The Identity of the Body

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

If I went into an average church in Burleson, Texas, even this one, and if I wanted to start a fight, you know, for fun, all I would need to do is demand an answer to this question. is a church at its core and you have to agree? If I walk into an average church, really anywhere, but in Burleson, we'll just say it in Burleson, what is a church at its core and you have to agree? And I have it right up there, Larry. There you go. We were going to be off the whole time. There we go. All right. What is a church at its core? And you have to agree, when you start asking people what a church is, you find there is not a little bit of disagreement. When you start saying, what is the essential quality of a church? What is the composition of a church? What is it made of? Well, if you're talking conversationally then, church is very hard to nail down. So we might say something like,

I went to church today, so it's a worship service. We might say, I'm going by the church to get a room ready. Well, then the church is a building. You say the church elected a new pastor. Well, then the church is the congregation. See, I need the church to certify my membership, which is what seminary students will need sometimes. Well, then you're talking about the leadership. So when you say church, you could mean a lot of things. for such a functional word, a word that we use every day, the word church, it lacks focus. It is riddled with vagaty and ambiguity. And so maybe if we're going to try to define what a church is, we can begin with what a church does, right? And any church is going to minister to people, right? Right. Okay. Yeah. A church ministers to people. That's great. That's well, and that's fine. But how does it minister? How does it minister? Does it host people with a church service?

Does it get people in a specific building for a ministry event? Does it integrate people into the congregation? Or is it just simply introducing people to the pastor, whoever that person is. How does a church minister? Which one of those things takes precedent? Which one of those things is more important than the other? For example, if I would say to a church or if I would say, not to a church, if a church would say that it wants to start a ministry to reach neighborhood kids, right? Nobody, nobody in their right mind in a church is going to disagree with that initiative, right? I mean, if I say, hey, let's reach neighborhood kids, the one person who's like, no, I don't think we should reach neighborhood kids, they're getting the death stare from everybody else in the church building, right? I mean, it's not okay to say that we don't want to reach neighborhood kids.

Okay. Just, just to clarify, if I ever asked that question, you should say yes. Okay. Um, however, however, that's not the end. That's not the end because if there is no focus on what a church is on how a church should minister to people, there's no agreement there. you will not get past the idea of reaching neighborhood kids. Should we start in the building or should we start outside the building? Are we gonna work it through Sunday morning or are we gonna do it a different day of the week? Is it really ministry if we're not teaching the Bible to them? Is it gonna be worth the insurance cost? All of those things are subsequent questions that turn initiatives like reaching neighborhood children into action. But if you have no focus on what a church is or what a church should do, you will just unravel into nothing. In fact, what will often happen is a church that wants to reach neighborhood

children that has no idea where they're going or who they are or what a church is supposed to be, or at the very best, there's conflicting ideas on what that should happen, then that church will not reach neighborhood children. They won't because they're going to decide on a way to do it together that instead of really trying to be focused and reaching neighborhood kids in a way that is consistent with who they are, they're going to make decisions that are going to appease the most people or better yet to offend the fewest people. And what you will get is a half-hearted ministry. You will get a result that are far short of what they could be if you were directed in your effort. So, defining a church by what a church does is still not exactly a good way to understand what a church is. Well, so instead of what a church does, maybe we can begin with what a church should be.

What a church should be. So, if a church should be something, what should it be? Well, you have what I would consider to be classic ideals of what a church should be. A church should be loving, but it should do that by teaching morality, encouraging good habits, bolstering faithful living. A church should be loving by doing those things. These are classic in that they were alive and well in the 1950s and 60s and 70s.

And for decades, both the church and the culture agreed with these ideals, that I'm supposed to go to church to get religion so that I can live right. Okay? This is the speech, this is the warp and wolf of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, and even into the 80s. Okay? Some of you here who went to church during that time understand exactly what I'm saying. And you're like, yeah, that's what a church should go for. The problem is that even though churches should be loving and teaching morality, the problem came in when churches were not loving and did not exemplify morality. When church leadership or when church influencers had major faults in their lives, it kind of exposed this hypocrisy. Okay? And so, in response to this in our culture in the 80s and 90s, There was a hard push against this idea that the church should be the moral compass and should encourage right living. And so then you had churches that were kind of pivoting and switching

direction. They were saying, hey, our church is not full of perfect people. In fact, no perfect people are allowed. And so you had churches that were still trying to be loving, but they were We're doing it in a different way than teaching morality or encouraging right living. Instead, they had, instead of following classic ideals, they followed what I would consider to be modern ideals. Okay? And by the way, I use classic and modern not to really uphold either one. They're just different shades of the same color. But by modern, I'm just, I'm just talking about lately. The modern ideals was for the, this ideal was for the church to be loving by being authentic. The church to be loving by being accepting. The church to be loving by being sensitive. These are more modern sensibilities. It wasn't to say that in the 50s through the 80s churches weren't sensitive or accepting

or authentic. It is to say that those ideals were just puffed up way big after 1985. that the ideals changed. But as this played out, we thought we'd solve the problem, but as it played out, the problems were exactly the same. Exactly the same. Because even though a church should be loving by being authentic, and that is a biblical ideal, churches have problems being loving by being authentic. There are many things in the way. Churches would not be authentic. They would not be sensitive. they would not be accepting. And because of that, they couldn't match up to those modern ideals and you had the same problem. Because the core of it is you cannot define a church by what it should be. That is fraught with problems. If you think you have found the perfect church, as the saying goes, don't join it. Because then it wouldn't be perfect. Right? Just in case you're a sinner like me, don't join it.

We can't define a church by what it should be. Even when you look at the New Testament churches, okay? Even when you look at New Testament churches, so churches that we see in the Bible, there are tremendous problems, racism, classism, false teachers, bad leaders, heresy, infighting, sexual morality, taking each other to court, And that's just in 1 Corinthians. It's all there. There are 32 other churches besides the Corinthian church that we know about in the New Testament that are named specifically, and over 90% of them receive correction and instruction. Okay, over 90% of those churches, so if you're doing math, if you're quick on your feed, 10% of them, it's three. Three churches receive, out of 33, receive really no reprimand, they just get a gold star. Okay. Less than 10% get a gold star.

So back to our question, what is a church at its core? If we can't define a church by what it does, and we can't, if we can't define a church by the ideals that it is striving for, then what are we going to do? Well, to get a good view of what a church is, we need to look at Scripture itself. How does the Bible show us what a church is? And although the Bible gives us many pictures of what a church is, right? Many metaphors in the New Testament. There's about eight, and there's four that occur a lot more than once. And three of those are that the church is the bride of Christ. That's an illustration that we collectively are Jesus's wife collectively. Also, the church is called the family of God. So this is why Baptists for centuries have called each other brother and sister. So brother Drew is still some of you call me brother Drew. I don't hate it. But the foundation of that is in Scripture is what I'm saying, that we are all

brothers and sisters in God's family. Also, you see this often, you see that the church body is the family of the living, excuse me, the temple of the living God. That in 1 Peter 2, it says, we are all living stones being built together into a temple for the living God. But there is another one, a fourth one that overshadows all those other ones. So again, there's four dominant pictures, but there's one of those four that just, it doubles, if not triples the exposure in the New Testament. And that is that the church is the body of Jesus Christ. Okay. So when you talk about what, how the Bible defines what a church is, the dominant view 35 times in the New Testament, 20 times in 1 Corinthians alone, the dominant picture of what a church is, is Jesus' body, arms, hands, feet, lungs, arteries, circulatory system, and that Jesus is the head. Okay? That's what you see all over.

So 1 Corinthians 12, 12, and we're going to look at 1 Corinthians 12 a lot more next week. But I just want to prove it here. It says, 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. The idea is that we are together collectively the body, the hands and feet of Jesus. And if that is true, if Jesus calls us His body, that should mean something to us. That should stir us up towards some really good things. That should move us toward unity. It should inspire us into action. It should inform how we minister to people. It should show us then a vision for the future. If we are Jesus' body, then it should say a great deal. This is why we have named the sermon series, The Body.

And over the next, or this week and the next six, we're gonna be looking at the body in particular. Today we're looking at the identity of the body. Next week, Daniel Oster is gonna be preaching. He's gonna be talking about the diversity and unity of the body. Week after that, Daniel Oster is still gonna be preaching and there was much rejoicing. about the love of the body and then the witness of the body, the discipleship of the body, the leadership of the body and the gathering of the body. If Jesus calls us his body, it is worth our time to understand not just what that is conceptually, but what that means for us at South Burleson Baptist Church. We're going to call ourselves a church. We should understand what that is. And I don't mean to lift up our church and we call ourselves a church, but others might call themselves like fellowship or something.

That's fine. I'm not trying to glorify the name church. I'm saying we are declaring as a church that we are a church. And if we are declaring that, if it's on the sign and we're proud of it, then we need to understand it. And so this week we're going to begin with the identity of the body. And so yes, the church is Jesus's body. Then let me ask you another question on top of that. It's going to sound real similar, but it's not. What makes our church a part of that body?

Is it because our church has a shared history? Is it because we cooperate? Is it because we worship together on a Sunday morning? Are we at church just because we say so? Why are we at church? Are we sure then that we aren't some counterfeit body? If the church is Jesus's body, It's kind of a precious thing to say, is it not? I mean, it's kind of a big thing, a heavy thing to lay down. Hey, we're Jesus's body. Oh, okay. Well, how do we know? How do we verify our identity as part of Jesus's body?

Because I guarantee you, there are people that collect themselves that are religious that will even kind of nominally claim the name of Jesus. However, they are not a part of Jesus' body. They are not a church in the New Testament sense. And for us to really grasp that, we need to understand what we are to be able to answer that question well. Like for this, we are going to turn to 1 Corinthians 1, verse 26. 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 26. If you do not have a Bible, there are Bibles that are stationed all over in the pew seat backs. And those are for you. If you do not have a Bible, and you would like to take that Bible as your own, you can, it's not stealing if we give it to you. So here, I'm giving it to you on behalf of our church, and it's not stealing if you take it. But if you don't have a Bible, we want you to have a Bible. And man, we have Bibles. So please have one of ours, we have a lot.

So again, we're going to turn to 1 Corinthians 1, 26 through 31. And 1 Corinthians is just a little bit of background. 1 Corinthians is a letter written to a church in Corinth, the Corinthian church. This is the first of two letters that we have, hence the name 1 Corinthians. So it is a letter written to a church, and this church is very much still trying to figure out who they are. They are a young church. They have immature leadership. They are trying things and they are failing, and then they're trying things again, and then they are failing. It's like, you remember being 21, right? Okay, this is the church in Corinth. They are failing forward, okay? They are figuring it out, messing up, and then having to figure out again, okay? Paul is writing to them, and he's actually speaking to some issues of identity. And I wanted to explore that. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, just in the first verse, sorry, in verse 26,

the first that I identified, 1 Corinthians 1, 26, it says, For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many of you were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. Okay, for any group of people at all, any group of people at all that are intent on referring to themselves as a church, such as people that we find this morning. We are intent on calling ourselves a church. Then one thing must be absolutely certain. One thing and one thing only proves our identity and our authenticity as Jesus' body, and that is that we are called.

Look at the first line. It says for consider your calling. You are called. As a church, the basic fundamental understanding of who we are is that we are called by God to be and do something together. In other words, we are responding. Nobody woke up with the idea and said, you know what, let's start something called a church. Oh, okay. No, man. A church is God's idea. A church is God's plan A. we are a church because we have been called by God. In fact, there's a connection, a heavy connection between the word church and calling. And it's clear when you look at the original language. So I promise not to bust out Greek every week. I do. I promise. This is probably the first time I've ever done it. However, it is really interesting to see the word for calling in Greek is clasis. That's what clasis looks like in Greek. You don't need to memorize that anything. However, the word for church in Greek is ekklesia. Now, I've positioned the words a

specific way and I hope you see the similarities, right? Do you see it? See it now? It's the same root, klesis, ekklesia. It's the same root. It's calling. The word church, the word ekklesia is It's actually not a religious word. It's just a word that means basically assembly. Okay. It means, it means, yeah. But when in the New Testament, whenever you see a church right here, a church then is a group of people who have been called.

They have been called. It's in the word. They've been called. And when 1 Corinthians begins, 1, 26 begins with consider your calling. This is the assumption. The assumption is that what makes a church a church is that it is called that Jesus chose them as a local body, his body of believers. This is what it means to be a church. Our identity as a church is that we have been called. And so this morning, I want to look deeper into that calling and I'm going to look deeper into 1 Corinthians 1, 26 through 31. And I want to draw out two important aspects of this calling. There are two really important things that if we miss them, if we just say, oh yeah, call, great, then we're going to kind of not understand what that identity as our church is. So I want to look again at verse 26. It says, for consider your calling. We've already covered that brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many

anywhere of noble birth. So again, as a church then, we were called out, called out. What these verses are saying is, hey, you're a church, so why don't you start by taking a long look in the mirror? That's how you begin. Take a long look in the mirror. Can your wisdom or your power or your nobility explain your life. You who are a church, you who are called out, just... Were you called out on your own merit? Is that why God called you? Your wisdom, your power, your nobility? No. No. You were foolish, you were weak, You were low and despised. You were nothing. There is a humility that comes with our calling. Where if our main identity is that we are called out of something, then we can point to no trophy case. We can point to nothing of eternal significance that made us some bright shining student for God to kind of look down on us to kind of look down on us and go, no, that one, he looks cute. She's really smart. I want her,

I want him to be part of my church. No, no. And I'm sure you're adorable and I'm sure your parents think so, but no, no, that is not what made us call. In fact, what made us call is that we were low in despise, is that we were weak and foolish. This is the way God works. And so we see that in the next couple of verses. 1 Corinthians 1, 27 through 29, it says, but God chose on purpose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. Your nothingness, my nothingness, our nothingness is the very prerequisite for God to call us. It is in God's very character. This reminds me of a story in the Old Testament. The man was named Gideon. Now Gideon, if you do not know Gideon's story, you don't need to know much other than he was of low stature.

When an angel comes to visit Gideon, he explains how weak and foolish and ignoble he is. He explains how he has no clout. He explains how no one is really going to believe him. He's a fearful man. However, God called him to assemble a fighting army that numbered really close to 135,000 people from the tribes of Israel. And in Judges, it says, after this army was amassed, right? And so Gideon is amassing an army and it's gonna go fight the Midianites, okay? Gideon's amassing this army, he's got 135,000 people. He's still outnumbered, right? He's still outnumbered. He, at this point, he only has 32,000 people. So he's at 32,000, facing 135,000. He's outnumbered roughly four to one. And the Lord said to Gideon, The people with you, the army, are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand. Just let that sink in for a second. God is saying, there's too many people for me to let you have victory.

I need you to have fewer people. And then he says, lest Israel boast over me, saying, my own hand has saved me. God in heaven is saying, I want people to experience this victory by my hand. And I want there to be absolutely no confusion. So to do that, I'm actually going to lower the number of your army. And so in the first phase, it's two phases. The first phase, he went from 32,000 people to 10,000. And then he did it again, he went from 10,000 to 300. So that Gideon and his army are outnumbered 450 to one. And you don't have to be a war strategist to know those are not good odds. Okay, not good odds. But whenever they were outnumbered 450 to one, God looked at it and goes, yeah, it's about right. That's perfect. Great, 300, that's exactly what I was hoping for, okay? Whenever we read in 1 Corinthians 1:26, it says, consider your calling. I want you to consider that your calling is a lot like Giddings, right?

That you don't come to the table with anything to barter with. You don't come with any clout. You don't come. God doesn't care how cute you are, how well you speak, how good your life is, doesn't care. He's choosing you. He's choosing you for reasons you might not get to know. And whenever God calls those people who are low, He puts them in situations specifically where God is going to get the glory, specifically. This fact alone should stir us up to humility in a way that is ingrained in everything that we do and think. It should help us understand that we are not here on our own merit. And you know humility is hard. Humility, knowing you're humble is hard because as soon as you acknowledge it, you're not humble anymore. So it's like this code you keep trying to put on, but then you take it off as soon as you put it on.

Here's how you know you're humble. You know that you're humble because you truly believe that you would not be where you are right now without God. Okay? If you know that, if you know that deep in your bones, this is the Christian humility that we're talking about. This is what God desires in us. And when you, you know you're humble, when you read verses or sing songs of God's grace and it moves you. I mean, I see some of you in the back raising your hands. You don't think I see you, but I do. You are an encouragement to me, right? When you sing a song of God's grace and it just moves you, I mean, it's just like, yes, Lord. That's a good thing. That is a connection to a deep truth that you aren't here on your own merit. It helps you see it. It is hard to articulate the opposite, but when you, when somebody's faking humility, you can just smell it. And if there are any used car salesmen out here, I apologize in advance, but you smell

like a used car salesman, okay? It's like, I just, I don't trust everything you're telling me, right? I actually have good friends that are used car salesmen. I do. No, they really are good friends. They know the business they're in. But you can tell when others are faking that humility. You can even tell when you are faking that humility, right? It's obvious. It's there. However, with that humility, with that Christian humility, with that humility verifying our identity as a church, we cannot stop there. We don't just, in other words, we don't just need to remember where we were called out from. Because although that does bring out the proper humility in us, if we only look at that, if we only see that, we will lack confidence. So look in verse 30 of 1 Corinthians 1. It says, that because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

As a church, we are not just called out, we are called in. We are called in. In other words, whenever we're looking at 1 Corinthians 30, it says, it says, in him, because of him, you are in Christ Jesus. If we are in Christ Jesus, then we have wisdom from God. We have righteousness. We have sanctification and redemption. And our humility, our humility must stay intact at the same time that we grab hold, confidently of the fact that Jesus Christ has given us wisdom from God, that Jesus Christ has saved us, that he's redeeming us, that he's sanctifying us, that he's making us more like him. The confidence that we have in that process should not lead us to be proud. At the same time that we are laying hold of that confidence, we also are gripped with our own inability to measure up to that. The wisdom we have is from God. It's not from us. That's another way to say

it. That's just really helpful. In other words, so there's a lot of kind of problems with this that can occur, this humility and this confidence. Sometimes our humility, it leads to disqualification. In other words, we are so aware of the fact that we were called out of debauchery, sin, prideful living, whatever, you know, being a Pharisee, whatever you were called out of, and then you're so aware of that that it leads to disqualification. You say, well, you know, Jesus commanded Christians to do this, but you know, somebody who's a little more well-equipped than me better stand up. They better jump out there and do that, right? You just stick your hands in your pockets and kick the ground and say, aw, shucks, maybe not me. And at that point, your humility has stepped into ineffectiveness, it has stepped into incompetence. Your humility has turned into something else.

It's turned into disqualification. That's not the humility that we see in the New Testament. That's not the humility that we're trying to see in 1 Corinthians 1 here. We need to understand that those whom God has called, He has also given power and not just, you know, a little bit of power to make it through the day, but Holy Spirit power. You have been given gifts, you've been given strength, you have been given wisdom, you have been given all of these things. Jesus is at work in all of those things And He has gifted you to not just serve other people and be tired on the weekend, but He has gifted you to live an abundant life where you receive joy from giving. You receive this high, this spiritual high from actually loving other people. This is the power of God in you. Our humility must stay intact, but in Christ, we need to know, We need to be confident of the fact that we have confidence.

Sorry, that we have wisdom and that we have confidence. We need to be confident of the fact that we have assurance in our relationship with Him. We need to be confident of the fact that we are growing in Jesus's likeness. And you show me a Christian who is humble but not confident, and I will show you a Christian who is weak and immature and will be for the rest of their lives. At some point, that humility needs to be coupled with that confidence. Yes, it's good that you're not proud. Amen. Okay. Nothing's worse than a guy who's confident and prideful. That's tough. But this is the other side, right? And so in Christ, if we have all these things, if we have wisdom and assurance in relationship and confidence and that we're growing in his likeness, it means that we are as a church going to be put in situations where it will require God's wisdom. We will put in situations where it will require us to have assurance in our relationship.

It will require us to have a confidence that we are growing in Christ's likeness. Our identity as a church is marked by our actions in those situations. A church is not a church just because we assemble and sing Christian songs. It's just not. Or mediocre preaching like we have today. It's more than that. It's more than a Sunday morning, right? It's more than that. A church is marked by how it responds, by how it moves to action when there is need. How we pray for one another, how we witness all of these things, this is how we verify our identity as part of Christ's body, is that we act like Christ. It's not our shared history, it's not our cooperation, it's not just because we said so. We are not a counterfeit body. We can verify our identity because we can consider our calling and we can let our humility keep us grounded as we remember where we were called out front.

And then we can let that develop into confidence as we remember where we were called into. We were called into Jesus, into his wisdom, his power, his assurance, all of those things. And we can rejoice. We can rejoice together as a body. We can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are a church when these things are true. But it also works not just collectively, it also works personally. We're about to have our time of invitation where Dana and Sadie are going to come and sing. And as they do, I want you to think about not just those things collectively, because they are true as a church, right? verifies our identity as a church is that we are called by Jesus. That is the exact same thing that verifies our identity as a Christian personally. You're not a Christian because you're moral. You're not a Christian because you go to a church. You're not a Christian because you read the Bible.

You're not a Christian because you prayed once. You're a Christian because God has called you out of darkness and into light. He has called you from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the son he loves. I could talk about it in 1 Corinthians. Sorry, in Colossians 1:15. When you have been called, and in that calling, it's humility. You didn't do anything to earn it, but in that calling, it's also confidence. And let me just encourage you this morning. We're going to have a time invitation. I'm going to be right here. We're going to be singing. Dan and Hader are going to be singing, leading us in singing. As we do, as we sing, I want you to run this through your mind, is that if in your Christian life you have been humble but not confident, what I would push you on is that maybe you don't understand the God. Maybe you understand that you're a sinner but you don't understand that

you're called to much more than being beat down by religious law. God in heaven sent his Son so that he could have a relationship with you where you are growing in the likeness of the Son. You are not just beaten down. If your humility has turned into disqualification or it turned into ineptitude, you need to understand that that is going to require you to make a decision about your relationship with Jesus. You're gonna need to be able to say, okay, Jesus, I don't want to live that way. I want to live in confidence with you. The only way you can do that is with God and in community. We're not lone Rangers. We need help. Saying that you need help, that's usually the first step. I think I've heard that some times. As we sing, as we have our time of invitation,

if that is resonating, then that's for you. I would encourage you, you can come down side-out, middle-out, the side-out, the matter. I'll be right here. You can come up, We can talk, we can pray. If you're interested in joining the church, if you're interested in just receiving prayer, you've got a question, you've got something you want to talk through, that's cool, that's cool. Only if you join a church do we parade you up here and vote on you, okay? Any other reason you come and talk to me, we're not gonna parade you up here, all right? Trust me, I love you, I don't want to do that to you. Okay, it just, only if you're joining the church do we do no litigation.

So during our time of invitation, it's good. It's going to be humiliating for me. I've been joining the church. During our time of invitation, I do want you to reflect what's the Lord calling you to do, and will you do? Let me pray for us. Jesus, thank you so much. Thank you that you care for us in all these ways. You can bring us to humility and to confidence that we aren't just left on our own. We aren't just left to figure it out. We aren't just set free and then put on the side of the road, but that you desire us to understand

all that you've done for us and to understand all that you're going to do. Help us to see both, hold both the humility and the confidence. God sent his Son, they called him Jesus. He came to the land. And be great because he lives He will fear his eyes The future life is worth living Just how sweet and joy he is Sinters sit on my stool His child can face a certain loss Because he lives Because he lives I can face tomorrow Because he lives fear as I close the future life is worth living just because me and then wandering across the river a fight lies by No more with his friend than a slave to victory The lights are growing further Because he lived back in place to us He lives in the future. Life is worth living just because. It's called the Old Testament and it says, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. Go today, boast in the Lord. Be dismissed.