Okay, before we get started, I need to ask your opinion about something. I should have asked Lois to do this at the announcement time but I forgot. As you know, we haven’t been having evening services here since the whole virus thing started but I don’t see any reason why we can’t meet here in the auditorium. So, I need to know if y’all want to have services as usual tonight or do you want to continue to cancel it?
You want to meet tonight? Are you sure? Because we don’t have to. Nobody will ever know. I’ll even put something on Facebook saying what a great time we had as four people were saved and two vowed to be missionaries, all the while we’re all home in our jammies eating popcorn and watching a movie. What do you think? Why not?
Is coming to church tonight really all that important? Now, some of you better stay quiet because you never come on Sunday night anyway. But for you others, is coming to church really all that important? Do you have to come every time the doors are open or is less okay? How many times a month is okay? Where is the cut-off between okay and sin? Is it four times a month? Is four times a month okay with God but three times considered sinful? What’s the number? I need to know because I want to do the very least I have to do and still be okay with God.
That’s what it boils down to, isn’t it? Isn’t that really what we are saying when we skip church? Aren’t we really saying that church is not that important and we can choose to hang out at the house or the lake or the golf course or whatever and we can still be right with God? How important is it to be right with God? We know that to have powerful and effective prayers, we need to be righteous. Is anything else involved?
Look, I completely understand some people that are at high-risk of getting or transmitting the virus and are not comfortable leaving their house if they don’t have to. That’s wise. I have advised several people to just stay home for a while. It doesn’t mean you have a lack of faith or anything like that especially when God has given us the technology to be able to put it on Facebook (even though Facebook has its problems). And we will talk about our options even as we stay home later.
But right now, let’s talk about what is the least amount of righteousness we can have and still be considered righteous. What’s the least amount of kingdom work we have to do? How close to God is close enough? How much sin is permissible? How many good works do we have to do to still be in God’s good graces? Do you ever think about that? Oh, no, of course you don’t, right?
My Uncle Bill graduated Army boot camp right after WWII and he said they immediately shipped his platoon over to Germany on a huge Navy ship. He said the trip took about three weeks if I remember right and every morning they called for all hands on deck and they would give out the work detail for the day. There were Navy and Army troops on board and everybody was expected to work cleaning, painting, fixing something every day.
He said they lined up in multiple lines all across the deck and every day he would make sure he was at the back of one of the lines. As the commanding officer went down each line giving the men their orders, he would wait until he got to his line and then Uncle Bill would just step over to the line the commander just came from. He said it worked every day. He never got assigned any work that whole trip. He just went back to his bunk and slept or read or did whatever he wanted to do.
Now, I have to admit that’s pretty funny in this instance, especially knowing my uncle, but too many of us want to overcome Satan and be able to fight off temptation and respond correctly to Satan’s attacks and yet we also want to do the very least we have to do spiritually. If you will turn to 1 Corinthians 12, we will see how hurtful that is to you and to the whole body but we will also see some ways we can help each other with this.
We are continuing our study of the New Testament churches and we are looking today at the second part of our study on the church in Corinth. 1 Corinthians is between Romans and 2 Corinthians which is next to Galatians, all written by Paul to those churches and to this church. We will look specifically at 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 today.
1 Corinthians 12:12-27 says, “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[a] 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? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 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!” 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. 27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”
Let’s stop right there. That’s plenty. Paul goes on to talk more about how the church is the body of Christ but let’s chew that up and swallow it before getting another bite. Now, I did some research – and you know what that means. I Googled it – and I found what doctors believe to be the least useful part of the human body. Do you know what it is? No, it’s not the Democrat’s brain. It is the plica semilunaris. The plica semilunaris is the little part of your eye right in the inside corner of your eye that produces that crusty “sleep” in your eye in the morning when you wake up. That’s all it does and yet God has given every one of us two of them. He designed us all to have a plica semilunaris.
Now, similarly, this is also the least important part of this message – knowing what a plica semilunaris is – and I only bring it up to say that even the least important part is still important and is still designed by God, used by God and intended to be there. Every part of the body is important. Look at verse 12 again.
“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with…Christ.” It seems like he would say, “and so it is with the church” because all of this is describing the church. I heard someone say that while Jesus was here on earth He had a flesh and bone body to do His work but since He ascended back to Heaven, Jesus now uses our flesh and bone bodies to do His work and we do that work through the church.
Now, the wrong thing to take away from this is that God only uses you when you are at Christ Fellowship, 1301 N. Main St. in Lake Bridgeport on Sundays. This building is nice and lovely and a gift from God but it is not the church. You are the church. You are part of the body everywhere you go. You are part of Christ Fellowship and Christ Fellowship is part of the global church everywhere we go.
But there are three things that I do want us to take away from this and the first thing is that we need one another in this body. Paul says in verses 15 and 16 that just because some part of the body says they are not a such and such then they aren’t part of the body, that doesn’t make it so. When you come to be a member of Christ Fellowship, or really of any like-minded church, there are, like American Express says, benefits of membership.
The most obvious benefits are the abilities to teach and to vote. If you are not a full-fledged member then you are not allowed to teach a class or lead a Bible study, nor can you vote when we have the occasional business meeting. But the real benefit of membership comes from having a loving family to support you and care for you when the inevitable crisis comes.
A while back there was a lady in our church that was needing something and she asked and the church responded and helped her with whatever it was that she was needing. I don’t remember what it was but people in the church jumped on it and solved the problem. I don’t remember exactly how she put it but she asked the question something along the lines of, “Why are y’all doing all this?” I just kind of shrugged and said it was because that’s what family does.
Have you ever stubbed your toe really bad? There’s not much more painful than that, right? I did it not long ago in the middle of the night. I got out of bed and headed to the bathroom and hit the couch with my little toe. I thought I was going to be sick. I just stood there as shock waves like electricity when up and down my spine and even into my hands. Then my stomach got queasy. I got a headache for a while. It was awful…all because my little pinky toe was in pain.
It’s the same with the body of Christ. When one hurts, the whole body hurts and if you aren’t plugged in and active then you don’t know when the body is hurting and you aren’t able to help when another is hurting nor are you able to be helped when you are hurting. If someone else is hurting, do you know that you may be the only one that can help them? That’s right. We see it all the time.
God has allowed you to go through certain things in your life so that you might be able to help others when they go through similar problems. Who else and who better to help them than you? But if you aren’t plugged in and active, you miss out and they miss out.
The next thing Paul shows us in this passage is in verses 17-20 and that is that we are all different. Some of us are really different but we are all loved, right? He says there are many parts but one body. Now, think about it. Wouldn’t it be a really great church to go to where everybody was alike? Wouldn’t it be exciting to belong to a body where all the members thought the same and looked the same and had all the same hobbies and likes and dislikes? No! It wouldn’t!
God has mixed us all up and thrown us all together like a big ol’ salad, with bikers and cowboys, some smart, some athletic, some with administration skills, some with building talent. Some drive Jeeps, some like to walk. Big, small, bald or pony tails, God has put us together for a reason and has given us unity like only He can. Now, as our church grows, that unity will be tested. You just watch. But we want those differences because a church will be spiritually stunted without them. When we get to Heaven, God is not going to ask you why you weren’t more like Billy Graham or why weren’t you more like Brian or Lois or anybody else. He’s going to ask why you didn’t use the gifts and talents that He gave you to edify, encourage, support and help the body of Christ.
Now, lastly, look at verse 27. It says, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” I asked the question in a church-wide email the other day, “What is the purpose of the church?” and there are lots of good answers. The church exists for the fellowship of believers, the discipleship of new believers, the evangelism of non-believers. We go to church to be encouraged, to be inspired, even convicted of sin. We are here to help each other, to learn and to teach. A big part is worship and prayer. That’s all good and right and biblical. But verse 27 says we are the body of Christ. So, what was Christ’s purpose on this earth? Why did Jesus come to earth?
Yes, he came to teach and to heal and to inspire and prophesy but we know He especially came to earth to die. It was the Father’s plan from the beginning of time to send His perfect Son Jesus to die on the cross to pay the price for sin that we could never pay. Now, some of you are getting nervous hoping I don’t say that our purpose as a church is to die. No, that’s not the ultimate purpose for us and it wasn’t the ultimate purpose for Jesus.
The ultimate purpose for Jesus was to glorify the Father. Now, I hope some of you are asking, “Where does he get that in scripture?” Well, I’m glad you asked because we get it in red letters from the mouth of Jesus in John chapter 12. You ought to turn there and read it yourself. In John 12, Jesus is telling His disciples about His imminent death. He is being very honest and open with them and doesn’t want them to be surprised so He tells them that it is the Father’s plan. Then He says in verse 27, “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name!”
He says the reason He came was to die on the cross but that ultimately God’s name would be glorified. That was His purpose and that is the body of Christ’s purpose. Our goal, our reason for being, our existence as a church should be to glorify God. Everything we do around here and anywhere else we go should be to glorify God. We worship, pray, teach, preach, sing, eat, fellowship, play games, minister to the RV park, hand out flyers, have a food pantry, go to the jails, ride motorcycles and minister to the poor, the addicted and the incarcerated all for one reason: to glorify God.
Yes, we get blessed and have fun and store up treasures in Heaven while we do all of that but that’s not our ultimate reason. We want God to look good. We want the neighbors and all the world to see God’s grace and love and mercy, His forgiveness and the peace and wisdom He gives. We want them to see that it is God at work in our lives individually and as a church as we love each other even though we are different and we want them to see the unity that He gives. We want to let God look good in our lives so the question we started out with this morning about how many times should we go to church in a month is a dumb question.
We should be asking, not how little can I do and still be righteous, but how much can I do because God has made me righteous? In what ways can I show my friends, family and especially lost neighbors the glory of God? How can we make God look good, especially in the difficult times and in times of great crisis like this virus? Having fun and feeding the neighborhood are good. Ministering and teaching and singing are all great but it is glorifying God and making Him look good that brings His power to our efforts.
Yes, you can worship God on the golf course on Sunday morning. You can pray at work and you can sing “Glorious Day” while mowing the lawn just like you can here. But is God getting the glory like He would if you were here at church? Would you be able to help the body or be helped by the body of Christ if you aren’t here? What does it tell your neighbors or other church members that may be young in the faith when you choose to stay home because there is something good on TV?
But I hear ya. I understand that you are watching on Facebook or you are reading this as a letter in jail and you can’t make it to church on Sundays, maybe because of the virus or some other sickness. You can still be plugged in. No, there is no substitute for being here in person and worshiping and fellowshipping with the family but think of what the New Testament church did. They didn’t have Facebook. They wrote each other letters. Today you can do the same thing. Do you have any idea how encouraging it is to get a handwritten letter, note or card in the mail? If nothing else, send a text. Make a comment on Facebook that you are watching and praying for someone in particular. Don’t let this virus or anything else be an excuse to separate yourself from the body of Christ.
Do you really want to overcome Satan and his lies? Do you really want revival in our country, in our church, in your house? Are you willing to do what it takes to genuinely respond correctly when Satan attacks? If you’re not, I understand. It’s not easy. But don’t expect to live the full and abundant life God wants you to live and don’t expect God’s full power in your life. It’s that simple…and that difficult.
In fact, you can’t do even that on your own. It takes a close relationship with God through His Son Jesus to be able to even bring God glory. That starts in your life when you ask God for forgiveness of your sins and you repent of those sins and trust Him to be Lord of your life. Do that right now.
Invitation / Prayer J.S. Bach said, "All music should have no other end and aim than the glory of God; where this is not remembered there is no real music but only a devilish hub-bub."
Ben, let’s sing one more song.
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