Community - Every Member Matters - 1 Corinthians 12:21-27

All right, well we have been in this community series for the

last bit and I'm super excited to get back into that.

Last week we had one of my friends from out of town

planning a church in Scotland and man, he just wrecked me with

the word. I'm so thankful for that, it was

really good for me. I hope that you've heard that.

If not, our stuff is available online.

You can go and listen to it on there while we get into our

community series today. You can turn your Bibles to 1st

Corinthians chapter 12 and we're going to get into our time of

Bible study as we do. Let me share this with you.

On February 22nd in 2022, the Sikorsky S 61 N helicopter

departed U.S. Navy Pacific Missile Range

Facility in Kauai, HI. They were conducting a sling

load operation for torpedo recovery. 30 minutes after

takeoff the crew began to experience problems calling out

stick stick, stick. Witnesses reported seeing the

helicopter flying 200 feet above ground gradually pitch nose down

into a near vertical altitude. The helicopter impacted with the

ground nose first overturned and the cockpit was consumed in

flames. 2 pilots and two crew members died.

Upon investigation of the crash site, there was a 'cause that

was determined. The wreckage revealed that the

Flight control A4 four or aft servo rod was only partially

connected to the input cleavises there.

There's a bolt there that's supposed to be in a place that

it's not. The bolt had no evidence of

fracture or deformation, no thread wear.

This means that the bolt likely backed out of its normally

installed position due to the absence of its nut and Cotter

pin. This would have resulted in a

lack of command to the four aft servo causing an uncontrollable

nose down altitude. As you can see, that's the

linkage that allows the pilot to steer.

Upon further investigation into the maintenance records, it was

determined that only a few months prior a mechanic had

recorded, removed and installed forward and NAFT servo.

The most likely cause of this accident was negligence to

reinstall the necessary nut and Cotter pin.

I know that's kind of a heavy illustration to begin our time

with today. Perhaps appropriately, it is

Memorial Day and many service members have given their lives

to defend our country and some unfortunately due to error.

What we'll see today in our time of Bible study is that every

member of the community matters. Even something as small as the

nut in Cotter pin, something so small that we wouldn't normally

consider. So as we come to God's Word,

we're going to read it. Today will be in First

Corinthians 12/21 to 27. I want to remind you that when

we come to the Scriptures, the Bible says that the Word of God

is profitable. And one of the things that it

does for us is it instructs us in righteousness.

It gives us direction for how we operate as God's people.

We also know that the Word of God is a lamp to my my feet, a

light to my path. It's directive to us.

And so I want us to just take a moment and pray, settle

ourselves and ask the Lord to direct us as individuals, but

also as a church to how we can make every member matter in

Portland Gospel Church. So I'm going to give you just a

few moments to pray and then I'll lead us in a prayer.

God, we pray that you'd speak to us today.

We come to your word, we surrender.

We want to do community your way.

Pray that you'd open our eyes. Help us to see the way that you

see. Help us to love the way that you

love. Use this time in Jesus name,

Amen. If we begin reading in First

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

Corinthians chapter 12, starting in verse 21, the Bible says, And

the I cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee, nor

again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.

Nay, much more, those members of the body which seem to be more

feeble are necessary, and those members of the body which we

think to be less honorable upon these we bestow more abundant

honor in. Our uncomely parts have more

abundant comeliness, for our comely parts have no need.

But God hath tempered the body together, having giving more

abundant honor to that part which lacked.

That there should be no schism in the body, but that the

members should have the same care one for another.

And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it

or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it.

Now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular.

So today we continue, we have seen in previous weeks in

community that you have something to to contribute.

We have spiritual gifts that are there.

Every person in the body can give something to the body.

We you have something I need, I have something you need.

We saw that illustration last week or two weeks ago that we

have unity and diversity. We're very different and

community doesn't mean that we're all exactly the same, but

we value each other. And today we're going to see

these interesting parts, the less comely parts and how every

part of the body is going to matter.

So let's begin. If you're taking notes that we

need the weak, we see here in verse 21 the I cannot say to the

hand, I have no need of thee. We have no part in the body that

is unnecessary as we're going to see every part matters.

And we see this word used here. The word is feeble, and feeble

is perhaps not a word that you use all the time.

So I have a definition for you of the word feeble is to be

weak, destitute of much physical strength as an infant.

That's a really good example. Something that is I think Amber

would call a little squish. You know, there isn't a whole

lot there. Don't drop it.

It's it's very vulnerable. It doesn't it doesn't have

strength. It can't hurt you.

And this is some of the parts of the body.

Some members are more weak than others.

The there's a Bible use of this word.

There's many, but there's a use in Second Samuel chapter 4, it

2 Samuel 4 · chapter mention

says when Saul's son heard that Abner was dead in Hebron, his

hands were feeble. So he got some news that really

scared him for the situation that happened.

And his hands were weak, He was shaking.

Maybe you've had those moments where you're just your hands are

wet and you're you feel like you're just going to fall apart.

And it's related here to trouble.

Everyone was troubled in that situation.

So we have members in the body like this, but we need to know

the weaker necessary. It says in verse 22, nay, much

more, those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are

necessary. And I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking the necessary, do I have to kind of necessary,

right? This is what Urban Dictionary

says about necessary. The word necessary means do you

really have to, but shorter, isn't that how we at times treat

something that's necessary? Well, you know, we have to

include them because that's what we're supposed to do.

We got to make sure everybody is welcome or whatever.

And that's not the Bible's use of the word necessary.

Perhaps a better definition is something that cannot be

excluded if it's necessary. Just think about the helicopter

introduction. If it's a necessary part, it

better be there. It's not possible that it should

be excluded. Now, one of the best ways that

we can come up with a definition for a word, this is a Bible

study principle as we look at the uses of the word throughout

the Scripture. So I have a couple times today

that I want to do this together. So the word necessary is used

throughout the Scriptures. There's probably a few more

references than this, but it gives us an overall picture.

Job said that his food was necessary.

He said he esteemed the words of God more than his necessary

food. In Acts 13, we see that

something was necessary, was the right thing to do.

It's frequently something that's needed or needful.

But lastly, in Hebrews, it says that it's a part of God's plan,

like it was necessary. God was accomplishing things,

things needed to happen. And there are people in the

church that are necessary in such a way.

They are needful. Perhaps God even placed them

there for a reason. They're a part of this body, and

we want them to stay attached. We want everything to be healthy

and functional. So if something is necessary, it

must be cared for at all costs. If something is necessary, it

must be cared for at all costs. I do want to bring back up to

you the illustration that I opened our cert or sermon up

with and I gave a Riddle to the kids a little bit ago and I

asked something like what is made of metal.

It's small, it's on almost everything.

It's flexible. And without it, someone's going

to die. And this is the Cotter pin right

here. This is what a Cotter pin is.

Maybe you've seen one of these it maybe you've seen you've been

to IKEA and you've seen something similar to this.

And you assemble some furniture and you miss one of these little

pieces, and you're like, Oh, no, can we still use it without the

safety pin? And I think we all know, no,

that's not what you want to do, right?

This is how it works. It's flexible.

You stick it through something. It does not retain the weight.

It does not have a strength function.

But without it being there, the thing that is strong falls

apart. It becomes very, very dangerous.

They're really small. They're all over there in your

vehicle, all over the place. The Cotter pin.

I know this because I used to be an illustrator for six or seven

years. I drew a lot of pictures and I

learned the difference in a Cotter pin, a cleavus pin, and

all these different machine head screws and assembly drawings and

that sort of thing. But these things are so small,

but without them, they fall apart.

This is also like members in the church body.

They're small, but they're necessary.

You see, God honors the weak things verse 23 says, and those

members of the body which we think to be less honorable upon

these we'd bestow more abundant honor, and our uncomely parts

have more abundant comeliness. So we'll get into what that word

means for just a moment. But quite simply, we have things

that we would honor that we'd say, hey, I really like this

part, the engine or the bicep. You know, we we all have things

we think get gets more work done than something else.

It's maybe easier to check on maintenance wise, or it's more

obvious it's coming from the front of the room instead of

from a backroom somewhere else, right?

But here we see our uncomely parts, the Bible says have more

abundant comeliness. So let's look at this word

comely. The word comely.

This is my summation for you, that it is upright.

It's not necessarily just righteous.

It's something that's doing right.

It's appealing. It's not just attractive, but it

is like it's goodly to look upon.

It's handsome where it's graceful in some way.

There's a skill or an excellence or a lightness to it.

This is what something is comely is.

It's appropriate in appealing so we, we can develop this

definition from the Scriptures. I have a few references for you.

The Bible in first Samuel 16 of King David said that David was a

comely person. He, he was an excellent

musician. He was valiant in war.

He was prudent in his business and comely.

He was good in appearance and he seemed to have a lot of things

together. I quoted early earlier to you

that Psalm, Psalm 147 says that I'll just read the whole thing.

Praise ye the Lord, for it is good to sing praises unto our

God, for it is pleasant, and praise is comely.

So this is the appropriate upright thing to do for us to

praise God, perhaps to the antithesis of this Jesus.

And Isaiah 53 is said to have no form nor comeliness.

Maybe you've seen pictures of like sexy Mormon Jesus.

He's got cute hair, everything's bright and glistening and he

looks like real attractive, like Brad Pitt's playing Jesus or

something. And this is not the Jesus of the

Bible. It says he's not comely not not

in an unrighteous sense, but it says there's no beauty that we

should desire him. It like you would have just

passed over him and perhaps chosen somebody else if you

thought that's the Son of God. It wasn't about physical

appearance. And perhaps that is something we

need to learn in the church as well, that comeliness isn't

necessarily just appearance. But I put it to you this way,

the church doesn't dispose of the weak.

We probably have more attractive, more productive

members of the body. And in a sense, as we grow,

certain individuals should start to take on more leadership or

more things. But for us to be healthy, God

says we need to have some internal uncomely parts.

They make us better. Really, They make us strong.

Just think right now the way the Bible uses the uncomely parts,

it's talking about the parts you don't see inside of the body.

Are there any organs in your body that you want to sacrifice

right now? I mean, maybe you could live

without a couple of them, but would you choose to?

I'd prefer not to. So the Bible says in verse 24,

for our comely parts have no need, but God hath tempered the

body together, having giving more abundant honor to that part

which lacked. So it says that the body is

tempered together by some of these uncomely parts.

So let's look at this word tempered.

The word tempered is to be mixed together into some kind of

permanent, proper state. And frequently when something's

tempered, we believe it to be hardened like tempered steel.

So we have the combination of ingredients that makes a better,

more stable state. Let me show you a few Bible

verses. Exodus 29.

You know this if you've ever baked anything, especially if

you've made a cake unleavened bread and cakes unleavened,

tempered with oil. There are only a handful of

ingredients that really matter in a cake.

If you don't have the main ingredients that temper the cake

together, it turns into something else.

The next thing you know, you're eating a vegan cracker, right?

And do you know what emergency cake is?

You can make cake without some of the main ingredients, but you

probably don't want to leave out like milk, eggs, butter, sugar.

There's a there's a handful of things that are just

irreplaceable when it comes to tempering the cake together.

Otherwise, it just comes out weird.

The same is true with here. The Bible uses apothecary.

This is the mixture of oils or perfume and ingredients together

that would be anointing the high priest.

It says that they were tempered together, a bunch of ingredients

coming together to be one thing, to serve one purpose.

This is biblical temperance and really the way that we gain this

is temperance is a fruit of the Spirit.

As the people of God submit to the Spirit of God and the Word

of God, we exercise this quality in our community.

We become tempered together. We are mixed together.

We are strengthened together for a singular purpose.

Even the weak parts are all in the mixture.

Remember, every member matters when the final concoction is

made. You're not likely saying, man,

what a wonderful ingredient that was in that cake.

You're just saying yummy. Unless it was a vegan cake, then

sorry Savannah, I know you work at a bakery, but I haven't had

many vegan things that I enjoy. I'm will.

I'm willing to try it, just it just doesn't come out quite the

same for me. But God uses the weakness to

bind us together. We need weakness in our

community. I don't want our church to be

weak. I want to be strong.

But you know how the Bible uses these oxymoronic kind of

statements like when I'm weak, then he is strong.

We need these things. They actually help us as we're

going to see learn how to love and serve each other.

A basic example of this is. Some of you might know that, but

it's kind of hard for me really to say but.

Can I just say that if you want to be in ministry, you want to

lead people, you want to pastor, sometimes things are going to

happen in your life for you to learn a lesson or for someone

else to learn a lesson. And not long ago, I developed a

hernia, and I'm not particularly excited of that or proud of

that. I did turn 40 this year.

So I guess this is the new normal.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

But you know how that works, right?

There's muscles here that I do. I'd used to exercise.

I don't know what happened. I think God just decided, you

know, that's what's going to happen.

There's muscles here that are supposed to hold back things

that are important on the inside.

And when one of those is weak and there's a breech made, then

all of a sudden you walk around holding part of your body while

you're moving, right? And now my hand has to hold on

to me while I move around. For now.

That's hopefully going to be fixed soon.

But this weakness causes my body to remember, oh, yeah, I do have

other parts that are important, too.

One body part has to care for the other body part.

So we're going to learn that we need to work together.

Our weaknesses force us as a church, as a community, to

function together. Let's read verse 25.

This is that there should be no schism in the body, but that the

members should have the same care one for another.

So we are called to choose unity.

This is a choice that we make. I don't have this on the screen,

but Ephesians 43 says we endeavor to keep the unity of

the Spirit and the bond of peace.

Unity is an endeavor. It's a thing to pursue if we

surrender to the Spirit of God. It's the natural thing that will

happen in the people of God. But we see this, this phrase

here that no schism be in the body.

And just another helpful way for you to come up with a definition

of what does a word mean in the Bible.

Sometimes a word is only used one time in the whole book, the

whole Bible, and that's this word right here.

Schism doesn't show up anywhere else and it's interesting to see

how God uses a word. He places this word in the most

body conscious part of the Bible, but it is translated in a

couple of other places. And maybe if you've been to

Bible study, we've taught you how to use Blue Letter Bible to

do searches. And the King James Bible has

honesty to be able to tell you what was the word translated

from Greek to English or from Hebrew to English.

And sometimes we can go find that word and see how else was

it translated. And it develops A broader sense

of, OK, now I'm getting the picture of what this word means.

Most of the time, context will do well to help you understand a

word. But let's look at this word and

a few other places in this same epistle, First Corinthians

1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1, Paul addressed this church and he said that they

should speak the same things and that there be no divisions.

That's how he uses the word here in the same book.

Later on in Chapter 11, he says, when you come together in the

church, I hear that there be divisions among you.

And he says, I believe it. Now I've been to Corinth.

I believe you knuckleheads aren't ever getting along.

I've been there. I've heard reports.

This is a church that Paul planted.

He went to Corinth and labored there.

But we see that this word has a churchy kind of a context is

Webster would say it's a breach of unity among people of a

religious faith. A schism isn't just a

disagreement. It seems to be amongst the

church crowd. And Webster goes on to say the

in Scripture, the word seems to denote a breach of charity

rather than a difference of doctrine.

So a schism isn't just like someone preaching heresy or we

got to fix what somebody's saying that's wrong.

It's more about how we function together.

Are we choosing to, in honor, prefer each other and take care

of the weak parts and all of the members of the body?

It's kind of like an autoimmune disorder when the body gets a

signal that says, hey, this thing, let's attack it, but that

thing actually is a good, normal part of your body.

That's not healthy, that's dysfunctional.

And that's what can happen in the church.

So to fix this, we have to care for each other.

We have to learn how to not attack each other, but how to

care as it says in verse 25, one for another.

You know this, Jesus said this is the commandment that I give

you. Listen, you want to summarize

some of Jesus's words, Love one another as I have loved you.

Love one another. We have some of these famous

words out of Romans chapter 12. Be kindly affectionate. 1 to

Romans 12 · chapter mention

another. Now I could go through all of

these and honestly I don't have the time to read them all, but I

did give you a list and it's not on there.

But this next slide you might want to take a picture of that

because it didn't want to print that for you and you might need

to zoom in, but there may be other references.

This is a pretty good summary of the use of the phrase one

another in the scripture. If we were meeting midweek this

week, I would probably have you read all these and talk about

them. It'd be good for us.

But if we just look here, pretty simply, the first one's probably

my wife's favorite, being kind one to another, right?

That's they say that's free, isn't it?

So when we come together, remember this is a church kind

of charity. We're together.

We should at least be able to be nice to each other.

We should be good for our word. We shouldn't be judging other

people. We should have a level of

openness between us that says, hey, how are you, Let's talk.

We should be able to caution and advise others to say, hey man, I

see this. How are you doing with that?

We should be able to at very least greet and welcome, Hey,

hi, how are you doing? If we can't say hi to each other

in the room because something's between us, we got to figure

that out. We need to help each other out,

not attack each other, not self promoting, patiently responding.

Ephesians 432 be kind one to another, tender hearted,

forgiving one another, right? We need to love each.

No, this is an Awana song that my kids, I know I didn't finish

it. I'm sorry Sheldon.

If you ever watch The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon would not be

happy. He'd have to finish it.

Loving one another, comforting, building up.

You get the picture right? And if not, you can take a

picture. You go study it later.

Be good for you to look it up, but this is the way that we're

called to function together, the people of God.

We have to have this kind of care.

So I ask you this, who wouldn't want to be a part of a community

like that? Isn't that what you would want

out of a church to say? I don't.

I'm not only valued based on how much I'm doing, like what if we

get sick? What if, what if I'm not doing

well? What if somebody in this room or

somebody that God gives us has a terminal diagnosis?

Would they still matter? What if you're 6 or 8 or 10 and

you can't go out and evangelize? I saw this modeled from my

pastor. I learned so much being on staff

and not being the guy in charge. I'm so thankful for my pastor

James. He was, he's awesome.

And I watched him the way that he cared for.

There was a group of old ladies in our church, which I think we

call them the widows or the ladies class.

And they could sometimes be a point of frustration for us

because they were the old group that had been doing things like

for 50 years. And we were trying to be the

newer group and let's, you know, we're doing this discipleship

stuff. And they never really got on

board with any of that. But even in a closed door

meeting when they weren't around, he was always trying to

look out for them and take care of them.

They met in a classroom they were used to.

It was way too big for them, but it was theirs.

And we wanted to do other things with it.

And he's like, leave them alone. No.

And I saw him with some of these ladies sing songs to them on

their deathbed. Does a dying person matter?

Is that what a senior pastor should be doing?

Caring for the weak? I learned a lot from James.

And this week I got to confess. I don't know what how the Lord

will answer this prayer. I'm afraid to even pray it.

But I've been praying. I've been praying that God would

give us the week. What if we had some elderly

people in our church? Wouldn't that be sweet?

I mean, what if they couldn't go hard and get after, but they

would just be here and we'd love on them and they'd love on us?

Wouldn't that be sweet? What if we did have some people

that maybe did need more care than we're used to?

It would definitely cause us to like have to hold on and figure

out how do I love something inconveniently sometimes That's

a good, healthy kind of community.

Lastly, let's end with this, we win and lose together.

Verse 25 or I'm sorry, verse 26 says and whether one member

suffer, all the members suffer with it or one member be

honored, all the members rejoice with it.

Because you see, the body is 1. And just like, I'm sorry to

bring it up again, the illustration in the beginning,

we all are going to go down or we're all going to stay a flight

based on the care that we have for each individual member, even

the weak things. If we go down, we go down

together. And I don't I don't want to

bring anybody down. Roman says, rejoice with them

that rejoice and weep with them that weep.

This means when other people in the community get a thing that

we may want, we say, I got to figure out how to rejoice with

you. When other people in the

community suffer in a way that we don't understand, we say, you

know what? I don't, I don't understand it,

but I need to figure out how to get with you and how to love

you. This is how we need to be

treating each other. I promise you this will be

attractive to a world that has no concept of this.

Materialism or atheism has no value for weakness.

It's it's productivity. Value is based on what you do or

what somebody thinks of you. It's not intrinsic to your

nature because you're made in the image of God.

Only Christians have this kind of value.

Materialism has no no real value for the weak.

It's all just false value. It's it's loose and weak.

I do want to end with this really personal illustration.

My thing isn't working very often.

Does anybody know what this picture is of?

It's a famous moment in sports history that happened recently

in your lifetime in the last few years.

January of 2023 at the stroke of midnight as the ball dropped in

Times Square. This happened the NCAA playoffs.

CJ Stroud throws 4 touchdowns for 348 yards, no interceptions.

2 receivers have 100 plus yard games.

I think Lathe Ransom had 9 tackles.

It's 4. I'm sorry, it's 3 seconds left

in the fourth quarter. It's 4th and 11, meaning it's

the last play. It's 41 to 42 Georgia.

I'm cheering for the Buckeyes. If you didn't know, 41 to 42,

Georgia, 3 seconds left, the last play we get to kick one

final field goal and Noah Ruggles kicks his career longest

or what would have been. And he missed wide left.

And every Buckeyes fan was like, I mean, it was, it was a great

game, but it was terrible to lose.

It all came down to one kick and the whole team lost the whole

season because of 1 moment. Many other star players had

excellent games. I'm not blaming this guy, this

is just how football goes. It was.

It's a risk. Everybody's heightened emotions.

If you can imagine. I wouldn't want to be the guy

with three seconds left and the game's on you.

Let's win. Let's live or die right now.

Like no. Could we pay somebody else to do

that, please? But this is an example of how we

will be successful together or we will fail together.

We can't win as individuals. We went as a church and really

the winning is giving honor to the Lord.

Seeing soul save, functioning together, being healthy.

That is a win. And we need every part.

Every part matters, so I'm going to give us a few moments to pray

and respond. We'll have a final song here in

a minute, but let me ask you a few questions.

If you just take a moment of quiet, bow your head and pray,

what is a step that you can take today towards helping weaker

members of our church? Or maybe you want to think about

our church collectively? What is a way in which we're

lacking in meeting each other's needs?

If nothing comes to mind, you can pray for us That as a

church, God strengthens us. Maybe He even gives us some

people that we need to care for, or He surfaces some things that

we need to get serious about. I want to give you 30 seconds or

so to pray, and then I'll lead us in a prayer.

We'll have one more song.