What About My Church? Series

INTRODUCTION

• SLIDE #1

• My life in Christ, my relationship with Jesus, should it make a difference in my life?

• Now that I belong to Jesus, what now?

• Now that I belong to Jesus, what kind of impact should that have in my life? Is Jesus just another activity or another checklist?

• Or is Jesus something more?

• What does Paul mean when he wrote passages like Galatians 2:20?

• SLIDE #2

• Galatians 2:20 (CSB) I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

• In our series, WHAT NOW, we have been taking a look at how passages like Galatians 2:20 play out in our life.

• What does it look like to no longer live, but allowing Christ to live in me? What does it look like to live by faith each day?

• Last week we looked at how our relationship with Jesus should impact our relationships, today we are going to dig into the question of how my relationship with Jesus should impact my Church.

• The message today will dovetail somewhat into last week’s message, but it today we will delve into how my relationship with Jesus should impact the way I see my church as well as how involved I decide to be in my church.

• When we are baptized into Christ, we are added to His church, and when Jesus comes back, He is coming to get the church according to Ephesians 5.

• Part of belonging to Christ, one of the implications of being in Christ, is the fact that we are called to be a part of the body of Christ, the church.

• I know people who think they do not need to come to church to worship God; however, that thought reveals the lack of understanding of what God calls us to do.

• You do not have to be in this BUILDING to be able to worship God; however, refusing to be an active part of the body of Christ reveals a lack of faith, love, and understanding.

• Today we examine the thought, WHAT ABOUT MY CHURCH?

• How should me faith in and my relationship with Jesus affect IF I come to church, WHY I take the time to come to church, and WHAT do I do when I come to church.

• Today we will spend the bulk of time looking at 1 Corinthians 12:12-27.

• Let’s begin with verses 12-14.

• SLIDE #3

• 1 Corinthians 12:12–14 (CSB) — 12 For just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body—so also is Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and we were all given one Spirit to drink. 14 Indeed, the body is not one part but many.

• SLIDE #4

SERMON

I need to…

I. Promote unity -12-14

• When it comes to my church, one of the things I need to do is to promote unity.

• Paul is going to use the analogy of the human body to demonstrate this point.

• When you look at the human body, there are many parts to that body and for the body to function at peak efficiency, all those parts need to work in unity.

• We also need to realize that UNITY does not mean there are no differences.

• As a matter of fact, our diversity is part of our unity.

• As we get older, we know how a bad back or a bad knee, or lung issues can cause us a great deal of grief as we try to function each day.

• We see that Christ is the same, one body with many parts.

• Notice in verse 12, Paul does not say the church, but rather, he references Christ.

• This reminds us that Christ is the head of the church (Ephesians 5:23, Colossians 1:18) and that Christ stands by the church united and grounded in Him.

• We cannot build a building or gather a bunch of people and call it a Church of God unless it is headed, united, and grounded in Christ.

• A divided church is not a church that belongs to Jesus.

• One of the things that I hate is the identity politics, where we divide people by race, social economic issues, and any other thing people can think of to divide us.

• In the early church the great divides were, Jew and Gentile, economics, slave or free, and gender.