How Beautiful Is The Body Of Christ Series

I heard about a man who was driving down the expressway in rush hour traffic. Suddenly his cell phone rings and his wife says, “Honey, you need to be careful driving home because I just heard on the news that there is an idiot going in the wrong direction on the same expressway you’re on.” He said, “It’s not just one; there are hundreds of them!”

Some people are that way. They think they are the only one right and everybody else is wrong. Now some of you may think, “You know, God I’m doing you a favor. Here I am. I’m in church today. God, you are so fortunate that you’ve got me.” Some people think that they are totally indispensable and irreplaceable.

I came across an interesting little poem:

Sometime when your feeling important,

Sometime when your ego is up,

Sometime when you take it for granted

That you’re the only prize-winning pup,

Sometime when you feel that your absence

Would leave and unfillable hole,

Just follow these simple instructions

And see if it humbles your soul.

Take a bucket and fill it with water,

Put your hand in it up to the wrist.

Now pull it up fast and the hole that remains

Is the measure of how you’ll be missed.

You may splash all you please,

As you enter and stir up the water galore,

But stop and you’ll find in a minute

It’s back where it was before.

Now throughout history there are always been individuals who thought they were indispensable. Winston Churchill said, “The cemeteries are filled with men who thought that they were indispensable.” There is only one indispensable member of the body of Christ and it is the head, Jesus Christ himself. So don’t make the mistake of overestimating your worth. If you lean in that direction I want to give you something.

Ego-Bursting confession: I am a fallen deformed sinner. There is still something in my personality, my sinful nature that I cannot completely trust.

We need to make that affirmation about who we are.

Did you know there is a member of Green Acres Baptist Church that I have an awful lot of trouble with? The guy that gives me more trouble than anybody else is my wife’s first husband. I have a lot of trouble with that guy because sometimes I don’t like what he does and the way he thinks. Even though I’ve been a Christian now for many years, I feel that in me there is still something I can’t really trust. It is that old sinful nature. You say, “Aren’t we forgiven sinners?” Yes, we are.

The Apostle Paul, when he was writing to Timothy, said this, “This is a worthy saying and worth accepting that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” Paul said, “I’m the chief sinner.” He didn’t say I used to be before I met Jesus on the road to Damascus. He said, “I am the chief of sinners.”

Friends, we need to be careful about over-estimating our value and our worth. The Bible says, “Let him who stands take heed lest he fall.” It says, “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.” That is one extreme.