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“What Part Am I?”

Will Harris
08/25/24 - Sun AM

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Romans, the 123th chapter starting in verse three, reading from the ESV version as well.

For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think.

But to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned for as one body, we have many members and the members do not all have the same function.

So we though many are one body in Christ and individually members, one of another having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.

Let us use them if prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness.

Let love be genuine, abhor what is evil and hold fast to what is good.

OK. All right, good morning. Everybody.

I really appreciate the opportunity to stand before you this morning and speak to you for just a few moments.

This is something that I've been looking forward to for a while.

Uh Ever since the afternoon was uh presented, offered to me something I've been excited about and um hopefully this will be somewhat beneficial to you in hearing this.

It was beneficial to me for preparing it and going back through this as I was preparing this morning.

If you like, you can go ahead and turn your Bibles to First Corinthians chapter 212 will mostly be there this morning.

Uh As we go through our study, I appreciate Mr Jim and the songs that he's led, he did an excellent job selecting those to go along with our idea this morning as well as uh Jim for the reading a moment ago from Romans.

All right, we're working good deal.

All right.

So many of, you know, uh know me and what it is that I do for a living.

But if you don't, I'm a pharmacist by day.

Uh And so when I was in school, I had to take a lot of science classes and specifically, I had to take a series of classes called anatomy and physiology or A and P for short.

Uh And as you might imagine, these classes went into a lot of detail about the study of the body and uh specifically the functions of the various systems and organs that made it up.

So if you break down the anatomy versus physiology part, you kind of have two different sides of that.

Anatomy is the study of the structures of the different parts of the body themselves.

And in physiology is the study of the function of those structures, both individually and then on a larger scale, how they function together as systems and how those systems interact with one another to form the entire body.

Uh It's a lot of detail.

It was very interesting.

Uh But in a sense that's what I want us to talk about today.

Now, don't worry, there's no test at the end of this, there's no lab practical, no dissections, anything like that.

But as you might have imagined, what I want us to talk about is not a physical body, but to talk about the Lord's body.

And that is the church and more specifically on an individual basis.

I want us to ask the question, what is my function?

What part do I play in the body?

All right.

So let's go ahead and turn to the first Corinthians 212.

And I want to start off by reading this passage here.

This is a little bit of a lengthy reading.

Uh But this is gonna help set us up for the remainder of our discussion this morning, first Corinthians 214.

And we're gonna pick up now in verse 12, it says just as the body through though one has many parts, but all its many parts from one.

So I'm gonna have to read off my page.

My eyes are not that good.

First body is one has many parts but all the members of that one body being many are one body.

So also is Christ for one by one spirit, we were all baptized into one body where the Jews are Greeks, where the slaves are free and have all been made to drink into one spirit.

For in fact, the body is not one member but many, if the foot should say because I'm not a hand, I'm not of the body.

Is it therefore not of the body.

And if the ear should say, because I'm not an I, I'm not in the body, is it therefore not of the body.

If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing?

If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling?

But God has set all but God has now set the members, each one of them in the body just as he pleased.

And if they were all one member, where would the body be?

But now indeed, there are many members yet one body and the I cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you.

Nor again the head to the feet.

I have no need of you.

No much rather those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary.

And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable on these, we bestow greater honor.

And our unp presents parts have greater modesty, but our presentable parts have no need.

But God composed the body having given greater honor to that part which lacks it.

That there should be no schism in the body but that the members should have the same care for one another.

And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, or if one member is honored all the members rejoice with it.

Now, you are the body of Christ and members individually and God has appointed, we're gonna stop there verse 27.

OK. So what is it that Paul is talking about here?

Well, we're talking about the body and that is the church.

Uh I think we all understand the analogy that Paul is making here.

Uh The Corinthians had a lot of pride and a lot of ending going on because they all wanted to be the best or the most showing and they wanted the most showy roles within the group there.

And so Paul is trying to really make the point to them and drive home this idea that just as the body needs all of its members to function correctly.

So the church has all kinds of roles that need to be filled uh for it to function.

All right.

So this morning as we go forward into this, what I want to do is I want to take Paul's analogy that he's laid out for us here.

And if you'll allow me just a little bit of leeway, I want to take it and run with it just a bit stretch, it just a little bit, uh, to make some application here.

And I hope you'll see where I'm going with this in just a moment.

Uh, I want us to consider if we think about this analogy of the church being the body, what part is it that we play?

What part are we?

And so this morning we're gonna look at a few different roles that we might be playing within our local church.

And maybe as we go through these, you'll hear and you'll think this is the part that I play.

Now, the first part I want us to talk about is the Rs, OK. When we talk about eyes, we're thinking about vision o obviously.

And when we use the word vision in the English language, usually there's kind of two ways that we use that word.

Uh One is maybe the most obvious sense and that's talking about physical sight, uh vision with our eyes.

Uh And the other sense we use it is we talk about vision in a figurative sense.

And so we talk about vision and maybe an introspective sense being able to look within ourselves, sometimes we'll say things like that and see things about our own selves, or we'll talk about vision in the sense of foresight, being able to uh look into what we see coming down the pike, so to speak, and uh make inferences or predictions about some of those things based on our past experience, our past uh uh lives and things that we've seen uh so far.

And so when we think about this idea of vision within the local church, the local church has needs for those types of vision, both of those.

And so, first of all, we need people who have that physical vision and are willing to use it.

Uh We need people who can see and acknowledge the work that others do.

We need people who can look beyond themselves and look around them to see what's going on around them.

That sounds easy.

That's not easy.

It's really, really hard I think, es especially in our society to look past ourselves.

We get so wrapped up in what's going on in our own lives that sometimes we just neglect to see the person that's sitting right next to us on the bench.

But we need those people, we need people who are looking around and being observant.

Uh And as we think about people, acknowledging the work that's going on around them, I think that's an important role.

People who are seeing the work that those other brethren are doing and saying, brother, I see what you're doing.

I see the work that you're doing and I appreciate it.

I know that it's taking time and it's taking effort and I appreciate what you're doing there.

We see examples of that all through the scriptures.

Romans is a great example of this.

We're turning to Romans 16.

We'll look at just a couple of instances there where Paul does this very thing.

Uh Romans 16, uh and look at verse nine first and he says, greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in the Christ and ST is my beloved.

So we'd see this idea of urbanist here.

I don't know anything about urbanist, but I tell you what, I do know, Paul says he was a fellow worker and that's him seeing the work that he's doing.

Acknowledging that uh jumping down just a few verses, verse 12, Greek Tryphena and Tripos who have labored in the Lord, greet the beloved persons who labored much in the Lord.

So again, we see these people that we don't really know a whole lot about, but we see Paul acknowledging the work that they're doing, he's looking around and he's seeing the work that's going on and saying, brother, sister, I see what you're doing and I appreciate it.

It means something, it is important and that is, that is important.

It's, it can be really discouraging.

I think when we're trying to do these things and try to do what needs to be done.

And sometimes it just feels like it's for, it's for nothing.

And I'm not saying that we should be doing our works to be seen by men to receive acknowledgement from others.

But I think we all understand that, that encouragement that we receive from our brethren is encouraging.

It is helpful and it does help, help you sometimes to keep pushing forward to keep going.

Now, besides the idea of seeing other people doing good works, we need to be able to look around and see those who need our help.

We need to see those who are struggling, uh turn with me over to the first Thessalonians, first Thessalonians chapter five and jump down to verse 14.

Again, Paul writing here says, now we exhort you brother and warn those who are unruly, comfort, the fainthearted uphold the weak, be patient with them all.

And again, this is one of those verses that we read a lot.

But I tell you what if you're gonna be doing this, if you're going to be warning those who are unruly, comforting the fainthearted, upholding the weak, you know what you gotta do.

You've got to know who those people are.

You've got to be looking around and seeing who's struggling, who's weak, who's faint hearted and that takes looking beyond ourselves.

We need people who have those that physical vision and are willing to apply it and see what's going on around them.

We need that physical vision within the church.

But now I said, there's two senses that we use the word vision, there's that physical sense, but also there's that more figurative sense and we need that too within the church.

We need people who can see dangers that are on the horizon.

Uh Turn with me back to Acts chapter 123 now, um acts 20 jump down to verse 29.

Uh and this is the elders of the church at the Ephesians here being addressed and it says for, I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock.

And so you have this warning here for them to be looking out, to be looking ahead, to be looking for those dangers that are gonna be presenting themselves to the church going forward.

Um And that takes experience that takes wisdom and that takes our older members of the congregation specifically who have more of that life experience, who have seen things who have seen patterns that have played out over the years within the church within society as a whole.

Because I tell you what, there are a lot of younger people myself included in this that just don't have that kind of experience.

We don't have that kind of background, that kind of past knowledge to be able to see those patterns, those applications.

And we need you to be looking out for those things.

We need you to be aware of those things, those dangers that could be coming up that we maybe don't see.

And similarly, if we're talking about this idea of figurative vision, I also think that we need people who can see a vision for what a congregation can be, who can look for ideas and ways for us to be growing and moving forward and ways to get there.

Uh So we need other people who can be visionaries in a sense to be looking for ways that we could be growing and improving in our, in our work here.

Now, at this point, some of you are thinking about my passage from the A and you're thinking, well, that's an elder's job.

That's not my job, that's not my responsibility.

And yes, this is addressing elders and this is certainly work that does fall to the elders.

I wanna challenge you though.

That is not just an elder's job.

That is something that we need from every all of our older members who have that kind of experience.

We need you in our classes, teaching younger people.

We need you in our private, in our homes, having those conversations and helping us to see those things.

And so I want to challenge you to move past that idea that this is somebody else's job and be willing to take that on because we need those people who have that kind of vision in the church that is important.

All right.

So that's our first one.

We talked about eyes, we talked about the two senses of vision, that physical vision, that figurative vision that we need within the church.

The next part that I want to talk about the next part of the body that you might be feeling within the church.

How about ligaments?

It's one you didn't see coming maybe so in the body ligaments, uh they are connective tissue, uh they uh literally hold your skeleton together.

They're kind of the glue that keeps you from just falling apart.

If you've ever been in a, like a science classroom and you've seen the skeleton on the stand there and it's got the joints where you can pick up the elbow and move all the fingers and things like that.

It's uh articulated is what they call that.

It's held together by a series of screws and you've got little hinges and things that hold that together so that all those joints work.

Uh Obviously, you don't have that in your own body.

The what fills that role is ligaments.

They're connected tissues that hold those bones together so that when you move things around everything moves like it's supposed to, they are the connectors within the body.

We need people like that in the church.

We need connectors within our congregation.

First of all, we need social connectors.

We need people who are providing opportunities for our connections, for people to get together, to spend time with one another, to encourage one another.

And again, the the New Testament is filled with examples of people like this.

These are the people that you read about at the ends of these epistles in that last chapter, you know that we usually just kind of skim through and you've got this whole list of names create.

So and so and so and so, but if you read through those lists, it is filled with people who are acting as connectors and they're not flashy.

We don't know a lot about them, but they were using their homes, they were using their resources to provide those opportunities.

I'll give you just one.

as we look at this turn with me to Book of Colossians, and we're gonna jump to the very end of the book, chapter four, Colossians four and jump down to verse 15, uh greet the brethren who in Laodicea, in Memphis and the church that is in his house.

Again, I don't know anything about Memphis.

I have no idea who he was.

I don't really know anything about what he did outside of this, but I tell you what I do know is he was using his home and he was using the resources.

He had to provide those opportunities.

He said, well, you know what, I've got some space here.

We need a place to meet.

Y'all, come to my house, we can meet here.

He was providing that opportunity for connections.

We need peacemakers within the church.

I'm missing a bullet point.

We need peacemakers.

We need those who are willing to hope for and believe the best about our brethren.

Uh Turn with me back to First Corinthians 13.

We're not gonna read this, but uh I think we're familiar with this passage enough.

We don't have to read the whole section here.

But we're looking for those who are gonna believe the best.

And so that's gonna be those people who, when they hear something disparaging or discouraging about a brother that they're not gonna immediately just accept that at face value.

They're gonna say, well, now wait a minute.

I know brother.

So and so that doesn't sound like something he would do and they're gonna go and try to address that you're gonna say, well, brother.

So and so look, can we talk?

I've, I've heard this thing.

Can we talk about this?

Is this what happened?

If not, what really happened?

Let's try to work this out.

They're trying to hold the group together, not sow discord and tear it apart because it's often, I think that's what happens is we have people who love to stir the pot and they're trying to tear the group apart rather than pull it together.

We need people who are looking to believe the best about brethren.

And uh last bullet point up here, we need the hospitable and this goes very uh goes along very well with that first point of social connectors.

This is a related idea.

We need people who are willing to show hospitality to open up their homes and use their resources to provide those connections.

And I think sometimes when we think about hospitality, we have a very narrow, a myopic view of what that is that we think.

OK. Well, hospitality is, we clean the house, we deep clean everything.

We dust the baseboards and we clean the bathrooms up and scrub everything and we buy a pot roast and we're gonna have mashed potatoes and English peas and we're gonna invite the preacher over on Sunday afternoon.

And that's ok.

Hospitality check.

Is that, yes, absolutely.

Is that the only thing it can look like is that what it has to look like?

No, absolutely not.

And that's one of the things that I've been so encouraged by, with this group and other groups, I've been apart with too, not just this group, but I love that in our small groups that we have.

I personally have seen so many different examples of what hospitality can look like.

It doesn't always look the same and it's been diverse.

It's been interesting and I've seen so many people be creative with how they show hospitality based on the resources and the abilities and things that they have.

Uh I don't want to call a whole bunch of names here just because I don't want to miss anybody.

One that comes to my right off is Miss Wendy.

She's a librarian.

I tell you what we, I was in a small group with her, I think last time around and you know what, she has this giant amazing library at the middle school and it's got tons of space and it's got all these kids books and we had lots of kids in the group at the time.

And on a Saturday afternoon, she opened up the library and we had our small group meeting in her library at the school.

Now, does that, is that what we think about when we think about hospitality?

Does that fit our, have the preacher over for pot roast?

No. Was it hospitality?

Absolutely. Yes, it was.

And I want to encourage you to be creative, to be looking for those opportunities to use what you have available at your disposal to show that hospitality to others.

It can look a lot of different ways.

OK. So we've got two.

Now, we've got our eyes, we've got our ligaments.

Next one, there's be smokers muscles.

This is maybe one of the most difficult categories to talk about because it's so broad.

There are so many different ways that this can look.

But broadly speaking, what we're talking about here is the mode of power within the church.

These are the people that make things happen.

Uh And again, it can look a lot of different ways.

Uh So here, if you ask 50 different people and talk to 50 different people, you could get 50 different answers for what this looks like.

But broadly speaking, these are the people that when you need something done anytime of the day or night, you know, you can call these people.

Every group I've ever been a part of has these people in it.

And that's amazing.

Um Again, I don't want to start calling names cause I, there are so many amazing people here that I think do fit this bill.

Uh David and Betty Williams come to mind immediately though.

I know if anything were to come up, I could call them and I, I really do believe that they would do anything that they could to help out.

And there are so many of you like that here that try to fill uh fill that role.

But this is a broad category because everyone has different skills and different abilities that can be brought to the table.

So I want to look at a couple of examples here.

Uh Turn with me the first Timothy first, I'm sorry, not first in first Thessalonians, I wanna look at Timothy first Thessalonians chapter three two and verse one.

It's uh again, Paul writing.

Therefore, when we could no longer endure it, we thought it good to be left uh in Athens alone and sent Timothy, our brother and minister of God and our fellow laborer in the gospel of Christ to establish you and encourage you concerning your faith.

TIMS is an amazing example of this.

Uh It just seems like as you read through Paul's work in The New Testament, he just comes up over and over that anytime Paul needed something needed somebody to go and take care of and shore up a group just it seems like Timothy was always just right there.

He says, yeah, you can send me, I'll do it.

I've got this send me and he was always willing to go and do what needed to be done.

And I think we can, it's easy to glaze over sometimes.

Just what a, um, commitment this was.

You didn't hop on a Greyhound, you didn't hop on um, an Uber or something like to go there.

This was a major ordeal to go to these places and you weren't there for a week or two.

You were there for months, maybe a year or two.

This was a huge commitment and travel, a huge commitment in time and resources.

This was not an easy thing and Timothy was always willing to do that and step out there.

I think about people like Aphroditus.

If you turn up the book of Philippians, Philippians two, and we're gonna pick up in verse 25 here.

Yet I consider it necessary to send to you a parody as my brother, fellow messenger, the one who ministered to my need since he was longing for you all and was distressed because you had heard that he was sick for indeed he was sick almost unto death.

But God has mercy on him and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.

Therefore, I send him the more eagerly that when you see him again, you may rejoice and I may be less sorrowful receiving.

Therefore, in the Lord, with all gladness and hold such men in esteem because for the work of Christ, he came close to death, not regarding his life to supply what was lacking in your service to me.

So again, here's somebody who was willing to drop everything he was doing and go do what needs to be done at risk of his own life.

He put his self in danger to make sure that Paul's need and the need of the gospel was stilled in this time.

Now, those are people that when you think about the muscle within the church, OK?

Those examples make sense.

Those people that may immediately come to mind.

But I want to look at one more before we move on from this.

If you'll turn with them back to Acts nine.

Because again, this is not always the men who are able to drop everything and go to a foreign country.

That is one way that work and motive power, this muscle can look but it doesn't have to be that turn with me back to acts chapter nine.

Now we'll look at the example of Dorcas or Tabitha.

And I just want to read a couple of verses here.

We're familiar with the story as the whole of this account.

But I want to look at the things that are said about Tabitha and the work that she was doing, it says in verse 36 at JPA, there was a certain disciple named Tabitha which is translated Dorcas.

And it says this woman was full of good works and charitable deeds, which she did.

And I jump with me down to verse 39.

This is Peter's coming up to see her and Peter arose and went with him.

And when he had come, they brought to him, uh brought him to the upper room and all the wills stood by him weeping, showing the tunics and garments which Dorcas had made while she was with them.

This is somebody who did not necessarily have the ability to pick up and go to a foreign country.

She did not have the means to go do things like that.

That wasn't even necessarily her role within the church.

But what she did do was she looked around her, she used that vision that she had and she saw needs, she saw people around her who needed clothing, who needed just basic physical provisions.

And she said, you know what I can do that, I've got a needle and thread here at my disposal.

I can make that happen and you see the evidence of this as these people are coming and they're showing Peter the things that she's done for them over the years and how much she meant to them.

And you see that it really did matter.

It made a difference to these people.

And so this is the people who, these are the people who are seeing those needs and doing what it takes to meet those needs.

So many different ways that this can look.

All right, get all my slides here.

Now, there are a lot more useful parts that we could discuss and frankly we just don't have time if we could go on all day talking about things like this, things like the heart, we could talk about the mouth, we could talk about the feet, but there is one more that I think we do need to talk about.

That's the appendix. Alright.

Maybe you've been sitting here this morning and you're listening to these different roles that we could be filling with the church.

I don't think that's me.

That doesn't sound like me.

And so I would want to challenge you.

Now if you haven't heard anything yet that you feel like fits you and your role, maybe it's time for some self examination.

Maybe we need to stop and think.

Am I the appendix?

Ok. When we young, our appendix functions as part of our immune system, it actually does perform a role.

Uh but as we age, it stops functioning in this way and essentially for the rest of your life.

Once you get past a few years of age, it really doesn't do anything.

Uh If you're lucky, it just sits there for the rest of your life.

And that's that uh if not, occasionally, it will remind you that it's there and become inflamed and try to kill you.

Ok. Now, unfortunately, we can have people who play a similar role within the church.

They start out excited, they start out active and they're really getting in there.

They're doing things, but quickly they start to do less and less and they start to taper off and these are the people that are present, they show up on Sunday morning.

But past that, maybe you just, you don't see them a whole lot.

You don't see them at group meetings and get togethers and things like that and you just, you don't see a whole lot of them.

And what that leads to is as they start to draw back and become more and more disconnected from the group as a whole from the church.

It leads to bitterness, at least bitterness towards others and that inflammation that can cause problems.

Uh turn with me over to Hebrews chapter 12, Hebrews 12.

And I want to pick up in verse 14, pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord look carefully lest anyone should fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness spring up cause trouble.

And by this many become the file.

And so this is what happens.

I've seen this play out that you have these people that draw back and they're less connected and they're not spending time with their brethren, they're not talking to the people around them and they start to believe all sorts of crazy things about the people around them that they feel like because they're not talking to their brother that somehow will.

I think he slighted me.

He didn't shake my hand this morning when I came in.

He didn't say anything to me.

I think he stud me and it snowballs.

This sounds crazy.

But I've seen this play out personally in my own life and I don't have that much experience, but I've seen these things play out.

They start to believe all sorts of things.

And is any of it rooted in reality?

No, but because they're not spending the time and being involved with people around them, they have all sorts of misplaced ideas about people's motivations and what people really believe about them.

And this is dangerous.

This is really dangerous.

These are the people that can tear a group apart.

I've seen that happen too.

And so as we think about this, this morning, maybe we need to ask ourselves if you don't see any other group that you fit into.

Am I the appendix?

Ok, at various points in our life.

The interesting thing about this is we may find ourselves in this position and the good news is that you don't have to stay there if you find that you were on fire that you were active.

But you see looking back over your walk as a Christian that you have started to drift away, that you've shrunk back that you are not as active as you used to be that you start to have doubts and insecurities about the people around you that can be fixed, you don't have to stay like that.

Uh And the other interesting thing is we think about these roles is that I've talked about these as if it's a very singular thing that I'm a this or I'm of that.

And the truth is that we should be all of these good roles.

That is uh we all need to have vision that we're using.

We all need to be looking to be connectors and use those opportunities.

We all need to be using our muscle to do the work of the church.

The church needs you to step up and fulfill those roles and abilities that God has given you.

So I ask you two things this morning, if it is possible that you have fallen back that you have become that appendix.

I ask you not to stay that way, make that right.

We, we would be glad to talk to you to pray with you to encourage you to help build you up because we've been there too.

I've been there.

The people around you have been there.

We don't want you to stay like that.

That's not a good place to be.

That's not a good place for you.

That's not a good place for the church.

Now, if you're sitting here and you have not obeyed the gospel, well, you're not a part of the body.

Yet, you're not any of these things.

You have not put on Christ in baptism, you have not become a part of his body.

And again, I would ask you to think seriously about that.

We are not guaranteed any set amount of time past what we have right now.

And the most important decision that you can make in your life is a decision to put on Christ and baptism to become part of that spiritual body so that we can have life forever with him in eternity.

I would ask you to seriously consider that if there's any way that we can help you with any of those needs, we would ask that you come for it now as we stand and sing the invitation.