The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts, and though all its parts are many, they form one body so it is with Christ. But we were all baptized by one spirit into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given the one spirit to drink. Now the body is made up of one part, not one part, but many. If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, it would not for that reason cease to be a part of the body. And if the ears should say, because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, it would not for that reason cease to be a part of the body. 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? But in fact, God has arranged the parts of the body, every one of them, just as He wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you and the head cannot say to the feet, I do not need you. On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. And the parts that we think are less honorable, we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpleasable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no spiritual treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And in the church, God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interprets, but eagerly desire, the greater gifts, and now I will show you the most excellent way. Father, we ask this morning that you would open up our hearts and our minds to hear you. We all have our preconceived ideas about who you are and what you're like. Father, take those away this morning as we go to your word. Father, shine the light of your truth on our hearts. We would see Jesus, and we pray in His name. Amen. Please be seated. If there's one thing that we can say about the apostle Paul as we've been studying first Corinthians, we would say he doesn't pull any punches. There were multitudes of problems within the Corinthian church, and Paul addresses every one of them in a very direct manner. A problem such as immorality that was not even reported amongst the Gentiles. Unbiblical divorce, consorting with temple prostitutes, participation in temple meals, getting drunk at the Lord's supper, divisions in the body. The Corinthians were selfish and self-absorbed, and Paul tells them so. And so when we get to chapter 12 of Corinthians, we find the same theme, but a bit of a variation. There's still problems going on in Corinth, and it appears that this time there are problems with spiritual gifts. Now becoming before people became Christians, they worshiped in pagan worship. The Corinthians were all a part of all kinds of dramatic and pagan signs that they would use. They would sometimes call upon demonic forces. There were transes, there were supernatural experiences, and these experiences were used as almost a test for whether or not their worship was authentic. And so Paul goes right to work. And in the first 11 verses of chapter 12, he confronts them and tells them how easily they are led astray. And now it appears that their focus is on their individual gifts, rather than on the body. Now the first 11 verses of this chapter talk about all kinds of gifts, and it's important for us to know that this is not an exhaustive list of the gifts. There's just some of them mentioned, but in the verse 11 verses, Paul mentions things like speaking in tongues, words of knowledge, and gifts like that. Now we could take the entire morning and debate whether or not things like tongues are for today, or whether gifts of healing are for today, and what about all of the faith healers? Well those things are really extraneous to the text, and so let me just say a couple of things about these. First of all, if you look at the gift of healing in the early church, you find that even the shadow of the apostle Paul would heal people. In fact, they're accompanied with many of these gifts where people being raised from the dead. When is the last time you heard someone being raised from the dead? What about words of knowledge? Well the problem with words of knowledge is how do you know they're from God? He'll babcock's as a pastor, and he wrote about his journey with charismatic gifts, and he wrote a book entitled in search of charismatic reality and write this. Old Testament prophets were called sears because of visions they beheld, but what evidence was there that any of our prophecies had their origin and a revelation given by God's spirit? Ezekiel protested, this is what the sovereign Lord says, woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing. In the final analysis, isn't that what we were? Prophets who had seen nothing? What evidence was there that what we were following was not just our own spirits instead of the spirit of God. I could find no evidence in the Bible that prophecies were communicated by mere intuition or subjective impressions. Now it isn't often that I get to deflect something to read. In fact, if you remember not too long ago, he gave me the task of preaching on Genesis 34, the rape of Dyna Jacob's daughter. Now I'm not bitter about that, but I haven't forgotten either. Genesis 1 Corinthians chapter 14 is a passage that reign will be preaching on, and in that passage are all kinds of gifts, and so the responsibility of clearing all of this up will lay with him. However, let me clear up just a few things. Let me kind of give an overview because it is a part of the text. Let me tell you what I believe the Bible teaches. We would make a distinction between different types of gifts. We would say that some of the gifts are operational today, such as the gift of health and preaching and teachings. Others, we would designate something we would call sign gifts, gifts such as tongues and supernatural healings. Sign gifts were given to authenticate the ministry of the apostles and the New Testament prophets in the early church. Tongues were direct revelation from God, and were given equal authority with the written Word of God that we have today. These gifts ceased when their needs ceased. Today we have the completed Word of God. God has written all that we need to know, and his revelation is written in the completed Word of God. Does God speak today? Yes, he does, through his Word. Does God heal today? Absolutely, but not through the supernatural gift given to individuals. Sign gifts were foundational for the church just as was the office of a apostle. Now, we would say that we have a very high view of Scripture. We would believe in the sufficiency of Scripture, that the Bible is all that we need, and we do not need added revelation. Now, I know it's quite often for people when they're seeking God's will to depend upon things like feelings and intuition, and even to ask God for signs. Ron Brown told me about a man who worked for his father, and this man was very much in love with a young lady, and so he wanted to marry her, but he didn't want to do it unless God really wanted him to, and so he asked God for a sign. Well, he was out walking on Fort Lauderdale Beach, and a man came up to him and gave him one of those pamphlets that says, if you go, and you listen to one of those timeshare spills that we will give you a free gift, and so he went. And listened, and lo and behold, his free gift was a diamond ring. He was ecstatic. He went to his girlfriend and told him about this sign from God, and asked for her hand in marriage, and she consented, and they were married. A few months after they were married, they decided they were going to get the ring appraised, and so they went to a jeweler and found out that it was a cubic zirconium. What kind of sign was God giving them then? Folks, we don't need additional revelation from God. His revealed word is sufficient. Now, all that background, let's look at the grace of the gifts. Verse 11, the Bible says that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is distributing gifts. He distributes them to individually. The Bible says, as he wills. Verse 18 says that God has placed the members, each one of them in the body, just as he desired. Here's how it works. God gives individual specific spiritual gifts, and then he places those individuals within the body of Christ to minister to the body of Christ. There's a lot of spiritual pride going on in the Corinthian church. There were those who had certain gifts, and they were very proud of them. Today, spiritual pride takes many forms, doesn't it? There are churches that give themselves the title full gospel, which of course implies that the rest of us only have part of the gospel. Some are viewed as being spiritual if they have certain gifts, and if you don't have those gifts, that somehow you're lacking. Second class, a settling for God's second best. Sometimes, spirited worship can be equated with spiritual worship, and the amount of activity and worship becomes the litmus test for whether or not God has been truly worshiped. Now, we would never have any kind of spiritual pride in our church, work we. We practice the principles in our church found in Matthew chapter 18. And of course, you're familiar with what chapter 18 says. It is the passage on how we apply church discipline. The Bible says that if your brother sins, you go to him. And if he doesn't listen, you bring one or two witnesses. And if he still doesn't listen, you bring it to the church. And if he is unrepentant, the Bible says to put him out of the church, which is in essence excommunication. Now, we follow those principles, and we can become very proud of the fact that we do because a lot of churches don't. Spiritual exercising church discipline is messy. It takes a lot of time. And who wants to confront people anyway? Well, again, we can become very proud of that fact. I listened to a tape by Joe Novenson a few weeks ago. He was talking on the subject of church discipline. And he asked a couple of pointed questions. How do you feel when you put someone outside the church for a lack of repentance? Is there sorrow in your heart? Does it grieve you? Not very much. I don't lose a whole lot of sleep over it. Maybe you can identify. Why is it that when we have to put someone out of the church, someone who's running from God, it doesn't bother us a whole lot? Maybe it's because in doing this, we feel better about ourselves. We're not like those disgusting sinners who are put out of the church. We would never be involved in such a thing. And so we look at ourselves and exalt our righteousness. Folks, that's one of the signs of spiritual pride. And God hates it. It happens whenever we forget how much of God's grace we need every moment of our lives. God gives his gifts to his people out of his grace and he sovereignly gives to whoever he chooses. There really is no reason to be proud of anything. That's the grace of the gifts. Now let's look at the diversity of the gifts. The passage emphasizes that there are different kinds of gifts. The Bible says yet there is only one body. Paul says it this way, verse 14. For the body is not one member, but many. Verse 16, at the ears says, because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body. It is not for this reason. And it was a part of the body. For if the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? Paul presents this grotesque picture of a body that's this giant eye. Have you ever seen the movie, Monsters Inc? It's sort of like that creature in the movie. And so he says, what if we were all the same? Suppose we were like a giant eye or an ear. Can you imagine what that would be like? What if the church had nothing but preachers? That just gives me shivers to think about it. What if we all had the same personality? There is diversity within the body of Christ. We are all different. We are different in appearance. We have a diversity of taste. There are a diversity of gifts. What if everyone hated carrot cake? Where would those of us who like it be able to get some? What if the world were ruled by sushi haters? It would be a sad state of affairs. We all have different gifts. We all have different personalities. We're all wired differently. Some of us are quiet and reserved. You may not believe this, but Paul Calfa is a very quiet and reserved person. When we ride over to Presbyteria together, sometimes I have to nudge him and make sure that he's awake. He's so quiet. But when he gets up in the pulpit or in front of a class or he teaches, he comes to life. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde almost. He comes a lot. So there are those who are very quiet and reserved. And then we have others who are more, shall we say, flamboyant, like Susie Spence. Different people worship in different ways. Some people are particularly demonstrative. In fact, they probably would get up and dance in the aisles if they weren't afraid that the ushers would come and escort them out of the service. Some of us, though, are more reserved and more quiet in our worship. Some are easily moved to tears. Others laugh a lot. I miss Gordon Shelley. Gordon Shelley was always sitting right up in the front. And Gordon Shelley would always laugh at my jokes, even when they weren't particularly funny. God wires us all differently. We are all very different people. And so this text talks about how only we are different, but we have different gifts. And you know something that ought to make us thankful. Not envious. Not a particularly gift that you don't have and wishing and being envious for it, but being thankful that God has gifted you as individuals. Have you ever taken one of those personality tests several years ago? Our staff went away and took the Myers-Briggs test. And I remember before going away on our retreat that I was thinking to myself, all right, we'll go and we'll have kind of like an encounter group and we'll affirm each other and make each other feel good about their gifts and how they're important and blah, blah, blah. And I'll do it. And I took the test. And to be honest with you, I really did not learn a whole lot about my gifts. I know how I'm wired. I know I enjoy administration. I like to organize things. I like to teach. And so I didn't learn a lot about my gifts, but when I went to this retreat, I learned something about my heart. There were those at the retreat who were, shall we say, administratively challenged. And my attitude towards those people is what right do you have to exist if you don't know how to organize things? And so I'm sitting there quite smug and thankful for the gifts that I had been given. And then I started listening to other people and what gifts they had. And God started softening the up a little bit. When I heard that there were people who had gifts of health, that loved to help people, gifts of mercy, gifts of compassion, and hospitality. And that there were those who really cared about other people when all I was interested in was organizing their lives. God gives us all gifts. They are his present to the church. We balance each other out. We all come to the table with different gifts. We do a lot of teamwork in our church. And one of my jobs is administration. I organize and oversee teams of people for different tasks. And one of the teams that I love to work with is the pastoral care team. And so I come to the pastoral care team meeting with my agenda. Here are the problems. Here are the people's lives who need to be fixed. And so I go through them and all of a sudden someone on the team will interrupt and say, you know what? That person really is hurting. And I think, yeah, that's true. That's really what we're about. Sometimes people complain that the pastors of this church don't visit everyone where in the hospital. Let me tell you a little secret. You don't want us to visit you in the hospital. In fact, my MO would be to come to the hospital and look at you and say, get out of bed because there's work to be done. Not not really quite that strong. But there are so many people in this church that do it so much better than I do. And God has placed them in the body. And he uses their ministry. He blesses us with their gifts. It is important that we have things in common, the essential doctrines of the faith, the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, the resurrection, but thank God, we're not all the same. Now let's look at the interdependence of the gifts. Verse seven says this, but to each one is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. The gifts God gives us are not for our possessions, for our personal edification, but rather they are given so that we might minister to the body of Christ. They are meant to build up the body. Ephesians chapter four, verse 12 says, that they are given for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ. This past week I met a man, I read about a man who was trying to build his wife up. And so he recounted to her all of the times that she had been by his side. He said, you've been with me through all the bad times. When I got fired, you were there. When my business failed, you were there. When I got shot, you stayed by my side. When we lost the house, you gave me support. You know what, dear? She said, yes. I think you bring me bad luck. I'm sorry. God gives good gifts for his church to build up the body. Paul points out that if we aren't careful though, we might think that there are parts of the body that are expendable. There are gifts in the body that really aren't that important to the whole, verse 21. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you. Or again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary, not expendable, not optional, but necessary. Verse 22, on the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary, and those members of the body which we gain less honorable on these, we bestow more abundant honor. Sometimes we might consider that some of the gifts are not all that important. The most important gift to the church is the pastor, right? He's the one who gets up on Sunday morning and preaches the Word of God. And so he's the most important. Let me tell you something. I would not be able to function without my assistant Patty Bowers. And Ray, without Wendy Buss, Ray would walk around in a fog. We all know that Ray is very gifted, and he is. He's an extremely gifted person. But have you ever heard him sing? Folks, it's nice to know that not every one of us has all of the gifts, and the gifts that seem to be optional are essential for the body of Christ. What does interdependence imply? What does it imply? It implies need. That the body really does need every gift, and every gifted person. We only function well when everyone is using their gifts. Sometimes we can get the mindset that it's just me and Jesus that is so foreign to the Bible. God looks upon us not only as individual but as a community. We really need each other. Loan Ranger Christianity is not biblical. Verse 25. So that there be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same hair for one another. Verse 26. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. If one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. You see what Paul is getting at. He is listing the gifts. He talks about the function of the gifts, and that he says that the gifts are used and when they are, we will care for one another. That the body will minister to itself. What would we do without Wally and Joyce Gable? Wally struggles with cancer. And he doesn't want his cancer to interfere with his visiting the sick. Nor does Shirley Exley or George Bruce who have their own physical struggles. What would we do without Herald Light who just loves to tell people about Jesus? What about Ted and Betty Santana who faithfully pray for so many people and on and on and on and on? If you look around you and you see the people that you're sitting next to and you know their gifts, you can see how God is using them to minister in the body. We need to use those gifts to care for one another. But not just for ourselves. Sometimes we as a church become so myopic. We look at the church like this and we see seven rivers and possibly our community and others in our denomination. But we forget about the church around the world. We forget that the body of Christ is much larger than just this little tiny place we call Lakanto. We also forget that most of the church throughout the world is being persecuted. More Christians were murdered in the 20th century than in all the previous centuries since Christ birth, simply because they named the name of Christ. Persecution is particularly bad in China where Christians have been arrested by the thousands. In Sudan, the militant Muslim government authorizes the capture of thousands of Christian children from their families and they're sold as slaves in open air markets. Pakistan, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Egypt, Nigeria, all of these places are Christian brothers and sisters are being persecuted and murdered. We cannot turn on our televisions today and not see the horror of what's going on in our war troubling images of those who are fighting in Iraq or Israel or the Gaza Strip or in many troubled areas of the world. You know, sometimes I get this gung ho attitude of just bomb them all and God will sort them out. We ought to grieve that innocent people die in war even if it is a just war. It ought to tear us apart. The Christ body is being persecuted and tortured. We ought to pray not only for our soldiers and for what's going on in the Middle East but we ought to pray for Iraqi Christians. We ought to pray for Palestinian Christians. We ought to pray that God opens up the world that people would know Christ through all that's going on around us. This morning I turned on the television I saw how people who are without food and water are drinking water out of ditches. You ought to grieve us people. You ought to tear us apart. There are Christians around the world who are suffering who don't have food and they need to know that their God, our God, has not forgotten about them. Before the Apostle Paul was conferred it, converted. His name was what? Was Saul. Do you remember what he was doing when he was on the road to Damascus? He was going to persecute Christians. And so he has an encounter with Jesus Christ himself. Jesus confronts him on the road to Damascus and he says this, Saul, Saul. Why do you persecute these Christians? That's not what he said, was it? He said Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?
Folks, don't miss that. Don't miss it. Jesus so identifies with his people that when we are persecuted, he is persecuted. When his church is suffering, it grieves him no matter where they live. It doesn't matter the color of their skin or their nationality. It grieves him when his church suffers. We must be careful not to forget about those who through their relationship to Christ, Christians who are brothers and sisters are suffering along with the wicked. Just as Paul admonishes the Christians in Corinth to care for one another, so he will admonish us as well. The focus of our passage is what God giving gifts to people so that they might minister to one another. And I've got to admit, it's very hard for me to care for somebody who lives a block away, let alone for people who are on the other side of the world. How do I change that? How do we change that? We know we're supposed to have this compassion, the compassion of Christ, but it doesn't well up very often in my heart. And so how do I change that? By trying harder, by doing more, by getting more involved, no, making me feel guilty, making you feel guilty doesn't change us. It never has, it never will. You've heard it a thousand times in this pulpit and you're gonna cure it again. We go back to the gospel. We go back to the fact that we are sinful people and we don't deserve the blessings of God that we don't care for one another, what so often we're proud of our gifts and we don't use them for the edification of the body. We admit who we are and we admit what's in our hearts but we don't stop there. We go back to the truth that though we belong because we belong to him and we are adopted as his sons and daughters, the father loves us. That he has compassion on us, that he treats us as his own children and Jesus is our elder brother. We go back to the fact that we are adored and cherished and loved not because we're good but because we're his. Let me tell you something. When that sinks in, it changes you. When that sinks in, you will see a softening of melting and you'll find yourself caring or concerned more about how your gifts will be used. You will be more enabled to love and generally care for one another. Folks, Jesus loves his church and we're thankful that he gives good gifts to her that we might minister in his name. Amen.