The church is incomplete without people with special needs

Andrew Ward

Sermon • Submitted 6 months ago • Presented 6 months ago

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What’s your idea of a health church?

The characteristics that if they’re missing, the church would be incomplete.

· Christians that are maturing spiritually?

· Lots of people and ministries?

· People giving sacrificially and regularly to support the church?

All those things are important, but today, I’d like to suggest something that truly makes a church incomplete.

· When a church is missing people with special needs.

· By special needs, I mean people with an intellectual or physical disability.

Why is the church incomplete without people with special needs?

· Today, I’ll give you two reasons why the church is incomplete without people with special needs.

<PRAY>

Reason 1: All people are created in the image of God

a) God created people.

· No one is an accident or a mistake.

i. Psalm 139 affirms that.

Psalm 139:13 13 For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.

o God has designed everything according to His will.

ii. God personally declared that to Moses.

· Each person is the design of God.

Let’s take that a step further:

iii. Special needs don’t mean someone is suffering the consequences of sin.

Three things I’d like for you to notice about this interaction:

(1) Jesus saw the man who was born blind.

· Jesus didn’t simply notice this man; rather, the Greek word translated He saw means to experience something.

1 Peter 3:10 10 For, “The one who desires life, to love and see good days, Must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.

· The reference isn’t to simply visually notice good days but rather to experience them.

o The blind man didn’t simply come into Jesus’ field of view;

§ Jesus really saw him,

§ who he was, and what he was enduring.

o The same is true of you and your suffering; Jesus sees you.

(2) The disciples assumed a cause-and-effect relationship between sin and suffering.

· The disciples likely came to their conclusion based on what was taught about people with special needs.

o Essentially, the belief was that disabilities were the consequences of a parent’s sin.

o Or the child sinned while in the womb, which came from a wrong understanding of Psalm 51:5.

Psalm 51:5 5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.

· Because of Adam’s rebellion against God, his sin nature has been imputed to all people.

CAUTION: We need to be very careful when assigning blame or cause for a special need that a person has.

· Even when someone has become disabled because of their own sin, we don’t know all the factors behind why God allowed it to happen.

· Therefore, speculating or assigning blame tends to do more harm than good.

Finally, I want you to notice the reason Jesus gave for the man being born blind:

(3) That the works of God might be displayed in him.

· We might summarize that by saying, in some way, this was for the glory of God.

Now, that immediately raises the question:

How can suffering and disability be for the glory of God?

· This is a big question that people have wrestled with throughout the ages, and there’s much to be taught from Scripture on the subject.

o Yet, in the end, there’s far more we won’t understand than what we will.

Deuteronomy 29:29 29 “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.

However, two important points should be considered when thinking about the problem of pain and suffering.

(i) In suffering, we’re brought to a crossroads.

o We want to know why.

o God always answers with Who. (That’s the testimony of the book of Job)

(ii) God hides gospel treasure in weak earthen vessels.

o I’ll show you what I mean from <2 Corinthians 4>.

Background: Paul writes letters to the church in Corinth during a great personal struggle over the church.

o Paul spent at least 18 months at the church in Corinth and it was special to him.

o Some people in the church tried to gain prominence by assaulting Paul’s character.

o The whole situation became very tense and troubling to Paul.

· However, Paul refused to give up because what he was doing was too important and he did this not in his own strength but rather he relied on the strength of God.

<2 Corinthians 4:7-10>

· We are all weak and insufficient on our own, but God’s power is in us.

o This is the gospel.

· God’s strength is seen most clearly in our weakness.

2 Corinthians 12:9–10 9 And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

Let me refresh your memory because we’ve covered a lot:

· We’re considering the question: Why is the church incomplete without people with special needs?

· The first point I’m establishing for you is an important and fundamental issue:

o All people are created in the image of God.

o Therefore, all people have dignity and worth, that’s intrinsic.

· God is revealing Himself to His creation, and one of the ways is through His image bearers.

o When we see other people, to a degree, we can learn something about God.

That may raise a question: What do we learn about God by seeing people who have special needs?

· There are many things we could learn; however, let me point out just one.

b) We should be reminded of the transcendence of God.

· The fact that while God is near to His creation and intimately involved with our lives, there is still an otherness to God.

o He isn’t like us.

Isaiah 40:22 22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

· We tend to put a great deal of value on conformity, everyone acting, looking, and talking like everyone else.

o However, God has created us with a tremendous amount of diversity.

o All of us are like one another in many ways, but there are also ways that we are not like one another.

There’s much more we could learn about that, but let’s continue looking at another reason the church is incomplete without people with special needs.

Reason 2: All Christians have one or more spiritual gifts that the church needs.

<1 Corinthians 12>

a) All Christians have a spiritual gift. <v.7>

· Spiritual gifts are given by the Holy Spirit to believers for the purpose of building up the body of Christ.

o He then goes on to give some examples of gifts in (8-10)

o There are many gifts, but they come from the same place: the Holy Spirit.

He then points out that there is a diversity of spiritual gifts, and we shouldn’t think that one gift is important while another gift is irrelevant.

POINT: The church needs every believer to use their gift for the common good. (7b)

i. All Christians, including Christians with special needs, have spiritual gifts.

o Therefore, those folks should be using their gifts for the glory of God and the common good of the church.

This may bring up a question in your mind whether people with intellectual disabilities and young children care saved.

· To fully address that would require another sermon, however I’ll briefly offer four points to support my belief that Scripture teaches that young children and people born with intellectual disabilities are saved.

(1) God's mercy and grace testify to the certainty that those who seem to lack the ability to believe will be saved. (cf. Ephesians 2:8-9)

· Isaiah’s statement about God's care and compassion for Israel illustrates this.

Isaiah 40:11 11 Like a shepherd He will tend His flock, In His arm He will gather the lambs And carry them in His bosom; He will gently lead the nursing ewes.

(2) While I understand we may have trouble communicating the truth of the gospel to someone in an understandable way; I don't believe the holy spirit struggles in this way.

(3) When David's infant son died, David said:

2 Samuel 12:23 23 “But now he has died; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”

· David looked forward to seeing his son in heaven.

(4) While Scripture doesn't give an age of accountability, God points out that there is a distinction in human development that separates people who have a capacity to make moral choices from those who don't.

Isaiah 7:16 16 “For before the boy will know enough to refuse evil and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread will be forsaken.

· This is a reference to the promised son of Isaiah coming to the age in which he could make moral choices.

Much more to be said about this but, we’ll now get back to the point that people with special needs have spiritual gifts and the church is incomplete if these folks aren’t using their gifts.

b) All Christians need to be active members of a local church

· This includes Christians with special needs.

o Everything in Scripture that applies to Christians applies to all Christians.

· Being an active member means using your spiritual gift.

God wants people with special needs included in every aspect of the life of the church.

· Jesus demonstrated God’s concern for people with special needs when He included them as an object of His ministry and care.

Luke 4:18 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are oppressed,

Application

The first thing we can do is very simple.

1. Christians should make it a habit to greet and welcome everyone who visits the church.

· I would encourage everyone to look for someone they don’t know each week and take a few moments to get to know them.

· Maybe you would want to come a few minutes early just so you could do this.

The second thing we can do flows out of the first:

2. Invite people to participate in activities outside the worship service.

· BFG, Summer Splash, etc.

· This may change the dynamic of the activity, understand that is a gift from God.

3. Understand that families with special needs children often live with much greater responsibility and it’s a great blessing when others are willing to step in and help out.

· One simple way is people being willing to volunteer to serve in the nursery or children’s ministry so parents can be ministered to in worship services.

Jesus demonstrated God’s concern for people with special needs when He included them as an object of His ministry and care.