Spiritual Gifts- The Body
CCCAG June 13, 2021
Scripture- 1 Cor 12:12-26
Introduction-
Today we're going to continue our series on the spiritual gifts in looking at how God uses them to bring the entire body of Christ together in unity through the diversity of the gifts that he gives us.
One of the questions I had as an early believer in Jesus is how come God just doesn't give us all the gifts?
Wouldn't it just be better if we were all spiritual Superman and super women? Every one of us capable of giving a word of prophecy, or healing the sick, or discerning between spirits, or being able to stand up on a Sunday and give a sermon.
Well God didn't design his church that way. God in His wisdom made us interdependent upon each other. In fact within all of creation everything is interdependent upon something else.
Plants need a number of things to grow. They need good ground to develop a root system, they need the sun to start the chemical reaction between chlorophyll, water, and carbon dioxide that produces glucose and oxygen. Take out one of those ingredients, the plant dies, and with it, all life on earth.
Taking anatomy and Physiology a few years ago and complex health alterations last semester we learn how interdependent the body is upon every organ within it.
Did you know your body uses Multiple different organs to manage your blood pressure?
One of the ways your body manage his blood pressure is called the renin angiotensin aldosterone system. It starts in the kidneys, the nephrons detect a lower blood pressure and release a hormone called renin. Your liver is always producing a hormone called angiotensinogen.
These two hormones meet up in the blood stream and covert to angiotensin 1. Meanwhile your lungs are always producing a chemical called angiotensin converting enzyme, otherwise known as ACE. Anyone ever heard of an ACE inhibitor for blood pressure? That’s why you get a cough with that- because the ACE inhibitor works by decreasing the amount of ACE secreted by the lungs, which also decreases your lungs natural production of chemicals that keep the air sacs from collapsing, causing the cough to make up for it.
ACE meets Angiotensin 1, causing a chemical reaction that creates Angiotensin 2 which is a very potent vasoconstrictor- makes your blood vessels smaller, increasing your blood pressure. Angiotensin 2 makes it’s way to the adrenal glands on top of your kidneys, which produces aldosterone, which tells your kidneys to reabsorb water and salt, which also increases your blood pressure.
See how that is all interwound with each other.
So it is in the church. We are all part of a body that need the other parts of the body to work properly.
That’s the main point that we will be talking about today, and what I want you to have the back of your head as we read today’s scripture-
We are going to cover the rest of chapter 12 this week in a few different slices, starting with verses 12-19
12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be?
Prayer
Our primary thought for this message is this- Unity in diversity is necessary for both your personal spiritual health and the health of the entire body of Christ.
This thought answers the initial question I had when I first got saved. How come God doesn't make us all spiritual supermen/women who can do everything?
The simple matter is because then we wouldn't need each other. Human pride would set in and there would be no unity within his body.
The premise behind this idea is this simple fact at the center of all creation-
You have to remember that we are made in God's image. We are a spiritual being in a physical body which makes up a soul that God interacts with and there is no disunity at all. We are a triune being- one person made up of three parts, just like God is a triune being.
That’s why Paul tells us in 1 Thess 5:23-
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul recognized that we needed the unity within our own body soul and spirit so that we could live victorious lives in Jesus.
Amen?
I also want to point out something else- the enemies forces are united against you. There is no division in the Kingdom of Darkness.
You don’t hear of a group of demons not liking the direction that satan is taking his kingdom, so they go form a new hell.
How do we know that?
Because Jesus taught that-
Matthew chapter 12 Jesus deals with a person possessed by a demon and cast the demon out. The person is completely healed and sitting there in his right mind and the religious leaders of his time see that and say that
“It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.”
Jesus replied to that by saying
“Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. 26 If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? 27 And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. 28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
This is why unity is so important when we talk about the spiritual gifts and the diversity of the gifts in the body of Christ.
The gifts are supposed to be proof that God's Kingdom is here among us and carried along with you as you live your life.
I think the church has a tendency to focus on the wrong things and it causes them to run on the wrong track toward a wrong finish line. We worry so much about our health and wealth and comfort here on this earth and forget that this is not our home.
That's why I hate the prosperity gospel so much. The prosperity gospel teaches that God wants to make you healthy, wealthy, and live your best life now instead of giving you the armor of God and sending you out to battle the Kingdom of Darkness.
To bring the goodness of God’s Kingdom to those living in darkness.
To use the spiritual gifts HE has given us to show people the love and mercy of God, and point them to Jesus for healing.
A unified church is a family of believers under the headship of Jesus that pushes back the Kingdom of darkness in their world and proclaims the Gospel through their love for each other and their willingness to serve those who don’t know Jesus.
Illustration of when it goes bad.
Tammie and I came to salvation any healthy and thriving church that had an average Sunday attendance of over 800 people. Then a group rose up within the church that had the wrong idea of what the spiritual gifts were for, and many of them used them to promote their own spirituality- “hey, look at me and how much I’m flowing in the spirit” and over the course of several years that church shrank to about 30 people.
They “spiritualized” it to say they were the ones who stayed faithful to what God was doing.
But that isn’t biblical. That’s not what Christ came to do.
In fact, it says so right here in 1 Cor 12
18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be?
Has anyone ever put a puzzle together?
I remember getting a puzzle for a gift one year and on the cover of the box it showed a large buck standing in a river flowing through a forest.
It was a perfect kind of gift for me because I got to do it by myself in my room and then have to deal with all the drama that was going on and other parts of the house.
Unfortunately, this puzzle was bought second hand at a rummage sale and many of the pieces were missing including 3 around the head of the deer.
I was so disappointed because the box promised one thing but the reality was because of the missing pieces the beauty that was supposed to be within that box was never realized.
That is how the world views the church when people refuse to use their giftings to benefit the body of Christ, or we don't allow people to function in the giftings that God has given them.
Often you will see this in a celebrity pastor type church- the focus is on the man or woman speaking instead of allowing Jesus to use everyone in the body to accomplish His mission.
The world gets an incomplete picture of the Glory of God in our lives and within our church family, and the Kingdom of God suffers violence.
That is not good for the church as a whole, or for you and me as individuals in the church.
Jesus gives us this example-
In Matthew 25:14, Jesus gives the example of three servants who were given various amounts of treasure by their master to care for while he went away. Two of the servants were wise and used what the master had given them to be able to present it back to the master when he called for a report on what they did with what HE had given them. Since they had a return on HIS investment in them, they rewarded richly and received much praise.
But one of the servants took and buried his treasure or as some bible translations say, refused to use his talents for the master because he didn't trust his master’s character or sense of honor to reward him for using it.
This servant received a severe rebuke and was fired for not using what the master gave him to increase his master's Kingdom.
So it will be for you and me if we don’t use what God has given us to enrich HIS Kingdom.
One final illustration on this point that will help launch the next part of this message-
Several years ago then President Barack Obama was giving a speech defending his plan to raise taxes for infrastructure to improve everyone's lives.
He made a statement that created a social media firestorm when he said the infamous statement- “You didn’t build that, (meaning your business), other people did that. Other people helped you build what you have”
To a conservative, that was red meat to a dog- everyone pounced on this.
The talking heads screamed nightly at us how unamerican it is to think this way. It spoke a little to me personally. I started out so far behind I didn’t even get to the starting line- in fact I had no idea there was racetrack to run on or how to compete on it.
broken home, rampant drug use, mom’s abusive boyfriends, high school dropout. Yet by God’s grace, I eventually turned my life around by a ton of effort and stand before you today a fairly decent citizen.
For Barak Obama to say that all my effort was other people’s doing infuriated me because I believe that in America, anyone can go from gutter to success if they just put in the work, and work hard for what you want.
But then, after a few years, I thought about it. As a conservative, it pains me to say it, but he was actually right if you apply it spiritually.
First and foremost- I surrendered my life to Jesus. That changed everything for me.
At that point in my life, I was a nobody, no car, no way to get to church, barely able to live paycheck to paycheck and couldn’t get ahead….but the church sent a bus or arranged rides for us to make sure Tammie and I could get to every church service we wanted to attend.
I had a low paying job, yet several of the church members helped orchestrate me getting into a factory that paid decently, and then drove me back and forth to work for a couple of years until we could afford a car. It was there I made enough money to support our young family, and go to paramedic school and live my dream.
Because of my upbringing, I was a bit crass and loud, and didn’t really fit in with a church crowd. But several men came along side me to change how I viewed myself and others to create a person that people might occasionally be able to stand to be around.
Several of the wealthy members in the church gave freely gifts to us. In fact, the freezer in our basement was one of those gifts so we could learn to spend our money more wisely and by in bulk when the food sales happened.
When I said I felt God called me into ministry, several pastors gave up their entire libraries when they retired, and another gift of a $3k computer program that gave me access to virtually every major commentary, book, and reference available in 2000.
Even as a paramedic, there were dozens of people along the way that helped me in my career to be the best paramedic I could be, and eventually helped me be on the precipice of becoming a nurse.
I say this because I want you to think back in your life to those people who gave of themselves, their advice, their treasure, or their talent to help you get to where you are today.
And now, pay it forward- let God use your experiences, your talents, and your treasure to help other climb that ladder, and see the Goodness of God in their lives.
We don't want to be a church that sounds like verse 21-
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”
The beauty of the gospel within the church is seen when a whole bunch of messed up people get together and do beautiful things for the Kingdom of God.
In spite of their differences
In spite of their failures
in spite of their past
and even in spite of their present
they all choose to come together as God's family to do God's work for God's glory.
I want to close today by discussing what we would call the weak brother or sister.
There are those in the church that it seems like they never move forward. Day after day week after week year after year it seems like they make no forward progress in their relationship with God or in how they act before the world.
When I would meet with the pastoral staff at my last church these people were informally called the people the EGR’s- extra grace required people.
Sometimes we have to show a lot of patience, tolerance, and longsuffering in dealing with some of our brothers and sister.
In fact, in most families, I’ll bet there are a few people you hesitate to invite to thanksgiving dinner, or Christmas morning. A few people that really grind your gears when you are around them, and you’d prefer if they would have a flat tire the day they are coming over.
Paul addresses this in the last part of the chapter-
22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
The next time you see that family member that you'd rather not be around, whether it's in your natural family or your church family just remember this.
When you were at your worst doing the most awful things in your life and committing the most evil you have ever done
Jesus would have gone to the cross just for you. He loves you at your worst but wants you to mature into the best version of yourself you can possibly be this side of eternity.
That’s the glory of the Gospel that is supposed to be seen within the body of Christ- a unity in diversity that shows the world the Kingdom of God changing lives and eternity’s.
We are going to remember that today as we take communion.
