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What was that about? It was about identifying with a teacher so that they could have some form of prominence in the church.
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And then later they began to argue or there was a conversation about marital disputes.
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The single versus the married or the ones who want to be married versus the ones who don't.
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Then there was the question of food, whether you're going to eat food offered to idols or whether you're not and how that's going to offend others.
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How do you identify yourself? Are you an idol meat eater? Right? And I believe in chapter 12 this really comes to a head because people are beginning or Paul is addressing the fact that people are finding their identity in their spiritual gifts.
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They're finding their pride in their giftings.
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Those who had certain gifts were spiritually superior to those who didn't have those same gifts.
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And those who had less exalted gifts in the sense that they were maybe less prominent in the body were made to feel spiritually inferior.
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And much like in the world today, people find their identity in what they do.
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The Corinthians found their identity in what they could do.
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What has God gifted me to do? What has God gifted you to do? Oh, you don't have this gift and I do.
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And I think that's why verse 27, I think, sums up everything that's come before it in this chapter because verse 27, Paul reminds us where our identity truly lies.
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Verse 27 says, Now you are the body of Christ.
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In case you missed the metaphor, because he just spent several verses going over the metaphor.
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The hand can't say to the foot, I have no need of you.
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The eye can't say to the ear, I have no need of you.
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If you're all an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If all were a hand, where would be the ability to walk? You know, he's given this lengthy metaphor about the body and the individual parts.
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And he says, now you are that body and individually members of it.
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This is you.
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What does it mean? It means that we're part of something so much bigger than ourselves.
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But this doesn't mean that being part of something bigger means that you lose value.
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In fact, quite the opposite.
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Paul is saying that individually you're members of it and individually you each play your part.
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King James Version says you're members in particular, meaning that in the particular way that you're different and you're you, you're a member of the bigger body.
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We are the body made up of individual members which together form a whole.
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And while none of us is the same, and not every gifting is the same, none of us lacks value in the body.
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Every one of us has an important function to play in the body.
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But here's the key, and I hope this makes sense to you.
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Your function in this body is not your identity.
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You say, what are you talking about? Being part of the body is not your identity.
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Christ is your identity.
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Being in Christ is what matters.
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Oftentimes when somebody dies, people ask, was he in Christ? Was she a believer? Was she a Christian? I've never once had somebody say, did he have the gift of tongues? Or did he have the gift of mercy? Or did he have the gift of this? Or did he have? Nobody ever asked that question.
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Because at the day that you pass and you go into the eternity, it's not going to be what you had.
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It's going to be who you were.
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And you're either in Christ or you ain't.
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Your identity is not that you have the gift of mercy.
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Your identity is not that you have the gift of administration.
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Your identity is not that you have the gift of prophecy or anything else.
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Your identity is that you are in Christ.
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And at the end of your life, that's all that's going to matter.
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So when it comes to identity, there is no greater question.
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Not what gift do you have? I'm not saying your gifts aren't important.
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Your gifts are important.
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Your gifts are a gift to the church.
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And they're important to the church.
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And they are important in how you are playing a role in the church, in the function of bringing about God's will for the church.
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All of that's important.
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But that's not who you are.
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You are Christ's.
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You are part of Christ's body, if, in fact, you are his.
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Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
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He goes on to talk about then the diversity, verses 28 to 30.
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He draws a conclusion about our identity in Christ.
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And now he again stresses the importance of our diversity.
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Remember what I said last week, in case you forgot or you weren't here.
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Diversity is not the opposite of unity.
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Division is the opposite of unity.
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Unity comes when we appreciate our diversity for all the value that it comes with.
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Because, you know why division comes in the church? Because we're diverse and we don't like it.
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I don't like it that people think differently than me.
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I don't like it that people act differently than me.
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I don't like it that people don't live the way I live, or school my children the way I school my children, or eat the way I eat, or do whatever.
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I don't like it that people don't do it the way I do it because I do it the way I do because I think it's right.
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And so we create division on things that don't matter because we can't appreciate diversity.
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So in verses 28 to 30, Paul reminds us of the importance of our diversity.
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And he does it two ways.
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Verse 28, he shows us that everybody is something.
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And verses 29 and 30, he shows us that no one is everything.
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That's the title of today's sermon.
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Everybody's something, but no one is everything.
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You say, what are you talking about, Pastor? Well, look at verse 28.
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And God has appointed in the church...
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Who appointed it? God.
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That's important.
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God has appointed it in the church.
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First, apostles.
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Second, prophets.
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Third, teachers.
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Then, miracles.
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Then, gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.
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Now, if you want me to explain each of these gifts, I'm not going to do it.
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And here's why.
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Paul doesn't do it.
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You say, now, wait a minute.
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Your job is to explain the text.
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Yes, but that's not the point of the text.
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The point of the text is the diversity of the gifts.
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Paul's not giving us definitions here.
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Now, he will, in chapter 14, talk about prophecy and tongues, and the difference in the importance of those two, and how one is important over the other, and why they're important.
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And we're going to talk about that more then.
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And I could go through and give you a listing of what these things mean, but ultimately, his point in this verse is to say this.
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You're all got something.
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There's a diversity here.
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And for the sake of my mind, you have to know this can't be the whole list.
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This is not every gift given to the church.
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This is not every gift given to the church at Corinth.
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So that's why I say this.
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The point of the text is not to explain these gifts.
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The point of the text is to explain that each of you has a gift.
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God has appointed in the church all of these various things.
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And a lot has been said about the fact that he uses numbers here.
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In fact, I read several commentaries on this, and almost everyone pointed this out, that the fact that he says first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then healings, and he goes on.
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And I do want to say this about this.
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I think that there is at least some credibility to the statement that there is certain priority given in the listing of what was the first thing that Christ established in the world was his apostles.
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And there were New Testament prophets.
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Agabus was one.
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And there are others that are New Testament prophets.
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And then the teachers maybe could be identified as the elders.
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And so we do see a progression.
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Because the apostles were not meant to be for all time.
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There were twelve, and then Paul who called himself an apostle that was born out of season, right? 1 Corinthians 15, he says he was born out of time.
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And we call the first century what we call the apostolic age.
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Right? Now, there is a sense in which there are some men who weren't members of the twelve who were called apostles.
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I think Barnabas was called an apostle at one point, and James, the brother of Jesus, was called an apostle at one point.
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So there's a, we call big A apostle and little A apostle.
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Right? Because the big A, you know what the book of Revelation talks about? It talks about there's twelve, what is it? Pillars for the twelve disciples, the twelve apostles.
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There's a certain sense in which those men formed the foundation.
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And you don't build a new foundation with every generation, right? It's like on a house, you only get one.
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You don't build a new foundation with every floor.
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You build floors on top of one firm foundation.
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And Ephesians 2 tells us this.
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It says the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the chief cornerstone.
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Right? So there is a sense in which the apostles and the prophets do take priority.
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And I think there's a sense in which we say first apostles, then prophets, then teachers.
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I think there's a certain priority given to that.
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But I don't think that's the focus.
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I just think that's in the text, and it's something we can glean from the text.
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There is a sense in which the church had an age of the apostles that was important and it was foundational.
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There's something out there right now called the New Apostolic Reformation.
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And I think it's dangerous, not only because they have bad theology, and they really do.
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NARs, if you ever see NAR stuff.
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The New Apostolic Reformation is trying to make the argument that the apostolic age has come again.
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And that there's a new apostolic age that began, I think, in the 90s or the early 2000s with a certain group of prophets and apostles that are the new revival of apostolic giftings.
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The problem is their theology is all over the map and their heretics from as long as the day is.
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That's the danger.
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If you say you're an apostle and you don't agree with the Bible, you're not an apostle.
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So, I mean, you can call yourself whatever you want.
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But there are some churches, particularly some cultures, that use the word apostle similar to the way we use the word missionary or pastor.
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And if that's the sense of how it's being used, I wouldn't necessarily be wrong.
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I would just say that's like a little a-apostle.
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We don't use that language here.
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We say elder or pastor.
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But I just want to let you know, when you see that word apostle in the Scriptures, in general, it's talking about the twelve and Paul.
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Right? Because that's the apostles and that's the men that God used as the foundation of the church.
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Paul wants the church to understand that God has given a diversity of gifts.
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That's verse 28, and that's the reason for it.
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Though this list contains many gifts, it's not exhaustive.
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I've said that.
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And Gordon Fee says this in his commentary.
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He says, That's the point.
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There are differences.
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There is diversity.
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We're all different, but we all have a gift from God.
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Now, verse 29.
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He asked this question.
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Are all apostles? What's the answer? No.
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In fact, in the English, it just has question mark.
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Are all apostles? Question mark.
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But in the Greek, it actually infers the negative.
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Are all apostles? No.
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It's inferred in the question.
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And even in English, we know that it's inferred in the question.
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The answer is no.
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Are all apostles? No.
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Are all prophets? No.
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In fact, I want to say this.
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And again, I could go off on a rabbit trail that I don't want to chase.
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A lot of people today who claim to be prophets prove they're not by prophesying falsely.
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The Bible says if a man claims to be speaking for God and claims to prophesy, and what he says does not come to pass, you do not need to listen to him.
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That's what we call the prophet's dilemma.
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You claim to be a prophet.
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You say something's going to happen.
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It doesn't happen.
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You were not speaking from God.
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That's right.
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Remember when Donald Trump became the president? A very well-known charismatic leader came out the next day after the voting.
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And he said, well, I'm so happy to see that we had this brother so-and-so who came last week and prophesied the victory of Donald Trump.
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And my response was, well, he had a 50-50 shot.
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If he was wrong, would you have stoned him? Because that's what would have happened in the old covenant.
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If he pronounced something that was untrue and said it was from God and it didn't happen, they would have drug him out and stoned him.
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Are all apostles? No.
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Are all prophets? Thank goodness, no.
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Are all teachers? No.
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In fact, what does James tell us about teachers? Not everyone should assume to be one.
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Because teachers are held to a higher standard.
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Do all work miracles? No.
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Do all possess gifts of healing? No.
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Do all speak with tongues? No.
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Do all interpret? No.
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What's the point of all this? The point is the title of the sermon.
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No one is everything.
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No one has every gift.
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No man is an island unto himself, especially in the church.
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Western thought is hugely influenced by a sense of rugged individualism and a sense of self-reliance.
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In fact, that's what makes a man a man.
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In America, he is self-reliant.
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Beats his chest and stands boldly in the face of adversity.
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Therefore, so many Americans have an intrinsic sense of self-independence, right? The problem is in the church, we're not called to be independent.
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We're called to be interdependent.
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In the church, we're not called to independency.
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We're called to dependency upon one another.
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Because God doesn't give us all the gifts by ourselves so that we can go out and be independent.
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He gives each one different gifts so that we can learn to be dependent upon one another.
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Because I don't have all the gifts, and you don't have all the gifts, you need me, and I need you.
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No one is everything, but everyone is something.
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That should be a bumper sticker.
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But I don't like bumper sticker theology.
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But the reality is no one is everything, but everyone is something.
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And I, again, I don't mean to chase rabbits on different things, but I do want to say this about this.
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On this particular text, there's also another important doctrinal statement I have to make because I don't want to get, I don't want to jump past this without saying it.
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There are some who believe, particularly in the Pentecostal charismatic movement, that unless you have the gift of tongues, you cannot be saved.
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I've taught on this before, I've read many quotes from guys who have said this.
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In fact, Dr.
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James White debated a man who said this very thing.
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And Dr.
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White said, so you're saying I'm not saved.
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Well, I, and he sort of hemmed and hawed, but at the end of the day, yes.
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You've not spoken with tongues, you are not saved.
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Because the gift of the tongues is the evidence of being born of the Holy Spirit.
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Paul repudiates that in this passage.
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Do all speak with tongues? What is the answer? No.
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So even if we were to concede that the apostolic gifts that were in the first century, active in the church, even if we concede that those gifts have continued down to today, even if we concede that those gifts were meant for all times and all places and all churches, there is no reason at all to be convinced at all that everyone would have the same gift.
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You say, but everybody in Acts 2 spoke with tongues at the receiving of the Spirit at Pentecost.
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Yes, but what was the purpose of speaking with tongues at Pentecost? Because there was a diversity of languages present.
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People from all over the world had gathered, and this was God's miracle showing that He was actually lifting the veil that had been labeled at Babel, where now, you remember at Babel, before Babel, everyone spoke the same language.
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And God mixed up the languages, and God created diversity in that way.
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And in Acts chapter 2, there was a lifting of that, and when they spoke, everyone heard it in his own language.
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They were given a gift that was for that time and that purpose.
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But there's no indication in Acts, there's no indication in anywhere else in the Bible that everyone filled with the Spirit will speak with tongues.
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In fact, the opposite is said here.
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Will all speak with tongues? Do all speak with tongues? The answer is no.
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And later in chapter 14, we're going to see this.
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Later in chapter 14, Paul's going to say that, given the opportunity to speak with a tongue or speak in prophecy, you should speak in prophecy because prophecy builds up the church.
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And by saying that, he's actually saying something about the gifts there.
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He's saying that there are actually gifts that can take priority over other gifts at a particular time and for a particular reason.
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That's not saying superior or inferior.
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That's saying, for the time and place, there are certain gifts that are more important at that time and in that place.
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Right now, we're hearing the Word of God.
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So the gift of prophecy is on display because that's what's flowing, hopefully, through me in the preaching of the Word.
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But in a hospital room where my wife might exercise the gift of mercy, she might be so much more valuable than me right then in that place for that time.
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You understand? So Paul tells us your identities in Christ, your diversity of giftings are this.
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Everyone has a gift, but no one has all the gifts.
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Even if you see somebody and say, boy, I think he or she is really gifted.
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They don't have it all.
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They can't have it all.
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Nobody has it all.
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And then in verse 31, we have our priority.
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Paul says this, Now you say, wait a minute.
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Are you saying some gifts are superior, some gifts are inferior because he's talking about higher gifts now? What did I just say? At certain times and in certain places, some gifts take prominence because of purpose, right? And what is the purpose of every spiritual gift according to the Bible? The gifts are for the building up of the church.
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So what is Paul encouraging us to desire here? Desire that we be gifted to build up the church because those are the gifts.
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That gifting is what matters most.
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Earnestly desire the higher gifts.
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And I think the higher gifts here could be misunderstood because, again, if somebody thinks that it means more important, it depends on the context and the purpose and what's happening.
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I would say it this way, and maybe maybe this will make sense to you.
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Earnestly desire that the gifting that God gives you builds up the church because that's the highest calling of your gift.
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Earnestly desire that you be used to build up the church because that's the reason you were given the gift in the first place.
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We can't make ourselves have a gift, by the way.
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You can't make yourself what you're not.
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You can't make yourself...
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And this is why, again, going back to the gift of tongues, they actually have booklets of teaching you how to speak in tongues.
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No, they're...
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Okay, I'm going to have to bring one in to show you.
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They exist.
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And it really does.
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It has like consonants with no vowels.
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And it says, you know, say these consonants, a-da-da, ba-ba-ba, ta-ta-ta, ba-ba-ba, ta-ta-ta, da-da-da.
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And just do that over and over until you feel the Spirit take control and then you'll be speaking in tongues.
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They give these to kids.
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I'm not exaggerating.
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Nobody at Pentecost was passing out pamphlets on how to do this.
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I mean, it was a gift from Almighty God.
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And if it is a gift from Almighty God that He gives to us and it has that purpose, it's not for...
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It's not something we can create or build or make ourselves, but we can desire it.
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We can desire that we be used in the church.
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We can desire that we be gifted for service in God's kingdom.
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But I want to say this, and this is why I say this is our priority.
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Paul says this, though.
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He gives sort of a juxtaposition.
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He says, earnestly desire the higher gifts.
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And there's a linguistic issue here I don't even want to get into too much because it can be read as you are earnestly desiring higher gifts.
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And if so, that means it's a rebuke.
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But none of the translators take that translation.
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A lot of commentators do, but not translators.
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And so I didn't really want to get into the linguistics of that.
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It's whether it's in the indicative or in the imperative, and I want to get into that.
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But if we take it as the translators give it in every translation is earnestly desire the higher gifts.
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That's Paul saying, earnestly desire those gifts which build up the church.
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And now I'm going to show you something even better.
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And now I'm going to show you something even more important.
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You say, what could be more important than that? Chapter 13.
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Now, I'm not going to exegete chapter 13 today.
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That's next week.
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And I'm so happy because guess what? Next week, the advent day.
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Guess what it is? Love.
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Read 1 Corinthians 13.
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If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love.
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I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
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If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge.
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If I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but I have not love.
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I am nothing.
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If I give away everything I have, if I deliver up my body to be burned.
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But if I have not love, I gain nothing.
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So that's the priority.
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Paul says your identity is in Christ.
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Your gifting are diverse, but your priority is love.
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Because you can have the best gift.
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And I want to say this, you can be the most gifted person in the world.
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And man, I've met some folks.
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I've met some folks that just were, I mean, their ability to speak.
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Their ability to command attention.
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Their ability to be winsome.
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Their ability to sing or to play an instrument.
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Or their ability to lead men and women was just amazing.
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But they had not love.
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This morning, actually, I read.
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Very famous, and I will not name his name.
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The very famous pastor is under the investigation of the church that he is in.
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For greed, heavy handedness, and an unwillingness to be corrected.
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Two of his elders have left and are now charging him with malfeasance, mistreatment of the other elders.
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And there's a large split that's about to come hard in this giant worldwide ministry.
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And if the accusations are true, and I don't know, that's why I'm not going to say his name.
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I don't know if the accusations are true or not.
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But if the accusations are true, this is a man who is truly gifted in speech and the ability to command attention.
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But if the accusations are true, he is doing so without love.
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And he is nothing.
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If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am nothing.
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So what's the priority? Our identity is in Christ.
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That's who we are.
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Our giftings are important, but they're not who we are.
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They're diverse, and we should appreciate our diversity.
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That's what we ought to do.
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But in our diversity, we must have love.
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You know what I call you guys a lot of times when I'm preaching? Beloved.
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You know why I call you the beloved? Because that's what you are.
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Not me.
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Now, I love you, but you're not my beloved.
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You're God's beloved.
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Most of us are familiar with that from weddings, right? Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to see the joining of this man and this woman in the state of early matrimony.
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Right? But that word beloved harkens to the scripture.
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The scripture calls us the beloved of God.
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And the reason why I call you the beloved of God is because that's what you are.
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Therefore, your most precious identity in this world, the most precious gift that you have, is not what you can do, but who you are in Christ.
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You are loved and the beloved of God if you are in Christ.
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It's not about how we're gifted.
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It's about how we're loved and how we love in extension of that.
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God's love flows into us and flows out of us.
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By the way, 1 Corinthians 13, I'm going to talk about this more next week.
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1 Corinthians 13 is not so much about our love, it's about God's love flowing through us.
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You say, how do I know I'm the beloved of God? How do you know you're the beloved of God? And this is where I want to draw to a conclusion.
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How do you know you're the beloved of God? Somebody might argue, well, everyone is loved by God, so everyone's the beloved of God.
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Not the same thing.
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Because I could say that God has demonstrated His love to all men by sending the rain, or giving them their hearts beating, or giving them air to breathe, or giving them food to eat.
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God demonstrates common grace to all men.
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That's not the same as being the beloved of God.
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How do you know you're the beloved of God? You're His child.
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How do you know that you're His child? How do you know? John chapter 1.
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Jesus came unto His own, and His own received Him not.
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But to as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the children of God.
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Those who believed on His name.
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Are you the beloved of God? How do you know? I would ask you this.
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Have you received Christ? By repentance, have you recognized your sin as an affront against the holy law of God? Have you received the forgiveness that comes in trusting in the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ? Have you placed all of your trust in Him and not in yourself? Because if you've done that, the only reason that you've done that is because God opened up your heart to believe the gospel, and you by faith repented of your sin and trusted in Him by a work of the powerful Holy Spirit who now lives inside of you.
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And if the Holy Spirit lives inside of you, guess what? You are the beloved of God.
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You are the beloved of God if you're in Christ.
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You are the beloved of God if you have received Him by faith and repentance.
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And I will say this and I will end with this.
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Nothing in this world, nothing in your bank account, nothing on the slip that you get from your boss that says where you work, nothing on your marriage certificate, nothing on any birth certificates of your children, nothing is more important than your identity.
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Nothing is more important than who you are.
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Nothing is more important than who you are in Jesus Christ.
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Let's pray.
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Father, we thank you for your word.
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And I thank you, Lord, that we who trust in Christ have found our identity in him.
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And Lord, it's in him that we find our joy and we know that we are loved.
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Your word tells us that you have loved your elect with an everlasting love.
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That you knew us before we were born.
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That you literally loved us before you created us.
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And you loved us when we were unlovable.
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And you demonstrated your love toward us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
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May it be, oh God, that we live our lives with an understanding of who we are in Christ.
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That the love of God might flow into us and out through us.
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By understanding that we are the beloved of God.
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Not because of what we have done.
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But because of your mercy and grace given to us at the cross.
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Lord, help our trust be firmly rooted in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
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And our identities found in him.
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Amen.