1st Corinthians chapter 12. We turn to again 1st Corinthians 12 and verse 12. Just a brief passage this morning which kind of sets us up for a longer analogy that he brings in in the following verses. But Paul is dealing with an issue in the Corinthian church which is perhaps not so unusual when you have people. People just get all kind of in each other's faces and they get all kind of proud and arrogant and they get condescending toward other people. Or there's this tendency toward enforcing, because that's really what you have to do so many times. in forcing a unity that isn't there. It's not that kind of unity, or excuse me, it's not that kind of uniformity, that everybody needs to be exactly the same, and if you're not like me, therefore you are less than. I'm the better one, and obviously you're less than. When we force a uniformity, some kind of a forced conformity, or an issue where there can be no variance, there can be no differences among us, and not in a substantive way, more in just a practical, tangible, obvious way. There's just so much that is an enforced uniformity versus a good unity. When we have something like this, when we have just a forced uniformity where everything is the same, every same form, Same manner, same degree, as the dictionary defines uniformity. That's not what we're after. And what kind of joy is that? That's kind of just lifeless. I mean, everybody's happy. because they're Lego people, right? But it's not a joy-filled situation. It doesn't bring happiness and a sense of optimism, does it, when you look at a picture like that? But when you look at God's intention for diversity, a unity, definitely, in our created order, made in the image of God, and yet different. And even just in the very nature of skin tone, as the song goes, you know, Jesus loves the little children of the world, brown and yellow, black and white, just in his sight. Let's change those lyrics. You probably have heard this. I think it was actually some folks in Brazil that suggested this. A change in the lyric. Shades of brown from dark to light. They are precious in his sight. And that's what we are. And we are that based on various skin tones, issues in the skin and so forth. Just as an example of A unity of humanity. We're all God's creatures all made in his image, whether saved or unsaved. We are made to glorify and represent Christ the Lord in in this age, but there's a whole diversity just based on skin tone based on height and we were to line up all of our people based on height or facial hair or, you know, what state are you from? I mean, there's just so much inherent diversity in our congregation and in our families and in our situations and in our churches. And so we're so grateful for God's intention in that way. We don't want to have a false uniformity where everybody has to be doing this or that or not doing this. that can diffuse, that can reduce the issues to that's the most important thing. And in the Corinthian church, the most important thing to them, at least in this context, was, hey, do you speak in tongues or don't you? Because I do, and I do it very well. And if you don't, I'm sorry for that. I'm the one that has all got it together, and I have more of the spirit than you do. And Paul is addressing this head on, because it's the whole issues of fellowship undercuts the whole idea of how does this church work together? How can we relate to one another? And what about the gift to the spirit? Is the spirit only given to some? Is the spirit given more, or is more of the spirit given to some people and less to somebody else? Is there some kind of a variance or degree by which the spirit comes upon different Christians? And so Paul addresses this very carefully, very directly. spends two or three even chapters discussing this particular issue of the gifts of the spirit and how God has wonderfully blessed his body, the church, with a variety of gifts and of ministries and of effects or the outcomes of these gifts. And so we've looked at that the last several Sundays. Here in verse 12, he brings the analogy of the body By the way, I didn't show pictures of body parts because that's kind of macabre. Distressing, perhaps, so I used happy Lego people. I hope you were blessed by that. 1 Corinthians 12 and verse 12. 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. For also by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one spirit. For also the body is not one member, but many. This is a text we'll look at this morning. Paul brings this analogy, this metaphor of the body, the human body, and he presents it in such a way, building or stating just a basic truth that, hey, you have one body, but lots of parts, lots of members. In fact, if you were to look at how he develops his case, He gives this analogy, he's using the human body as the metaphor, and then he says, he applies it to Christ, and we'll see, well, what about Christ? We'll see that in just a moment. But he talks first about, from the perspective of the body, here in verse 12, even as, we know this to be true, I mean, just look at each other, we have different parts, and he's gonna elaborate on this analogy in verses 15 and following about the foot and the ear and the eye and all these different parts. But he says, the inherent reality is, there's one body. And there is one body, yet it has many members. So from one perspective, he's talking about the body is one. And then he comes back and comes from the perspective of the members are many, but one body. So he's looking at it from two different perspectives, from the body down to the members, and from the members back to the body. And it's just one integrated whole. You can overemphasize one aspect. You've heard about people, perhaps. I wouldn't be one of them, by any means. But people who skip leg day, you know, I don't know if you've ever done that, if you've ever interacted with somebody who is all about the upper body, all about the biceps, all about the, and forgets to do the, you know, the puny legs down there. And that's, you don't do that. You've got to exercise and deal with the whole body. You go and realize, wow, we need to emphasize the reality, the effect of the whole body, not just one part, not just the ears, not just the chin, the whole thing works together. But there's still just one body. Now he's using this analogy. He's talking about the church, right? He's talking about the body of Christ. But he says, look, we all know this to be true. There's one body. And he emphasizes this. The body is one. And yet has many members. So we emphasize this reality here. The body is one. And yet all the members of the body, though there are many, are one body. So he's just saying the same thing two different ways. And he says it again in the next verses. Why? Because it's such an issue in the Corinthian church. They were so much interested in that piece of the body, that part of the body, that speaking in tongues or prophecy. It was a close related thing. And they had it kind of in reverse order. And Paul said, no, prophecy is actually more important than tongues. And boy, I wish that you could all Okay, speak in tongues, yes, but how much more to prophesy, because that edifies the church. But even that, whatever you do must be done in love, not in a self-centered, you know, you use your gift for your own glory, for you to get the accolades, the pat on the back, and so forth. No, you use your church to bless the congregation, to bless the church. And by the way, when we speak about this, using our spiritual gift, we can say, well, I have the spiritual gift of whatever, Well, how do you use that? And you say, well, I'm part of the universal church. I'm part of the big church worldwide and all this. And so I use my gift there. How about you use it in a local church? How about you use it in, in fact, why even, we don't see the term local church in the scriptures. We see church, and we can understand sometimes it's referencing the whole church, a timeless group of people. But most times in scripture, it's talking about a congregation. just a group of people who have covenanted to some degree together and agreed we're going to worship together, we're going to fellowship together, we're going to share meals together, we're going to share the scriptures together, we're going to minister the Word of God in a local congregation. So when we talk about a one body, our thought should not immediately go to the universal church, it should go to The congregation, the local church, this body, this congregation, it references Christ. We are Christ's body here in Grant County in northern Kentucky, and yet We are part of something bigger, but we ought not go skip the little part, right? We ought not skip the local church part. We need to be with God's people to receive and to give the gifts of the spirit, the ministry of the word of God, to share the promises of God. So he says, look, the body is one, but it has many members. They're trying to make, the Corinthian church is trying to make everybody be like the one, you know, the elite, the super spiritual people, the knowledgeable people, the wise people, Paul's been addressing this issue from the very first chapter about wisdom and knowledge and glory and all this stuff and just pompous kind of attitudes. Lay down your life. Remember Christ Jesus, our Lord, was crucified. That's a pretty humbling, humiliating proposition to consider that our Lord whom we worship was crucified and we should walk a crucified life. Not a filled up of our own selves, not me versus other people. No, we use what God has given to us to serve other people. The body's one, but it has many members. Don't try to force a uniformity that everybody needs to be like you. Or you need to be like those people, because there's a feeling perhaps of embarrassment. All I have is this. Is that worth anything in the church? Absolutely it is. If God has given that to you, you use it for the advancement of the church. You use that humbly, joyfully, entrusting that God will give fruit to your work. 1 Corinthians 15, 58. Don't lose heart in well-doing and all your good works. God is faithful. He will allow us to. perhaps in this life, but definitely in the next, see the result, see the fruit from our labor. So again, he's talking about this idea of the body. Many times Paul uses this analogy. Speaking of the church, he uses the analogy of the human body. He speaks about the body of Christ. He speaks about Christ as head. Ephesians chapter one, actually several times in Ephesians, he says, God the Father gave Christ Jesus as head over all things to the church, which is his body. This is the body of Christ. Ephesians 4 and verse 4, there's one body and one spirit. And then a little bit later in chapter 4 verse 12, the building up. Why does God give gifts to us? For the building up of the body of Christ. And then, you know this verse, at least you know the first part of it. Because we ought to do this very carefully, but why should we do it? And what should our methodology be and our purpose be? Ephesians 4, 15, and 16, speaking the truth in love. You know that. You've heard that statement. Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, again, that whole idea of the whole body being joined and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the properly measured working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Paul uses this analogy of the body so many different times and it's so powerful because we recognize we need to be building each other up. We need to be building and investing time and energy and words and love, comfort, mercy, all these things for the building up of the body in love. Notice he says it two different ways there in Ephesians 4, by what every joint supplies. Not those few joints, what those more important joint supplies. No, what every joint supplies. And according to the properly measured working of each individual part. We've got to have... You know, it's just amazing. You hear... Perhaps you've suffered by it from some malady. And it's just one little, small little thing in your body. But man, I mean, a splinter. I had a splinter in my thumb yesterday. That took some attention, and constant attention, because I don't have the thing to get it out yet. But it kind of was a preoccupation to me. And I got it out. Your prayers are answered, so it's all right. But do you realize how many things could go wrong in our bodies? Chemically, mechanically, just any number of things. Overabundance of this, underabundance of that can just throw us for a loop. We need all the pieces, all the wonderful little parts of the body to work together, to work wonderfully according to God's design for the growth of the body. for the building up of itself in love. We are after this idea. The body is one. We can't say that, well, I'm a part of this body over here. No, you're part of this body. You need to do your work here in God's design. It's a free agency, right? You can come and go, but be committed to a local church and serve and minister and use the gifts that God has given to you. The body's one, but it has many members. We emphasize that. Converse is true. All the members of the body, though there are many, when we need each individual part, they're one body. So we can't say, well, and he's going to get into this analogy further in verses 15 and following. Well, you know, the ear can't say to the eye or the hand or the knee or whatever. You can't. I don't need you. Or conversely, well, if I'm not an eye, then I'm really not worth anything in the body. Really, we need each individual part. And he talks about the lesser known quantities of the body, the spleen, or the ACL, or the thing under your foot. All the different pieces. I mean, you can get so tedious about this. You have all the members, but they're one body. And he emphasizes this for the sake of correcting these false views of the Corinthian church, that I'm more important, or those people aren't important at all, or I'm not important at all, and I'm really having the benefit of the church, and so I should just kind of leave, or just come late and leave early kind of thing, because I don't really have anything to contribute. Each person has an opportunity to serve in Christ's body, in his church. And he even summarizes it this way in verse 12, just as their human body is, so also is Christ. And you think, wow, I mean, that's a pretty bold statement just on the face of it. So also is Christ, Christ himself, he's using that term, Christ, not to refer so much to Christ Jesus himself in his person, but as he is reflected in his body. which is to say it's church, right? That he's using this by way of metonymy, you know, that grammatical term, metonymy, when you use a word that is associated with something else to refer to that something else. For example, when we talk about the White House, you know, the White House said, really? I mean, you think about that. The White House is talking now. I mean, these are strange days indeed. Or the crown, the crown of England. Well, the crown is doing this and making all these rules. We're talking about the people, right? We're talking about the king. We're talking about the president or the executive administration here. So also is Christ, his body, what he represents here on earth and or what represents him rather here on earth. And this is the nature of his work here in this world, which is amazing to consider. Wow, his work, he entrusted his work to a bunch of misfits like us, miscreants, and just people that are so rude and selfish. You look at chapter 13, it's okay to read ahead. You look at the definition of love, love is patient. If you took the opposite of that, you'd have pretty much a clear definition of what the world is. Impatient, just raging and passionate about this and going different directions. Patient, kind, not kind at all, a hard nose, you know, scrabble to the top. You just look through that and say how much different Christ's body here on earth is in relation to the world and how much we stand out, or we should, not being conformed to the world or the lust thereof because the world is passing away and those who do the All that stuff will perish also, but those who do the will of God will endure forever. We recognize that. So we want to reflect our Lord Jesus Christ in such a tremendously powerful way, each individual person doing his or her part. He lists or gives two reasons. You see this in verses 13 and 14. Introduced by this phrase, for also, for also, verse 13 starts that way, verse 14 starts that way. Many would put verse 14 as a start of a new paragraph, which could well be, but it seems like logically, or at least grammatically, he is building or expressing two realities based on this analogy of hey, we're all one body, and this is why, or this is an implication of it, verse 13, for also by one spirit. So we have one body, but now we're talking about the spirit, and notice here it's capitalized, because we're talking about the Holy Spirit, not just a spirit, but the Holy Spirit, by one spirit, we were all baptized into one body. and then skipping that middle section. And we were all made to drink of one spirit. So we have one spirit, I was gonna do two, but one spirit, right? One spirit who's doing this baptizing or something in relation to baptism, as we'll consider, and drinking of one spirit. The one spirit is doing it. So in other words, we're part of one body. What makes us part of that one body is the one spirit. So for somebody to say, well, I have the Holy Spirit, what about you? That's an old high school bantering cheerleader kind of thing. But can you say that a believer, my fellow believer over here, I don't know if you have the Holy Spirit or not. And you can answer that question very quickly by looking at God's word, Romans chapter 8. If you don't have the Spirit, you're none of his. If the spirit is not in you, you're not a believer. Well, that answers that. Okay, so maybe I have more of the spirit than another person. No. The basis of anybody coming into faith is by that one spirit, and it's not degrees of magnitude or anything of how much of the spirit do you have. It is perhaps the opposite. How much of you does the Spirit have? And that's the idea of Ephesians 4 or 5, 18, being filled with the Spirit. How much influence and control and work ability, and that's not an ability measured against the Spirit's ability, but on ours, how much are we letting Christ, by His Spirit, rule and reign in our lives? Part of that is in relation to Colossians 3.16. You think, all these verses, what's this all about? Because of the way that Paul writes his letters, Ephesians and Colossians are very similar. You can almost index them back and forth. Ephesians 5.18, be filled with the spirit. Colossians 3.16, letting the word of Christ richly dwell within you. How do we give more leeway for the spirit to work in our lives, we are giving ourselves more. We are letting the scriptures of God, the writings of God dwell richly in our hearts. Well, how do we do that? Well, reading, meditating, memorizing, speaking God's word, obeying God's word. I mean, all these things gives more free reign for the Holy Spirit to do his work in our lives. So it's not an issue of how much of the Spirit do you have, it's how much does the Spirit have of you. We have an entrance by the Spirit into this body, and it's not like, well, you've only come recently, I've been here for 20 years, you know, that kind of thing, so you're less than. No, we rejoice in the work that God is doing, both in coming into this congregation specifically, but even coming to Christ. You remember the parable that Jesus told about the guy who went out to hire workers to work in his vineyard or field or whatever it was. And right at the beginning of the day and throughout the day until even the last hour of the day, the worker, the farmer brought in more workers. And we thought, whoa, we're going to get a special deal because we worked, you know, bore the heat and the toil of the day and all this. Got the same payment, right? And what was this about? And you can read the rest of his parable, but the idea is there are no second class Christians. If you're in Christ, you're in Christ. If you have the spirit, you have the spirit. And if you have a gift, use it for the glory of Christ. Use it for the benefit of the church. Also by one spirit, he says here in verse 13. We were all baptized into one body. That's our entrance. That's how we get in. It's not a force your way in. It's not a pay your way into the church. It is a gift of God's grace granted by himself. It is something that we receive by his mercy, by his grace. It's not because it is owed us, not because that we have somehow inherently, by privilege of situation or anything, which he gives some examples here, have entered into, no, it is by his grace, by his choice, it is something that we receive, this action, in fact, both actions here in verse 13, we were all baptized, it's a passive idea, it happened to us, we were all made to drink, it happened to us, it's not that I wanted a drink, it's that God gave that drink to me, he baptized me into this one body. So hey, if I am part of this body now, this body of Christ universally, and even specifically, this local church, wow, I have a responsibility. I need to work. I need to serve. I need to use my mouth, use my resources to serve and benefit other people. I need to be able to receive even that. Because sometimes we get so proud, oh, we just want to give, give, give. But when it comes time to receiving, we say, oh, I don't need any of that. I don't need you. I don't need anybody. I just prefer to give. And we see that. I mean, you've seen this around in different churches you've been part of where People are active in doing serving or active in giving financially or whatever, but when it comes time to receiving some love, whether in a, well, it's all merciful, but sometimes in a, oppositional way, admonition, trying to correct something. Hey brother, you've got this issue going on in your life, can we help you? No, I'm fine, don't need you. Wait a minute, we're part of each other. We need to receive and to give admonition, care, counsel, all these things. It's not like, you know, Ishall and impervious or beyond ability to be helped by each other. We need to have that attitude where we can both give and receive. counsel, help, benevolence, mercy, words of encouragement, words of affirmation, words of correction. We need to give and take. Well, we have this one body. being baptized into one body, the Spirit is involved with that. Now what's interesting, and I don't want to get too deep into this because this does get really deep really suddenly, and that is to say, hey, this baptism of the Holy Spirit, right, that's something additional to salvation, right? Because I've heard of people that get the second blessing or, you know, the baptism of the Holy Spirit and they speak in tongues. Or they do these wonderful hopping around and doing all kinds of things. And that's special, right? That's an additional second work of grace. Now, when you hear those kind of phrases, second blessing, second work of grace, in some respects, more of a Wesleyan, John Wesley was one who taught this. this idea of entire perfection, or entire sanctification, he would call it. And he would not acknowledge that he was entirely perfect, and entirely perfect in this life? How can that be? He said, well, theoretically, it is possible. And his understanding of it was, we would be so totally filled with the Holy Spirit, that we would love only that which Christ loves, that we would hate that which God hates, that we would be so totally committed to God's work that it is possible, theoretically, that we could be entirely sanctified. Now, he would admit, I'm not even close to that, but it's possible somebody else could be. And that would be the goal, isn't it? Wouldn't we love everybody? To be walking in faith, walking in humility, walking in love, that's what we're after. John Wesley would teach entire sanctification, the second work of grace, as something as an optional, maybe not optional, but something additional to salvation. We're saying, no, that doesn't seem, that's not how Paul describes his baptism of the Holy Spirit, or baptism by the Holy Spirit, or baptism with the Holy Spirit, or being, it's not that. Some would say, instead of the second work of grace being related to sanctification, they say, no, the second blessing, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, is that related to speaking in tongues, or doing works of miracles, or prophecy, prophetic words, or utterances, or ecstatic speech, or something like that. That's the second blessing. That's the baptism of the Holy Spirit. No, no, that's not how Paul describes it. That's not how Paul is describing it. That's not how the scripture describes it. From the Old Testament time, when God says, I will pour out my spirit upon you, and you'll do this and that and the other thing. And he says, in relation to the new covenant, I will put a new spirit in their heart, and they will have my spirit within them, and their sins will be forgiven, and they will do these other things. The idea of the spirit coming upon people, being Well, as the scripture teaches, indwelling Christians, that's not an optional thing. That's not something that is additional to salvation. That is salvation. That is conversion. That is regeneration. The baptism of the Holy Spirit, being baptized into one body, the entrance of formerly sinners, not that we're not sinners anymore, but formerly condemned sinners, now forgiven sinners into one body. That's the Spirit's work. That is what, or is it the Spirit's work? That's part of the question here. It says here, also by one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body. This idea of unity, the idea of we're part of this body of Christ, universally, timelessly, but also part of a local congregation. The question comes in, Wait a minute, when Jesus, well, when John the Baptist taught about his baptism, I baptize you with water, but one who is coming after me is going to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And they go, oh, bring that on. That's what John was looking forward to, right? And he got kind of confused about, are you the expected one or should we look for somebody else? Because I don't see you doing what I said you were gonna do. I don't see you baptizing people in the Holy Spirit. I don't see this fire coming down and the ax is being laid at the root of the trees. I don't see that judgment. Jesus, are you the expected one or should we expect someone else? Jesus is the one who is giving the spirit. Jesus is the baptizer, we would say. Notice how it said there back in Matthew 3, verse 11. I think it is that exact reference. One is coming after me who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Here, that same phrase, baptism with the Holy Spirit, is translated baptism by one spirit. It's the same preposition in Greek, here translated by, there translated with. What are you even doing? Why is that even? Well, the question is, who's doing the baptism? Is the baptism by, as it's presented here? The Spirit is doing the baptism? Or is it Christ himself doing the baptism, bringing his people into his church with, or by means of, or by the agency of, or even with the content of the Holy Spirit? In other words, the Spirit himself is indwelling each individual believer. Why is that important? Because of the Corinthian issue, I've got more of the Spirit than you do. Or maybe you, brother Christian, don't even have the Spirit and pray that God would send His Spirit. Look, if you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit is indwelling you, which is amazing to consider and also kind of frightening because have you recognized where you've taken the Holy Spirit or what you've done with your body, your Holy Spirit indwelling you, the thoughts that you've had? Because He's able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. It's not like it's beyond His Capacity to do these things and we think wow I guess I should be more careful what I do with my body, with my mind, with my words, with my actions. If the Holy Spirit is with me I've been baptized with the Holy Spirit by Christ himself. I'm no longer mine. I have been bought with a price. You remember how he said that back in chapter 6, 1st Corinthians? That we have been bought with a price therefore glorify God in your body. We by one spirit We're all brought into not looking for a second work of grace, not looking for something special. If you are in Christ, you are a Christ follower. You trust every promise of his word. You obey to the best of your ability consistently, not just, you know, you know, once a week and twice on Sundays kind of thing. But every day we're trying to learn what is the will of God. We're trying to conform ourselves by our own By our action, yes, in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. It's not like we do anything by ourselves. We have the empowerment. Whatever God commands us to do, we can do by His glory. By one spirit, not two spirits, not some don't. By one spirit, we were all baptized. And notice how Paul includes himself in this. We. not just you all, we all, and not just we, some of us, or we, the more important members of the church were baptized. No, all of us who are in Christ, all who name the name of Christ, and he lists several different examples, which in our minds, you know, Jews, Greeks, slaves, it doesn't really resonate with us. We don't really, it doesn't have that same punch that it had in the first century. When you talked about Jews and Greeks, it would be Jews versus everybody else. The Greeks, those Greek-speaking people, but those culturally, ethnically, worldly, yucky people over there. And it even happened in the church. Act 6, remember, the Hellenistic widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution. And so there was a big, almost a church split right at the very beginning. over what was going on, kind of a racial, religious separation over these people. And Paul says, the most significant religious, kind of ethnic religious division of people, Jews versus Gentiles, Jews versus Greeks, makes no matter. Jews are saved. Greeks are saved. You're all brought into one body. Ephesians chapter 2 makes a big deal of that. 11 through 22, I think it is, where we recognize, wow, formerly being alienated Greeks, now brought near through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. So it's not like, well, we're the Jewish people and therefore we have more. more connection, more history with God and the scriptures and so forth. And so you Gentiles, yeah, I'm glad you're here, but you can never, never attain to our level of sophistication or God loves us more kind of thing. We're God's favorite. Jews or Greeks, we're all brought in. No separation, don't consider it that way. Or conversely, the Greeks who are so filled with wisdom, we've got the Aristotle, we've got the Plato, we've got the Socrates, we've got the whatever, and we've got all the wisdom. And Paul says, you see that hill of beans? It's less than a hill of beans. Because all your wisdom, it is against Christ. The gospel is foolishness, right? To those who are perishing, it's foolishness to the Greeks. It's a stumbling block to the Jews. Jews or Greeks come together by, or if, in, or with this one spirit into this one body. That which would formerly divide us, I mean, pretty substantially, Practically speaking, Jewish shopping over here, Greek shopping over here, Greek housing over here, Jewish housing over there, the education system, the careers, the marriages, everything. It doesn't matter. It's not a significant thing anymore. In Christ, in the church, forget about it. whether slaves or free. Now we're talking about a sociological class system where, well, if you're a slave, you're less than. And Paul addressed this issue back in chapter 7, remember? If you're a slave, don't worry about it. If you can get free, great, but don't worry about that either. Just do your work. Just glorify God, however situation you are. Whether you're a slave and embarrassed about it, whether you're free and gloating in it, there's nothing to gloat about, nothing to celebrate. It's God's mercy working in and through you. Don't let those divisions, and these are just examples because, you know, we could enter into this idea, well, I'm and I hate even to give the examples, you know, I'm a northerner, you're a southerner, or I'm a card-carrying blank member, and you know, whatever else, anything, we can separate even, I don't make a big deal of this, we have blue chairs and gray chairs. You see some historical implications of that, the blue and the gray, we don't, it's nothing to us, or the right-handed, there's so many things that would divide us, and Paul says, It doesn't matter whether this or that, whether this or that, we were all baptized. We were all made to drink of one spirit. There's so much discussion on this last phrase too. What does this mean? Drink of one spirit. It is a parallel idea to what he just said about being baptized in one body, being partakers. So much of the Old Testament, particularly, this idea of pouring out the Spirit, or the Spirit poured upon somebody, or the Spirit came upon, or God gave the Spirit. And there's an analogy. the image, rather, of water being poured out. Jesus at Sukkot in John 7 talks about this water that comes upon us. In John 4, when he talks to the Samaritan woman, he's talking about this water over here, I'll give you this living water, and it'll be tremendous." And that's the Holy Spirit, both contexts talking about. So this idea of drinking, receiving, benefiting from, being nourished by this one spirit, that's what he's saying. And the impact of that is we were all made to do this. We were all given this. It's nothing that one group can say against another, or that one person over here that doesn't have the same gifts as those more important people, or therefore I'm not important at all. No. You are in this body. Use the gifts that Christ has given, as we saw, by His discretion, by His purpose. It's not a willy-nilly, well, I guess you can have this gift kind of thing. No, it's an intentional thing, entrusting to specific people in specific times, moments of time, even specific congregations, that He intentionally places us there, gives us opportunities to do it. If He does this on a nationwide basis, right, Acts 17, 20-something, where he talks about placing boundaries on nations, both temporally and geographically. Boundaries, the times and the boundaries of their habitation, he talks about. Well, if he does that globally, how much more so is it individually and in a local church level? Christ is active in his church. And then he just summarized it again in verse 14. Four also gives the summary kind of implications of this. Again, the body is not one member. You can't just say, well, I'm the most important thing, or I'm the less important thing, and I don't have any part to play. No. There's one body. But not one member. We can't just have one member, one piece of the body. We need many. We need the variety, the beautiful variety of what God has done in our lives. One person, labor cat, of old, now in the Lord's presence. We're talking about marriage. If you marry somebody who's exactly like you, one of you is unnecessary. We don't need two of the same of you. We need this and that, and it's beautiful. I don't know. I know so many people are allergic to peanut butter. God bless you. How can you live? But peanut butter and jelly. I mean, that is just what you do. Or peanut butter and chocolate. I mean, they just put those two. It's not the same. Carrots and celery. We have some carrot allergies too. It's just we need the variety. Somebody compared it to dogs. I don't know if you give a natural diet to your dogs or kibble or whatever you do, but it's like you feed the dog the same thing every day. And they're thankful for it, right? But we want something different. We don't want just kibbles and bits, maybe, sometimes in there. But we want this and that. And God blesses us with this variety, a unity under God's direction. But we should not look down on each other. Oh, you're less than me. Or, oh, that person is better than me. We just do our part, not with any embarrassment, not with any self. awareness at all. We're just serving. We're just doing our things. It's amazing the process of a little baby from fertilization to birth and then to adulthood and all. Just the different things that go on in that body. For example, the baby comes into this world, into the arms of a medical attendant or the mama or the daddy or whatever, and breathes. Why? Because that's what God said for the child. He didn't, she didn't know, but that's what happens. Just doing your part. The lungs, who had no work to do in the womb at all, now are doing their part. They have this opportunity, wonderful opportunity. Do your part. Don't take any thought to yourself. Don't be embarrassed. Don't be embarrassed about what you have versus the other gifts. Don't be condescending. Well, I have this. Just nothing of that. We all are part of this one body using all of our many members for the advancement, the building up of the body in love. That's what we're after. We want to be celebrating that Christ would be honored in our lives, that we would be totally reflecting his good and perfect will. Our Father in heaven, we're so grateful for your word. Thank you for your Indwelling each believer, we pray that we would reflect you very well. Please, would you be honored and glorified in our lives, in our ministries one to another, both in the giving of our gifts to another, the gift of helps, the gift of discernment, all these different things that you have mentioned, but also to receive the ministry of other people, to let people into our lives and to share and to present ourselves not as people who have it all together, but being vulnerable with each other, lowering our defenses one to another, and that we would humbly receive your word as it is ministered through authentic relationships. Please help us to be kind and gracious with one another. Please help us to be your people wherever we happen to be, whether we're in the church or outside. We pray that we would be reflecting your wonderful kingdom. You are the king who has entrusted good gifts to your children, and we pray that we'd use them for your glory. Please save and sanctify us for your name. We pray, amen.