One Body

0:00 well good morning again to everyone got a i think a fun sermon for you all today the title is one body one body based on romans chapter 12 verses 1 through 8 in romans chapter 12 paul uses a simple but also complex idea of the body and how that relates to jesus's body the church so what's what we're going to look at today a little bit about the context of romans chapter 12 if you're not too familiar uh romans romans is a great book but it can be a kind of like a very doctoral thesis there's a lot of heavy theology in there and paul gives some of the greatest and most important thoughts on theology and the foundations of christianity however as much as paul was lofty and heady and technical and theological at the end of day paul is very practical because that's what he wants people to be as followers of jesus in romans 12 paul offers some of the greatest aspects that following jesus should be applied into your life and he suggests that spiritual transformation begins by going and being like jesus as we engage others we should be like jesus and there's a transformation that happens there and it happens within the church community and it's going to affect all of the believers as they engage with the world around them and so for today i'm suggesting this we can only be transformed into the one body of jesus when we live for one another transformation unity becoming one into the body of jesus happens when we live for one another are you with me on that yeah all right well let's talk about the physical body uh very quickly as a little bit of introduction our bodies are very amazing we can do many things with our bodies and i think sometimes we take that for granted it always amazes me when we look at how powerful bodies are but it could take one little thing to just make that body not so powerful perhaps a cold or a flu whenever i get sick i'm wrong with the fact that there's a germ that got to me that i could not even see and it completely obliterates me i can't sleep i'm my nose is runny my eyes are itchy or whatever it might be it's you need a microscope to see what's affecting you and uh for men there's sometimes the man flu it could be a little bit much there you go i bring up our bodies again because getting sick touches i think a little bit on paul and what he's driving at in romans and that is this we're made up of a body of jesus's followers we make up the church and we can get spiritually sick perhaps and if we get sick we don't know how to get healthy again that can affect how we grow into a church grow into one body and so we will transform in a way out of the body of jesus no longer being one body you see a cold has the power to transform you into something you could be a miserable human man with man flu or it could be an opportunity to transform you into becoming stronger healthier and well again it has the opportunity to make you back into a better human so as i speak of romans 12 keep in mind that we're seeking to be transformed so that we can be healthy as we are becoming one and as we are living for one another are you with me all right so let's touch briefly on verses one and two paul says i appeal to you therefore brothers and sisters by the mercies of god to present your bodies as living sacrifices holy and acceptable to god which is your spiritual worship don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so you can discern what is the will of god what is good and acceptable and perfect the way to illustrate this i think is uh working out going to the gym trying to be healthy the first thing though about trying to live a healthy love lifestyle and going to the gym is i think this it's a very challenging thing to do would we agree who likes working out yeah yeah there we go there we go and i think it's for one big reason as i think about this is it's mind power self-control discipline these are hard things you need to use your mind to choose that you're going to go into a whole new way of life of living healthy if you're serious about getting healthy and then you got to go to the gym and then you're going to eat better and it's you have to use mental energy you have to remind yourself no i'm not going to eat those that junk food i'm going to eat this bowl of broccoli yay i do like broccoli too but the first step to getting healthy is realizing the power of your mind the power your mind that you need to start living healthy and making decisions and doing those types of things now the interesting part though is when you actually run into somebody who's a gym person or who's very athletic and whether this be older or younger they become sort of weird and energetic they sound like they're cultish in how they talk about it um they come off sort of odd when they say man it just feels so good to sweat i just felt so good to the gym today or it was so nice i took a walk around my neighborhood and it was so beautiful outside i'm like it's hot it's muggy what are you talking about but they're becoming renewed because they chose to make a decision move forward walk their neighborhood enjoy the world around them and this is a little bit of what paul is saying in verses one and two he's reminding us as believers that there's a new lifestyle and you can step into it and it will renew you and so your new gym as a believer is in fact a spiritual one and a gym that makes your whole body and through jesus coming into you and you becoming part of the body so it's transforming you from the inside out coming to church doing practices of as you all were doing coming and having some bible study reading scripture memorizing you're choosing to do these things and it's transforming you from the inside out are you with me and again so you do this and it's affecting you spiritually and physically now you're wondering that's nice but why is this maybe important well because as you are being transformed you are also being united into the body you're learning about each other you're learning about scripture you're learning about what jesus wants from each of you and that's transforming and building us all up and so we're individuals a part of a body now verses verse three for by the grace given to me i say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think but to think with sober judgment each according to the measure of faith that god has assigned to you so we saw before kind of a renewal of mind it makes it easier for us to unite because we're working together we're working out spiritually speaking we're feeling better but then this verse comes up in verse three and then verses four and five we'll touch on but paul is saying that a believer as you're renewing your mind you need to examine yourself and you need to be willing to examine yourself on the area of pride that's one thing you start to feel healthier you feel better you're walking tall and then all of a sudden you go hey why aren't they doing the same thing right i mean it's a fair question but also it can be a little bit of a dangerous question now first pride is not a bad thing what is wrong with um what's wrong with being certain types of proud is that if it i would say this way you can feel good i feel good that my son does great things my daughter does great things but it's a difference when i go my son is better than someone else's son you see the difference there yeah when you make yourself feel better by looking down at someone else it's arrogant but it's also a sense of pride i make more money than they do so i'm better than they are that's not that's not a good form of pride feel good about your work feel good about what you do how you participate and contribute and god is against against forms of pride where a person believes because of whatever it is they have or they do that that makes them better and that's what paul is talking about here and it's a believer who's experiencing that renewal should hopefully have a balanced perspective the perspective here is that we're better to ourselves our church community our local community when we're honest and say yeah i'm great at this i'm not so great at that but other people in the church are good at that where i'm not good at this and vice versa again building us together being one body being balanced let me talk about a movie kind of an older movie now y'all remember the disney movie cars yeah cute movie if you're not familiar it's about a lightning mcqueen he's a kind of little red race car and he goes he gets waylaid in radiator springs kind of a desert where he finds kind of meaning about friendship and his own family and identity and what we see is he's a race car driver and he's a rookie he's on the rise but he cares only about being number one and he doesn't care about anyone else and he believes everyone around him is there to make him more famous and so cars is a movie that's teaching us children and adults however good you think you are or maybe you are actually good at something it doesn't mean you can use people or mistreat people or it doesn't mean you don't get to work well with other people and this is where we can extend it in verses four and five what paul is talking about for as in one body we have many members and not all members have the same function so we who are many are one body in christ and individually we are members one of another and it gets straightforward a body has more than just one part and those parts all have different reasons and functions and so it's the same thing with the body of jesus i cannot play i love music but i cannot play those objects over there don't you don't want me to do that you want me over here preaching teaching encouraging so if we forget that that we're not then we're not going to be at full potential if you whoever the givers are the the the teachers you need to be doing those things as a part of the church body and we kind of see that in the cars movie we'll go back to that a little bit but romans verses four through five is calling us again to be transformed into one body and to do that we need to be honest what am i good at what am i not good at what is judy good at and what are we going to be doing with that how is she going to help how is she going to contribute those types of things and in the movie with lightning mcqueen and cars um it's not just about letting your pride get in the way it's about how do you work well with other people that's a part of growing into the body is as a church we want to work well with others we're all humans we make mistakes we have bad days we need patience we need kindness so well um let me move on to a little bit here another important analogy to this whole piece is because the body's believers we need to allow each other to help each other and i think paul wants believers in jesus to understand that we need to live again for one another and as we're doing that we're being transformed so shifting a little bit paul's reminding how transformation helps us see the importance of the church body having the right sort of pride and we're better when we're helping each other recognize that and i would encourage you all maybe this week saying hey i wonder how i encourage somebody i really appreciate how you read the scriptures up front if you ever want to do that please come and participate whatever it might be i like all i think the christian resource ministry that happens those are great things how can you contribute to that or how can you just encourage that it's very important because it helps build up what you all are doing as a church well let's look at verses 6 through 8 in verses 6 through 8 paul says we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us prophecy in proportion to faith ministry in ministering the teacher the teacher in teaching the exhorter in exhortation the giver in generosity the leader in diligence the compassionate in cheerfulness and so paul lists all these things and we as a church body have access to these gifts now i don't know if this is an exhaustive list but i think it's a helpful list to consider and look at and what's important here is paul is reminding us and encouraging believers that there are gods there are gifts that god gives to the church body and that's a big piece it's important because i've been around a lot of different types of denominations and a lot of different types of christianity i've hung out with progressive christians liberal christians fundamentalist christians charismatic christians highly spiritual christians meditative christians hippie type christians i'd call them and then there's even a disgruntled group of christians that i've hung out with done ministry with and one group that i think is great but struggles with things is i think some folks who really gravitate towards spiritual gifts and i love spiritual gifts i think it's important that's why i'm talking about it but overall as a group they struggle with that because the people who focus a lot on spiritual gifts get caught up on i have this spiritual gift you don't have that spiritual gift and i've got a special insight or when you get your spiritual gift let me know and it becomes a little problematic because it's a form of pride and it's missing the idea here where i said the gift is from god it's graciously bestowed upon you and it's bestowed upon you for the benefit of the church becoming one body not becoming a huge eye or a really strong left arm whatever it might be it's so that the whole body can grow you are given a gift that's from god to help and again that's why it goes back to having kind of sober judgment saying yeah god has given elude massive talent with music but that doesn't mean it's only be a music driven church and or the preacher i'm a good preacher that's great but it's not just preaching through church it's a balancing of many things are you with me yeah so and i you know i could also leverage this into pieces like this there's people i would say have gifts of kind of being prophetic and challengers and then that might be looked at like someone who's all about social justice issues which are very important we should fight for justice we should advocate for the right things but we should be very careful when we become so advocators of something that we stop loving our neighbor in the process and this you've seen this happen too where folks unfortunately they'll get so passionate about a topic that is very important that does need to be changed but then they start becoming visceral or they start becoming frustrated with why don't you want to do it like i do it don't you think this is an important thing whatever the issue might be i could bring up hot topic issues but i'm sure you could fill in the blank and if they are important but they should never be lost on the sense of you have a passion that's great god's given you that don't lose sight of it and and then you start you stop loving your neighbor pursue justice but also pursue god and let him love you and love those people who aren't there yet for whatever reason are you with me on that yes yeah yeah so we'll move forward a little bit here again god gives these gifts to us graciously to build us up to help us to help maintain the body of jesus and as kind of way to kind of close out i'll talk about chronicles of narnia you've probably read most of these books but in the lion the witch and the wardrobe if you don't know four kids go into a mysterious wardrobe they enter a land there's a dark queen who has control over everything and they battle a lot of things and in that story there's a scene where they go and they meet father christmas that's the british version of talking about santa and father christmas decides to give all four children gifts because they're going to enter a battle pretty soon in this book and so peter the oldest brother he gets a sword and he gets a shield and susan receives a bow an arrow and a magical horn and then the youngest girl lucy she receives a tiny little bottle of magic healing potion and a tiny little dagger and in the book and then also the movies that came she's very saddened about this she's like what i got this little thing older brother gets a cool sword she's other sister gets a bunch of cool stuff you know bow and arrow and she just gets this little thing so she's kind of bummed about it and so but he gives them these gifts and they're supposed to be something reflective of who they are and the power they have within them and so later on in the movie near the end of the lion witch and the wardrobe peter the oldest brother he's fighting a great battle and peter becomes terribly wounded and he's lying on the ground and someone yells for lucy to come and help bring this magic potion bring that little magic potion and they assume it was just to help peter recover from his wound well it does but then lucy runs all over the battlefield healing all the soldiers who got hurt friends lucy was given a gift that was able to help others a gift that was small it represented her but she could still go around and help others God has gifted you with something to help represent you and you can go and help others it might be big it might be small but God has gifted you are you with me yes well to kind of come to a close here when we come and take time of communion I would really encourage you reflect on when you were having the bread in the cup take your time think about these elements think about these things that you're about to consume because in 1st Corinthians chapter 10 verses 16 and 17 Paul says this the cup of blessing that we bless is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ the bread that we break is it not a sharing in the body of Christ because there is one bread we who are many are one body for we all partake of the one bread I think there's something beautiful to be said that when we do this time we are becoming one with Jesus and it's important to remember that it's important what it does for us both physically and spiritually as we become one church and that's the moment when that kind of all happens and comes together are you with me well if you could please stand as you're able we will sing the hymn of the day