Being One Body

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⟦Transcript⟧ We’re going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 this morning, 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and we’re going to be talking for the next few weeks about the concept of community. Because it seems like everybody today is looking for community and they don’t know where to find it. Unless you’re just really an introvert and you want to be a community of one and yourself, and there is some of that too, but people are looking for community. That’s why people are so hung up on social media, I think. They’ve forgotten how to be a community with real people, and we do it electronically now, but people are looking to connect with other people.

And God designed the church as a community. God designed this to be a community of believers. It’s not to say that we can’t find community elsewhere. I mean, people in this church are involved in other things. Like Julie just said, she’s involved in quilting. She finds community there.

I’m involved in different community organizations, find community and fellowship there. But as far as what God has designed and where we are supposed to first and foremost find community as believers is supposed to be in the church. And he talks about us as being one body because it’s not just community like, I know you, you’re my neighbor. But it’s supposed to be community where we are a part of one another. He designs us to be one body. And he calls us one body.

This is what we’re going to talk about in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 this morning. But thinking about the whole concept here that he presents in 1 Corinthians 12, the whole idea is that the body’s diminished if it doesn’t work together. I was thinking about this along with things that happened earlier this week. I had to take my dog to the vet on Monday. And y’all heard me talk about Max. I call him my college roommate. roommate, my four-legged college roommate. He’s been with me a long time.

He’s very special to me, and I thought I was going to have to put him down. I was just, I was devastated. Didn’t know what was wrong. He hadn’t eaten in about three days. He just stood there back arched and shook and wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t take treats, wouldn’t, ears weren’t perked, wouldn’t come running to us. I just, I was devastated.

I thought we were going to have to put him down. Took him to the vet, and to make a long story short, she said it could be digestive, it could be kidney failure, it could be any of these things. She said, but when I run my fingers along right here, when I get to this little vertebrae area, she said, and I touch it, there’s a reaction. She said, it makes me think that he’s got a bulging disc, that there’s a disc in his back that’s bothering him. And I said, okay, but we’ll try to do something about that before we go to any extremes here. Gave him a steroid shot and some steroid pills and some pain pills that I had to sign my life away for, done at the drugstore.

And within just a few hours, he was like a puppy again. And I thought, how crazy is that? Because I would never have thought he’s not eating because his back hurts. There was one little disc in his back that was hurting him, but it was so out of whack that it threw the rest of his body and his personality out of whack and nothing else worked right. And that to me illustrates really well how the whole body can be affected by one part of the body not participating or not cooperating, not doing what it’s supposed to do. And the fact is when any part of the body is diminished, the effectiveness of the whole body is diminished.

We don’t think about that until there are parts of our body we don’t think about until something goes wrong with it. You know, I don’t look at feet as being a vital organ. I mean, We want to walk around and stuff, but they’re not really vital. Nobody ever calls a prayer vigil usually because they’re having open foot surgery, like open heart surgery or brain surgery. I mean, these are things that really terrify us.

Oh, they’ve got to operate on my foot. I’ll be in and out today. We don’t think about the foot until it goes to sleep and then try to walk around, try to run a marathon with a foot that’s asleep. The whole body just tries to compensate, and it just doesn’t work as well as it should until that foot is back on line. Most of our parts seem relatively unimportant. I mean, they’re not the heart.

They’re not the brain. Most parts are not. Until they stop working. Until they malfunction. Until something goes wrong. And then at that point, we realize just how important it was.

I don’t think a lot about that foot until it’s hurt. And then I realize how much I need it just to get around. just to stand up out of the chair, just to walk across the room. I realize how important it’s been all along. When there’s a problem, we start to see the importance of each part. And what’s true of the body, what’s true of the human body, is true of the church as a body. It’s not by accident that Paul spends an entire chapter talking about the church being a body. And we talk about the church body as a collection of people.

But we forget the aspect of the body where we’re supposed to be knit together and connected to each other. And far too often we see the church as an organization when God sees it as an organism. And there’s your first line of blanks. We see the church as an organization instead of an organism, which is how God sees it. And if you don’t understand the difference, think about it this way. I’m a member of several organizations.

Most of the political, and I won’t tell you any more than that because about half of you would be mad at me. But I’m a member of different organizations. You know what? If I don’t show up to a meeting, they might have to rearrange some things, but the organization goes on. If I move away, or if somebody dies, we have to rearrange some things, but everything goes on. And organism, you take away one of the parts, and nothing is ever quite the same.

If I had to have my leg amputated, I might learn to live without it. But nothing would ever be quite the same, would it? And I know people can do incredible things. I’ve seen those guys that come back from Iraq and they run on the blades and they can run faster than I can now. But imagine what they could do before. And I don’t mean to diminish what they’re doing.

I’m just saying, they would probably be the first to tell us nothing’s ever quite the same when you lose a part of the organism. See, the church isn’t an organization. I realize that to the outside world, it looks like an organization where a collection of people, and people come and people go. But in the church, you add people, and you take people out, and that does happen naturally. God calls people home, or God calls people to serve somewhere else, but it’s never quite the same. Now, that doesn’t mean we sit around winging our hands and say, ah, we can’t do anything because so-and-so’s not here anymore.

But it’s never quite the same. I never met Miss Jane that y’all talk about. But the way I hear y’all talk about her and her work in our children’s ministry, even years later, I realize something has been missing since she is no longer with us. And things are never quite the same. That doesn’t mean they can’t be good. That doesn’t mean they can’t be great.

That doesn’t mean that the church can’t function greatly. I didn’t spend that much time with him. I mean, I wasn’t here that long before he passed away. But when Bill was called home, it left a big hole for me already in the fellowship of this church. So you see, you take somebody out, you take a part of the body away, things are never quite the same. God talks about the church being an organism where we all cooperate together.

We’re all parts of the same body, rather than an organization where you can take people in and put people out, and it just doesn’t matter. In the church, it matters who’s here, and it matters who’s not here. And so we look at 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and we’re going to start in verse 12 and read down to verse 20. It says, For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body being many are one body, so also is Christ. He’s calling the church the body of Christ.

And in a very literal sense, that’s true. We are not the physical body of Christ. But now that Christ has ascended back to heaven to the right hand of his Father, we are his hands and his feet in more than just a figurative way. Christ has left us here to do things and go places on his behalf. We are his body.

And even though we’re many members and we’re many individual parts and we’re many individual people, we’re one, he says. For by one spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, we have been all made to drink in one spirit. For the body is not one member, but me. So Paul compares the church to a body. He spends this whole passage, this whole chapter, comparing the church to a body. He says it contains many individual parts that God has put together, but they all play an important role in the body.

There are many individual parts, but it’s one body. There are many of us here this morning. And guess what? We’re all different. We don’t all agree on everything. I’d be worried about us if we did.

We agree on the important stuff, but we don’t all agree on everything. And yet God puts us together as one body. And just like the human body, we’re made up of many parts. There’s no difference to be made in the church as there is in the world. Now, the world looks at people and likes to categorize them and rank them. You know, he’s the richest.

He’s the poorest. Here’s the scale in between. Best dressed, worst dressed. We see that all the time on TV and in the magazines. The world likes to rank people and make a difference, and you’re important, and you’re more important, and you’re not important at all.

You’re over here. We don’t care about you. There’s not supposed to be that difference in the body and the church. There’s no distinction. God doesn’t look at us as categories. He says here, Paul says that we’re all in one body, and he says whether you’re Jews or Gentiles, whether you’re bond or free, These are differences that the world would look at and make a huge deal about.

Jews, and the word there, Greek, is Gentiles. The Jews and Gentiles did not like each other. Think about cats and dogs, Jews and Arabs, groups of people that just did not like each other. There were many-year, deep-seated, long-running resentments between these groups of people. And the world would look at it and say, which side are you on? You’re either with us or you’re with the Gentiles.

You know, split down the middle. The world would look at and make a big difference about bond or free. Oh, you’re one of the upper crust of society. And you’re down here in the gutter. And so we’re going to treat you differently. He says, no, not in the church.

It doesn’t matter. God doesn’t look at us as categories and say, you’re rich, you’re poor, you’re black, you’re white, you’re born here, you’re a foreigner. God looks at us and says, you are one body in Jesus Christ. There’s no distinction in verse 13. And in fact, he looks beyond that and says, you are one body and I have made you one body. I have put you together.

And he illustrates that by saying that we undergo the same baptism as a symbol of the new life in Christ. You know, whether you were black or white or you’re rich or poor or Jew or Gentile or whatever it was, you might have been that, but then you were buried with Christ in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life. And you start life with all of those being secondary characteristics. right now what you are is citizen of the kingdom, first and foremost. And you’ve been given a new life in Jesus Christ.

You’ve been given a new identity. And you’re first and foremost a part of his kingdom and a part of his church. And when he talks about drinking into one spirit, we’re all partakers of the same Holy Spirit. It doesn’t matter. Whether you came to church today as a believer, as a member of this church, whether you came in here and you’re dressed in a suit and you’re wealthy, not that everybody in a suit is wealthy, because here I am, or you came and you’re poor and you could barely afford gas to get here.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white. It doesn’t matter whether you’re from here or from somewhere else. It doesn’t matter. We are all partakers of the same Holy Spirit. And another division that we see a lot of times in the church is between the, I don’t even like these terms, the clergy and the laity. The guys up on stage, they’re closer to God.

He’s the preacher. He must be closer to God. Baloney. We are all partakers of the same Holy Spirit. We are all indwelled by the same Holy Spirit of God. And so when you look at it, and we’ve been given the same new life in Christ, and we’ve been made partakers of the same Holy Spirit, it really doesn’t matter our background to God.

He looks at us and says, you’re all part of one body. I’ve put you together. All the parts have a different function, but there aren’t any insignificant parts of the body. He says in verse 15, If the foot shall say, because I am not the hand, I am not of the body. Is it therefore not part of the body? Apparently the foot was kind of jealous.

I understand this. I don’t like feet. The kids put their feet on me. I say, don’t do that. I don’t like feet. I’d rather they put their hand on me.

And so we’d look at that and say, well, the foot’s dirty. It’s been in shoes or it’s been running out there in the dirt. It’s dirty. The hand you wash more frequently. And so, yeah, the foot would be a little jealous of the hand. The hand seems a little more important.

You know what? The hand can do this. So simple and we take it for granted. that we’ve got these thumbs that we can grab things with. And we can do really intricate things with our hands. The foot just kind of stands there and holds us up. So the foot might get jealous and say, well, because I’m not a hand, I’m not part of the body, I’m not as important. Paul says here, is it therefore not part of the body?

If it feels that way, if it feels left out because I’m just the foot, not the hand, is it really not part of the body? Is it any less important here? If the ear shall say, because I am not the eye, I am not the body, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? The ears, the ears are really cool. The ears can hear things. The ears take pressure waves in the air and bounce it off your eardrums and send the vibrations down through little hairs and bones.

Your tiniest bones are in your ear. And send it through all of that stuff down to nerves that decipher it in the brain. And you read it as sound. That’s incredible to me. And yet the ear could look at the eye and say, well, you do that same thing. You pick up on light and wavelengths of light and pigmentation.

They’re flipped upside down, and then you decipher them through these nerves in the brain, and you get to see things. All I get to do is double and hear things. And the ear could be jealous of the eye, he says, and think, well, because I’m not the eye, I’m just not even really part of the body. And Paul says, is that even true? It’s no less part of the body just because it’s not an eye. The ear still serves an important function.

If the whole body were an eye, he says, where were the hearing? Think about it. If you were just a big old pile of eyes, could you hear anything? Do you like to be able to hear? Is it useful to you? I assume it is when I’m able to do it.

Hearing is very important. We’d miss it if it was gone. If we were just a big old pile of eyes, we wouldn’t be able to hear anything. He says if the whole were hearing, where were the smelly? If the body was just a big old pile of ears, we wouldn’t be able to smell anything. And he’s saying there that the nose is important too.

And if any part’s got anything to be jealous about on the head, it’s going to be the nose. He says the nose is important too. I know this probably sounds silly, but he’s making a point here, but there are no unimportant parts in the body. Even the appendix, we cut that thing out, but it does something, we just don’t know what. All the parts do something. Even your skin, we look at it, we take it for granted, I’ve got skin. your skin is incredible it’s the first line of defense against disease I think skin is the skin is the heaviest organ in the body every part does something in the body and the same thing is true in the church and it doesn’t matter if you think well I’m not a preacher I just help in the kitchen I just watch the kids I’m not a Sunday school teacher baloney there is no unimportant part in the body the only ministry I can do is pray for people great do that more we need more of that.

There is no unimportant part in the body and there’s no unimportant role in the body. He told us the foot is no less important than the hands, the ear is no less important than the eye, and the nose is no less important than the ear. And if the body were limited to just a particular part, it would only accomplish one thing, and think of all the other stuff that wouldn’t get done. We think sometimes if everybody was just like me, this would be so much easier. In a sense it might be, but I don’t want to go to a church where everybody’s just like me. And I don’t even want to be married to somebody who’s just like me.

Amen? One of us would be unnecessary. There’d be a lot that wouldn’t get done in our house if we were both just like me. And you know what? There would be a whole lot in this church that would not get done if we were all just like me. Or just like you.

God takes all of us with our strengths and our weaknesses and our gifts and our different energy about things. We get excited about different things. And God puts that all together and makes sure that his work gets accomplished that way. God places all the parts where they are for a reason to accomplish the tasks that he’s given each of us individually and collectively. So we work together for that purpose, and we work together best that way. It says in verse 18, but now have God set the members, every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.

It’s all by his design, and that’s true of the body and of the church body. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. God takes us all and puts us together in a way that pleases Him and glorifies Him and accomplishes His work. Which brings me to the main point of this message, if you take nothing else away from today, that the body doesn’t work right unless it all works together. The body does not work right unless it all works together.

That’s true of the human body. I was about to say the human body, just like my dog story, But he thinks he’s human. That’s true of a physical body, I’ll put it that way. None of the body worked right because that one little disc wasn’t working the way it was supposed to. And it’s true of the church body. The church can function if half of us say, well, I’m not the preacher.

Or I’m not, I can’t do the things Kathy does. I can’t do the things that Brother Kim does. So I’m just not going to participate. If half of us do that, or if any of us do that, I mean, we can still limp along and get some things accomplished, but the church doesn’t work right. It doesn’t work to its full potential. And as all the parts are there, and they’re all doing what they’re supposed to and working together, the body doesn’t work right unless it all works together.

It can still work. It can still function. It doesn’t work right unless it all works together. So what we need to learn from this, and what he’s telling the church at Corinth about their relationship to each other and how they were supposed to fit together, and not just occupy the same pew on Sunday, say hi to each other on the way out to the parking lot and call that a relationship, that they were supposed to be a community together. They were supposed to function as one, as one body made up of very different members. What we learn from that that applies to us is that you matter in the life of the church.

You matter. Why don’t you take this hand. Take your hand. This incredible hand that can move around and do all sorts of things. I want you to put three of the fingers down. Tuck them under the thumb.

While you’re pointing with your index finger, point it to your chest and say, I matter. You matter in the life of the church. And when we casually amputate ourselves. I know that’s a graphic term, but that’s what it is. when we casually amputate ourselves from the body, by thinking our involvement doesn’t matter, we hurt ourselves and we diminish the body, the body’s effectiveness. You may be thinking this morning, well, this is just a message. He wants more people.

He’s trying to make us feel guilty if we miss. It’s not that at all. Please don’t misunderstand what I mean when I say this. There’s no benefit to me, really, by having a huge number here. I mean, I would love it. Don’t get me wrong.

But I learned years ago not to gauge the health and vitality of a church based on numbers. And I don’t get a commission on everybody who walks in here, by the way. Just so we’re clear on that. It’s not, oh, he wants us in there so he can look good. He’s got the big church. I really don’t care about that, honestly.

I’d love it if we were full, but I’m going to be here preaching whether we’ve got 10 people or 100. The reason I want you here and the reason I want you involved is because this church just doesn’t work right without you. That doesn’t mean you miss a Sunday and everything falls apart. That’d be a pretty sorry church. But I mean, all across this country, there are people that just kind of drift in and out of their church. And I mean church members.

They drift in and out of their church and think, well, nobody notices I’m here. It really doesn’t matter. I can just slip in the back and I can be. . . You’re shortchanging yourself and your church. And I realize the irony of saying that to the people who are here. And it’s hard for me to tell you when you’re not here.

I realize I’m preaching to the choir, but I want you to know. I want you to know where my heart is. I want you to know where I stand. And I want you to remember this because there will be that. Even as the pastor, there are days where I feel like I don’t contribute anything to this church. There will be days where you feel like I don’t matter.

Nobody cares whether I’m there or not. It doesn’t matter if I do this ministry or not. That is a lie from the devil. And we’re shortchanging ourselves and we’re shortchanging our church when we just casually amputate ourselves from the body. Nobody goes out and says, hey, I think I’d like to have my arm cut off today. Actually, I’ve seen this on TLC.

There’s some weird thing where people do that electively. The way y’all are shaking your heads, thank goodness, y’all realize, no, we don’t do that. That’s not normal. We don’t just wake up and say, hmm, I think I’d like to cut off an ear today. No, we realize we need our parts.

When something’s broken, we go to the doctor and try to get it fixed. Because we know we need them. We need those parts if they can be saved at all. We can’t do that to the church body. Each of you are vitally important.

For who you are, for the role that you play, for the ministry that you accomplish both inside this church and as a member going outside of the walls of this church and ministering in the community, you are vitally important to accomplishing God’s mission here. And it’s vitally important that we work together. The body doesn’t work right unless it all works together.

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