Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

Nearly 2,500 years ago, a slave and storyteller by the name of Aesop wrote the following:

One fine day it occurred to the Members of the Body that they were doing all the work and the Belly was having all the food.

So they held a meeting, and after a long discussion, decided to strike work till the Belly consented to take its proper share of the work.

So for a day or two, the Hands refused to take the food, the Mouth refused to receive it, and the Teeth had no work to do.

But after a day or two the Members began to find that they themselves were not in a very active condition: the Hands could hardly move, and the Mouth was all parched and dry, while the Legs were unable to support the rest.

So thus they found that even the Belly in its dull quiet way was doing necessary work for the Body, and that all must work together or the Body will go to pieces.[1]

And with that we step into one of many analogies that Scripture uses to define and describe the church.

Three of these analogies are rooted in Old Testament imagery.

Throughout the Old Testament we see that Israel is referenced as God’s bride, God’s flock, and God’s vineyard.

All of these are repeated in the New Testament and refer to the church.

We are considered the bride of Christ.

We are considered branches and Christ is the vine.

We are sheep and Christ is our chief shepherd.

Each of these word pictures point to the reality of God’s ever present, personal, and protective relationship with his people.

In the New Testament there are some additional metaphors for the church.

(1) The church is a kingdom in which Christ is it’s King.

(2) The church is a household or family.

We are considered to be sisters and brothers of one another and of Christ.

We were adopted into his family.

God is our Father.

(3) Peter describes the church as a building.

He writes, “you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” ( ESV).

Paul as well tells us that the church was “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” ( ESV).

And then we come to and find a word picture that seems to reflect Aesop’s fable.

The church is as well one body with many members.

Paul uses the body analogy in .

[Read passage.]

With this analogy he confronts two errors, underestimating your value in the body of Christ and overestimating your value in the body of Christ.

In either error he challenges every believer to [purpose statement] accurately assess and submit to how God sovereignly places you within the body of Christ.

Error # 1: Underestimating your value to the body (15-17).

Error # 1: Underestimating your value to the body (15-17).

Much had gone on in the Corinthian church for many members to feel like they were not important to body life.

Likely, the division that occurred as different members split off their commitment to a specific person (Paul, Apollos, Peter, or Christ) resulted in many members feeling left out or on the fringe.

Inevitably, people were pushed to the sides or to the fringe of church life as others debated the appropriateness of sexuality within the church or lawsuits between members or differences of opinion on whether or not members should be celibate or married.

Others were dismissed as the rich or powerful flaunted their positions with head coverings and lavish meals during the observance of the Lord’s Supper.

Clearly people were ostracized as the church setup specific spiritual gifts as a sign of true spirituality.

So, simply, there were probably a lot of people who didn’t feel part.

They didn’t feel important to the rest of the church.

Maybe they were poor or held a lowly social position and as a result felt unimportant or irrelevant in the church.

Others may have felt insignificant because they deemed their spiritual gift as less in value.

While others were performing large or dramatic and publicly visible spiritual gifts, they considered themselves an irrelevant foot who was always covered up and was criticized for stinking too often.

And let’s add to this reality.

The church didn’t do a good job of making them feel like an important part.

Some members may have been unintentional or inadvertent in their disunity but it seems like others were quite purposeful as the rich and powerful set themselves up over others.

Paul addresses, first, this group of ostracized and fringe believers with his analogy about the church family being a body with many different members.

Paul tells them that perception is not reality.

The treatment of others had affected their opinion of themselves and their view of their value within the church body.

They had concluded, wrongly, that they were not valuable, that they were not important.

Yet, Paul disagrees.

If you conclude that you are unimportant to the church family, you are perceiving something wrongly.

Let me offer a couple of ways this may work itself out.

Underestimating your value.

You may underestimate the value of your service and need to embrace the reality that, even if your service is small, it is important.

I don’t believe there are any irrelevant, insignificant, or small ministries in the church, but let me throw out what some may consider to be small.

“I only listen to kids say verses in AWANA” or “I can’t get out as often as I would like and all I can do is pray through the church prayer lists” or “I only work in the nursery once or twice a month” or “I only sing on the worship team once in a while”?

Really any statement concerning your ministry that starts with, “I only,” signifies that you are underestimating the value of your giftedness.

Choosing not to serve.

You may have chosen to not use the gifts God has given you within the church and as a result you don’t feel important.

Yet, the reality is that you are important and the whole church is not benefitting from your gift and is in fact not as healthy as it would be if you were to implement your gift.

There could be a number of different reasons why you have not chosen to implement your gift.

Let me acknowledge potentially the most severe.

Someone may choose to not use their gift out of pure spiritual laziness and immaturity.

Hopefully this would not be true of any of us.

Maybe, you don’t like the gift God has given you.

You may not care for the place in which he placed you.

You may want something else and as a result choose to not use the gift that God has given you.

When this choice is made the entire body is negatively impacted.

When a foot chooses to not do what it was meant to do because it desires to be a hand instead, it negatively affects the entire body.

Maybe instead of using the gifts God has given you, you pursue some other area in which God didn’t gift you.

I have experienced a similar struggle in the different youth sports I’ve helped coach.

There are always more prominent positions in any given sport and typically most of the players want to play those spots.

In football, a lot of the players want to be a running back or quarterback and most do not want to fill the role of lineman.

In baseball a lot of players want the opportunity to be the pitcher or catcher and most do not want to fill the role of outfield.

Yet what would happen if all my football players were running backs and everyone refused to block on the line?

What if we had 5 pitchers and 5 catchers in baseball and no one was willing to play right field?

The occasional pop fly to right field would turn in to a game winning at bat.

The church is the same.

Every role is important and if any role is missing, the whole body is drastically and negatively impacted.

Church fails to equip or release.

The church may have done a poor job in assisting you in serving, either because we failed to equip you or because we have not allowed you to serve in the areas you are gifted.

Sin can be present within the church structure and this sin would negatively impact the functioning of the church.

If bias, prejudice, or nepotism affected your ability to serve, the whole church body would be negatively impacted.

If service is established based on “who you know” instead of God’s giftedness, the whole church is hurt.

There are going to be consequences to the entire church when any one of its members undervalues their role within the church body.

When an ear stops hearing because it wants to be an eye, everyone feels the consequences.

When a hand chooses to be a foot, it’s no wonder that we walk around kind of wobbly.

When people choose to not use what they have, a church tends to compensate by forcing people who are not gifted in those areas to do them anyway.

If the hand refuses to work, the foot may be forced to pick up a fork and feed the body.

It might get done, but it’s going to be messy and take a lot longer.

MACARTHUR.

Because a hand is not doing its job, a foot is called on to do that work, and so on.

If most of the congregation is inactive, the active members must do work for which they are not equipped.

The answer to an inactive organism, however, is not an active organization.

Carnality cannot be overcome by compensation.

No human substitutions can satisfactorily replace God’s plan and God’s power.[2]

Correction # 1: Trust God’s sovereignty in his placement of you in the body (18).

Whether or not someone has chosen to not use their giftedness because they are lazy or because they don’t really like it or because they would prefer some other gift – whatever the reason, the solution to this problem is contentment and trust in God’s sovereign decision of where he chose to place you within the body of Christ.