All right, we have been doing something a little different this summer. We are going through a series called We Are the Body. We’re looking at 1 Corinthians 12, and in a couple weeks, we’re gonna get into 1 Corinthians 13.
Does anybody know what the theme of that next chapter is? Love, oh man, I’ll just skip it then. You guys already know. But in 1 Corinthians 12, it talks about being the body of Christ and how we are like Christ.
We’ve talked about how we have a fellowship, we have a love and a bond that is like that above, like the song tells us, like that above, as in like the Holy Trinity. The bond of the Trinity is not just coercion and power and over-strengthening, but it’s a perfect love between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And Paul said, our relationship is like that relationship in heaven that we strive for.
So if we are the body of Christ and Christ is our example and the Trinity is our example of the relationship we have, then when we look at Christ, we see that Jesus was a little different. Jesus came into the world as the Messiah, the promised Messiah, from hundreds, thousands of years of prophecy. One man fulfilled all of that in the person of Jesus Christ and he came and he disappointed so many.
They wanted the Jews to unite and defeat Rome and get back an earthly king that would take over and do all this stuff. And Jesus told Pilate when it was his opportunity, he said, my kingdom is in heaven. Jesus ran everything differently than the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the religious leaders of his time.
He showed them how to live in the church, that it wasn’t like the rest of the world, that if someone was an outcast or hurting or thrown out, he brought to them healing and restoration. He came with transformation. He even came to transform and disciple and baptize those who already thought they were perfect because if you’re thinking you’re perfect, you maybe needed to dip a little deeper in the water for the baptism because God’s got work to do in every one of us.
And if we’re gonna function as the body of Christ, as the people of Christ, we need to get over ourselves. Last week, we talked about how Paul said, the hand cannot say to the eye, I am not needed because I am not an eye or the foot can’t say I am not needed because I am not a mouth. All this stuff, when we say we’re not good enough, Jesus comes in and says, I will make you good enough so you can be part of the church, you can be everything.
And he transforms us from within. The flip side of that is people who look at others and they say, not as good as me. They got a long ways to go to be like me.
It’s like the great evangelism line where you say to somebody, I used to be a mess like you. We stand as you are able. Our text comes from 1 Corinthians 12.
We’re gonna look at 21 through 27 and see that there is a lot going on within the body of Christ that we need to be aware of. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body.
And if the ears should, oh, 21. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.
And on those parts of the body that we think of less honorable, we bestow greater honor. And our un-presentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, and that there may be no division in the body, that the other members may have the same care for one another.
If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
The word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God, thanks be to God, amen, you may be seated. Now when I was preparing for this, I read from Mark Taylor, who is a biblical scholar, and he gave us four key assertions of this text. And I’m just gonna give you these key assertions to let you know that these are basically the four things we’re gonna talk about, so when we run out of time, you’ve already got this.
So if you have this down, you know how to work together as the body of Christ. Number one, will you read these with me? Number one, we need each other. Number two, all are indispensable.
Number three, God gives greater honor to those who lack it. Number four, what impacts one impacts all. Now, when we look at this text that Paul gave us on the body of Christ, we see these four points lived out with each of the way the body parts are interacting with each other, which seem to be not that much different than the way that church members may react to one another.
The first one, members of the body need one another. Now, I don’t know if any of you read Rick Warren’s book. Before Purpose-Driven Life came out, there was another purpose-driven book called The Purpose-Driven Church.
And in there, he talked about a church who had a purpose and something to work towards the whole time. But a lot of what he talked about is when you have a purpose, you become a healthier church. Now, a healthy church is something where the members of the body and the leadership all have that same purpose, all work towards Jesus Christ, all put Christ first.
And believe it or not, I’ve had a lot of experience with unhealthiness in churches. Now, another thing to note on members of the body need one another is in family systems, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, but that’s kind of my training in pastoral care, that family systems talk about the dynamics in a family and then it’s applicable to a business or it’s applicable to a church that everybody seems to have a role in a system. And when I heard that, they talked about a suckerfish at the bottom of the tank that collects all the waste and just sits there and feeds off of everyone else and doesn’t give anything back to the group.
And you probably never met anyone like that in a church. But what happens is you look at that and you think, I cannot wait until this person finally dies and then we can have access to the kitchen. Wait a minute, it’s not that specific.
What it is is there is a role for that person in the church in unhealthiness, gives that role to the person, but what happens in an unhealthy system is that when that person is gone, that role is missing and someone just steps in to replace it. It doesn’t work as smoothly as that. In other words, all members of the body need each other.
Those who are on the fringes, those who have been there for 50 years, those who are learning and growing and trying and hoping, those who keep messing up, the body needs one another. But to be healthy, we have to have that same purpose in Jesus Christ and trust in God for our purpose. Verse 22, the parts of the body that seem weaker are indispensable.
In other words, those members we may think of as weaker, those members we may think of as not helping out in a way they could are indispensable. But another way I like to look at that is when we talk about leadership. They’re indispensable and he goes on to say that the under-presentable parts are treated with modesty.
When you think of the body and the un-presentable parts being treated with modesty, someone coming in, a new Christian or someone who is horribly struggling, we don’t say, okay, you need to be in charge. That’s one of the difficulties I’ve run into is people say, okay, that’s the first thing they need to be is on a committee. Nothing gets people fired up for Jesus like serving on a committee.
But in that, don’t make the mistake, I’ve done this too many times, where I say this person is whining and complaining and they’re tearing the whole church down. And in my, I’m gonna say I was younger and blame it on that. I would say, well, we need to put them on a team and put them in leadership so they can see we’re doing everything above board.
And then they just bring that team down too. And so, what it means, what I see it as, when you treat it with the modest parts of the body, you treat it with humility, you cover it with humility, there are so many things about individuals and so many things about us that we all have things that we need to improve. I mean, the kids pointed it out to you, they’re gonna be honest, that none of us are perfect, that all of us can improve and all of us can trust in God more.
God gives greater honor to the members who lack it. Okay? That sounds different than the church who shames people who lack honor. God gives greater honor.
How can we honor people who lack honor? How can we honor ourselves be honored when we lack things to be honored for? I’m just gonna walk through several things, but what’s most important through all this is for us to be cognizant of what we lack, what we need to be humble about, what we know that we can’t do on our own, this is where it gets into. We think, well, if they weren’t here, they weren’t here, they weren’t here, I could just do it. And the truth is, none of us could be the church by ourselves.
Proverbs 16, 18, pride goes before destruction in a haughty spirit before the fall. Sorry if this is offensive, but that’s why I’m glad June’s over. Celebrating pride of anything is destruction.
It goes before the fall. A haughty spirit is what can ruin a church and a group of people. Humbling ourselves before God and admitting that we need God and God’s grace is what we all need more than that.
Isaiah 40, verse 29, he gives power to the faint and to him who has no might, he increases their strength. Who does God give more to? The weak. Those who need honor, God will give them honor by giving more of himself to lift them up and to strengthen them.
We get it so backwards, we think the most important people in the church who are those who don’t think they need much, but sometimes those who receive the honor are those who need more from God. If you know desperately in your soul that you need the love of God and the grace of God, then God will honor that and pour out his grace on you and lift you up. Second Corinthians 11.30, Paul says, if I must boast, I will boast of all the things that show my weakness.
Okay, turn to someone else you don’t even know and brag about your weakest problem in your life. Okay, not really. But Paul says, I boast in my weakness.
Why would he do that? I mean, who would wanna boast about what someone could make fun of you for? But he goes on to say, if you don’t know this text, it’s where he said, I prayed three times to the Lord that he would take away this physical ailment I have, which was probably something with his eyes that was making me weak. So I couldn’t, I prayed for healing. And Paul, who goes to an island and heals everybody who comes to him, God was not healing him of this, and it weakened him.
It made him be able to do less than he wanted to do. Do you ever feel weakened, like you wish you had more strength, you had more energy, you had more health so you could do more? Paul wanted that so bad, it was just holding him back. And then he heard Jesus say this to him.
But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness. I’m too weak to do this.
So it’s the Holy Spirit carrying me through. So it’s Jesus coming into my life and lifting me up. It’s the person who comes in and knows they need Jesus, who God honors.
Jesus would talk so many times about those who are already perfect, they’re not gonna accept me. So the church comes together in all our weaknesses, and God honors those weaknesses, because who gets the glory when we struggle through and we are strengthened and we rise up, even though we are weak? God, God gets the glory. So God honors us and God is glorified.
Last one, Hebrews. Let’s look at Hebrews 4, 16. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help.
Find grace to help in time of need. Have you ever found comfort in that verse? Knowing that we have a Savior who has been tempted in every way like us, a Savior who has struggled, a Savior who has been put aside, who has been cast out, who has been sentenced as unworthy and to death. So when we come to Jesus and we go, man, I don’t really wanna tell God about this.
This is bad. I shouldn’t have done this. First of all, he already knows.
Second of all, he understands us. He doesn’t condemn us for our weaknesses. He strengthens us.
And that is how the body is so much different in so many ways. Finally, in verse 26, what affects one member of the body affects all the other members. If one member suffers, all suffer together.
If one member is honored, all rejoice together. One suffers, all suffers. If one is honored, all rejoice together.
Thomas Lindbergh tells a story about two shopkeepers who were on opposite sides of the street, bitter rivals, because their stores competed with each other and they would spend each day tracking each other’s business, watching customers go in and out, trying to take those customers away. If one got a customer, he would smile at the other one in triumph. One night, an angel appeared to one of the shopkeepers in a dream and said, I will give you anything you ask, but whatever you receive, your competitor will receive twice as much as you.
Would you be rich? You can be very rich, but he will be twice as wealthy. Would you wish to live a long and healthy life? Well, he’ll live twice as long and twice as healthy. And he thought about it and he thought about it and he said, put one of my eyes out.
That’s how much hatred he had in his heart. One sign of jealousy is when we show, when it’s easier to show sympathy and weep with those who weep than it is to exhibit joy and rejoice with those who rejoice. The world is not gonna see the church differently until we love each other.
God said, love one another. And we’re gonna talk a lot about that love, how loving one another doesn’t necessarily mean I am, because I, it means because I love you, I’m gonna walk through this with you. It doesn’t say, because I love you, I’m not gonna say anything to you.
It says, the love in a church says, if something good happens to you, the whole church needs to rejoice. I mean, Luke told three, Luke gives us three parables by Jesus. I believe it’s in chapter 15, where, remember the woman finds a lost coin? She loses her coin, she looks around, she finds it.
And who rejoices? All the angels of heaven. And then there is a prodigal son who was lost, and now he is found. And who rejoices? All the angels of heaven.
So when we rejoice with one another, when one of us has reason to rejoice and the rest of us join in, we’re joining in with a heavenly choir. We’re joining in with a God who celebrates with us. If we’re gonna be the church like to that above, we rejoice with one another.
We come together and strengthen one another in our weakness and in our pain and in our hurt and in our struggles, and believe me, we all face those in life. None of us are exempt. Jesus says the rain falls on the righteous and the sinners.
That covers both of us, all of us. We all go through stuff, but the church comes together. That is what Paul says about how the body works together.
It’s different. You don’t see that in the real world, in the world outside the church. You don’t see that so much in business.
And unfortunately, you don’t always see it in the church. But when we humble ourselves and we come to God and we trust in God, we become the body of Christ. Because the world, the world is not only a strange place these days, but it’s hurting.
The world needs to see the church who loves one another, who’s there for one another, who lifts up one another, who cares for one another, who prays for one another, who celebrates with one another, a church that’s the body of Christ, because God loves us. We stand as you are able. Our song of response, Almighty God, we just pray that you would work through and within us.
Help us to be the body of Christ. Help us to be more like Jesus. Help us to look out for the weak.
Help us to be humble in our weakness. Help us to love each other, to lift each other, and to strengthen one another, so that your name can be glorified, not only here in this building, but throughout the world. In Jesus’ name, amen.