I invite you to turn in the scriptures tonight to 1st Corinthians chapter 12, 1st Corinthians chapter 12, and that is found on page 1219 if you're looking for that, 1219. Tonight we come to, we're going to be considering together verses 12 through 26, 12 through 26. I'll read through the end of the chapter. I think you'll see at the end of the chapter, we'll really be addressing some of the things that you're, I assume, are all curious about with regard to the gifts and some of the supernatural sign gifts which are there addressed. But tonight there's something the Apostle is addressing first before he deals with that issue. So let's give our attention tonight to the word of the Lord. This is God's holy inspired word. Verse 12. just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body though many are one body so it is with christ for in one spirit we were all baptized into one body jews or greeks slave or free and all were made to drink of one spirit for the body does not consist of one member but of many if the foot should say because i'm not a hand i do not belong to the body that would not make it any less a part of the body and if the ear should say because i'm not an eye i do not belong to the body that would not make it any less a part of the body if the whole body were an eye where would be the sense of hearing if the whole body were an ear where would be the sense of smell but as it is god arranged the members in the body each one of them as he chose If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you. Nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. And on those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor. And our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty. which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way may the lord bless the hearing of his word one of the things that i have realized is that when there is a controversy in the life of the church and there's always a lot of controversies in the life of the church when there's a controversy in the life of the church people are usually asking the wrong questions the wrong questions and they are generally thinking of the wrong things first and this is essentially what we have dealing with the issues in corinth surrounding the extraordinary gifts in fact the issue is so hot still in our day about the validity of thinking through the question of the validity of tongues and healings and miracles. Just go to Sermon Audio and look and see where everything is downloaded, where the most downloads come. It'll be this issue, trust me. And if you put some title of tongues up there, you're going to get a lot of listeners. We're all caught up with the mysterious and we're all caught up with the exciting and as we looked at in Corinth, the enthusiasm, the ecstasy, all these kind of things that we find interesting and that we're really curious about. We fence look. We wonder. We're curious about these things. Paul knew better than that. Last week, I wanted so bad to deal with that question of signs and wonders for today. I want to get there. And you're going to hear a lot about that coming up. But I didn't want to let the text first address what needed to be addressed before I got there. That was even my own tendency. Paul doesn't start there. Paul starts somewhere else. If you remember the structure of 1 Corinthians, from chapter 7 on, a series of questions had been posed to Paul about different issues in the life of the church. And he's been working through these questions and answering these particular questions that the Corinthians had posed to him. And evidently, one of those questions had to do with the gift of tongue speaking. We can only surmise what it may have been. Paul, and I'm trying to put this together and just assuming, I don't have it, but I imagine it went something like this. Paul, we are seeing this tongue phenomenon sweep through the church in Corinth. We know it's a gift of the Holy Spirit, but what about what we're seeing here? It's out of control. There's gibberish. Nothing is in good order. And the utter fascination of the whole thing in the body has presented a real problem for us. The utter fascination of this has presented a real problem for us. For now we have super apostles. I'm putting together both books here for a minute. Now we have super apostles. And everyone's bowing to the super apostles. And guess what it's done to the gifts in the life of the body. Guess how the body has been hurt. We're really confused about this, Paul. would you help us to understand this issue of the extraordinary gifts and particularly the issue of tongue speaking? That's what I come up with. Paul didn't start there. Paul didn't start there. What he's been doing in this first section, and this is a section from 12 through 14 addressing this particular issue, he's addressing the issue of spiritual gifts and spiritual persons. But before he gets to the tongue issue, before he addresses this very large problem in the life of the church in Corinth, where does he go first? The church. To have any understanding of gifts, to have any understanding of sign gifts, a strong, robust view of understanding and having a strong doctrine of the church must be in place. In other words, if you don't understand Christ's design here, if you don't understand what the church is, what its purpose is, what's going on, if you don't understand why God gives gifts, if you don't understand the intention of it and how this all works, if there's no appreciation of the design, if there's no appreciation of what Christ is building, what is to be accomplished, Answering questions about tongue speaking will make no sense. Answering questions about the supernatural, extraordinary sign gifts won't be of help. The same is true with us. Many of our problems today in searching for power in all the wrong places, many of our attraction to all the extraordinary stuff that we see in our day, Many seeking for experience in life, wanting to be entertained to death, is directly tied to a time in which we have lost any appreciation for the church. What it is, why it exists, and what Christ is accomplishing through His church. We live in a day when most people would say, I really don't even need to be a member of a church. This is what we've lived. A statement that years ago would have been foreign is common lingo today. It's a common statement today. And therefore, it makes perfect sense that people have no sense then of being a part of anything other than them. That's it. It's all about them. It's all about me. Well, that's what we're considering together tonight. Paul is helping reshape and Paul is helping correct what has become an aberrant view of the doctrine of the church. What it is and how God is shaping the body and fitting each member together, particularly giving gifts to each one in light of what Paul said last time for the common good. Shared common good. And so we left off last time by realizing how important it is of thinking about who we are and that each member matters. And that's what I want you to think about tonight. How am I contributing to the health of the body of Christ or the hurt, maybe, of the body of Christ? Because if we can answer these questions in light of what Paul is doing here, the sign gifts won't be so hard to look at. Last time we focused on diversity. Remember, there are diversities of gifts, there are diversities of activities, And there are diversities of, and you notice he emphasized this, effects. That God is empowering all of this. He gives you the gifts to do it. He gives you the opportunities to use them. And then he is even in charge of the results. He's in charge of the fruit. And aren't you thankful for that? That's an encouragement to us, isn't it? That it's not all resting on us. That God is the one in charge of it through and through. That God is the one empowering this through and through. Well, as he's addressing what I believe is this specific issue of tongues, he focuses first on something they weren't considering. That's verse 12. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. What an amazing statement. He just introduced something that he has desperately wanted them to understand and appreciate. What is it? It's what they're a part of. The body of Christ. And he's using throughout this whole section what we know about our bodies to illustrate this as a metaphor and to help us think through this. I mean, you could start with that. Our body is made up of many different members. You know, when you speak of your spouse, you don't reference one body part, do you? You don't run around and say, my wife is all mouth. I hope you don't. It may be true. You don't run around and say, so-and-so is this, or so-and-so is this body part, or this body part. You don't speak that way. You don't say, I love her mouth. I love everything about her mouth. You don't do those kind of things. She has, you have, one body. And what Paul is saying here is he has just used something common to us to describe the church. He just said, as this reality goes on, and you know this about your own bodies, and I'm going to come back to this here in a moment, so it is with Christ's body. Now, remember putting this together, what Ephesians says, what we are members of. We are members of his body. And Ephesians says, Christ is the head of the church, which is his body. And is himself its savior, and the church submits to Christ. The church is the body of Christ. Now, what that means is that all members who are joined in union to Christ are one. It's one body. And Paul's really helping us to understand and appreciate to think about the church as the body of Christ. That's probably the best way to describe the church. The church is the body of Christ. And how do we see that play out locally? Well, you see that in the sacraments, don't you? Sure you do. He says that here. for in one spirit we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all made, notice the allusion here to the sacraments, to drink of one spirit. He's using sacramental language and he's helping us understand in baptism you were welcomed into this body. You were initiated into this body. It's a sign and a seal. It signifies a washing and being joined to him. You drink Him in the supper. Special blessings of the body. What a beautiful thing the sacraments are, aren't they? Wonderful. I don't think we've thought about that enough. Am I wrong to say that? What are the implications of that? I believe there's probably a very, and I know that about this church, there's a strong consensus here that membership matters. Strong consensus among us that membership matters. But I'm sure you know that you're living in a church environment today where that's not a shared consensus. Many of you maybe even struggle with, you value it, but you wonder, is it just something thrown on us by the elders? Or is it really even a biblical concept? Think of how this thinking has prevailed in our culture today, in the church. Most people think, I'm going to choose a church that best suits me, and what is easiest for me, and if something happens that I don't like, I can change that, and I can go and do what suits me. We really do approach this like we approach a lot of other things. It's a voluntary institution, we think, and we can come and go from it at our own good pleasure, and no one should ever tell me that I really have to do it. I mean, wouldn't you agree that's a common approach to this today. We really do have this struggle of thinking that way about the church, and what do we incessantly deal with as elders? Well, we deal with this. We deal with this problem. People move away, and maybe it's a young person, maybe it's an older person. And I don't know how it got there, but there's been a lack of any concept or appreciation for the fact that there is to be a local commitment made at a local level, at a local church, there's no sense of that commitment that is necessary for people today. It just seems to be gone. And so most of the time we call, and you should understand this, parents, if this has troubled you and you've struggled with this, our goal is to love the body of Christ, to love all of the body of Christ whom the Lord has put under our care. And we call them and we encourage them. And it's a tough thing to do. We have to do it lovingly and carefully. But the challenge is, is almost universally we get this sense of from people today that we're intruding into their lives. That's the sense we get. This is an intrusion. Oh, there's that strict church again that's, you know, antagonizing us. Nobody else does this. You know, that's the battle. That's the struggle. and you get a statement like, leave me alone. You ever thought about that? Leave me alone. He just said you were baptized into Christ. That's all of our children. Do they have that right? It's something to think about, isn't it? We've heard, I'm the church. Why would I have to be accountable to anyone else but me? And then you go back to baptism and then in the supper. You promised you'd never say that. You were made a member of the body and we care for you and we love you and we want you to be involved and to be involved in a way that honors Christ at the local level which is an expression of you belonging to him. I'll never forget years ago when I was wrestling with this issue and they had these old R.C. Sproul tapes. Now they're in the VHS. They're just amazing. We had VHSes. But they were VHS tapes and he was doing all these discussions with young students, high school, college age students. I'll never forget the question as they were all sitting in the group and he said, do you think you need to attend a church? And it was startling in the group that around the way, they all, why would we need to do that? And then one girl piped up and said, she responded and said, well, I don't think you need to do that to be a Christian. Common thought. I'll never forget what Sproul said. Not only did he quote Hebrews, which said we shouldn't forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but then he said something that's always stuck with me, I thought it's been immensely helpful. Maybe it'll help you. I don't know how anyone could say that they love Jesus and not His body. I never lost that. Listen to the Belgic. We believe that since this holy assembly and congregation is the gathering of those who are saved and there is no salvation apart from it, people ought not to withdraw from it, content to be by themselves, regardless of their status or condition. People are obliged to join and unite with it, keeping, listen to this, the unity of the church by submitting to its instruction and discipline. You say, why? Well, what have you considered in the first part of Corinthians? You've considered that you need a message that has the power to save you, and you can't just get it anywhere. He told you, It pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. He told you you need a ministry. You need to be served the gospel. And that's something that every person needs. There's something very special that happens when the gathering comes together and the gospel's preached. The Lord loves to save in that environment. Isn't that wonderful? Loves to save. Brings salvation. And then we say in the Heidelberg that every member should consider it a duty to use his gifts readily and cheerfully for the service enrichment of the other members. So when a person floats around and treats the church like a menu at the Chinese restaurant and never really becomes a member and never has any obligation to use any of his gifts, what is he? Well, he receives all the privileges of membership without any responsibility. And Paul, what he's doing here, and you'll see how this gets to the tongues issue, what he's doing here is explaining how we are to think about ourselves as Christians. And his driving point is to say this, you don't exist independently. You forfeited that when you came to Christ. You are not your, what was the first thing the Heidelberg says? Own. You were bought with a price. And Paul explains now, in light of that, how the body works. What he does in this section is so beautiful and important, using the metaphor of the human body, to say, you even know in your own bodies you don't function the way that you're treating the church. If you functioned in your body the way that you're treating the church, you wouldn't be able to leave the house because your parts would be spilled out everywhere. I didn't have that in my notes. That didn't really work, but I think you get the point. Notice what he says in verse 15. If the foot should say, because I'm not a hand, I don't belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. See? And if the ear should say, because I'm not an eye, I don't belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense be of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? If your foot looked up at you tonight and had a little mouth on it and said, I'm no good because I'm not a hand and I don't want to be in this body anymore. I want to be out of this body. What would you do? Well, you'd take the hand and slap the foot, right? If your ear ever said, I don't have the ability to see, therefore I want out. i want to leave the body and the ear says well by the way you have no right to tell me that i have to be a member of this body i'm gonna go and be an ear on my own you know that's madness it just doesn't work does it well now start to think about what the lord did when you came to christ do you get his point let's make it stronger he does there are many parts yet one body the eye cannot say to the hand i have no need of you nor again the head to the feet i have no need of you that's not even a possibility right well why do we think that's a possibility with christ's body why do we treat him that way why are you behaving like a foot with a mouth trying to give the body of christ the boot because you're members of it and that comes to expression locally. Paul says, think of your own bodies. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. And on those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor. And on our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. You know that. I've used this before, but I think it just works. You know the story of Dizzy Dean, don't you? Dizzy Dean was the famous pitcher for the Cardinals. And as the account goes, in the 1937 All-Star Game, Dean broke his toe fielding a grounder. And the injury continued to plague Dean throughout the rest of his career so that he had to overcompensate with his arm and finally, because of the bad toe, threw out the arm. You see? Paul says, on those parts of the body we think are less, what do we do? Well, my hands are pretty important. See anything on my hands tonight? A ring? That's it. I don't put anything extra on them. What about my feet? Many of the women here paint their feet, soak their feet. Some of the men say, I don't want to pay for that. And they put fancy shoes on them. The next time your husband gives you grief, you can say, well, see, Paul said we can give honor to our feet. You give honor to those parts of the body that are steamless. Here's where it all goes tonight. Look at the mess in Corinth. They are caught up with the sign gifts. They're looking for power in all the wrong places. They're looking at those who were deemed as doing the great things in the church. And the little pinky toes were marginalized. they were undermined. They were undervalued. And their gifts were thought to be nothing, so they were not used. When you've created an environment that's about that, when you've created an environment that's about the show, only about the super spiritual ones, when you create an environment that's about using just the tongue, for tongue speaking, you've divided the body. You've created a host of takers and not givers. When people blatantly choose to neglect their gifts in the body of Christ, they become like Dean's bad toe. They're like the bad toe. And other parts of the body then try to compensate and the whole thing is out of whack and then everything starts hurting. It's just a tragedy. I see a lot of serving in the Escondido United Reformed Church. I see a lot of saints use their gifts. But I want you to think about this tonight. The manifestation, he says, of the Spirit. The manifestation of the Spirit is given for the profit of all. And then he outlines these gifts that Christ has poured out on the church, concluding that the Spirit manifests Himself by distributing to each one as He wills. The whole building holds firm as each person uses what the Spirit has given him. It really does challenge tonight our view of the church. Do we come here and think, the ministry of the Gospel is what has changed our lives. Amen. I have been saved through the foolishness of the message preached, and I remember when the Lord opened up my mind to receive that. And the glory of that and the wonderful way He served me. Grace was given through the gospel preached. I think sometimes in our zeal to recover that, a high view of the means of grace which we should have and I'm all for it and you know that I preached it strong. I've been wanting to recover that. I want to see it strong. Are we balanced in saying this? if you stop saying if you stop there that's like reading the first two parts of the catechism and axing off the third if you stop there that's like axing off the third section of the catechism what is the third section of the catechism gratitude if I the Lord and your teacher have washed your feet you ought also to wash one another's feet or since we have a great high priest over the house of god notice this is the context of coming together let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean with an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water let us hold fast the confession we did that tonight of our hope without wavering for he who promises faithful and let me skip a verse here for a minute and read the second part of this don't neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some, do you know what brackets that? It's this. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. And then you should encourage one another as you see the day drawing near. Belgic says this, we should bend our necks under the yoke of Christ by serving to build up one another according to the gifts God has given them as members of each one another in the same body. See? The only way that's possible is for us to have a good strong view of what we're a part of and what you've been joined to. And that's exactly what Paul does here. He reframes our whole thinking of the church in verse 18. But as it is, God arranged the members in the body each one of them as he chose if all were a single member where would the body be verse 20 as it is there are many parts yet one body and he says it again in verse 24 god is so composed the body giving greater honor to the part that lacked it in other words don't neglect the little gifts don't think they're little what's little is great that there may be no division in the body you need to understand it's not some voluntary thing that we're a part of that you pay the dues in and run out it's this living organism it's such a privilege to be a part of the living body of christ and when he baptized when the sign of baptism was put on you and you were initiated and brought into his covenant family of love and then you drink Him by the Spirit, you need to realize He has brought you into that body and He sustained you in that body. He's made you a living member in that body and you get a privilege to serve in that body. Just as your common experiences of the little parts on your body that you need, so you are composed into Christ's body and you are relevant and important to the whole. And that's why it hurts when someone dies, doesn't it? There are times to leave a church. There are times to move on. But I've also seen people barge out angrily and leave the whole family. And I think to myself, they just pulled out from under us a foot, right? And didn't even care. It's like a soldier who suddenly loses his leg. It's painful. You were a member. You are a member of that body like the foot is a member of the body. And that should cause some care in how we treat the body, shouldn't it? God ordered this so that your members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, guess what we're all doing together? We're all suffering. We're all crying. We're all weeping. We're all embracing. If one member is honored and one member is really being blessed by the Lord, we all enter into the joy of their excitement. John Stott once said, what does the layman really want? The regular churchgoer? He wants a building that looks like a church, clergy dressed in the way he proves, services he's been used to, and to be left alone. Is that true? Thus do laymen abandon the God-given tasks and the professional clergy pick them up to the church's impoverishment. You say, I don't still feel like I know what my gifts are. You kind of beat me up, Pastor. I don't know what my gifts are. Well, let me say this. God loves to use the things that you love to do. I don't want to throw that out. He loves using your talents, your likes, your abilities. And he does give a supernatural gift or gifts sovereignly bestowed upon us so that you are vitally necessary to how the whole body functions together. Every part is useful. And so don't despise the little things. Luther used to say in his preface to the book of Romans, faith doesn't ask whether good works are to be done, but before it's asked, it's done them. You don't have to go figure it out. Before you've even asked, you're doing them. And you know how many people I've talked to and they go, I don't really know what I'm doing, and yet they have encouraged me beyond. Didn't even know they were doing it. Just to be active and present. works will follow. I'll close with this tonight. One pastor tells of a church that had a real bad reputation in the community. History of conflicts, fights, splits, nothing but problems. Here's what the pastor said happened. Many in the church were sick of the strife and responded to the spirit under the preaching of the gospel. As a body, they began to act and look more like Christ. Gossip died down the gifts of the spirit began to flourish the deacons began to send flowers to the hospitalized and sick in the community hot mills were taken to the chronically ill persons a spirit of prayer and intercession began to come into their prayer meetings visitors were impressed by a new attentiveness attentiveness in the sunday worship services one of them remarked before when i visited everyone just read their bulletins and looked around and there was no engagement The youth were disconnected. But now, they listen like hungry people. The change is so mysterious, it's frightening. It's the greatest privilege to be here. And even if you're just a doorkeeper in the Lord's house, you hold a great spot. You're holding it over for the master. And remember what Jesus said. On that day, when he's there and he's looking and he says, you gave me a cup of cold water. And you said, when did we ever do it for you? When you did it to the least of my brethren. You did it to me. God has fit every one of you expressed here locally into the body. And if you understand the doctrine of the church and you understand that you're a member of that, that he did that, you're going to appreciate how then you serve and how you're vital to being an encouragement to the whole, stimulating one another to good works. And then you're not going to be focused on what you think are all the top gifts. You're going to understand we're all relevant to the project of Christ's church, building up of living stones to the praise of the glory of his grace. Let's pray to him tonight. Heavenly Father, thank You for equipping us and helping us to understand what we are a part of. Forgive us for being so individually minded. And give us servants' hearts as we have received grace from You and heard Your wonderful gospel of love and that You've reached down and pulled us out of slavery as we saw this morning and brought us to You and set us free. Now we become slaves of righteousness serving the King. And so thank You for composing us and making us members of the body of Christ. May we treasure what we're a part of and never bury that talent. Forgive us for a low view of what You've done. Raise our view of Your work, the person in the work of Christ, the washing of our feet out of the roof so that we might go and do the same. Be with us this week. May we show forth that we belong to the King, servants of the Master all the more as we look for the day that is approaching. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.