Finding One's Place

SERMON: 2015-10-18--s0715--finding-one-s-place-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:46:18.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The entire provided window contains continuous theological exposition, scripture reading (1 Corinthians), and pastoral application related to the body of Christ, forming a single cohesive sermon. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Quick review this morning for those of you who may not have been able to join us over the Thanksgiving weekend. We've been seeing together that one of Paul's favorite analogies in the New Testament of the church or God's people is the term body, more specifically the body of Christ. Here's how he puts it in 1 Corinthians 12, 27, he says, "You are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it." Two things really he is saying there. The first is that the church is truly an extension of Christ the head. Christ is in heaven, we his people are on earth, we are joined by the Holy Spirit and as God's people are together we manifest the presence of Christ and we become his hands and his feet. As we speak his word, as we do acts of mercy and kindness in reliance upon the Holy Spirit then Christ is moving through us. That's one aspect of what it is to be the body of Christ. The second aspect is that we truly are a body together. That is to say we manifest the presence of Christ, we do his work as a single unit and one of the reasons Paul uses the analogy of the body so extensively in the New Testament particularly in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 and 14 is because as we saw last week it's so exemplifies the idea of unity in the context of diversity or to put it the other way around diversity in the context of unity. Listen again to how he puts it earlier in this chapter verse 12 and 13 "Just as a body though one has many parts but all of its many parts form one body so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by 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." And so what Paul is saying here is this as you and I by faith individually are joined to Jesus we are also by faith joined to one and other and we become one body working together towards the purposes of God and that of course is where the challenge lies and we talked about that a little bit last week because there are many many factors that keep people apart and that keeps the church fragmented around the world as well as locally. First of all we are individuals we have our own ideas we have our own minds we have our own backgrounds we have our own experiences we are separated by personality we are separated by culture we are separated often by language and we are often separated by the degree of brokenness that we have in our lives and so the question that we have been considering is how can this biblical picture of body become increasingly a reality in our experience. And so far we have looked at two steps that Paul talks about in this chapter that we need to embrace the first is that in Christ are the resources that we need to be this kind of community verse 13 again we were all baptized by one spirit so as to form one body whether Jews or Gentiles slave or free we were all given the one spirit to drink now think about that verse for a moment because it is hard for us to imagine today a cultural gap bigger than the gap between Greek and Jew or slave and free as I was thinking about how to put that in modern day terms it would be something the shock factor here would be similar to having your local neighborhood pedophile come into your house and babysit your children I am not saying that is a good thing that is a whole other story I am talking about shock effect this was the shock effect that Paul was talking about Greeks and Jews coming together slaves and free you might as well have somebody in Skid Row come into the leading house in the community and live there that is what he is talking about how do you bridge these kinds of social divisions well you bridge them says Paul because in Christ we have been baptized into one spirit and that Holy Spirit of Jesus imparts to us his DNA and as we yield to his DNA as we yield to the life of his spirit then we not only grow in our relationships with the Lord but we also grow in our relationships with each other so that the body of Christ comes together that is the first thing that we looked at last week the second thing that we looked at flows out of that and that is the fact that God sovereignly chooses our place in the body God sovereignly chooses whether we are a hand or a foot or an eye or an ear or a little toe verse 18 in fact God has arranged the parts in the body every one of them just as he wanted them to be our job is prayerfully to try to discern where God is placing us and then to apply ourselves to that place in the body knowing that if I am doing my little part and you are doing your little part and somebody else is doing their little part the whole machinery begins to turn as one unit the body grows up and begins to function and that brings us this morning then to still a third principle that I think we need to understand not only but really put into practice and that is this we need to trust God to establish us we need to trust God to establish us David Psalm 16 5 and 6 he says Lord you have assigned me my portion and my cup you have made my lot secure the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places surely I have a delightful inheritance notice the emphasis there you have assigned me my portion that is what we just talked about God determines my place but he not only determines my place you have made my lot secure you in you I have a delightful inheritance in other words God not only decides what my place is but he brings me into my place and he keeps me there because throughout scripture there are two kinds of wisdom that are operating James talks about that in the book of James wisdom from below and wisdom from above wisdom from below is rooted in the lie that there either is no God or if he exists he is not particularly interested in you and me he cannot be trusted I need to take matters into my own hands and my success in life depends then on my native skill my native ability my native determination and perhaps whatever luck factors come into the picture it always leads to friction and confusion because on my way to the top there are always people trying to pull me down there are always people competing with me for the same place for the same spot for the same resources it becomes a survival of the fittest and whoever climbs to the top typically gets there because he is stepping on everybody else it leads to great confusion and it leads to a lot of antagonism all you have to do is listen to politicians as they're campaigning for office and you get some idea of what that looks like but then there's wisdom from above and wisdom from above as I'm sure you know rests on the truth that God is you know God is so amazingly confident in himself that he never goes out of his way trying to persuade you or me that he exists you may have noticed that God just is he not only is but in Christ he's my creator in Christ he is my Redeemer he loves me with an infinite degree of love his purpose is to establish me in Christ in a new creation eventually where all his riches can be shared with me you see that in the original creation story Adam and Eve were given by God everything that you and I tend to have to fight for and the Bible message is that as we join to Christ we put our trust in him God is our father he redeems us he decides where we fit in life both in the world the secular world if you will and in the church world he is the one who sovereignly decides my gifting and my place as I embrace that he will bring me into that place he establishes my portion he becomes my inheritance that's the message of scripture from one end to the other while the rest of the world runs crazy trying to climb all over each other to hold on to what they've got the Bible says seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness make it your business to walk with God make it your business to try to obey him through faith in Christ and all these other things for which the Gentiles strive says the scriptures I will give to you many examples of that in scripture how this really works I'll give you three just very quickly story of Joseph we all know it well I trust sold into slavery by his brothers at the age of seventeen sentenced to jail on false accusations by Potiphar his master languished in the dungeon and yet in due time God sovereignly comes along plucks him out of that dungeon establishes him as prime minister of Egypt next Sunday night Lord willing and the Sunday night thereafter we're going to show you a two-part documentary about the story of the Exodus the historical evidences of it and the historical evidences of the life of Joseph it is fascinating it will strengthen your faith write it in your timetable try to join us for those two services it is incredible what's actually there contrary to what many scholars are trying to say today that's Joseph there's David we're in the midst of studying his life this is a little detour from that little detour David anointed king over Israel at what maybe the age of 15 came into his kingdom not until 15 years later seven and a half years beyond that before he became king over all Israel and during that time he had plenty of opportunity to do King Saul in who was determined to destroy him but every time he resisted the temptation and the urging of his compatriots because he said I'm not going to touch the Lord's anointed he knew how to wait for his time and eventually Saul died by his own hand and the kingdom was given to David and of course the ultimate example of trusting God to establish you was the Lord Jesus the Lord Jesus today is King of Kings these Lord of Lords his name is higher than anybody else he is over all the nations of the world indeed the whole universe falls at his foot at his feet how did he get there he didn't mount any campaigns didn't raise an army he didn't campaign for office he didn't fight to be number one no he made it his business to do what to love the father and to be obedient even unto death and Philippians chapter two gives us what is probably one of the earliest great hymns of the church you know these words well but this is what it says concerning the Lord Jesus after we are told to have the same mind in us that we have in Christ Jesus who being in the very nature of God did not equality did not consider equality with God something to be grasped and the word there is to take by force Jesus was the Son of God he had the right to demand his place he had the right to demand obedience he had the right to demand submission he refused to grab hold of it instead what did he do he made himself nothing taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness let me pause there for a moment and emphasize this is called theologically the kenosis the self emptying of the Lord Jesus the whole universe was created through him and by him and now he limits himself to the form of a mortal human being couldn't be more helpless than the baby whose birth we will soon be celebrating at Christmas time represents more than that he humbled himself to becoming a servant going on to the next verse and being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross and you got to remember the death on a cross was the ultimate humiliation it was reserved for the worst of the worst of the worst and you hung suspended between heaven and earth as a symbol of the curse of God on your life this is your savior this is the one who created the universe this is the one who put all the stars in motion remember these songs we sang earlier how great thou art this is how great he was and this is how he humbled himself even unto death death on a cross but it doesn't stop there does it therefore God exalted him to the highest place gave him the name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father that's your Jesus and if you're a Christian this morning you're a follower of Jesus guess what that means means you take up your cross and you follow him it means that in the course of everyday living you're not going to climb to the top by virtue of the wisdom from below but you humble yourself for the mighty hand of God and you trust him to make your way plain because you know that as you make him your priority he will give you everything that you need so that you can serve him for the purposes of God and that's true for life in the church and it's true for life in the community God himself will make the way the psalmist put it this way in Psalm 125 those who trust in the Lord are like man's lion which cannot be shaken but endures forever that's God's covenant commitment to his people now please understand with me this does not mean life on easy street in fact if you look at the three examples that I've just named Joseph David and Jesus and we could pick many others in scripture you will discover that they all went through a pretty significant dip before they ascended to the position that God established for them we've talked about Joseph in jail for what 10 years on false accusations those were not happy years I can promise you David chased around the wilderness by King Saul at least seven years times I got so perilous that he had to pretend madness among the Philistines because he was afraid for his life you know how the story ends you miss the depth of the agony in getting there and Jesus how did he get the name that was above every day by walking through the valley of the shadow of death my God my God why have you forsaken me still able to trust in God the Father just because God promises to establish us whether that's in marriage whether that's in business whether that's in ministry whether that's in some you know significant area of my life doesn't mean that it's always going to be an easy straight and without spending a lot of time on that I can give you two reasons for that number one is the devil really hates it when you come to life he really hates it when you come into your inheritance he really hates it when you start believing the word of God he really hates it when God starts blessing you and he will do everything he can to remind you that it is not true that you're a failure you're not going to make it his intention is to keep us under his power because he knows that when we escape his power not only has his kingdom lost but God's kingdom has gained because now we become his enemy and I don't recall that I've ever seen anybody really step out in faith in new areas of life without being seriously challenged or tested on that journey and the purpose for that testing because this is often where we get stuck why does God allow this well I can tell you why God allows this because if God is going to entrust us with authority in his kingdom influence in this world and in the world to come he wants to make sure that he is burned out of us all the wisdom from below and replaced it with wisdom from above you want to find out what really lives in your heart you want to find out if your faith is real you're all wondering when I'm going to do that I know you want to find out you want to find out what really lives in you forget the good days everybody can be super spiritual in the good days what happens when the road is rough when the sky is black the heavens are like brass and God's promises seem empty isn't it true that that's one like Abraham we tend to take matters back into our own hands and and we beget children by Hagar rather than trusting for God to accomplish it with a woman of promise so what makes this so very complex is that in the life of the kingdom it's always this odd combination of the sovereignty of God and human responsibility where does the one begin where does the other end but I'll tell you if God is going to entrust us with authority in his kingdom establish our place there will be times of testing and the purpose of testing will be to deepen our faith in God to believe his word to believe his promises so that we can actually be established and entrusted with authority why did Jesus receive the name that is above every day why has God entrusted to the man Jesus understand this with me please do why did go on and trust the Lord Jesus with all authority in heaven and on earth that is to say Jesus the ship is yours to run I trust you completely you know why because he was faithful in a beauty and even unto death God has never had to worry about Jesus ruining his kingdom for his own selfish purposes now look at your life and my life do some self-examination and you see why sometimes we have to go through a little refining process so that the river of life that flows forth from us is as pure as pure can be lest others be polluted by our does that make sense Peter puts it this way and this is in the context of intense and severe persecution in the church one Peter 5 10 and after you have suffered a little while to God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ and I love these words will himself do what read them with me restore establish and strengthen you restore establish and strengthen you God's not interested in frying us in the fire he's very much interested in burning off the dross so that the gold will last forever because God is building an eternal kingdom so what am I saying God will establish you God will establish you in your marriage God will establish you in your relationships with the world around you God will establish you in friendships God will establish you in ministry God will establish you in the church God will himself do it not just automatically and magically he will give you what you need to do what you need to do and the people around you what they need to do and it will just happen because that is the whole point of redemption it's God who redeems so we need to trust that in Christ are all the resources we need to do life and community we need to trust that God has a place for me not only but that he will establish me in that place and then here's the fourth thing we need to embrace biblical diversity and I use the adjective biblical diversity deliberately because as you know we live in a world where the dividing line between right and wrong black and white good and evil is constantly being blurred and God today is being pictured by people as a God who is a benevolent grandfather who somehow or another will accept and tolerate anything that goes and people don't understand that the reverse side of love is God's wrath and holiness and so when the Bible talks about diversity it doesn't talk about everybody being included in everything that God does it's a diversity that is limited to those who are in Christ Jesus and who submit to his authority the book of Revelation puts it this way verse 14 and 15 of chapter 22 blessed are those who wash the robes that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city you know in evangelism years ago people used to ask the question have you stood before God and he said why should I let you into my heaven what would your answer be and the only answer is I have washed my robes so to speak in the blood of the lamb I only enter the holy city because I have repented of sin I have submitted to the Lordship of Jesus I am baptized in the Holy Spirit I wanted the children of gone but then the passage goes on in the next verse outside terrible word outside are the dogs talk about negative term those who practice magic arts the sexually immoral the murderers the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood biblical diversity does not mean that there isn't a line that God draws in the sand that says inside that line you're in outside that line you are out that line is determined by what we do with the person of Jesus but that said that said when you are on the inside there is still a huge diversity there is a huge difference one from another that's the whole point of this particular chapter and if you just want to take out for a moment the bulletin insert with the scripture we're going to read together the verses 14 to 20 it won't be on the screen but I want us to read that together so that we can really capture the heart of what Paul is talking about here verse 14 says even so the body is not made up of one part but of many if the foot should say because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body it would not for that same reason cease to be part of the body if the ear should say because I'm 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 in the body every one of them just as he wanted them to be if they were all one part where would be where would the body be as it is there are many parts but one body brings us back full circle to what we were talking about last week how does the human body function it is made up of many parts it is made up of cells it is made up of tissue it is made up of organs it is made up of systems those together make up your body and then how does your body function you've got all the body parts you've got a hand you've got a foot you've got a thumb and as I said before when the body is working properly you're not even aware of the body you just take it all for granted you say oh I want to sit down on the chair you go sit down on the chair you want to walk out the door and out the door you don't even think about it as I said before it's not until you're sick or you've broken something or you suffered you know a stroke or some illness let's just say oh my goodness the jobs that I used to take for granted I can't do anymore the body is broken God puts diversity within the body many different parts to do the job together earlier he puts it this way in the verses four five and six there are different kinds of gifts but the same spirit there are different kinds of service but same Lord there are different kinds of working but the same God who works them all in all men of course you could add women and notice the structure of that verse the parallel between different and same different kinds of gifts same spirit different kinds of service but the same Lord different kinds of working but the same God very interesting Trinitarian verse and what he is saying is that when God pours out the Holy Spirit he's going to give different gifts to different people they're going to look very very different some people have the gift of administration some people have the gift of speaking some people have the gift of serving some people have the gift of just being quietly in the background the gift of prayer or you name it different gifts different kinds of servings the Lord Jesus decides your place in the body calls you to a different task and calls you with a different passion my passion as you know is to see men and women come alive in Christ and to fully bear fruit for God and to learn to live in community in a way that glorifies God may not particularly resonate with you maybe you're much more concerned about poverty issues or social justice issues or the political scene different kinds of serving because we're not all called to the same thing then he talks about different kinds of workings you know what that means that means that when God works in my life or when God works in your life it's not necessarily going to look the same at all because he can do whatever it is that he wants to do and he is a god of incredible diversity now why is that so important well I'll give you a couple of reasons I only have two in the power point but there's really a third that I want to make and the first is this our tendency is to judge others by ourselves you know that our tendency is to judge others by ourselves what I mean by this is this I experience God in a certain way or maybe I don't experience him in a certain way I expect everybody else to be like me I pray in a certain way I expect other people to pray just like me I like certain kinds of music I expect other people to like my kind of music I am comfortable worshiping God in this way I'm not comfortable worshiping God in that way and instead of making that a personal preference or the personal work of the Holy Spirit in my life I make that a sacred standard that I expect other people to follow and I judge other people on the basis of how I have experienced God or in how I serve God that's what was happening in the Corinthian Church they were incredibly gifted but they were looking down their noses at each other because they didn't understand that the way God works is in great variety and part of growing up in the body of Christ is to recognize yes there's an inside and there's an outside you're in the kingdom or you're outside of the kingdom but in the kingdom there's going to be an incredible variety based not just on personality but based on giftings of the Holy Spirit based on callings that people places on each other's lives and how God communicates himself to his people and what that means is that we can set each other free to be what God calls us to be knowing that in an orchestra not everybody is going to play the same instrument an orchestra makes harmony symphony not because all the instruments are the same no you have a wide variety of instruments but they're all playing off the same music and they're all following the same director Jesus Christ to try to direct his body so that all these different parts can help each other and that's really the second thing why this is so important it makes us interdependent that is to say it makes us need each other only Jesus had all the giftings only Jesus was totally self-sufficient in his dependence on the father but remember from the head the anointing flows on you and me he calls us to different places he works in our lives in different ways and he gives us different spiritual gifts and some of us are a mouth and some of us are an eye some of us are a foot some of us are a hand some of us are well you name it and the point is this where would the body be without the hand or the eye he puts it this way in verse 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 we need whatever gifts gone for here's my theory and belief about the local church because my passion is the local church and I believe that God is calling the local church to function as a body so in love with God so in love and so in tune with God and with each other that that they are a community together that moves through their broader community demonstrating the life and the power of Jesus so that the deaf hear you know the poor are raised up and the blind see and and all of that that's God's heart and God's passion but in order to make that happen there isn't one the single one of us who can make that all happen or who has the necessary giftings to make that happen it needs the whole community I was thinking about that in the context of putting on worship services I've never added up how many people are involved in putting one of these services together but by the time you add the tech crew the musicians the people in taking care of the kids the front desk people that watch the doors I bet you it's three dozen or more most of you if you're not serving those could you won't even be aware of that you just come here and you expect it all to go off a hitch and not until something goes wrong do you realize how much work it is to make this happen you know that do you know how much work people do behind the scenes to put on a service how early people get here to do music or to do the tech stuff and how many times they have to troubleshoot and you won't even know that it's happening that's the body at work and many of you are part of that in your own way you contribute time talent and treasure behind the scenes nobody ever notices it perhaps but if you're not doing it it's not gonna happen and the body falls apart god assigns different giftings gives different callings and works in different ways so that every part can play a part in making the big picture happen and you know why that's important it's important because if you're a part of this community you need to know that you matter and that what you bring to the table matters and here's a very important thing to understand because the temptation is to think that if I'm a lesser part of the body therefore I'm not important every community every community in the in the kingdom of God every community in the world has a diversity of people you have the people who are upfront you will have the people who are obviously talented you have the people who who get the attention and then there's the rest of us we we just sort of struggle along we you know don't feel particularly spiritual don't have a lot of biblical insight and what do we do well we just sort of shrink back and say well I'm not really important because I don't really contribute nobody don't even notice me how many of you here wake up at a given Sunday morning and you say well I'm not gonna go to church today because nobody really needs me anyway and who will even notice if I'm not here is that true don't say yes but it's okay right the one talented person always minimizes his talents because he's comparing his talents to other people's talents and secretly he's angry and gone feels insecure and feels less than and so it's really interesting that Paul as he goes on in this message begins to address that particular issue because he says every part matters just because you don't see your pancreas watch what happens to your body when your pancreas misfunctions just because everybody thinks you know a given part of your body is irrelevant watch what happens when it's missing and so God goes out of his way now listen to this goes out of his way to give greater honor to the lesser part so that there will be no divisions in the body of Christ follow along with me as you're reading we'll bring this to a close very shortly he says verse 22 those parts of the body that seems to be weaker are indispensable and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor and the parts that are unpresentable are treated with greater modesty while our presentable parts need no special 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 you know what he's saying there what he is saying there is that if you feel like you're a nothing or a nobody if everybody in church is rich and you're poor and you want to hide big highs you don't think you belong or other people seem to have it all together and you're struggling with fragmentation and difficulties that nobody can even possibly understand or experience you know what God is saying he will give special grace to the less presentable parts so that you too will have your place in the body of Christ you know that do you know that some of the most gifted people spiritually are people who are sometimes the most broken and do you know that they will have an experience of God in places that you and I can't even understand or believe because God balances out the body so that we can all honor each other respect each other and belong to each other so the upshot of all of this is this God is building a people of power and he's making a people of praise who will move through this land by his spirit to glorify his precious name if you're in Christ and he places you in a community like this then you must give your life not only to Jesus you must give your life to community and when you discover you don't have what it takes to do it then you got to remember this in Christ are all the riches of the Godhead and whatever you need to find your place and to live it God will lead you into it he's already decided what your place is and he will move heaven and earth by the power that made the whole universe and that raised Jesus Christ from the day he will move heaven and earth to bring you to where you need to be and as you embrace that and begin to function in that little place you become part of something that is much greater than you are and together with other members in the body of Christ you find purpose and destiny you can accomplish things that you could never accomplish on your own and God will be glorified because the work [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:46:10.540; remove through 00:46:18.000] of Jesus has not been in vain. 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