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Let's turn our Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 12, please. As you know, we're going verse by verse through 1 Corinthians in the morning, but this morning
I switched it because I wanted to talk about Luke 13, one to five. So tonight we'll do 1
Corinthians chapter 12. Verse 12, probably to the end of the chapter, are close, at least to the end of the thought in this paragraph, or as they say in theological studies, this pericope.
And so let's go to 1 Corinthians chapter 12, right in the heart of the book, talking about spiritual gifts, talking about charismatic issues.
Started working on a new book this week, Correct Questions to My Charismatic Friends. Kind of just an intramural, ironic questions to my charismatic friends.
And here Paul has charismatic friends. They're the Corinthians and he's trying to set them straight.
They're not thinking correctly. And I've said this over and over, but just to reinforce it, chapter 1, people were divided over who their leader was.
Oh, we follow Paul. Oh no, we follow Jesus. Later, they were divided on who had money and who didn't.
I mean, just the same reasons why people divide today. You don't look like me. I don't look like you. You don't have the wallet
I have. You don't have the car I have. And now they're dividing over tongues and these supernatural sign gifts that God gave.
Now there was nothing wrong with the gift of tongues back in those days. It was a gift of language that people would talk without, would speak without ever knowing the language, without ever studying the language.
But you can imagine if you got such a gift, you might think you were pretty good. You might think you were on the in crowd.
You might think that you were a have and everybody else was a have not. And so Paul is trying to tell them, listen, think rightly about spiritual gifts, chapter 12, chapter 14, and he's got chapter 13 in there.
It's not the wedding chapter. It's the love chapter because they're not using their gifts properly.
And so 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul is laying his heart out to say that since God so loves the church, we ought to love the church as well.
Think about the two great commandments if you would for a second. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Love your neighbor as yourself. We have a right view of what God has done, who he is, how he's accomplished atonement on your behalf, validated by the resurrection.
Then you should do what Jesus does and that is he loves people. He serves them.
You can think of Jesus rolling up his sleeves and washing disciples' feet.
Now, it's difficult to serve other Christians because they're sinful, but that is the mandate in the
New Testament. And so as we look at 1 Corinthians chapter 12 today, verses 12 and following, here's the outline.
Five words that should help every Christian to think rightly about Christ's church and the spiritual gifts that he gives through his
Spirit. Five words and I'm actually gonna do a little Baptistic thing. Baptists like to do alliteration.
Every word starts with the same, but I'm gonna end it with all the same I -T -Y. So you can just kind of get a little flavor today.
It's kind of a, it's just a Baptistic day. We had a revival this morning, short of a tent.
And then we'll have some Baptistic preaching tonight. So I love Baptists, don't you? I do, yeah.
We have some Baptists here in the church who never have forgiven me for changing the name from Bethlehem Baptist to Bethlehem Bible.
So what are you going to do when we change the name Bethlehem? I actually had one person tell me, if you change the name
Bethlehem, we're leaving the church. I'm a sinner too, and that just makes me wanna change it faster.
Don't say that to me. Use reverse psychology on me. Five words that should help you think rightly about Christ's church and spiritual gifts.
If you want a so that or some kind of proposition, it's so that the church stays unified. The whole driving point behind the thing is we're held together by the common bond of the blood of Christ Jesus.
And so whites, blacks, Jews, Gentiles, male, female, free, slave, the list goes on, rich, poor, smart and college educated or no high school diploma.
Everybody can just get along, serve one another and stay unified.
How do you keep a group like this together? You should see what I see. And now you're all saying, you should see what
I see. Do you see what I see? And words that the world uses like diversity aren't always bad words because we are a diverse group, yet Paul wants unity since we're all blood bought
Christians. Diversity isn't bad if it's for the right reason. Now we are diverse because God calls people of a diverse background.
How many people here speak English? Most everyone. Who here speaks more than a different language besides English in addition to English?
Who speaks at least two other language in spite of English? Three others. See these guys back here, four others, five others.
Well, give me the number. How many other languages do you speak? All right, see?
And did your brother beat you or you know the exact same languages? The same, okay.
I mean, how much different could we be? So how do we all stand in line and march accordingly?
Can you imagine if you've ever seen high school marching bands? They're really bad. I've been in one.
They don't know what to do. But then all of a sudden you watch West Point marching band and you think, you know what?
They know how to stand in line. They know how to march. They know what to do. So how does a church all stay in line?
They've got to think rightly. They've got to understand God's perspective. And so five words that should help you in our spiritual gifts passage.
First word, unity. Unity found in verses 12 to 13.
There's a oneness to the body of Christ. Uni, one, unicycle, one cycle.
And as I read verses 12 and 13, see how many times you could spot the word one and or body or one body.
Verse 12, for just as the body is one and has many members. Just a quick heads up.
This does not mean a congregational member. This means a part of the body. This is a member of the body.
My arm's a member. My hand's a member. My head's a member. If you are dismembered, they're cutting off parts of your body.
So when you see the word member, don't default to I'm a church member. I went through membership class. Think of body parts, okay?
For just as the body is one and has many members, parts, and all the parts are 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 are Greeks, slaves are free, and all were made to drink one spirit.
We have a unity here and we are going to be needing each other. As body parts all need one another but are all part of the one, so too we need one another.
Commentator Garland said, one person alone, no matter how gifted, cannot play a
Beethoven symphony by themselves. No person, no matter how gifted, can act a
Shakespearean tragedy by themselves. And no person, no matter how gifted, can play another team in football or as we call it here in America, soccer.
Why? Because we need each other. There's a basic unity to our physical body.
There's a unity to the church body as well. And that's why he says at the end of the verse there, so it is with Christ.
What's Christ's body? Who is Christ's body? You are the church. I have a body here and I am one, so too the church body is one.
I have different members, I have different parts, so too does Christ's body, the church, have different members and different parts, appreciative of everything, needing everything.
And Paul is wanting to encourage spiritual oneness. Why? Because they're factions, they're disunity.
They're chapter one disunity, two disunity, three disunity, four disunity, 11 disunity, 12 disunity, 13 disunity, 14 disunity.
So Paul says you are one, one church. What's the proof? Verse 13. For in one spirit we were all baptized.
Has nothing to do with water baptism. This has to do when God saved you, he immersed you into the body of Christ.
He placed you in the body of Christ. This isn't second blessing baptism. This isn't I got to speak in tongues.
This is figurative language that says at salvation, God plunged you into the body of Christ.
He immersed you into the body. We are all baptized into one body. By the way, of course it has to mean that because if it means you speak in tongues, here it says they all had it happen.
If this is a second blessing, it says we were all baptized into one body. Friends, this has nothing to do with water.
This is salvation. Jews are Greeks, slaves are free. Just stop for a second.
How do you get Jews and Gentiles together? Especially with the mosaic law given to separate people.
How do you get Jews and Gentiles under one roof? And all at the end of the verse, verse 13, were made to drink of one spirit.
True believers in Christ Jesus have been baptized by the Spirit of God, placed into the body of Christ.
It has nothing to do with water baptism. This is Galatians 3 language. For all of you were baptized into Christ, have clothed yourselves with Christ.
No single person excluded. No amputations. I've been in the operating room a lot and probably the worst thing that I would ever see and hear was when a patient, usually a male, and they didn't have good circulation in there from the knee down and they would have to amputate just below the knee and there'd be some gangrene possibly there and so they would cut off, ligate, do all kinds of things and then they would finally separate the limb from the person and they would walk over to a bucket that had a sterilized liner in it and then they would drop the limb into the bucket and it was just a weird experience.
The sound, the thought, I still thought they're supposed to put people back together again in the operating room and they're amputating.
And here, when it comes to seeing the body, everybody's important and we wouldn't wanna amputate unnecessarily from our elbow down.
No person in the church is an amputated member just kind of floating around out there unnecessary, thrown in the dump bin of the sterilized kick bucket.
Word number two, to try to help you think rightly about the church, unity, spiritual gifts.
Not only unity, but number two, diversity. See how that's Baptistic? Unity, diversity.
By the way, if you ever have an outline like that, just don't mess up the word and torque it and change it just because you need it to rhyme.
That would be bad, but I think these work. Diversity, in other words, diversity of the members found in verses 14 through 18.
Not church members, but of the body parts. Your hand is not your eye, is not your ear, is not your nose, is not your kneecap, is not your foot.
Unless you're a transformer. Just wanna see if you're awake. I'm sweaty and hot, you guys probably are too.
Even though we're unified, we are diverse. Verse 14, for the body does not consist of one body part.
You're not just one big eyeball walking around, that'd be interesting. It's kind of like, you know what that reminds me of since I'm getting off track a little bit and I'm starting to get a little loopy?
It kind of reminds me of like a VeggieTales with just Mr. Cucumber Man. How does he walk? He's just all a cucumber kind of thing.
And to think that the Phil Vischer from VeggieTales actually has said, I've taught
Christianity without Christ. I've taught Christianity just teaching moralism and it's just been gospel less and I shouldn't have done that, it's fascinating.
Diversity in the body, but it operates as one. That's the point. Verse 14, for the body does not consist of one member or parts, but many.
Therefore, we all do different things in the church. We all don't speak in tongues.
At Corinth, if you don't speak in tongues, you're nobody. And so why would we all speak in tongues?
Why would we all do the exact same thing? We would all be ears. We would all be tongues.
We would all be eyeballs. That would be a freakishly looking setup, wouldn't it?
One big orb. I'd be thinking it was some kind of twilight zone thing or something, outer limits. Some eyeball flashing, huge.
Stick to the notes, Mike. Stay on target. We don't all have the same gift, nor should we ever think we should because there's one body of Christ, but diverse giftings.
That's why he's using this analogy. This is for two reasons. So you don't say,
I want somebody else's gift. I want that just with envy saying, oh, if I could only do what they do.
And it helps so that you don't look at someone else and go, they're nobodies. Disdainfully looking.
You know, they don't have my gift. They don't do what I do. They're not gifted like me. And so I don't know what they're doing, but they're just kind of over there.
So it protects against envy and it protects against disdain because would you ever think about that?
Well, you know, my eye can think that it's so great and my toe, it's just a toe.
But we need our toes. We need our eyes. Verse 15, listen to this strange personification.
If you think this toe talk and this head talk and this eye talk are weird, talk to Paul about it.
Verse 15, if the foot should say, here, this is a strange personification, a talking foot.
There's a talking donkey in the Bible. Now there's a talking foot. Because I am not a hand, the foot says,
I do not belong to a body. That would not make it any less a part of the body.
Just because you're a foot, you're still 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. And if I was a 12 -year -old kid, I would say this, no, duh, right?
That's Greek, actually. These are hypothetical illustrations.
Paul is saying any disdain, any envy, let's eradicate it like we would a termite infestation.
Paul's trying to encourage people who are lowly. And he says this in verse 17, if the whole body were an eye, really prominent part, would there be any sense of hearing?
If the whole body were an ear, would there be any sense of smell? No, we need each other like the body needs its body parts.
Eyes cannot hear, ears cannot see, everyone matters.
Then this kind of almost, I almost hate to say it because it sounds like everybody's special. And if everybody's special, nobody's special.
But here, everybody is special, that is everybody is needed. Because all your body is needed.
Every body part plays an important role. I know somebody's thinking, what about your appendix? That does too, we just don't know.
What about tonsils? We'll do that in part three.
I'm sure God made tonsils for a reason. And if we lose a body part, the whole body suffers from its absence.
You know, the greatest part about it is the sovereignty of God cures many things.
If you believe God's sovereign, it cures the way you look at the weather. If you believe God is sovereign, it cures your view of election.
If you believe God is sovereign, it helps you with evangelism. And if you believe God is sovereign, it cures you when it comes to, well,
I didn't really get the gift that I wanted. I really want to preach like John MacArthur and R .C. Sproul, but I really can't.
Well, you know why you can't? Besides the hard work, it's the sovereign gifting of God that made those men into who they are.
Well, if I could just be a missionary like Elizabeth Elliot. Well, she is a good example of someone who would go to her husband's murderers to preach the gospel, but you aren't
Elizabeth Elliot. Why? Why? Because God didn't make you like Elizabeth Elliot, because He sovereignly chose to made you who you are.
See that in verse 18. But as it is, those are interesting words.
Where do you ever see those in the Bible? But as it is, in other words, get used to it, buckle up, take it or leave it.
Those are the facts, as it is, God arranged. Look at that again.
It's the will of God, the sovereign purposes and determination of God. People are different in the church.
Not everybody's a teacher. Not everybody back then was an apostle. Not everybody back then spoke in tongues.
God arranged the parts in the body. God gave you two eyes. He could have given you three.
He could have given you 14. He gave you two. It was the wisest to give you two. He gave you one nose, two nostrils.
Just think about how, I mean, there's beauty to people, but just think about how weird we look. We're a strange looking group.
And I don't mean you particularly, I just mean as the human race. Why? God designed us this way.
Dogs look like dogs because God designed them to look like that. Cats look like that because Satan designed them to look like that.
That was the low hanging fruit, sorry. As God sovereignly determined our bodies to have two hands, two feet, two nostrils, et cetera,
God sovereignly orchestrated the church body to have some people who had certain gifts, other people had other gifts, and we all serve one another because God is sovereignly working.
It's the will of God. It's a fact as it is.
It just means it's a matter of fact. It makes life less complicated if you embrace the sovereignty of God.
It's online, it's for free. Get A .W. Pink's The Sovereignty of God and read it. Your life will be much better.
Believe me. So we can now concentrate on the abilities we have to be faithful, not worrying about what other people have, what other people do, how well they do it, and how
I can't do what they do. No, faithful. William Carey, I can plod. Yeah, but I just wish
I had the gift of teaching and I don't. Retort, well, you're slamming the sovereignty of God for not giving you the gift of teaching.
God willed out of his good pleasure and his free will to make the body different, to make the body diverse.
Word number three, five words to help you think properly about Christ's church, stressing church unity, number one, unity, number two, diversity, number three, found in verses 19 through 21, reciprocity.
I know why I don't try to do the Baptistic thing very much because it's hard to look up these words. I'm thankful for words with friends because you can say, find me words that end in I -T -Y, and it'll tell you there are 1 ,800 of them, and you just have to get one that means the right thing, and what
I'm after here is mutual need of members. Commonality, I could use that one.
Verses 19, 20, and 21, Paul is talking about the mutual need of members. Now, remember, everybody at Corinth, I speak in tongues, you don't look at us.
We're the haves and you're the have -nots, and Paul is saying there's one body, different parts, and we all need each other.
Verse 19, for those of you who were wondering why I would say just what some big eyeball would look like, wouldn't it be some
Dr. Frankenstein thing? Yes, and here Paul says, verse 19, if all were a single body part, remember, where would the body be?
It wouldn't be anywhere because you're all one big eyeball. There's no body, there are no legs unless your whole body's a leg.
See what the Sunday morning people who don't come back to Sunday night miss? Verse 20, as it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
In the human body, in the body of Christ. No matter how important your gift is, it can't function alone.
No matter how inconsequential you are or your gifts are, the body needs you.
Nobody's better, nobody's worse. Some people overestimate themselves. Look at verse 21,
Paul addresses them. These kind of showy members, the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you.
Kind of like some kind of pipe in some smoking robe or something like that, I have no need of you.
Reading the New Yorker or something, listening to William Buckley, I have no need of you. Nor again the head to the feet,
I have no need of you. It's almost like from the head to the feet, from the top to the bottom,
I don't need you. And actually this was the attitude that some of the
Corinthians had. May we never say this at Bethlehem Bible Church.
So overestimating our own importance as a sinner who's bought by Christ's blood, deserving hell, but we're at the top of the food chain.
No, there's no air of superiority. There shouldn't be at least, there was at Corinth, they were all puffed up.
Fourth word, to help us think rightly, unity, diversity, reciprocity.
Number four, dignity. Found in verses 12 through 20, excuse me, 22 through 26. Every member is important.
Every member has value to the church. Every member has significance.
If my hand has significance to my body, so too do you in this local church.
Verse 22, on the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. Ever stub your toe?
It's indispensable for you to have a toe. Now he's really after the folks here who say they have the gift of tongues, but think they're superior.
And this frankly is the danger of the modern charismatic movement. Seeming to be weaker, but they're indispensable.
And then verse 23, one of the most interesting verses in all the Bible. I bet you've missed it. One of the most fascinating, interesting, strange.
See, you're reading it ahead of time because you want to see what it is. You're not listening to anything I say. You're reading this strange, peculiar verse.
It's an oddity. It's Ripley's Believe It or Not is what it is. 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.
Unpresentable parts? Yep. Unpresentable parts. Now the comedian in you might say some people have more unpresentable parts than other people do, right?
But that would not be theologically correct because your unpresentable parts are your unpresentable parts.
They are your reproductive glands. They are your private parts.
And you make sure, here's what Paul's saying. You make sure when you go out of the house, there is an extra special attention given so that you don't go out of the house with those parts uncovered.
You never say, well, I better double check, make sure my ears doesn't show when I go out of the house.
It'd be horrible if I walked out of the house and they saw my ears. But it would be horrible if you walked out of the house and your unpresentable parts were presented.
And you take extra caution to cover yourself up. I told you it was an interesting verse.
If it wasn't in the Bible, I wouldn't have preached it. We clothe,
Kistemacher said, the less honorable parts of the body more carefully than the nobler parts.
Why? Because if you don't, it would create shame, embarrassment, impropriety, public exposure.
Verse 24, which are more presentable parts do not require. You don't have to tell a young little boy who walks out of the house, you know, don't let anybody see your ears.
But you tell a young boy something else, don't you? You tell him to sit up straight. You tell him to shake your hand and look him in the eye.
And without being vulgar or rude, I wanna make the point, you tell him to zip up his zipper. Why? Because it's inappropriate.
You give more attention to that because it would be bad if you didn't.
And Paul is saying, let's read the rest of the verse in verse 24. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it.
In the very same way, our unpresentable parts need a little bit more care, so too are the people who have gifts like that.
Why? What's the purpose? Verse 25, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.
Listen to what Martin Luther said. We sang one of his hymns earlier today, tonight. The sun does not say that it is black.
The tree does not say, I bear no apples, pears, or grapes. That is not humility. But if you have gifts, you should say, these gifts are from God.
I did not confer them upon myself. One should not be puffed up at their account. If someone else does not have the gifts
I have, then he has others. If I exalt my gifts and despise another's, that is pride.
The sun does not vaunt himself, though more fair than the earth and the trees, but says, although tree, you do not shine,
I will not despise you, for you are green and I will help you to be green. Equal concern for one another.
That's the point. Every body part is important. So much so, look at verse 26.
This is fascinating. If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together.
Plato even said, if you slam your finger down against an object and hurt it, he said, we do not say my finger has a pain.
We say I have a pain. And so here, if one body part suffers, we all suffer.
If you've got a bad back, everything in your body hurts. And likewise, there's a common joy here.
If one member is honored, all rejoice together. No rivalry.
Luther went on to say, see what the whole body does when a foot is trodden on or a finger is pinched?
How the eye looks doer. The nose draws up. The mouth cries out. And all the members are ready to rescue and to help and none can leave the other so that it means that not the foot or the finger is trodden on and is pinched, but the entire body.
So if you hurt your foot, it might cause a tear to come out of your eye. That's a pretty good illustration.
And finally, the fifth word. Sovereignty. Unity, diversity, reciprocity, dignity, and now sovereignty found in verses 27 -30.
Sovereignty over the members. Verse 27, Now you are the body of Christ.
Actually, that's a ye, y 'all. Now y 'all are the body of Christ. I just heard
Estilus Johnson say that. Now, ye are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
He's going to call them to mutual fellowship, mutual love, mutual camaraderie.
You are the body. Oh, stop right there. You are the body? Who's he talking to?
You Corinthians are the body of Christ. Incest, immorality, lawsuits, factiousness.
You're the body of Christ. It's pretty amazing.
You are the body of Christ and then what does he go on to say? Verse 28, And God, here's more sovereignty language,
God has appointed in the church first. Not tongues.
Like chapter 12 earlier, tongues is last. Tongues is always on the list last in the New Testament because why?
People want to make it up front to make it first, but here it's last. First apostles, you want to rank things?
Paul ranks them. Top of the food chain apostles. Second, prophets.
Men who would speak inspired revelation for God. Third, teachers.
Then miracles. This is almost backwards. What does the
TV teach you? What's at the top of the list? Miracles, signs, and wonders, but here it's apostles, prophets, and teachers.
Why? Because those things just point to the message and the messenger and the message is the most important thing.
Then the gift of healing, helping administration and various kinds of tongues, languages.
That's how he ranks them. That is the order of importance because we have the word first, second, third, and then, then he ranks them.
Well, he goes on to say finally, and we need to wrap this up so we can celebrate the Lord's Supper, verse 29.
There's a way to both say an English sentence and a Greek sentence so that you want the negative to come out, and that's exactly how it's written here.
Are all apostles? No. Are all prophets? Actually, no is in the
Greek. No. Are all teachers? No. Do all work miracles?
No. Do all possess gifts of healing? No. Do all speak with tongues?
Again, in there at the end of the list, no. Do all interpret? No. And so then he says something super fascinating, verse 31.
He says it to the church of Corinth. We've got to wrap it up here. But earnestly desire the higher gifts and I will show you a still more excellent way.
If you read this, no, let's flip this around to get you to think. If a charismatic comes to you and says, chapter 12 of 1
Corinthians, verse 31 says that you are to desire the higher gifts. You're to desire healing and tongues and all that.
What would you say to them? How would you logically work through that? It says right there to desire the higher gifts.
What are the higher gifts? Russell, want to give it a shot? Okay, good.
But here the Paul does say, desire the gifts. Now to be fair grammatically, he's either saying an indicative, you guys desire the higher gifts and spanking them for it.
Or it's an imperative like translated in the ESV, desire the higher gifts. Now, the first thing he's doing is he's telling it to the church.
He's not telling individual people because you can't desire the gift of miracles if God doesn't give you the gift of miracles.
You can't desire the gift of teaching if God doesn't give you the gift of teaching. So how can he tell the church desire the higher gifts?
What's the highest gift? Pardon me? Well, chapter 12, verse three, that's true.
That's the highest thing of spirituality that Jesus is Lord. But what was the highest gift he just talked about that said first?
Apostles. You guys are desiring everybody wanting to speak in tongues and you've got an apostle.
Desire church. That's why it's a second person plural. Church, you should desire the highest gifts and you're looking for the lowest thing on the totem pole, tongues.
Oh, we speak in tongues. We speak in tongues. We speak in tongues. Paul said, you've got it all wrong. You're going for low hanging fruit.
Desire the highest gifts, Corinth. And they had apostles, so you should want an apostle to show up.
Actually, since apostles and tongue speakers don't exist today, if I could pick one or the other, which one would
I pick? What would you pick? If you could have an apostle walk in or somebody could come in and speak a language they've never learned.
Some of our brothers back here could then translate some of those languages. What would you rather have? I would rather have an apostle.
It would be so much better. And I could say, by the way, I was trying to translate this particular verse. What's this interpretation?
Can you help me? Can you help me show some of these other people over here in this faction and BBC are all wrong and I'm right?
Help me confirm this. The top of the list is apostles.
You Corinthians want tongues. And I'm telling you, you should desire apostles because they speak for God.
Apostolic revelation. The foundation of the church. That's all he's saying.
So in summary, Paul is saying the church of Christ is like a body.
And when one member sweats, we all sweat. We need each other.
Last little story and then I'm gonna close. When we have visitors who come to the church and then they want to stay and become members, here's what
I automatically know. That if we did everything perfectly and we did everything right and we were self -sufficient,
God wouldn't be bringing new people to our church. Why? He's bringing new people to the church because we have deficits.
We have areas that are blind spots and as a husband can cover the weaknesses of a wife and then a wife can cover the extraordinary weaknesses of the husband.
Why are you laughing? So too, when people show up, I don't even care what their gifts are.
I just know if they'll attend regularly and go through the new membership class, spiritual gifts class inventory.
I know we need them because otherwise why would God bring us these people?
And so when God does bring us these people, they're gifted people and they might not know the five solas.
They might not know Tulip. They might not know who John Calvin is. They might not have figured out asymmetrical reprobation.
They might not have all this other stuff figured out, but we need them. And so we come alongside and we say, one for all and all for one.
I hope you say that as a family. We say that a lot. All for one, one for all.
Why? Because we're after the glory of Christ Jesus, not a personal glory, but after Christ's glory.
So we're gonna pray and then we'll have the Lord's supper and celebrate the only God in the universe and the only
God in the universe who could take a variety of people like us, put them together for his glory here even in 2012.
Let's pray. Father, thank you for our time in the word. And we just would ask that you would now seal these things to our hearts.
Help us to not think we're better because we're more gifted, not to think we're less because we're less gifted, but help us to think about your son's honor in a dying world.
People who need to know about Christ Jesus, the only risen savior. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.