when certain things come up. It is prudent for the pastor to step out of that consistent exposition of God's Word and go to another portion of God's Word that addresses that matter. And tonight, as I've already announced to you, we have the privilege of witnessing Liam Schultz come into membership. And I want to just take a moment to remind you of how big of a deal that is. in a Christian culture that minimizes the importance of church membership. In a Christian culture that has what one person has dubbed commitment phobia. In a Christian culture that in many ways has a proclivity of a failure to launch. What do I mean by that? A failure to be a man. A failure to be a woman. Children who grow up in the church will and consistently have the proclivity to hang on the coattails of the faith of their mother and father. And it's not the way it's supposed to be. As Paul said, when I was a child, I thought like a child, I spoke like a child, but when I became a man, I put childish things away. And one of the things that this young man is going to do tonight is move on to the next step. He's going to recognize that he is part of a living, breathing, mystical, sacred, holy body. The body of Christ. And he is not content to stand back and say, I'm going to be an observer. I'm going to be a spectator. with a bag of popcorn in one hand and a 64 ounce Coca-Cola in the other. No, he's going to jump in and do his part. He's going to grab a spot on the rope and he's going to pull. He's going to bear up the burdens and the sorrows of his brothers and sisters. He's going to rejoice with those who rejoice. He's going to weep with those who weep. He's going to stand against those who would be malicious and cause division. and dissension in the church. He's going to be faithful to you. He's going to be faithful to his elders and his deacons by the grace of God. And I want to underwrite how big of a deal it is. We never want Grace Covenant Church to be a place where non-members and people who are flirting with Christianity aren't forced to make a decision. One of the things about Jim Elliot, if you recall, Jim Elliot was a famous missionary who was speared to death by the tribe that he went to take the gospel to. You could read about him and be very inspired by him, but I'm willing to bet that if you were in an elevator with him, you would be waiting for that door to open. He was just one of those guys that he would always tell people, I want to be that person who is a point of decision for everyone. Say, whoa, bro, back off. Well, no, that's the kind of people that we want filling our pews. We want people who, to the outside world, are going to be a point of decision. who are not interested in Vanity Fair's popularity contest, but are interested in people crossing the finish line to get to heaven. And so tonight, as we bring in Liam Schultz to membership, and as all of us, as is our membership covenant, will reaffirm our membership vows, I want to look at 1 Corinthians 12. And this morning, I will address the first half of the chapter. And tonight, when you come back, I will address the second half of the chapter. This morning, I'm going to talk about unity and diversity in the body. And tonight, please come back, we're going to talk about weakness, honor, and suffering in the body. So let's give our attention to the reading of God's Word. I'm going to start at 1 Corinthians 12, verse 12, and I'm going to read through the end of the chapter, verse 31. Listen carefully, for this is the holy and inspired and inerrant Word of God. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. 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. For in one spirit we are all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. For the body does not consist of one member, but of many. If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less 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? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as He chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. God has appointed in the church, first, apostles, second, prophets, third, teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts, and I will show you a still more excellent way." That's part of the reading of God's Word. The grass withers and the flower falls, beloved, but the Word of our Lord stands forever, and we are grateful for it. Would you bow your heads with me as we ask the Lord for help in the ministry of the Word this morning. O Christ, open our ears and help us to listen. Open our eyes, we wish to see Jesus, for it is in His name we pray. Amen. So tonight, as we come together, we will affirm our commitment to this church as the body of Christ. And so I again want to address some thoughts in the epistle of 1 Corinthians on how to think about this. The individual spirit which runs rampant in our culture today as well as in the subculture of the church, is not unique to our day and age. Individualism, at the end of the day, is not a cultural thing. It's a sinful proclivity of our human nature. And though we can see this individualism run rampant in evangelicalism today and in the church at large, isn't it interesting that when you look back at 1 Corinthians 12, Paul is addressing the first century church, he was dealing with the same thing. But I want you to notice in verse 12 the simple logic that Paul gives us. Look at verse 12 for a moment. He says, 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. Just as there are many, but there is one, so it is with Christ. Though Christ be physically in heaven at the right hand of the Father, make no mistake, He is alive and well on the earth today. You say, well, where shall I find Christ? The answer is in His people. in the holy courts of the Lord, where you will find them worshiping Him, in the righteous deeds of the saints, first to the household of faith, and then to the world." So here's the main idea that I want you to capture and grasp and cherish this morning. To be a Christian is to be vitally connected to the body of Christ in the local church. To be a Christian is to be vitally connected to the body of Christ in the local church. You see, when we ask, where is the church? You can answer that by identifying a zip code and an address. Where is the church? Where does the church gather? There is a people who are a Holy embassy of the Kingdom of Heaven that meet all over the world. This is the church. This is the body of Christ. You want to see Christ? You have a doubting Thomas in your life? You point them to the church. You point them to the people of God. So I want you to think for a moment of somebody who's getting a transplant, okay? Of some bodily organ, right? Maybe it's a heart, maybe it's a kidney, maybe it's a liver. I'm sure you know this, but a bodily organ, like a heart or a lung, can only last four to six hours outside the body. Kidneys can only last 24 to 36 hours, and the liver can last eight to 12 hours. So this is important, Because when we think of the analogy to the church, some Christians think, I could be a Christian and not be connected to the body. Well, you're a heart that's in an ice chest. Can you survive? Yeah, you could survive for a while, right? But Christians who have a low view of Christ's body think they can thrive outside the body of Christ indefinitely. And why? Because they foolishly judge their spiritual life by their circumstances. Everything's going great. God must be smiling on me. Friends, that is a very immature way to think about the spiritual vitality of your soul. The blessings that God may be giving you may be judgment. Okay? What's going on in your heart and how that works itself out through your hands and your feet and your mouth and your ears, that's where the real test is, you see. One surefire metric of your spiritual wellness is your connection and commitment to the local church. But at this point, we have to clear some brush. Because many Christians naively think that merely confessing Christ means that they are part of the church. So I want to ask, first question this morning, first heading in the sermon, how is Paul thinking of the church in 1 Corinthians 12? He uses a body analogy, right? One body, many members. So the question we have to ask is, how is he thinking about the church? So when you ask that question, you need to have some theological furniture in the room so that you can navigate through the answer. So let me give you how theologically the Bible thinks about the church. In a nutshell, we think of the church in two different ways. They're not mutually exclusive. They dovetail together. But on the one hand, we think of the universal church, or lowercase c, Catholic church, okay? And this includes in this category what we call the militant church and the triumphant church. The universal church is all people of all times and all places that have confessed Christ. We're thinking specifically of the elect. Those whom God predestined before the foundation of the world. So it spans the lengths of time, and it spans the length of continents. But under this heading, you have the militant church, which is those Christians who are alive. They haven't died yet. And they're still in the church, and they're fighting toward heaven. That's the militant church. But then you have the triumphant church. Those are the saints who have died and are now in their souls, in what we call the intermediate state, with the Lord in heaven. To be absent from the body, Paul says, is to be present with the Lord. So under this heading of universal church, you have militant church and triumphant church. But then that is juxtaposed, listen, to the local church. Now the local church is a body of believers, listen to me, who have covenanted together to carry out the one another's in Scripture in this particular community under these elders and these deacons around this fellowship table. And they have made a commitment to be there and to be faithful. Now, that local church, again, is not... Well, there's somebody who is a Christian, but he's not connected to a local church. No, they're not in the local church. That's what we mean by local church. The Presbyterians will call it the visible church. That's fine, as long as what you mean by that is I see those who are confessing Christ. I see them. I don't hear about them. I don't read about them on my social media feed in India or in China or whatever else. I see them every week when I come to church and I worship the living God in the courts of the living God. That is the local church. So the question is, in 1 Corinthians 12, which one is Paul talking about? Is he talking about the universal church? Or is he talking about the local church? Well, I submit to you this morning, very definitely he's talking about the local church. He's talking about the local church. I want to give you five reasons why that's the case. And here's the first one. Number one, because Christ is head of the body. Though He is physically in heaven at the right hand of the Father, He is spiritually present in church every time she gathers. In other words, the local body is not a headless body. The church is not a headless horseman. What does Jesus say in Matthew 18 when He's talking about how discipline is to be carried out in the church? Well, first off, you need to note that He's talking about discipline being distributed in the church. But He says at some point where two or three are gathered together, there I am in their midst. Now, he's not talking about a Wednesday evening prayer meeting that only has two or three people, okay? A lot of times that'll happen, they'll be like, well, brothers and sisters, where two or three are gathered together, their crisis... I mean, that's not wrong, but it's not what he's getting at. He's talking about the courts of the church, when the church as church comes together to adjudicate whether somebody's going to be placed out of the congregation or stay in. And what does he say? I am there. He is there in the keys. He is there in His name. He is there when the minister is preaching the Word of God. He is there with us in a very unique way. Somebody says, well, isn't Christ omniscient? Isn't He always with us? Yes. But there's a unique and special way in which Christ is with you when you're driving to work on Monday morning versus how Christ is with us in the courts of the Lord while the means of grace are being distributed. He is here. So the body is not a headless horseman. Christ is there in the church. Secondly, why Paul is talking about the local church and not the universal church, is notice that, especially in verses 23 and 24, there are weak and less honorable members in the body. There are weak and less honorable members in the body. Well, when we think about the triumphant church, those who are in heaven, they're not weak anymore, are they? Right? They are not less honorable, are they? They do not sin. They are in the presence of the Holy Seraphim and Christ Himself. And so this cannot be talking about the universal church. Paul is talking about the muck and the mire and the blood and the grit of church life. In the reality of church life, you have weak members. In the reality of church life, you have unpresentable members, which we'll talk about tonight. In the church of Christ, you have honor, the kind of honor that throws a blanket of love over weak and unpresentable members, and the kind of honor that is based on merit, where you honor those to whom honor is due because of their efforts in the kingdom of heaven. And so we see that having weak and less honorable members in the body shows that Paul is talking about the local body. But thirdly, notice in verse 25 that there's schism in this body. Is there schism in the triumphant church? Absolutely not. Everybody's minds have been made perfect. They behold The living Christ, the corporeal Christ, the physical Christ. Nobody wants schism. Nobody even has the tinge of schism rearing up in their hearts in the presence of Christ. But in the body here on earth, there is the susceptibility of schism. And so this further shows that we're talking about the local church. By the way, when we think about this middle of the road state that some Christians like to be on, like, I'm a Christian, I'm part of the universal church, but I'm not part of a local body. Well, it's very easy not to have any division and any confrontation with weakness and unpresentable parts when you're not connected to a body. When you stay home, you don't come to church, or you come very rarely, you can choose to excise those weaknesses and those unpresentable parts and the strife and the difficulty and the messiness of relationships by just not being connected. There's no commitment. Fourthly, notice in verse 26, there are suffering members in the body. The universal church is not suffering. The souls that surround the throne of Christ, even right now, are souls made perfect, you see. But then, fifthly, there is a public, physical, and spiritual baptism into this body. Notice in verse 13, he says, we've all been baptized in one spirit into the body. And some commentators have tried to say, well, this isn't talking about water baptism. It's just talking about spirit baptism. Why? Because they want to get away from the idea that this is talking about the local church. They want this to be ethereal. They want it to be abstract. They don't want it to have teeth. Beloved, there's water in this text. This is talking about water baptism. Why? Because those who push for a universal church, as I said, try to argue that baptism spoken of here is not water, but baptism in the Holy Spirit. In other words, they just say it's regeneration. But this is clearly not the case. Paul is speaking about actual water baptism here. Not divorced from the Spirit. Obviously the Spirit is using that baptism, listen, to bring you into the local body of the church. Are you through baptism also being brought into the universal church? Absolutely. But Baptism, through it, the Spirit of God brings you into the local church. And who were the witnesses at your baptism, if it was done properly? The local church. Not the universal church, right? There weren't people streaming from India. I mean, maybe there were if you were streaming, but there's not, the church around the world is not witnessing this. And by the way, you need witnesses at your baptism. You need people that are going to say, brother, sister, I remember ten years ago when you went under those waters, you came up. You came up. You came up with Christ. That means your life is hidden with Christ. That means that the sin that you want to hold on to so tenaciously, it needs to die in the water with the rest of your past life. You came up. Live as though you have. So water baptism shows us that this is talking about the local church. Now, why is all of this important? I'm glad you asked. This is important because we live in an age of low churchism, commitment phobia, and a general suspicion of anyone with power. Our confession teaches that everyone is bound by the Word of God to be a member in a local church. 2 London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter 26, paragraph 12. All believers are obligated to join themselves to local churches when and where they have the opportunity. Likewise, all who are admitted to the privileges of a church are also subject to the discipline and government of it according to the rule of Christ. The way people typically justify not being a member is by coming to a passage like this in Paul and saying, well, this is just talking about the universal church, I'm part of the universal church. Well, the problem with that is that your feet are never held to the fire. One of the main reasons why God wants us to commit to a local church with real, sinful, frail human beings is so that we can actually practice the one and others of Scripture. You can't love one another, care for one another, show patience with one another, unless you're invested in a relationship with a particular community of Christ-confessing people. It's only a matter of time as a member in a church that you see how hard it is. And sometimes people who are less mature, once they come up against this brick wall of hardship, they hit their limit in dealing with idiots, so they think, but what they don't realize is that their limit is one inch off the ground. It's one inch off the ground. In other words, they haven't learned how to be long-suffering with people. You ever think about that word? I think in the King Jimmy, they translate the word, the Greek word that we usually see in the ESV as patience, they translate it as long-suffering. I want you to think about that, just long-suffering. That's what you have to do with me. That's what I have to do with you. That's what we have to do with our wives and our children and our deacons and our elders and those members who just always have a complaint about everything, right? Long suffering, long suffering. How, you know, we always joke about, you know, don't ask the Lord for patience, because He'll give it to you, you know. And that's why with my boys, whenever I pray for patience with them, I'm like, Lord, give us patience, but be gentle, be gentle with us, you know, don't throw us in the gauntlet, you know, don't throw us in the meat grinder, okay? And I was just telling my boy the other day, like, son, as we're talking about his skills in baseball, both my boys just trying to be a balanced parent, where on the one hand, I'm complimenting them, give credit where credit is due, but then I'm also warning them, like, don't let it go to your head, right? And I say, here's the trick. Be humble so God doesn't have to make you humble. Be humble so God doesn't have to make you humble, right? So God puts us in this test tube of sanctification called the church, and the point is to cultivate long-suffering, patience, mercy, and grace. And one of the lattices upon which our sanctification grows is diversity in the body. And that's the second heading I would like to hit this morning. Diversity in the body. God has providentially gifted the church with every kind of diversity. Diversity in gifting. Diversity in service. Diversity in resources. Diversity in experience and knowledge and demographic and color. And this is what he says in v. 13 if you look at the text. For in one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body. Look at this. Jews or Greeks getting at ethnicity, getting at culture, getting at demographic. Slaves or free, getting at different rungs in the social order of things. All were made to drink of one Spirit. This idea of drinking of one Spirit, there are rich biblical theological echoes here of Moses hitting the rock that gave forth water for all people. This is a picture of one spirit who was sent by Jesus Christ for one people. Not a spirit of hate, not a spirit of jealousy or animosity or division or backbiting, but one spirit of unity around the throne of Christ. But each one of us needs one another more than we think. And not simply at the individual level, but at the corporate level. And one of the things that Paul's getting at is, stop acting like an amputated limb, okay? You say, I'm the eye, I don't need the foot. I'm the foot, I don't need the arm. It's like, don't you realize the body wouldn't be the body without all of these things. Don't act like an amputated limb. And this is kind of like a reductio ad absurdum in verse 15 that Paul's getting at. He's reducing this mindset to absurdity. He says, because I'm not a hand, I do not belong to the body. That would not make it any less a part of the body. So there's this myopic view. Myopic means you think of those horses that race in the horses, right? And they put those blinders up on the side of its eyes. Why? Because anything that they see on the side is going to distract them from the main goal. And some people are myopic in a negative way. They don't have the main goal or the main thing in mind. They have something else in mind. It's a myopic view of the body. And yet, many in the church think this way. They think this way when they think of the church as what they get out of it. That's a myopic view of thinking of the church. What do I get out of it? Well, I would submit to you what you get out of the church, though you do get something out of the church. You should get something out of the church. But if that's the exclusive way that you think about church, that is a lopsided view of the church. The body is supposed to work in unison with all of its parts. Every time you meet with the saints, you are both receiving, but you're also giving, or at least you should be. There's a rule in leadership seminars and business seminars that they talk about. It's called the 80-20 rule. And the 80-20 rule, whether you're in a church or a business or whatever, simply says 20% of the people do 80% of the work. And that's no less true in the church, it's no less true even in our church. 20% of the people are doing 80% of the work. So it kind of reminds me of a person who has paralysis in 80% of their body and only 20% of the body is working. That person's not going to be able to get much done, right? And then what else is going to happen? That 20% that doesn't have paralysis, it's going to get worn out, right? Well, the same phenomenon happens in the church. When you have 20% of the people doing 80% of the work, there's something wrong there. And so, beloved, I give this as a gentle exhortation. If you're not serving in this church, may the Spirit of God use Paul's exhortation to woo you into the service of your king and his body. You should not be a bump on a log. You should ask yourself that question. Am I, in the context of the church, a bump on a log? Do I simply come every single Sunday as a spectator and then I peace out afterwards? Am I doing anything? We need to be doing something. And let me address another issue under this heading. Over the years, I've had people come to me and tell me that they don't feel like they belong or they haven't found their niche here in the church. Let me give you the diagnostic questions that I give to them, okay? I want you to ask, if you feel that way, you feel like I'm not really connecting, you know, this isn't really my jam, okay? Ask yourself this question. Do I come to church? That's a good place to start, right? When the doors are open, am I there? Do I go to home groups? You cannot expect to belong if you don't come. Secondly, do I take risks in getting to know people, right? There's no way around it. You will get out of the church what you put into it. So don't be surprised if you're not putting anything into the church, if you're not putting yourself out there, if you're not taking risks, if you're putting up walls, and maybe you have very good reasons for putting up walls, maybe your own experience and baggage that you bring to the table is such that you've been cheated, you've been lied about, and you're just naturally suspicious. We understand that. And I can't give you any promise that that's not gonna happen here. I wish I could, okay, but we're not perfect yet. But the church is supposed to be a sanctuary. The church is supposed to be a body of people that puts the best construction on everything, everything you say, everything you do, unless convinced otherwise. Here's another question, very, very important question. Am I coming to church for the right reasons? The main reason why you come to church is worship to and communion with the risen Christ. Mark my words, that is the most, that's at the top of the food chain. That is the reason why you come. And on a horizontal level, you are communing with fellow Christians. If any other motive is your priority, then your sense of not belonging may be due to illegitimate expectations. So for example, are you coming because your friends are here? Again, these don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. You could be coming for the right reasons. Then, oh, it's an added blessing that my friends are here. That's great. But is it flipped? Are you coming because your friends are here and everything else is a supplement to that? Are you coming because your family is here? Are you coming because your parents make you? Are you coming because you feel like you have to even though you don't want to? If any of these are the reasons you are coming, I would expect you not to feel like you belong. We need to come to worship Christ. We need to stick around to see Christ in others and to be Christ to others through love and service. But now finally this morning, I want to draw your attention to unity in the messiness of the body. Unity in the messiness of the body. Paul says in verse 27, you are the body of Christ. You are the body of Christ. The church is a living, breathing organism. We are connected to the head, Jesus Christ. So does your connection to the head show in your connection to the rest of the body? When you get frustrated with other members of the body, look to the head and remember that Christ gave His life in obedience unto death for that member. Remember that the very frustration that you feel with that member of the body is probably a similar frustration that another member feels about you. Blood was shed for unity on the cross of Calvary. Paul tells us that at one point. He says Christ was given for the unity of the church. I pray that we would have that tattooed on our minds and hearts. I pray that that would be the driving force of every conversation that we have. Every comment that we make, every thought that comes into our mind and we take it captive to the obedience of Christ. If that thought, if that word, if that conversation is militating against unity, you need to cast it out and realize That thought is coming from the pit of hell. It is a demon whispering into your ear subtly or overtly and wants to cause mayhem and chaos in the church. And it's something that you should run in the opposite direction of. Blood was not only shed for unity on the cross of Calvary, blood continues to be shed daily in the context of church life. We slay our own passions. We slay our own agendas. We slay our own pride. And even our own grumbling to put our brothers and sisters first. If you find that hard, I want you to know that you're not alone. But I encourage you to put your eyes on Christ this morning. The head. I want you to see His humility. I want you to see His patience. I want you to see His grace. See how He gathers all His sheep about Him and loves them and cares for them individually. And I want to remind you this morning that you are among those sheep if you have repented of your sins and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. And as one of those sheep, the Lord wants to put you to work. The Lord wants you to be involved in the body. The Lord wants you to repent of any apathy or indifference that you have, any suspicions that have created walls, and He wants you to press in to the life of the church. And in so doing, we showcase the beauty of unity in diversity, all working through love. Let's pray. Our great God and Father, this morning we thank