Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, October 17, 2024. 1 Corinthians 12 Christ in Congregation
Good Morning, Good Morning my brothers and my sisters and welcome to a wonderful discussion based off of 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Today we discus what it means to have Christ in the congregation – and be a congregation that is in Christ.
I pray that this talk challenges you and strengthens you, and I pray as I always do that you will go to church – IT’S IMPORTANT!
This is a video recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, October 17, 2024. Watch here via the YouTube link!
This is an audio recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, October 17, 2024. Listen here or through your favorite podcast app!
This is a transcript from the audio of this episode of Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, October 17, 2024
Good morning. Good morning, my brothers and my sisters. Welcome to a chilly Thursday morning in the church town church. Well, it’s not chilly in the church town church of God. It’s chilly in church town, which actually doesn’t exist anyway. So is it chilly if church town is not a real town? Well, church town is a real town. It’s just that that real town is in Lancaster County. They call this place church town, but it’s a Boiling Springs address. Some are Carlisle addresses. Some are mechanics, Berg addresses. But they call the little town church town and always have it as a has a long history here of changing the name and then changing it back. But okay, here we are. I digress. I’m already down a rabbit hole. This is church town. This is the church town church of God. And the beeping in the background that you hear is a hidden fire alarm that needs its battery changed. I don’t know where it is. How many people in your homes have hidden or you have fire alarms and then they beep and you’re like, where is that beeping coming from? I’m going to have to track it down and just started beeping, of course, right before I hit the button. But we’re here. It’s Thursday morning. You can hear the change in weather, the change in seasons in my voice. Oh, look at that. You hear it? Did you hear it? I know where is that fire alarm? Maybe it’s upstairs. I can’t find it. Beep. It just beeps. Okay. We’ll track it down. I don’t see it anywhere. I can hear the thing though. Well, good morning and welcome. It’s Thursday. It’s a chilly Thursday tonight at the church. Randy Simpson will be here with a special guest. The concert says seven. There’s the altar of the church. I love the altar of this church. I love this church. I told the young people, I really hope that you grow to love this place as much as I do. And I hope that good Lord doesn’t return. You raise your children because you can, you can be embedded in a place. There’s nothing wrong with that. Making an idol out of it and saying that all that matters in my faith is this place is over the top. That’s not right. But saying this is where I’m rooted. This is my place. These are my people. I’m going to make a commitment. That’s what we talk about. That first step of leadership, if you will, of example ship is becoming a member and it’s not there. No. Well, I mean you are eligible to lead ministries. You are eligible to, to vote and you’re eligible to hold a seat at council. Good morning. So those things are very true. But really the statement that you’re making is I’m here. I’m going to be, I’m going to stay here. And that is not beneficial to anyone other than hopefully you. Well, no, it’s hard to describe, isn’t it? Because when you talk about membership, people get all kinds of crazy ideas. The benefit is mutual to be sure the body benefits from your commitment. You benefit from the foundation. There you go. And for me, that’s what it’s all about. It’s not like, Oh good. I can report to the denomination. We have another member. That’s not, no, no, I don’t even report to the denomination and stuff like that. Good morning, Cheryl. No, I haven’t figured out the problem with word. I decided to take the Facebook to see if anybody, one time I, my HP computer was acting up and the person that saw it was a computer tech and a friend of mine, a former student and fixed it right away. But this word, Mike, I am today I’m going to research. Can you delete and reinstall Microsoft word without any harm to your filing system? Cause there’s a lot there. A lot. So anyway, that’s, that’s where I don’t know where we got off on membership and all of those different things because we were talking about a place. Can you really, really love a place? Can you invest in a place? Can you be comfortable in a place? There’s the chirping. That’s going to make me mad, insane, but I’ll be all right. A lot of people would argue that I’m like right there. Anyway, maybe if you made me spend the night in the sanctuary with a chirping fire alarm, that would be it. That’d be it. That’s all she wrote for Brian. I would be climbing the walls like a spider looking for this malfunctioning fire alarm, smoke detector. We’ll find it. We’ll find it. Good morning everybody. Father, we pray that your word will be heard throughout the world today. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray for your wisdom, your inspiration, your leadership will. We pray that we are speaking in thinking in and living in your will. As we pray, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In Jesus name. Amen. Oh church, church, church. I talk a lot about church. We talked about that on Tuesday. Turning on the lights over the years has been an awful lot about Christian theology. There’s no doubt about that. What is Orthodox and what is not, what is right and what is wrong. And we also talk an awful lot about church and doing church and what church. I know I got to change the batteries because I can’t find the thing. I can’t find it. All I hear is this, you’ll hear it. If you listen, if I’m not talking, you’ll hear it. I got to find it because church is important. Church is that special creation of Christ upon the deliverance of God’s Holy Spirit. It is the mystery that was being withheld from both man and angel alike. And then when the gospel was to go out beyond the Jews, when the gospel was to be delivered to all people, what is the vehicle? What is the vessel? What is the institution? How was God going to do it? It is his church, the ecclesia of people who believe. And now we gather and we share the gospel one with the other every week. We stay in communication all week long. We’re praying with each other. We’re praying for each other. We’re gathering in congregation. We’re gathering for Bible study. We’re gathering for all the, you know, and then on Sunday we gather and we sing and we pray and we worship all of that 24/7, 365. We want to grow and become the disciples of Christ that he wants us to be. He knows we can be. Now we go. Now that the church is the light and you are a light. All of these other funky functions that we think the church should be doing or is about, or all of the reasons why we create churches, we collective humanity, collect, create churches to serve ourselves, to demonstrate our power, to create a cultish environment, to gather money, whatever the case may be. We have to be able to discern the difference between a church that is the bride of Christ that is functioning in the will of God that is providing for the believers who can then provide for the unbelievers and a church that is not that, like I said, all those other categories that I just mentioned. And so that’s why we talk an awful lot about church. Also, as a pastor, there is a weight of responsibility to do this thing correctly. There’s a weight of responsibility attached to that. I remember, and I shared this story before, as I’m being led into ministry, as I’m being trained at the seminary, as I’m being trained under my mentor here at church town, we created a youth group. That was one of my first lessons in faith because I said, he said, we would like you with your teaching experience and all of that, we’d like you to create a youth group. And I said, but there are no youth. He said, that’s because there is no youth group. We spent six months structuring, praying, doing all of the things. And we sat down that evening in January and there were seven teens around this table. And I’m like, okay, now I’ve been teaching for a well over 20 years at that point in time. And I taught a lot of things, but the weight of responsibility of what I was about to teach to just seven teens really fell upon me because now it’s not a matter of two plus two is five. I’m sorry. That’s wrong. Now it’s a matter of heaven or hell. And so you transfer that to a leadership role in the church local, which is a part of the church universal. And man, if I don’t get this right, souls are at stake. What is our purpose? What is the mission? What does scripture say repeatedly? What is the purpose of the ecclesia of the gathering? So that’s why we talk an awful lot about church because we want to get it right. And I want everybody who hears these words to say, oh, that’s really not what’s happening. When I go to church on Sunday, it’s kind of wacky. Like there’s none of that. You should be able to discern or yes, I’m embedded right where I need to be. Ye praise God for this place, wherever you are across the world. Christians need to be deeply steeped in the word of God in all ways. So we can have those conversations with non-believers about salvation so that we can have those conversations with non-believers about pick a topic, healthy human sexuality, what ministry looks like and who can be in it, what churches look like and what their function is. Pick a topic and we can discuss it. We, I, we, and we can open as we said on Tuesday and we say constantly the breadth and the depth of the entirety of the word of God, not just a few verses. I was on one of my Bible studies, online Bible studies and it is a Calvinist was there. Let’s just, I’ll just make this simplify it because there’s layers to reformed theology, but somebody was pushing back. And again, we just got done talking about this here at church town and the person just said, how do you explain Romans nine? Gotcha. Okay. Read it. Right. Seems like it’s all about predetermination who saved and who’s not and all of that. Okay, fine. How do you explain Romans 10, which appears to be the exact opposite. So there’s more to it. You can’t just say, we’re almost done. That’s it. There’s no, nothing else in all of the Bible. There’s a lot in the rest of the Bible. So it’s worthy of investigation. It’s worthy of study. It’s worthy of going deeply into the word so that you can sit and have conversations that are beneficial, mutually beneficial. So there you go. Biblical literacy. We’ve been on this kick for years here at church town and I’ve said this before. There’s been people from the conference who have come in and said like, there’s a lot of scripture and your Sunday morning services. Don’t you think you should back it down? Literally telling me to use less Bible every Sunday because you know, people just can’t handle it. Well, that’s what we’ve been doing for two generations, if not more. Now we’ve been lowering the bar, the expectation, same as in public education, lowering the bar, lowering the bar. And the idea is that we want equity. We want people to get over that bar. So instead of pressing in with high expectations and good teaching and good support and knowing that people can do this and coaching them to be successful, we lower the bar. That’s easier all the way around. It’s easier for the person who’s learning and growing. It’s easier for the supposed teacher and we’ve been doing it in church, lower the bar, lower the bar until we’re only preaching. What does the Andy Stanley say about preaching? You should only ever preach about money, marriage, sex and stress. That’s all people want to hear about. Really? That’s really going to make great disciples. That’s really going to make great people who when they see a human being crying on a park bench and they sit beside them and they say, “Can I help you in any way?” And this person lays on them a tragic death or a situation or whatever. And can I pray with you? Why would you pray with me, God? Why did, because God did this to me and I hate him. Can you continue that conversation with that person? That’s discipleship. Well no, because I’ve only ever been preached to about money, marriage, sex and stress. That’s why we do what we do. That’s why I say when the podcast comes around and the YouTube channel comes around, share it, share it, like it, share it, interact with it because it takes a billion of interactions with Christian material before it goes to the forefront of any algorithm on social media. It will. And there’s some good stuff out there. Red Pen Logic with Mr. B is what I mentioned on Tuesday. I love that channel. There’s a lot of stuff. Ali Beth Stuckey. There’s a lot of stuff out there that is very good. But man, you got to find it. You got to find it. You want some trash? You want to watch a women walking around in thongs on the beach or dive it? I didn’t even ask for it. There it is. You know why? Because they know I’m a male. Boom. Front and center debauchery because I’m a male, not front and center because I’m a Christian. Here’s Christian material. It’s not the way it works. So you got to be, woo, you got to be on top of this stuff, man. It’s a different world. And if you’re of my generation, you are the last generation, right? When we die off, we will be the last generation that knew the world pre technology, technological inner revolution, pre internet, learn the language of technology, and then live in a post technological revolutionary world. Does that make sense to you? We knew the world before we experienced the revolution, if you will, and we live in its aftermath. We’re the last generation that will be able to speak the language of pre smartphone. And you see all that stuff on the internet as well. Like, you’ll you’ll see and some of us think some of it is legitimate, where a person of my age or older will present to a teenager a rotary phone, and they have no idea how to use it like, what is this? So you know, I wrote this in the church town weekly. Now, it’s been a busy week and I did not get to make much commentary in the church town weekly. Most of the commentary that I made is in the prayer section of the church town weekly, I may write a little bit more because I’ve been I was on this scripture for turning on the lights. This is first Corinthians chapter 12. And it’s talking about the unity of the church. And again, it’s going to speak into Corinth, which again, we must take the letters of Paul and the teachings of Paul in the context in which they are meant. So he has this very metropolitan church and all of these different pagan religions are being brought into it. We’ve we read before about the debauchery that was taking place during the Lord’s Supper, people getting drunk and gorging themselves on food. And not only is that sacrilegious compared to what Jesus was teaching, it is just absolutely not an example to anybody outside those church walls, especially the poor who can’t afford the bread and the wine to begin with. He said, you got to get this place in order. We talked about the order that of what she discusses. And he uses examples and gives very practical examples of the covering of Christ over man, the covering of man over woman, the covering of man and woman over offspring family, etc. Order structure. He talks about wearing hats to symbolize that covering. All of those things. And again, we’re taking that in the context in which they are meant. And he says, man does not live independently of woman, nor does woman live independently of man. And there we go back to Genesis two and the picture of union, the picture of marriage, the picture of that man and woman united in holy matrimony, go being a church and now going to build be a building block of a bigger ecclesia. Men, women, husband, wife and children. And again, we talk about where in Scripture does it say, take ye little ones to the basement and teach them otherwise it does not. So we try to be, of course, we try to provide for meltdowns and feeding babies and all we provide areas in which those can be done and children can be cared for if need be. Otherwise, we’re together and the kids are in the aisles and they’re walking and they have to be shushed a little bit and they have to be taught how to listen and those sorts of things. And they’re never going to learn that outside of the ecclesia. So we worship as a family, families worship together. I don’t want to see mom and dad separated from their children. What? I don’t want to see that in church. I want to see mom and dad holding their children. I want to see children that get down from their mom and dad and go over to another person who they love and they trust. And it may be a person that’s several generations older than their parents, but they’ve grown this bond with them. This eight year old has grown this bond with them. It’s just all it’s so amazing to experience. And you’ll see the child sitting on another person’s lap knowing this chamley, they love each other. They trust each other with your trusting people with your children like that. That’s trust. And that’s we should be we should be working toward that goal. Amen. Now, dear brothers and sisters, this is chapter 12. Regarding your question about the special abilities the spirit gives us, I don’t want you to misunderstand this. You know that when you were still pagans, you were led astray and swept along in worshiping speechless idols. So I want you to know that no one speaking by the Spirit of God will curse Jesus. And no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit, right? You can’t claim Jesus as your Lord unless you’ve been saved. You can say it, but it’s not true. You can be trying to lead people astray by saying it. And Jesus has something very specific to say about that. It’s called blaspheming of the Holy Spirit. But you cannot be that unless you are saved by the grace of God. I claim Jesus as my Savior and my Lord, the Lord of my life, and the power of God’s Holy Spirit dwells within me. This is what Paul is talking about as a representation of the individuals in the ecclesia in the church, because there’s a lot of pagan idol worship that’s being brought into Corinth. But he’s going to make very clear there is one spirit. Now, to muddy the waters a little bit, he’s going to say this one spirit gives each individual special abilities and gifts according to their abilities, according to his will, really. But there is one spirit, the Spirit of God. There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same spirit is the source of them all. That’s very clear. There are different kinds of service, but we all serve the same Lord, being very clear here. God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us, being very clear here. A spiritual gift is given to each of us so that we can help each other. To one person, the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice. To another, the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. The same Spirit gives great faith to another. And to someone else, the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. He gives one person the power to perform miracles and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said. It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have. And we see spiritual gifts manifested in a myriad of ways within the body of Christ. Prophesying is speaking the Word of God. And you know as well as I do, people who are steeped in the Word of God and can discern the Word of God seemingly supernaturally. That’s a spiritual gift to read the Word of God, to extrapolate from it the truth of the Word of God and to communicate it. And whatever the gift may be, right, giving wise advice. Hospitality. Do you know how important the spiritual gift of hospitality is to the Church? Because as we know, the Church is given to us to edify the body of believers and in so doing be able to attract and to create new believers. Sharing the Gospel, converting individuals that then will convert them. It’s hard to say. Sharing the Gospel, edifying the Church so that we are able to share the Gospel with non-believers in the prayer and the hope that they will repent and be saved. There, a much better way of saying that. So when somebody new walks into your church, believer or not, the Lord has brought them there. Now you don’t think the spiritual gift of hospitality is important? You think, “Oh, whatever. This other person seems to have a lot more on the ball than I do. But I sure do love to embrace new folks and meet new people and welcome them and provide for them.” That is super important. Has anybody ever walked into a church and been ignored? How do you feel? Likewise, you can try to go over the top of this and fake it and you’ve got a committee in the parking lot and then you’ve got a committee at the door and then you’ve got a committee in the hallway. Then you’ve got a committee in the sanctuary and you’re escorted to special seats and you’re really made to feel weird because you’ve given special parking spaces and you’ve given special seats and there’s all these people hovering around you. That’s kind of weird too. But why not walk into a body and feel welcome? Like you’ve been there for 10 years. That’s a pretty cool feeling. That’s a spiritual gift and that’s really important. We’ll read this and maybe we’ll get back to the one body with many parts. Do you hear it? Do you hear the smoke alarm beeping? I got to fix it before I read these concerts tonight. I got to find it. I need one of those super sensitive microphones. “The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, some are free, but we have all been baptized into one body by one spirit and we share the same spirit. Jews, Gentiles, slave and free. Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, “I’m not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “I’m not a part of the body because I am not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything? Very, very practical teaching here. Every part, and this is where the enemy will try to tell you, “Well, your spiritual gifts don’t really matter. Sit down and shut up. You don’t really have any place in the body of Christ.” Yes, you do, but the enemy has gotten you to think that your place is somehow inferior to the place that somebody else has, when clearly that contradicts the teaching of Scripture. And so I want to encourage you, whatever you’re thinking right now about this topic, if you are filled by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, you have been endowed with unique abilities that will be exactly what the body of Christ that you are embedded in needs. God will bring everything that is necessary to complete His will on earth in a particular body of Christ. But our bodies have many parts and God has put each part just where He wants it. How strange a body would be if it had only one part. Yes, there are many parts, but only one body. The eye can never say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can never say to the feet, “I don’t need you.” In fact, some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually most necessary. And the parts we regard as less honorable are those that we clothe with the greatest care. So we carefully protect those parts that should not be seen, while the more honorable parts do not require this special care. So God has put the body together such that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less. This makes for harmony among the members so that all the members care for each other. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it. And if one part is honored, all the parts are glad. All of you together are Christ’s body and each of you is a part of it. Here are some of the parts God has appointed for the church. Apostles, prophets, teachers, miracles, healing, helping, leadership and languages. 1 Corinthians 12 is one of the best chapters regarding unity of the body of Christ. And ostensibly, he’s trying to pull together this body in Corinth that some are worshiping people, some are worshiping Yahweh and doing it correctly. Some are worshiping idols that have come in from outside of the church. Some are worshiping some sort of hybrid thinking that Yahweh is in the same category as the other idols that they’re worshiping, etc, etc. And he’s trying to set the record perfectly clear. One God, the church is created by the outpouring of his Holy Spirit. We are all indwelled by the same spirit. And everything that this body needs to thrive on earth and be the bride that Christ wants is provided for us by the power of his Holy Spirit through his faithful followers in the church. There you go. There you go. Christ in congregation and a congregation in Christ. It’s that relationship of John 17 of which he speaks and of which Peter speaks quite a bit of which Paul speaks quite a bit of which Jesus speaks quite a bit. This unique, could you explain who or what Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh is the a traditional name for God. In the Hebrew language, there are no vowels. And so it’s like Y, W, H, and then we add vowels to it for the way our pronunciation and it comes out Yahweh and it has for generation after generation, Yahweh. And so God does not present himself with a name. And there are Orthodox Jews and even other Christians who will not even venture to say anything but God if they say that. Yahweh is simply the traditional name, if you will, name of the triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Yahweh. Good questions. Good questions. Always good questions. So when I say go to church, it’s important. It is. The enemy does not want a 1 Corinthians 12 church. That is a church that is strong and thriving. Maybe he would. Except we put them all up, Kim. All the fire extinguishers, there’s the AEDs, the smoke alarms, all of the new stuff. He wouldn’t have a clue. It’s over there somewhere. I’m thinking it might be at the top of the stairs and beeping down. I’m going to find it here shortly. But like I said, we have to submit ourselves to 1 Corinthians 12 in terms of the teaching and be the body of Christ that he wants us to be. Satan does not want a 1 Corinthians 12 church. But we are the point of the spear in the war between good and evil. And we will submit ourselves to the Lord who is good every time. No comment, Dale, but I certainly would expect nothing less from you, my brother. Little target practice. Although I’m not quite sure people would appreciate the holes in the walls or being swarmed probably by the state police for discharging firearms into this small town. So that’s Dale. Dale lives in the middle of nowhere. Like he’ll go in his backyard and just start shooting like Yosemite Sam. We can’t do that here. Father God, thank you for good friends. Thank you for the laughter. Thank you for your spirit that bonds us together, binds us together as brothers and sisters. Thank you for your church. May we constantly be intrigued, constantly be seeking to learn and grow and become not only the disciples that you want us to be, but the church when you put us all together, the church that you want us to be in Jesus name. May your church rise this weekend and be a shining beacon of light into this dark and dying tragic world. May hearts be changed. May repentance occur and may the kingdom of God grow. Father, we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. God bless you guys. And you know, we’re always going to say on Thursday, go to church. It is important.
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