Why I need you
TCF Sermon
March 13, 2005
This week, I’ve had basketball on the brain. I’ve fully recovered from the deep depression I was in after my alma mater lost in the last second, trying to get into their first NCAA tournament in 21 years.
But since I’ve been thinking about hoops this week, I wanted to start with a good basketball story I found.
This is by a writer named Mark DeVries, from a book called Family Based Youth Ministry:
---I have often wondered what would happen if basketball coaches approached their work like most pastors are expected to. For example, I wonder what would happen if when a player was too busy to show up for practice, the understanding coach simply said, “We’ll miss you. I hope you’ll be able to make it next week sometime.” Imagine the players leaving practice and hearing the smiling coach say, “Thanks for coming. I hope you’ll come back tomorrow.”
If a basketball team operated like a typical church, we might expect concerned parents to call the coach, saying, “Can you tell me what’s been going on in practice? My son says it’s boring, and he doesn’t want to come anymore. I was wondering, could you make it a little more fun for them? And by the way, you might want to talk to the coach at the school across town. He seems to have the right idea.” The coach might send out quarterly questionnaires about what the players would like to change about the team (I can just imagine the answers: “shorter practices,” “more winning”).
A coach, responding like a typical pastor, might first feel guilty that the practices were not meeting the boy’s needs, and he would try to adjust his program to suit this boy (and every other boy who complained). Between trying to keep everybody happy and giving every student a good experience, the coach would squeeze in a little basketball practice. And what kind of season would this coach have? It’s a safe bet that the coach wouldn’t be the only one who felt like a loser.
But this is the very way that most churches operate. To expect that people be committed to the church at the same level of commitment that would be expected on an athletic team would draw the charge of legalism. The expectation of commitment to the church has become implausible to most Christians. Because the god of individualism pressures us to program to the lowest common denominator, we seldom raise the expectations high enough for churchgoers to experience real community.
Real community means real responsibility for each other. It means a commitment to be there for each other even when the schedule is tight and when motivation is low. But the typical Christian adult in our culture knows little about commitment to community.---
Wouldn’t you agree that team sports require a level of commitment? Wouldn’t you agree that the best teams operate as a unit, working together toward a common goal? Each player fills the role that best helps the team to its goal of winning games. When one player either doesn’t show the commitment to the team, doesn’t show up to practice, or won’t fulfill his role, the team suffers, and sometimes it means that, even if the team has the most talented players, the team will still lose.
Michael Jordan was probably the best individual player to ever play the game, but until he began to work with teammates, to help them do their part, and until the team found players willing to accept the role that playing with a Michael Jordan demanded, all you had was a guy who could do amazing things on the basketball floor, but his team didn’t win consistently.
A good team works together like body parts work together in the human body. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul writes to his fellow believers in Corinth, using a metaphor, an illustration of the church, as the body of Christ. He compares us to a body, one body with many parts.
In verse 21, in the midst of this vivid comparison, which we’ll look at this morning,
Paul writes: “21The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don’t need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don’t need you!"
Combining that with our basketball analogy, we might say: the forward can’t say to the point guard, I don’t need you.
Thinking about this message for the past several weeks, I thought I sensed a direction for this morning, but then I also thought – you know, I’ve talked about this before. Maybe different verses of scripture...maybe different contexts, but the same basic theme. Why we need each other. Why we need to be in fellowship. Why we need to get, and to stay, connected. Why these things are not really an option for Christians.
So, I thought, at least twice I’ve preached something on this theme from this pulpit. And I know the other brothers have addressed this as well. I even began looking for and thinking about other ideas. But this one wouldn’t let me go. So here we are this morning. If it feels like I’m preaching to the choir, so be it.
But, let me tell you that in the 25 years I’ve been in this church, there were many people I thought were fully connected to TCF. They would have told me themselves they were connected, they were committed to the body, and it appeared to me that they really were. In fact, they probably were, at least at one time.
Yet, somewhere along the way something happened to disconnect them. Now I’m not speaking necessarily of people who’ve left TCF for another church. That’s another sermon.
But people who’ve drifted from TCF and today, they’re not only disconnected, but for many of them, their faith is shipwrecked, or headed that way.
For those of you fully convinced of our critical need as Christians, to stay connected with one another in the context of this fellowship, let this morning’s sermon be an admonition to remain convinced, and to live it out practically.
For those of you who haven’t thought about the importance of this, or whose practice doesn’t line up with Paul’s analogy of the body, and you’ve said, thought, or acted like that eye that says to the hand, “I don’t need you,” let me tell you that, yes, I need you, and yes, you need me.
This morning’s message is titled Why I need you.
And the best place to start, I believe, is with Paul’s insightful analogy of the body.
There are more than 30 New Testament references to us believers as the body of Christ. I think that such a large number clearly indicates that there’s something very important about this way of looking at the church. While in some places in scripture, it’s clear that the body of Christ analogy, where we as believers are referred to with that metaphor, refers to the universal body, that is, our brothers and sisters not just here at TCF, but around the world, in other nations, even in other times, it’s also just as clear that in other places, the body metaphor only works in the context of a specific, local church.
The Baker Theological Dictionary of the Bible says it this way:
“Paul’s body of Christ language could apply both to the local congregation and to something more universal. (this) attests to the flexibility of the metaphor, but also reflects an important element in Paul’s ecclesiology: the local church is a localized manifestation of the church universal (1 Cor 1:2, 2 Cor 1:1)”
That’s what we’re looking at this morning – this localized manifestation of the body of Christ called TCF.
Dr. Paul Brand, wrote an excellent book many year ago called Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. This book explores in detail the many comparisons we can make between the body of Christ, the church, and us - as individual believers, with the human body. Dr. Brand says that he finds it helpful to, rather than think of the individual members, or body parts, to define the individual members of the church as cells.
Cells are the tiniest part of the body. Cells make up every part of our body, working together to make up my hand, my heart, all my internal organs, my skin, etc. The cells can work together and contribute to the normal, full functioning of the organ, which in turn, contributes to the normal, full, functioning of the whole body. Or they can, in a sense, rebel, making the body sick.
Dr Brand writes: “I sometimes think of the human body as a community, and then of its individual cells such as the white cell. The cell is the basic unit of an organism; it can live for itself or it can help form and sustain the larger organism.”
Let’s translate that into what we’re speaking of this morning. A believer at TCF can live for himself, or he or she can help form and sustain the church.
Brand writes: “(a cell does have the) potential to live a life separate from the body. It can be part of the body as a loyalist, or it can cling to its own life. Some cells do choose to live in the body, sharing its benefits while maintaining complete independence – they become parasites or cancer cells.”
Then, he writes of the specialization of cells. In other words, you have skin cells. They’re only skin cells – they’re not bone cells, or eye cells, or liver cells. But they work together, with millions of other skin cells, and form this amazing protective layer of skin that holds us together.
Now, a skin cell may not seem like much in and of itself. I can rub my hands together, and lots of skin cells, done with their useful life, fall to the carpet here on the stage. But I think we all know that without our skin, our internal organs would be unprotected, and that would be disastrous.
A skin cell may not be glamorous, but it’s vital. Paul Brand writes that for this specialization to work
---“the individual cell must lose all but one or two of its abilities. But the human cell can, through its limited role, make possible a much “higher” more meaningful achievement. In exchange for its self-sacrifice, the individual cell can share in what I call the ecstasy of community. Pleasure appears as the byproduct of cooperation by many cells.
When my cells work well, I’m hardly conscious of their individual presences. What I feel is their composite activity known as Paul Brand. My body, composed of many parts, is one.”---
That’s the metaphor the apostle Paul used most often to describe how we relate to one another. So, when we think of it in this way, we can clearly understand what it says in 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul writes: the eye cannot say to the hand, I don’t need you. Why? Because it’s not true. The eye does need the hand. How would the hand know where to go without the eye? How would the hand know what to take hold of, and where something to be grabbed is located, and what to let go?
So, thinking of it in those terms, let’s make it a little more practical. I Cor 12:27 says: “27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”
Romans 12:5 says “... in Christ, we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
What does that mean for us? What does that look like in our day-to-day real life? In it’s practical outworking, I believe we have to look at what scripture says about “one another.”
For your reference, I’ve compiled a whole list of scriptures, included on the bulletin insert, that talk about “one another.” (see end of text)
The Romans passage we read says we are members of one another. Members means limbs or body parts. Again, most of these verses don’t make sense just talking about the church universal, though some can also apply in that way.
When it’s talking about how we live, how we work, how we relate to one another, scripture is talking about the practical outworking of this body metaphor in the context of our relationships in the local church.
And we can’t have relationships in the local church, unless we’re here, unless we’re connected in a significant way. So we can read it this way: In Christ, we who are many form TCF, and each TCF member belongs to all the other TCF members.
We can’t possibly explore each of these verses listed on the bulletin insert this morning - that’s why I made it easy for you to explore yourself, and I encourage you to do so.
But, let’s just highlight a few, and see why I need you. Of course, I hope you understand that when I say I need you, it’s implicit that you need me, each of us needs the other.
Romans 12:10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.
So, here we see two “one anothers” in one verse. I must say that in my 25 years at TCF, in fact, it’s 25 years ago this month that Barb and I, before Lisa and Laura were a gleam in our eyes, first began attending TCF - but in my years here, I have sensed from so many of you, a strong sense of devotion, a real brotherly, and sisterly love, and have felt honored and appreciated in ways that encouraged my faith, and caused me to seek to return that devotion to you, and more importantly, deepened my devotion to the Lord Jesus.
I need you because I need that brotherly love in my life. I’m no different than the rest of you. I enjoy knowing I’m appreciated – which I think can be another way of saying “honored.” And so many of you have made it clear that I am appreciated. Things you’ve said... things you’ve done. That’s just one reason I need you.
Romans 14:19 So then let us pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.
Let’s note a couple of things about this verse. First, it says, “let us pursue.” The NIV says “make every effort.” The Greek there implies “to follow after or press hard,” or... to pursue with earnestness and diligence in order to obtain, to go after with the desire of obtaining”
What’s implied here? First, that it’s not easy. Sometimes, pursuing peace with one another is difficult. Secondly, it takes effort. Why would you have to be earnest or diligent if it came easily? That’s another aspect of this “one another” life we’re called to as members of the same body. We’ll see that in other passages we’ll look at, too. It’s not always easy. It requires going after these things with the desire of actually obtaining it. It requires diligence, perseverance, patience. But it’s worth it, because, note the results written of here:
Peace with one another. And building one another up. During my years at TCF, I’ve felt built up. I wonder, how have people been diligent in building me up?
They’ve held me accountable to be all I can be in Christ. They’ve encouraged me to use and explore my giftings. The leaders at TCF have built me up with the teaching of sound doctrine over many years. Of course, those are just a few examples. There are many people here who have been built up, encouraged, strengthened...in many different ways - in the KJV, the word is edify. The Greek means “The act of building, building as a process,”
ed•i•fy means to instruct or benefit, esp. morally or spiritually; uplift
Our faith, our moral strength, our spiritual strength, is built up, benefits from our relationships with one another, as each of us pursues those things that build up one another.
Galatians 5:13 You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.
When I consider that I’ve been at TCF half of my entire life, I realize how much of my worldview has been shaped by what I’ve seen and heard here. One of the most significant things I’ve learned at TCF, is that real, genuine, Biblical love must demonstrate a servant spirit.
In our culture, so much of what we hear, so much of what’s expected, includes the idea that we deserve to be served. What else could you expect from a consumer culture? But in the church, and specifically in this church, that idea is turned upside down. It’s turned upside down so much, that even leaders are to serve. In fact, leaders are to model service. I’ve seen that here. I’ve seen and learned and experienced that service. It has shaped my view of my faith, and challenged me to walk that out in my own life.
Another thing I need you to do is put up with me.
Ephes. 4:2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.
and
Col. 3:13 speaks of “bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.”
When this word for bearing with, in the KJV it’s forbearance, is used of people, it means to “have patience with in regard to the errors or weaknesses of anyone.”
Now, I think most of us who’ve been here awhile, if we’re honest with ourselves, would have to admit that we’ve given some of our brothers and sisters a reason to have to be patient with us. I need that. Because, news flash.... I’m not perfect.
Sometimes that includes forgiveness when I blow it. It’s another reason I need you.
In the interest of time, let me just read a few other verses without much comment. These verses reveal this “one another” attitude we’re to have in the body, and show why I need you.
Philip. 2:3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself;
1 Thes. 4:18 Therefore comfort one another
The word for comfort means “come alongside” one another.” This is an excellent example of how we need each other, as well as why we need to be “with” one another. You can’t really come alongside effectively without being with someone.
1 Thes. 5:11 Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
1 Peter 5:5 ... All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
Before we close, let me note that there are many positive things, the benefits, if you will, of being members of one another. Of being part of the same body of Christ. These things happen here at TCF, and they encourage and challenge me in my faith.
The truth is that most of us live up to the standards, or down to the standards, of those around us. I’m here – I need you – because I need to be held to a higher standard of faith and practice. But I think I’d be doing a disservice to you today, if I didn’t talk about the other side of this.
If we can be members, we can be dismembered. Or we can be disconnected. Think of the body metaphor again. If a hand or limb is severed from a body, the window is about six hours before that limb becomes permanently dead and useless. Once the blood flow is cut, it’s only a matter of time before it can never be made useful again.
If it’s to be re-attached, it’s not a simple matter of sewing that limb back on. It’s not a simple attachment – it’s very complex, and involves many intricate connections. There are blood vessels, nerves, muscles, bone, all a part of the connection between the body and the limb.
In the church, we are attached to each other in a myriad of ways, too. We’re here together on Sunday, but there’s more. When we’re well-connected, that is, we have relationships that are forged in things more than just visiting in a Sunday morning service.
There’s our life together in many different settings, revolving around our relationships as members of this church. There’s productivity. There’s usefulness and functionality.
When just a muscle is severed...Or just a nerve....or just a vein or artery...there’s less functionality, assuming the limb survives the severing at all.
I guess what I’m saying is that every aspect of the connection between a body part and the body itself is important. If one of these connections becomes disconnected, it has a visible, genuine impact.
Here at TCF, that might mean if your only connection is coming on Sunday morning, or if you’re not here most Sundays, or both, you’re not fully connected.
Now, in the literal human body, this severing is most often an accident. But, sadly, in the church, in the body of Christ, this severing is, more often than not, a choice.
Proverbs 18:1 (NASB) He who separates himself seeks his own desire, He quarrels against all sound wisdom.
The NIV says he defies all sound judgment. This is the danger, and the result, of separating yourself. Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed this up close and personally, many times in my years at TCF.
Someone who may have been closely connected here, begins to drift. It might start with the reality that being here every Sunday is less of a priority. Then, they’re not involved in anything else at church. Soon, they’re like the average American churchgoer, who, statistically, attends church once a month.
And, for those of you who are listening, I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. If you drift from church, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll drift from the Lord.
Blaise Pascal said “To be a member is to have neither life, being, nor movement, except though the spirit of the body, and for the body.”
Let me ask you a question before we close. Are you supposed to be here? Are you supposed to be a cell contributing to this part of the body of Christ called TCF? If not, if you’re not supposed to be here, why are you here?
If so, and you’re not fully connected, fully invested in the life of this body, and you’re not contributing your cell’s part to the overall working of the body, why not? Are you one of those rebel cells we noted earlier? Are you a hand, connected to the body, but not fully connected, maybe with a nerve severed, meaning you’re not fully functional?
Now, maybe you’re a fully functional cell, fully connected. I say to you this morning, nourish that connection regularly, to keep the lifeblood of the body flowing to you, as well as the other way – to the body.
Or is being connected not that important to you? If not, let me say this. I need you. We, the body of Christ at TCF, need you.
Let’s not take this body metaphor for granted. Let’s remember why God created us to be in relationship with one another.
Pray
list of scripture references
Body:
Romans 12:4-5
1 Cor. 12:12-27
Ephes. 4:15-16
One another:
Romans 12:10
Romans 12:16
Romans 13:8
Romans 14:19
Romans 15:5
Romans 15:14
Romans 16:16
1 Cor. 11:33
1 Cor. 12:25
Galatians 5:13
Ephes. 4:2
Ephes. 4:25
Ephes. 4:32
Ephes. 5:19
Ephes. 5:21
Philip. 2:3
Col. 3:13
1 Cor. 1:10
1 Thes. 3:12
1 Thes. 4:9
1 Thes. 4:18
1 Thes. 5:11
1 Thes. 5:13
1 Thes. 5:15
Hebrews 3:13
Hebrews 10:24-25
James 4:11
James 5:9
James 5:16
1 Peter 1:22
1 Peter 3:8.
1 Peter 4:8-10
1 Peter 5:5
1 Peter 5:14
1 John 3:11
1 John 3:23
1 John 4:11
Other verses:
Prov 18:1
