The Church: Many Parts, One Body

The biblical text will be considered this morning as we uh begin to worship God by receiving his word from him through the Spirit.

God is our helper.

This is 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verses 14 to 20 to this off.

1 Corinthians 12:14–20

And uh we're beginning in this message series uh for the church on the spiritual defense of the church.

In our text, the Apostle Paul, as you may have seen there, um, as was sort of introduced last week or two weeks ago, uh, he's using an analogy of a human body to teach you some things about the church.

And he uses a number of different analogies about um the church.

Uh, one is a building in Ephesians chapter two, and in chapter four, he talks about the church being um a body, and Ephesians chapter five he talks about the church being a bride.

So these are different uh teaching methods the Apostle Paul uses to help us understand exactly what it means for us as a group of people to come together, uh, being more together than we are separately through this spirit.

If we were to look at our text again, uh, for I'm saying we'll just kind of go through it incrementally, but if we were to read it several times together and try to look at the overarching theme or an overarching um uh main point in this text, it'd be pretty evident that it's uh it's pretty clear what it is.

For example, in verse 14, Paul begins the passage with a claim, and then he ends the passage in verse 20 with his end of that claim.

In the intervening verses are him just arguing for that claim, how true it is.

So let's look at that verse 14 and verse 20 to see exactly what this claim is.

He says, for the body does not consist of one member, but of many.

That's pretty simple.

But in verse 20, he says it again, as it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

This claims through the main idea of our text, the big idea he wants us to graph with.

To summarize, the church is a body, as our main idea, that consists of not one, but many members.

It's hard to know exactly what situation in the Corinthian church Paul was trying to address by this analogy and um and by the verses that followed.

Uh, but it seems from the preceding verses in the key context that there was rampant racism and classism that was important, not just in the city of Corinth, but actually in the church.

And then we got it.

The very uh previous verse to our text in verse 13 says this he reminded them in one spirit we were all baptized into one body.

And the all-body says, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, all are made to drink of one spirit.

In other words, in their there seems to have been um uh Jew Gentile tensions because of the way they ate and they drank and the types of celebrations they had.

Um, obviously the issue of eating food and drink, the offer to idols comes up numerous times in this book.

So there were a lot of uh ethnic tensions in the church.

Things that one part of the church held to be a matter of conscience, the other group thought, no, this is either a Christian or not, you know.

And so there was the division of church on these issues along the line.

In the church also, because around half of the Roman, um in the city of Rome at least, half of the population were slaves.

And if you go to other um uh cities, think about cities, many slaves were present.

It seems that when Paul mentioned slaves in previous, that there were people that literally were slaves in the church and there were masters in the church.

You can imagine how that when you're on the job side, um, how that would look like when they come together and they're sitting at the same table uh particularly supper, and how that made uh those divisions, social divisions that we use, what they say.

But Paul reminds us that those that are born again by the Spirit of God are no longer defined by or confined by whether they're an employee or an employer, whether they're born in Lima, Ohio, or Lima, Caro, no matter where you're from, in Christ you all maybe for saying line.

The church in fact is not to intentionally not mirror the social divides of the culture around us, but rather we should reflect the social realities of the human god, where the meek are blessed instead of trampling upon us, where the merciful are shown mercy, where those who hungry verse for righteousness are still and were being poor in the spirit to design and truth of Jesus and teaching on the kingdom, as you might know, turn the world's values upside down and show their quiet gods and if you spend much time around church circles, you may have been in churches where instead of the church operating like a body, it seems to really operate just around one person or one program or one thing.

For example, you may have been to a church that um, or at least heard of them, that uh the whole church involves uh revolves around the sermon.

So everyone shows up, that's who may come from long distances to hear the sermon, they're taking fewer notes, they're listening to this uh this well-playing person or an expert in some area of the scripture.

And then the sermon's over, they close their Bibles, they walk to the car and they go home, and church is over.

As soon as the sermon's over, church is affected.

But that's that's not a healthy body of work, I think Paul's saying.

And some of you may actually react to that and say, you know what?

I want nothing to do with that.

A lot of churches have to think it that way, and I just think it's better for we for us to get our religion on that home.

You know, all you need is Jesus and me as why do we have the Holy Spirit?

What's wrong with listening to your favorite sermon in your pajamas, giving one of these arms?

Why do I have to go to a church where they're just not gonna get it right all the time?

But the fact is staying home from church in your pajamas uh maybe works sometimes when you're uh snowed in, but that's not church.

Even the word church itself means an assembly, called out an assembly of people, and who's doing the calling?

God is doing the calling, bringing it together into a body.

The church is a body of people, God is calling together to worship and to proclaim to each other, to the world, and to serve, and to love, and sacrifice, and to learn relationships to display and to grow corporately as a body, to worship God.

So the body does not consist of one member of another.

Or maybe even they don't have church that revolves around the music program, right?

In fact, in the survey, that have been taken um uh more people than not choose their church based on the music group.

Um not their relationships, not community groups, not uh the sermon even, but the music, they're likely music because you mentioned it then they enjoy it.

It's no secret that people often use that as a basis for where they choose to attend church.

But we begin to think of church as basically an hour and a half of a worship experience.

And if you kind of get rubber emotionally and you enjoy the aspect of worship properly, but then when it's over, you kind of take your hat, you smile, you catch up the weather, and then you go home.

The Apostle Paul, I think if you were, you know, maybe if you were standing here today, you can tell, oh the church isn't about the band, the church is rather a band of brothers and sisters in Christ's, who would give their lives for each other, and actually we do give their lives for each other.

Maybe not in death, but in a thousand ways that they serve each other.

So back to Paul's helpful analogy about.

You know, when we think about analogies, when we think about interpreting scripture, we want to be careful not to uh stretch this analogy of the body, out of the joint, out of the socket, and make it more, make more of it than you possibly can be.

For example, I've heard people, you know, go in depth about how when you talk about the eyes and the pastors.

Let's talk about the passages and the hands, the left talk to beacons, and so on.

You know, the shoulders of the body are the security name because they wear on the file, because we're going to do it's faster.

What I what I think about it is they sometimes leave the keep the peace.

Um actually we could we could easily go too far in that interpretation.

And I can hear it a better example.

I think it's very well learned about the find human point, right?

So the very center of the brain regulates sleep and the motion is circadian references.

But wouldn't it be foolish to understand that the guy who might snort through every sermon every Sunday is just performing his spiritual superpower?

That's not what the body means.

And we'll actually look in verse 18, uh, exactly what Paul used to say about his analogy of the body.

Before we get to that, verses 50 through 17, I'd like to read that as we see how Paul shoots down some assumptions that we may have even this morning that I think existed in the church recording that contradict the truth of God about the church being a body.

Those are verse 15.

If the foot should say, because I'm not a hand, I do not belong in the body, that would not make any less than part of the body.

If the ears should say, because I'm not an eye, I do not belong in the body.

That would not make it any less part of the body.

If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing?

If the whole body were ears, where would be the sense of snow?

So what is Paul getting at here?

Uh there's an invalid assumption at work in the church before followers of Jesus and about the role we should play in.

For example, some Christians in the Corinthian church were evidently feeling like their spiritual gifts were less important than this body is not a joint.

We've got an arm back there in the road on the front.

So if we read that text, verse 1817, doesn't it seem evident?

There were some members in forum who were assuming that they weren't the eye, they weren't the hand, uh, parts of the body, and they weren't for call.

That's obviously what was going on with Paul.

Imagine there's a slave.

Maybe they would come in the midst, and they socially not even looked people in the eye to kind of snap in the corner or talking because you just didn't do that.

In fact, Paul addresses, I think it's in uh chapter 11, the preceding chapter, he talked only people who had suffered.

They were taking it separately.

You had some wealthy bringing all this food and they were just boarding themselves and getting drunk and on the wine, and you had others over here didn't even have anything because of their support.

And that was actually going on.

So you can imagine Paul talking especially in this contact to those who felt like, you know, socially, you know, economically and racially, or whatever they know something belonging to Bible.

But this wasn't just their story before.

This is this is our story too.

Our story is that we sometimes feel like we do not belong in the church body.

We sometimes feel like we don't actually belong in the church body.

Maybe you like so many things about the church, everything else was checking the boxes, but you just never felt like you actually belong there.

Maybe you would uh teeter towards the side of, you know what I mean?

I just want to express our fishing bank here above or I think that's one top and mountain just in the time we got.

But is that sort of the way you're handling the feelings?

Because you're assuming what these uh thinking were assuming as well, and here's the assumption.

But the church doesn't need to sort of show up and what do you show up or what do you think and aren't even there, or do you just skip a hooky?

So that moving others, moving on that Paul that you just looked at that idea.

In fact, to illustrate this and to correct this idea, Paul he really gets down on our level.

He he talks in this language of a body.

You can imagine maybe a slave that he talks to.

Maybe a slave was illiterate, and Paul's not gonna, he's gonna he's Paul's gonna bring some geologists of here, but he's gonna bring down our uh lowest common denominator.

He's gonna say, let me tell you this like about foot and here.

And so I'll put it in our link today.

Let me tell you about Freddy's button.

He just can't tell but compare himself to Harry and things like this.

You know, look at Harry, like he's got his uh opposable thumbs and and uh what kind of glue is here to put the hand and he literally has his finger on the bolts.

Uh and you're here if God can open yours in the church, he's probably gonna use the hand, right?

I mean, just think about it.

So how long do you think I would move along here?

Then you have sister burn her ear.

She overhears him what she's trying to do.

And she can actually relate to the things.

She hears about all kinds of opportunities to serve in the church, does this need, is that need, but then she notices Sister Ira's eye, who's so visionary, so bright, so on top of things, and she loses her nerve and she says, you know what, I'm gonna be back and do it if that was her, I'll stay hanging out.

All joking aside, notice how Paul corrects the false assumptions you play.

He argues that just because we may feel isolated or unimportant or inadequate in our spiritual youth, that doesn't change the fact.

The reality is we are each a vital part of the life.

How silly would we put the food to say you're not a hand on that?

It'd be hard to do that actually, but I mean that's a change in reality.

Also, it would be silly because that's actually something we can't uh you can't change, usually.

Also, the push should say, should feel, should think, we should assume, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body.

Here's just a two vector.

That would not make anything else to find the life.

In other words, the way you feel on a given Sunday doesn't determine your place in God's life or you're placing the church.

No, maybe our feelings are open now.

Sometimes we may, you know, we don't have to really belong and people invite us over for dinner, and we have, you know, you go and uh uh poker tournament or something with the brothers and I really enjoy this.

And then maybe three weeks later, you know, kind of use a field code or something, or something about like you know, maybe something down.

Also, it's not about our feelings.

And it's really not at all about uh our social status or our social standing.

How you feel does not make you any less a part of the body.

All these parts may seem kind of abstract, but in a room like this, I guarantee you, all of us at some point have felt like a play in a room's hands.

Maybe like an attendant.

Just trying to figure out why you were there.

We've all probably felt this way, you know, the new church plant.

Um, we're all trying to figure out how we can serve, how we can contribute, how we can live below, how we can uh take things forward, how we can grow, how we can multiply the impact of this church and this community.

And guess what?

It takes trial and it takes care.

And it takes humility, and it takes time, and it takes spirit, and it takes each other to mutually bring out the best in each other in a fine way that we serve the body.

I was really encouraged last Sunday to serve in children's ministry in grade school for the first time, and um uh I felt more like a bouncer or thing.

I don't know about you know, it's like uh, you know, don't don't pull that.

Don't pull it again.

And then you know, you gotta get on okay.

It wasn't quite like that.

But I have a lot of respect for Chris Matt because as I watched him engage these young uh children about their lives and started out and saying, What's new in your life?

What's new since your life talking?

Concerns they had to get out and then he asked what kind of prayer requests they had, and got into life.

And then they moved into the story of Daniel the lion's man, and then he ties it into half of Jesus' like this, Daniel told us about Jesus.

And to me, as an out there standing in the corner, it was a beautiful example about spiritual giftedness and applying the Bible.

And I think I haven't heard of the you may have seen uh YouTube videos of teenagers or adults that uh uh were born deaf.

And they can, you know, sometimes they can hear vibrations, they can feel certain things, they can learn to read live, they learn to sign.

And but then they uh it's relatively newer uh technology to put their implants, they have a surgery, they get their implant.

And a couple of days after their surgery, they even go to the audiology office and get the thing turned off.

And you've probably seen some of these videos right now, they'll put it off in here for a while.

They go in the office and they bring some uh some family members with them, and and they're expecting to uh hear for the first time, but they really don't want to need to hear.

And then the audiologist slowly starts turning it up, and telling members keep listening, and then the family members start talking, and all of a sudden, that moment they've been dreaming of it.

Well, they hear for the very first time the mother's voice, or their child's voice, or their spouse, or their own voice.

And I know that again they're just overwhelmed with emotion, and they bury their hands and they cry and they laugh, but that experience that they can be an insignificant body provided life.

We miscio want to experience that.

Whatever he walks around, most of you will be like, I know you think of the eye.

But that fear, oh how we want this year to be described by that kind of experience of joy and the hell of every member fully engaged, fully functioning to our full capacity in a spirit as well through us.

As we honor each other, as we celebrate each other, as we encourage each other, look each other often across, as we speak both competent truth and talk truth to each other often, as we fortify and proof each other in our various ways to call us.

We realign our thoughts and our beliefs and our feelings about the church in accordance to the gospel.

Well, the answer is right here in our verses and our gospel conviction.

But the church story is not a negative as you go along, or sort of writing this narrative thing, but rather we are entering into John's narrative, God's work is far more sovereign than we could ever possibly be.

But as it is, God arranged the members of the body, each one as each other's all were a single members, what would one be?

So we struggle with feelings of isolation or inadequate.

So the answer isn't simply no, but they could feel negative, high behind his mind, more I think ourselves than we are.

Or rather to question when it's the gospel and it says occasions of us, each as the body.

God arranged the members of the body, each one of them as he chosen.

One more person.

God arranged as members in his body, each one of us as he is chosen.

This means God is the word.

This means as the head, Christ is giving directions to the body.

That means he's the source of church life.

But he is solidly adding to our numbers, number by number, shaping and interlating our journey, our needs and our capacity in our years.

Are you telling me that there's something magical over here in church?

You know, I thought church is uh really all about the business plan, church is really all about um uh some mastermind like a good administrator, making things work out.

It's all about quality, quality of concerns, you know, uh can do these people off, or it's just more like social construct.

Are you telling me there's actually something magical?

Happening and we can meet together and open our hearts and God's word and enter each other's homes and DNA groups and coffee houses and pubs and meeting community groups.

The public gathering and pray over each other.

And we're baptized and we celebrate conversions, whatever we celebrate the Lord's supper together.

But not something magical, something supernatural, something spiritual.

But with a dynamic at work by the living God in believers when we come together into double scramble and heaven's other.

God is solemnly allowing each of us spiritually gifts to work for goodness on the body.

And here's the thing.

It's not based on how much we were.

It's not based on our social status.

It's not based on our potential, it's not based on our finishing school you went to or who we go to.

It's based on God's sign.

Yes.

That's what he says.

He puts memories in the body according as he chose.

Maybe that sounds kind of familiar to you if you're in a reform of theology, because that's how salvation is teleporting.

Second Timothy chapter 1, verse 9 puts it so well.

2 Timothy 1:9

God saved us and he called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the angels begin.

So if you love Jesus and have a way of life to think of God in the birth, you're not after God.

You can plan from the four times that you accomplish your salvation with the parts you play in the church.

So to remove or to belittle the gift or to neglect the gift is to insult God's living by his work.

To stir up his gift, to exercise his gifts, to put it to use and everybody grow to the full.

Now you are the body of Christ.

An individual members of it.

You are the body of Christ.

So while Paul's analogy in these verses that are part of our text say that we're a body, it's not until we did verse 27 that's words the body of Christ.

In Christ, I'll tell you Christ.

Christ is the incarnate God.

Meaning he's fully divine and fully human.

And what that means for us is that if God became man, God joined to himself a human nature, and when Jesus lived a human life, he was the most and truest expression of what it means to be a human.

Everything God ever intended for human tree, the highest aspirations God as the designer had to be created as a human.

After humans, Jesus lived it out.

He is the second Adam, and the first Adam fails to be.

He was the perfect human.

He was the specimen of what a man could be a human God created.

He was told he was given the spirit, John tells us our creation.

If we look in the gospel of Jesus' life, we can't see all the spiritual gift coming from Jesus, one way or the other.

Saying in the church, he's saying that we are the body of Christ.

No less Paul, the numerous passages in the New Testament, he tells us that collectively, through the spirit, the local church is body museum north and by Museo Central and so many others, we're designed to be Christ body and earth.

Of course, the bad news the apostle always tells us bad news, right?

The bad news are we falls so short of this, right?

The bad news is that by nature, and actually by practice, we teach are fallen short about the Lord and fulfilling these design of the human.

We are our humanity.

We're not humans before we stand on the should be right.

Think about it, right?

Think about our past and our limitations, think about how much more God is.

The bad news is that before God's grace, you know, even in our mind, we were individualistic, we were selfish, we were idolatrous rebels with our foot on the accelerator, heading over the cliff of God's justice.

Whereas Paul said in Titus reading through we ourselves are once you disobedient, unstraith, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

Is that Jesus Christ in his life and ministry in real time 2,000 years ago across the religion?

He lived before God the Father not only as our perfect human example, it's a lot of original say that that Jesus was perfect.

Not only was Jesus a perfect human example, he was our perfect human representative.

He fulfilled all of God's righteous design for humanity on our behalf by his life.

And then he went to the cross and made atonement for our sins on our behalf by his death.

And then he overcame the grave and approved his power saved by the resurrection.

And resurrection.

Not only as individuals, which we call sanctification.

God is making Jesus' image take shape in my own personal life.

That's sanctification, but not only as individuals in sanctification, but corporately, which we may call.

Christ's body, but the fullness of all another.

The church is Christ's body.

Christ being the fullness that feels everything, the church is that fullness that feels uh obviously God and ourselves.

We reduce it down to just social warming and uh social interactions that we might be bisected uh sociologically, for getting that God who got word in us, reflecting the life of Jesus.

So that would be important.

What word of your thing?

How do we really begin to live today in accordance with the gospel?

Practicing this gospel in our relationship with each other.

As members of this body, we should pursue service, and vulnerability and help others know they belong.

We can go this one off.

I think the practical implications of that pursue service and vulnerability and help each other know that we belong.

Of course, I think we should serve as we'll wager that a number of us um are still unsure exactly what our speech is on.

In fact, throughout this series, I know several people in conversation talk about uh we should give some.

The fact is we still discover our speech gifts by looking inwardly alone, but most of the time having a future meeting, and we sign up to serve in a very practical way.

And people you can serve alongside people, uh, meeting the needs of the church.

There were weeks, last time I checked, seven or eight ways, I think there may be four sheets on the table back there, but a couple weeks ago there were seven or eight different sheets you can sign up for to serve in practical ways in the church.

And uh after the servers, I'll walk by it, there wasn't a single name line.

But if it out, you may have gone to one of the pastors and said signed me up.

You do want to waste time wrong your name.

Or that means there's still a lot of unveiled spots and opportunities that you can.

There's probably hundreds of artificial, which is served a lot of.

But if you're not regularly uh volunteering in some capacity, I encourage you today to talk one of the pastors because they just if they'd take on a good opportunity, that could be for you and working there, certainly other shortages.

Secondly, we should pursue vulnerability.

Most of that are in the community or in team members, especially really likely that because of the level of transparency and vulnerability that you can have in small groups, especially in anywhere the men or women.

And you form these strong connections and vulnerabilities.

I I want you to encourage to be encouraged in that you're not actually a part of the community group.

I mean, you're missing out.

And what you're left with is church as a service product of uh service um uh event when you want to wonder something and a worship screen church, really.

Church is so much more than that, the gospel lifestyle, really helping the community with Christ's body.

And so I would encourage you to become a part of the community or community and the postform behavior.

Certainly less than that.

I think we should realize that there are potentially um those among us that didn't get invaded, you know, I'll talk about it like that.

And we should help each other.

We should have conversations, we should in the way we interact with each other, uh, when we check on each other and they want to know.

We should help each other know that they belong, just as the gospel said in the law.

Obviously, some churches are better fit for people and then and vice versa, other churches are better for different purposes.

How does it remotely remove our responsibility to help each other know that we belong to the body of Christ?

And you're testing here, some 59 uh one another passages talk about our responsibilities towards the rest of the members in the body.

Here's just a couple of things that they relate.

He says to be at peace with one another, to love one another, to be devoted to one another and love and love, to honor one another and love oneself, to greet one another, pretty practical, right?

Most of the whole thing together, but I think it is serve one another in God, and then finally carry each other's burden.

Yeah, although you know, a community and DNA group probably most often forge the strongest relational bonds, let me believe it because in no sense is a vision for this church, in my understanding, to be that a bunch of community groups and DNA groups happened to meet together under the same group at the same time on the same day, and they were mainly segmented community groups and DNA groups in a big room.

Right, the vision biblically for how the church interacts, even uh embracing the fact of death and celebrating the death of smaller group of people in the church of life, we should always be careful to actively engage with outside of our DNA groups, outside of our closest social.

Because the gospel celebrating that is our global responsibility.

The church is not a single part, it's not a single group, it's not a single entity, it's not a hand or mind, the body is many equally violent parts, at least here, shaping and diving apart.

And so the life is happy.

Let us have a body, labor in love, so as to give no reason for any part of the church to feel any less a part of the body than the gospel said it is.