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You ever see a body that was nothing but hands? No, of course not, that's silly. That wouldn't even be a functioning body. And so it is the same in the body of Christ. We can't all serve the same role or we would be a dysfunctional body when we understand the text.
You are listening to When We Understand the Text, an online Bible ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty. Find videos and more at our website, www .utt .com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Thank you, Becky. And hello, everybody.
Hey, mark it on your calendars. This date in history, May 25th, 2016, our YouTube channel for When We Understand the Text, WWUTT, has surpassed one million views. Yay! We actually passed a million views some time ago when you combine all the different channels that our videos are seen on.
But as for our actual YouTube channel, we've now amassed over a million views, almost exactly two years from when we posted our first 90-second WUTT video, which would have been in May 2014, if memory serves correctly.
So here two years later, May 2016, we made it to a million views. I know there are YouTube channels out there that have been seen many, many more times than ours, but I'm still pretty excited. Thank you so much for watching When We Understand the Text and sharing our videos and also listening to this program.
We value each and every listener that we get as we do these devotionals each day. We continue our study of the book of Romans, Romans 12, verses 4 through 8. That's our root text. And then we'll jump over to 1 Corinthians 12 and pick up where we left off.
But first, let's go to Romans 12, verse 4. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function. So we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them, if prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness.
And again, breaking down that particular section we did on Monday, if you go back and listen to that particular episode, let's go to 1 Corinthians 12 and we will pick up where we left off, which was right at the end of verse 11.
So 1 Corinthians 12, verse 12, for just as the body is one and has many members, boy, this is already sounding familiar, isn't it? And all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.
For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. So nobody has any higher standing before God than anyone else. We are all the same, united in one spirit.
A Jew doesn't have any greater importance than a Gentile does. And the way that Paul puts this to the Galatians, it's the case for men and women also. Men are not more important than women are, even though from our earthly perspective or from our fleshly perspective, let me put it that way, we might think of men being called to more important positions than women are called to.
I think of, for example, as it says in 1 Timothy 2, that men are called to be pastors, but a woman is not to have authority over a man in that way. So we might look at that kind of assignment there in 1 Timothy 2 and think, well, what's the deal with the men?
Why do they have more important roles? Well, it's not that the man has a more important role. He's called to specific roles, and women are called to specific roles. And no calling is more important than the other.
In their strengths and in their weaknesses, they're able to complement one another and function as one solid unit. And so it is the same in the body of Christ. We have different people with different strengths, different weaknesses, different callings.
Some are appointed to positions to which they have greater responsibility than other people, but they are no more important a part of the body than a person who we might assume would have a lesser position.
All of these people have various strengths and weaknesses that they are able to use and combine with one another, complementing one another, and we become a functioning body of Christ. Verse 14, for the body does not consist of one member, but many.
If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body.
If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? And if the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 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. We cannot all be the same part. And I would also press this upon you. You cannot look for a church where everybody is exactly as you are.
That's a dysfunctional church. You know, I've known people who are missions minded, to use an example. Somebody who is missions minded, and they want to go to a church where everybody else is missions minded.
We can only be doing missions. And so they find a church where everybody else are feet. We're all feet. We all want to go out and do missions. Well, what you end up with is a very smelly church when everybody's just a bunch of feet.
We can't all be the same body or we're a dysfunctional body. I served under a pastor once where he said, my vision for this church is to have every member that is sitting here out there on the mission field.
Now I respected the guy, but that's not the calling of everybody sitting in the church. That's not the way that the church is supposed to function. I understand the ambition. I understand the desire, but that's not how things work.
The 80 year old woman that is sitting in your church is not going to be able to get up and leave all that she has and go on the mission field in Africa. Furthermore, there's a young man in your church who's supposed to help care for the 80 year old woman and he can't leave to go to the mission field or she's got nobody to help care for her.
You understand what I'm saying? So there is going to be somebody in your church that is called to overseas missions that is called to go and reach an unreached people group. There are, there's one person, there's 10 people, however many, but the church is supposed to get behind them and help them prepare for that.
Studying for that, training for that, going to school for that, raising money, sending them overseas, staying in contact with them, praying for them, going there to visit them, helping to serve those missionary families on and on it goes.
So the church is behind that work. The church is completely involved in that work, but not everybody in the pew gets up and goes to do that work. There are other members of the body that remain here doing the ministry of the church in the church and also doing the ministry of spreading the gospel in the community where that church has been planted.
Everybody has a different function, a different role, and we cannot all be the same thing or we are a dysfunctional church. If a church was all men, it would be a dysfunctional church. A church of all women would be a dysfunctional church.
It must be made up of men and women, young and old, all of these generations that are mixed together, encouraging and disciplining, admonishing one another in the training and the instruction of the Lord.
As we grow together in this process of sanctification, we help one another to find their gifts. We help one another perfect their gifts, grow and use those gifts, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
As it says in Ephesians chapter five, meaning that when a person is called to a certain position or a, they have a certain gift of the spirit, we don't try to infringe upon that gift. We don't try to do their job.
Instead we submit to the gifting that the spirit has given to them. Let me give you an example of this. There's a gal in our church whose name is Julie. She is our Awana commander. Yeah, we have an Awana program in our church and she's the commander of the Awana program.
She's been appointed to that position. I was the one that appointed her to that position, but I submit to her authority in that position, meaning that I don't do anything with Awana that I don't talk to her about first because otherwise I would be infringing upon the position that she has been called to do and has been appointed to do.
I would also be going against myself because I would be thinking that my decision to put her in that position and make her responsible for that role is not good enough and so I need to jump in and start doing it myself.
Well, then I would be going against my own decision to appoint her in that place. So even for me, I'm submissive to realizing that she's been called to that role and quite frankly does it a lot better than I would ever be able to do it.
And so I don't go infringing upon her territory or I would be imposing upon the gift that God has given her to fill that role. And so this is what it means when Ephesians 5 tells us to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
I'm not going to go mess with the janitorial supplies and confuse the janitors. So even in their role, I submit to the calling that they have to clean the church. So this is the way that we serve one another in the body and we are an encouragement to one another as we grow in knowledge and understanding of the usage of these gifts.
And as I mentioned yesterday, if you don't yet know what your spiritual gift is, ask somebody to help you. Ask the elders of your church. Ask the Bible study that you're with to pray for you. Ask for the counselors that are around you to observe you and see if they can identify what your strength and what your weakness might be.
But I want to tell you something and I want to make this clear. Your spiritual gift does not come to you because a bunch of people gathered around you and laid hands on you and prayed for you to receive that gift.
That's not how you get a spiritual gift. Now, the apostle Paul could do that with Timothy because he was an apostle. But a church does not designate your spiritual gift to you in that way. And there was a family that we had in our church once that believed that's how a person came about their spiritual gift.
And they claimed that in their previous church, there were members that gathered around them, laid hands on them and prayed for them to receive a certain spiritual gift. But they were feeling like in our church, which they were now a part of, they were not being allowed to use that gift.
Well, quite frankly, I did not see in the man that I was talking to the gift that he claimed that he had. I saw no evidence of that spiritual gift whatsoever. And so I was just supposed to bow or submit to the authority of another church whose doctrine I don't even know, because presumably they laid hands on him and prayed for him to receive that gift.
That's not how we receive our spiritual gifts. And your gifting might even change. Your calling might even change when you go to another church because they have a need to fill there that doesn't need to be filled like it was in your previous church.
So you need to be you need to be humble enough and submissive enough to the roles and the callings within that body to listen to what people are saying about what you can do and how you can serve in that particular body of Christ.
And so it should be in every body with people in their strengths and their weaknesses working together so that the body functions and builds itself up in love, as is talked about in Ephesians chapter four.
And that's where we're going to go tomorrow. So in the rest of this section here, First Corinthians 12, verse 27, it says, now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping administering and various kinds of tongues are all apostles, prophets, 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? Not going to break that down as much, at least in this particular lesson, we will come back to it tomorrow.
I want to get to chapter 13, very last statement here in chapter 12, and I will show you a still more excellent way. So let's spend the last couple of minutes here talking about chapter 13. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.
Now, let me just say something somewhat off topic here. When Paul says, when I, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, he's not saying that we will speak in the tongues of angels and people will think that gibberish thing that they do, that they call tongues is speaking in some sort of angelic or heavenly or divine language.
It's not, it's just gibberish. That's not speaking in the tongues of angels. Paul is being hyperbolic here. He's exaggerating. If I speak in the tongues of men, or even if I could speak in the tongues of angels, but if I did not have love, I would just be a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.
So remember, and I mentioned this earlier in the week yesterday, if I remember right, that the Corinthians were thumping their chest and boasting about the spiritual gifts that they had. Look at what I can do.
You know, I've been gifted with prophecy, so I'm more important than you or I can speak in tongues. So look at how great that I am. This is one of the reasons why Paul says that the tongues are among the lesser gifts because of the emphasis that the Corinthians were placing on speaking in tongues.
And so the understanding is that the gifts that we receive in the spirit are supposed to be exercised in love. It's for the purpose of building up the body of Christ to the praise of his glorious grace.
It's not so we can feel great. It's not so we can fulfill our hopes and dreams or even somehow gain acclaim or fame because of the gifting that we have. It's to serve the body of Christ. It's to be exercised in love.
And the Corinthians weren't doing that. The whole reason Paul had to write 1 Corinthians chapter 13, which we now call the love chapter is because the Corinthians were doing the opposite of everything that Paul says here that love is supposed to be.
He goes on talking about having spiritual gifts, but not having love. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
And you got to know that Paul was thinking of the statement that Jesus made with even the faith of a mustard seed. You would be able to move mountains. Paul was thinking of that when he said that if I had all faith as to remove mountains, but I did not have love, I would be nothing.
If I gave all away, I have and I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. And so here in verses four through seven, when Paul is describing exactly what love is, the Corinthians were not doing this.
This is a rebuke. He's not being romantic. We typically use 1 Corinthians 13 is some sort of romantic chapter. That's not what Paul was doing here. He was having to tell the Corinthians. This is what love is supposed to look like.
Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way, which is what you do when you're chest thumping over your spiritual gift. You're insisting over your own way.
You're insisting on your own way instead of being humble and serving others. Love is not irritable or resentful, doesn't resent somebody else because of the gift that they have. And that's the gift that you wish you had.
Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing. It rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they'll pass away.
As for tongues, they're going to cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away for we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. All these gifts, these things that you're boasting in now, they're not even going to last.
They don't endure forever. Love endures forever, which he just said love never ends. And we see that again in verse 13, faith, hope and love abide these three. But the greatest of these is love. Why? Because faith and hope we need in this life only.
But love is eternal. We'll live eternally with our God in the love that he shows us even now. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
Isn't it like a child to selfishly demand something and insist on their own way? Don't act like that. Grow up and be a man and be in service to others who are around you. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. There's something there that we can see. We can't see the picture completely clear right now, but a day will come when we are looking back on our circumstances and we will see, oh, OK, all right.
I see why God was calling me to that. I see why he was pointing me, appointing me to that at that particular point in time. I don't understand it right now, but a day is going to come where we're going to look back and see exactly the way that God was working in all of these things.
We don't understand the picture clearly now, but a day will come when we will know him just as we have been fully known. Verse 13. So now faith, hope and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.
So when it comes to having the gifts of the spirit and exercising them in the body of Christ, we do so in love. Our great God who loves us, demonstrating his love for us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
We praise you and we thank you for this calling, not only out of our sin and into your righteousness, but this calling to be a part of your people and the body of Christ. Help us to fulfill the calling that you have called us to, to know the gifts that we have been given according to the spirit and to exercise them faithfully to your praise, not to ours, not to feel great about ourselves, not to make something much of us, but to make much of Christ.
We ask these things in the name of Christ. Amen.
You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. We hope you are a part of a church family committed to gospel teaching, and we thank you for including us in your Bible learning.
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