Thanks Mary Lynn.
We're going to pray ourselves for the Lord's table this morning.
I'd like for us once again to come back to our theme, The New You, Members of the Body.
Open your Bible, please, to 1 Corinthians 12.
Possessing a sense of belonging and worth is crucial to healthy personal development.
Children, of course, need to have that as they grow into young childhood and into pre-adolescence and then adolescence.
They need to have a sense of belonging and worth, almost without exception.
Adult criminals fail to find that sense of belonging and sense of worth in their childhood.
But it is no less true of adults that we also deeply desire to have a sense of belonging and worth in the world.
We want to have security in our relationships, whether those be friendships with others or, even more pointedly, our marriages.
We want to know that that other person in our marriage truly needs and desires us.
It is also true in our employment that we desire to know that we're important to the company.
But we contribute something of value to its mission, its purpose, its worth.
Companies that have happy employees are companies that communicate that sense of corporate belongingness and corporate worth to the employees.
It is a wonderful thing that our God provides for us, His children, a sense of belonging and worth.
Before salvation, of course, we were not related to God. We were not His children.
We were separated from God by our sinfulness.
God in His love and grace came into the world in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
who suffered for our sins and died and rose again from the dead, that He might rescue us from our lostness,
that He might restore us to God from whom we were separated by our sin.
He came that we might have forgiveness and might become the children of God.
If you're here today and you're not a child of God, you can come to know God in a wonderful, personal way.
You can have a relationship to Him through Jesus Christ, by placing your faith in Christ as your Savior and trusting Him as your Lord.
When we become children of God, we receive a wonderful sense of identity and belonging and worth.
The new you as a child of God is described a number of ways in the Bible, among them members of the body.
The new you is in connection with other members of the body.
I want to conclude some of my thoughts from last week regarding that truth.
The new you is in connection with other members of the body.
When I'm talking about members, I'm referring to our spiritual union that we have together.
But I do not want to underestimate or undervalue the importance of being a member of a local church, an official member of it.
A spiritual member, yes, true, by our birth in Christ, but an official member of it, a committed member of it, a participating member of it.
That is God's plan for all of us as His children.
At the end of the service today, after we've observed the Lord's table together,
we're going to give an opportunity for those of you who wish to, and who are led of God to do so, to come forward and join us here in the front,
and thus indicating your desire to initiate membership in this local church, to become a member of this particular local body where God has plugged you in.
We were talking last week about the fact that the body that we're connected with is a unity with diversity.
There are lots of differences among us.
But providing a foundation under all of the diversity is an essential unity.
We are one body in Jesus Christ.
And we were talking about the fact that the body is a unity with interdependence as well.
God has made us so that we need each other.
And that's good. That's not bad.
In our culture, we are learning today that if you need others, somehow you are weak. That's bad. That's bad.
What is good is to understand that God has made us so that we do need each other, not to be independent, but to be interdependent.
We're in 1 Corinthians 12. Look at verse 12, and then we'll skip down a few verses to verse 20.
Even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ.
In other words, he is drawing an analogy between our physical bodies and Christ in his spiritual presence in the world.
Then in verse 20 he says, Now there are many members, but one body. He says the same thing again.
And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you. And again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.
On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body, which seem to be the weaker, are necessary.
And those members of the body which we deem less honorable are those we bestow more abundant honor, and our unseemly members come to have more abundant seamliness.
Whereas our seemly members have no need of it.
But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked.
That there should be no division in the body, but that the member should have the same care for one another.
If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. If one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
It seems to me that the apostle in writing these words has the physical body foremost in mind.
But behind that ultimately the spiritual body of Christ. It is true of our physical bodies what he says here.
When you have arthritis in your hands, it affects your whole body.
When you have a big toe that's been split on the bed post in the middle of the night, your whole body aches as a result of it.
On the other hand, when you've sat down to a nice Thanksgiving meal and you have eaten that turkey and that dressing and mashed potatoes and all the rest of it,
and you finish it off with some pumpkin pie with whipped cream on it, your stomach is holding the food, but your whole body feels pretty good about it.
So good it wants to go lay down and enjoy it for a while, right?
Our bodies are composed that way, and so is the body of Christ.
When one member of the body is suffering or is hurting, there's a sense in which we all share that pain.
When one rejoices or is honored, all of us feel uplifted and exalted by what that one member is going through.
That's what he's saying here. You are Christ's body, he says in verse 27.
You, you are Christ's body and individually members of it.
Joe Ellis writes, In the body of Christ, the abilities of each member complement the abilities of other members,
so that the body is fully equipped and functions harmoniously.
Thus the whole church and each member of it will grow to strength and maturity resembling Jesus himself.
Ellis has hit on an important word, the word compliment.
God has not made us to duplicate each other.
He has made us diverse and unique and special, so that we complement each other.
We should not expect to force other people into our molds, but to accept other believers as God has made them
and convicted them and gifted them.
Because they are so different, they complement who we are and we need each other.
And thus working together, each one doing his thing, the whole church is growing into maturity.
It is growing harmoniously into the likeness of Jesus Christ.
There are some implications of what I'm talking about.
For example, to be unattached or unconnected to a local church is a contradiction of who we are.
For we are members of the body, God calls us that.
And to be sort of free floating, unattached, unconnected, is to live in contradiction to whom God has said we are in our deepest identity.
That is a powerful truth.
It is a powerful implication.
God has made us to be connected to a visible local body of believers in a local church.
When we are unconnected, it results in a discrepancy between God's purpose and God's statement and how we're living.
We're not living under the Lordship of Christ.
We can't be when we're living in discrepancy with what God says we are, members of the body.
Every member is a special creation to contribute to the good and the advancement of the whole.
We need each other. We need each other.
And we need to be aware of the modern temptation.
To sort of remain on the fringe of things.
To be involved enough to get some benefit.
But not to be involved so much as to receive the full benefit.
God has made us to be full participants in the body, members of it.
Again, may I quote Joe Ellis, he says it well.
Peripheral church members who keep their relationships rooted outside the church.
Show little growth and maintain a tenuous contact with Christian ideals.
The individual who is not enfolded in a strong sense of community is hindered in his ability to grow up in Christ.
To implement seriously the details of the Christian way of life or to function effectively as God's agent in the world.
You see here he warns us that if we remain peripheral, we're on the fringe of things.
Just sort of there.
There and not there at the same time if one can be that way.
That it actually limits our development and our character.
And we do not grow up into God's ideal.
The body is an organization.
I mean it has elements of organization about it but beyond that it's an organism.
It's a living entity.
C. Peter Wagner writes, while the church is subject to many principles of human organizational management,
it is much more than a mere human organization, it's the body of Christ.
Isn't that what Paul said in verse 27?
It is an organism which Jesus Christ as the head and every member functioning with one or more spiritual gifts.
God does not bring people into the body of Christ as spectators.
He expects them to participate in the life and work of the church.
Just as the various members of our own physical bodies contribute to the well-being of the whole.
To be members of the body is to experience eternal meaning and identity.
It really is.
To be members of the body of Jesus Christ and the local church, the reflection of that body,
is to experience eternal meaning, identity, a sense of worth and value which God knows is important to all of us.
We too easily find our sense of identity with our jobs or some earthly position that we may have in an organization.
With the passing of time, how quickly those positions can fade away, be gone, how easy it is for us to lose a job and to lose identity.
God didn't intend for us to find our identity in our jobs in the world or in some position that we hold in a human organization.
God wants us to find our identity, our worth, our value in our relationship to the body of Jesus Christ and the church in the world.
We are members of the body of Christ.
This involves of course enormous responsibility as well as privilege.
It means as a body member I am responsible to preserve unity in the body.
He tells me that in Ephesians 4, we looked at that briefly last week.
As a member of the body I am to serve God with the abilities he has given to me as a unique member.
I am to invest my God provided resources in the church.
I am to pray with spirit supplied energy and interest for the work of the church.
I am to participate in its life and its mission with integrity and with faithfulness as a member of the body.
It is only as we actually live out our identity as members in the body
and we seek to fulfill our God assigned responsibilities in the power of the Holy Spirit
that we will come to enjoy the sense of belonging and value that God has provided for us as members of the body.
British theologian Eddie Gibbs writes,
No individual Christian has by any means all the gifts of the Spirit.
Unlike the manifold fruit, the gifts are dispersed among the body.
This underlines the truth that no Christian is self-sufficient.
We all need each other as other members of the body of Christ.
There is a mutual dependency at every level with everybody making his or her distinctive contribution to the whole.
That's what being a member in the body is all about.
We come today to some elements at the Lord's table.
We do this because these elements speak of our being members of the body.
Turn with me back a page or two in your Bible to 1 Corinthians 10
where Paul is writing to these troubled carnal Corinthians regarding some of the practices surrounding the Lord's table.
Notice what he says in verse 16 of 1 Corinthians 10.
Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ?
Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ?
He's talking about communion.
Yes, we are sharing. We are fellowshipping.
We are celebrating our oneness with Christ as we come to this table.
It goes on in verse 17 to say, since there is one bread, we who are many are one body.
I want you to notice in verse 16 the physical body of Christ being spoken of,
that body that was sacrificed for us, which is represented by these elements.
Then in verse 17, the spiritual body of Christ, a body that is not sacrificed,
a body that is gloriously alive and vital in the world today,
a body through which Jesus Christ lives and expresses himself as the head of the body.
We who are many are one body.
And so as we come to the Lord's table, it's important that we come with a sense of oneness,
that we come with a sense of unity, a sense that we are together in this thing.
In the next chapter of this very book, he goes on to warn that if we are not in oneness
with other members of the body, we should not partake of the Lord's table.
One who is not a Christian should not partake of the Lord's table.
One who is a Christian but who is not living under the Lordship of Christ
and who is not at one with other members of the body should not participate at the Lord's table
because it's a contradiction.
You say, well, it's only a ritual, it's only something we do.
Yes, but Jesus Christ has given special meaning to what we're about to do.
And he says this represents the fact you are one bread, you are one body.
You can't be on the fringe when it comes to one body.
To be peripheral and to participate is to lie and to be a contradiction.
We are called members of the body of Christ, and as members of the body,
we come to this table today to celebrate our unity, our oneness in Jesus Christ
because of his shed blood, because of his broken body on our behalf.
Would you bow with me, please?
Before we come to the table, it's important that we examine our hearts.
He who eats and drinks at the Lord's table in an unworthy manner
comes under the discipline of God.
That's no joke.
That's serious.
But if today you are living under the Lordship of Christ,
we invite you, whether you're a member of this church or not, to participate with us.
For this is the Lord's table, it's not just our church's table.
It speaks in one sense of the wonderful unity of our church,
but it's broader than that in the sense that it's his table, and we remember him.
We invite you, if you're a Christian and our guest today, to participate with us
if you're walking in obedience to Christ.
We are commanded to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness
so that if we do, all of these things will be added to us.
That's the priority, his kingdom.
Is that the priority in your life?
Let's sing about that.
And as we sing, let's determine that what we're singing, we mean with all of our hearts.
Seek he first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness
and all these things shall be added unto you.
Allelu, alleluia.
Our Father, we come to this table
sensing our need to be checked, to be cleansed, and sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
We do not want to participate in this holy ordinance in a way that displeases you.
And we come to participate with gratitude,
giving thanks to you for the body of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Giving thanks to you for the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
For this bread representing his body, for this cup representing his blood,
we offer ourselves, our hearts, our words, with gratitude.
In Jesus' name, amen.