Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
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Anger
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Analytical
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Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul uses his most masterful illustration yet.
It’s so good, it can hardly be improved upon.
There’s no explaining this any better than Paul already has.
It’s something we all understand, this illustration.
It’s not like his illustrations of farmers or soldiers or runners; it’s a real stretch for city folk to grasp the life of a farmer.
It’s next to impossible for a civilian to understand what our service men and women go through.
People who run are crazy, so only crazies are able to understand what runners might be thinking.
But this illustration, this illustration all of us readily understand; it takes almost no effort on our part to grasp what he’s saying.
Paul couldn’t have picked a better illustration if he tried.
>Every person has a body.
It’s not a profound truth, but it is a helpful truth when we are tasked with thinking about the church—the Body of Christ—and how it functions, how it works, how it is supposed to behave.
Every person has a body.
We understand that an individual body works together, all the parts of the body doing their thing, and this without any sort of extra effort.
I don’t have to tell my hand to reach for that cup of coffee.
Every morning, instinctively, my legs carry my sleepy body to the coffee maker.
My hand grabs the coffee pot, pours the coffee in the coffee mug.
And the coffee in the coffee mug goes right in the coffee hole situated nicely on my face.
The body just works, doesn’t it?
Over the last few years, it’s become painfully obvious to me that I’m not 18 years old any more.
I’ve started to mimic what I though was weird behavior from my Grandma Lindy.
When sitting on the couch or in her chair, she’d say to herself (though loud enough for everyone else to hear), “Okay, body…time to get up.”
And then as she got herself to her feet, she quietly quote a Bible verse: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
There have been more than a few moments, in times of sheer exhaustion, where I’ve pulled a Grandma Lindy: “Okay, body…time to get up…the spirit is willing...”
We might have to motivate ourselves like that from time to time, but overall, the body just works.
The parts all work together and they don’t typically do anything our central nervous systems haven’t told them to do.
The body is incredible; the Creator knew what He was doing, didn’t He?
Paul makes the case here, in 1 Corinthians 12, that the Creator, the same one who made the human body, has made the church one body in Christ.
Paul’s writing about the human body as a Jewish thinker for whom, with Genesis 1-2 in the background, the question of God creating a new, true humanity in and through the Messiah, Jesus, was all-important.
Paul uses the metaphor of the body to build his case for the beauty of the church.
The church does not function (or shouldn’t function) as a collection of separate individuals.
The church does not even function like a democracy.
There is never a 51% to 49% victory in the church.
The church doesn’t (or shouldn’t) split up along party lines.
The church is far more vitally connected than that.
The church functions as a body (or should).
Consider our own bodies.
When we stub our toe, our whole body reacts.
Our legs react; we bend our knees and raise our feet.
Our arms react; we reach down and grab our toe.
Our mouths cringe, and we yell (you know what you yell).
Our eyes dart about to see what we stubbed our toe on.
The body words seamlessly and organically, together.
there are no individual decisions to be made.
The body reacts as a whole unit.
It is not as though certain members of the body decide to opt out when they don’t feel like helping.
And yet the body exhibits great diversity.
Toes are unlike ears; eyes are unlike elbows.
Their diversity is not a hindrance to their unity, but absolutely necessary for it.
The body couldn’t function if it were made up of 100 ears or 100 elbows.
Paul wants church members to see themselves as integrally tied to one another like the various members of the human body.
The church is meant to function as a body.
The Church should work just like the body does, each part playing its role with an (albeit unspoken) appreciation for the other parts.
Your mouth doesn’t thank your eyes or your nose.
Sometimes it should, but it doesn’t; it just works, it functions, each part together as one.
>The Church is meant to function as a body.
Unfortunately, there are a couple of issues that keep the Church from functioning as it should.
There are always issues when you get more than a few people together.
The Church is not immune.
The sad truth is: as long as the Church has been around there have been issues (hence the section title I’ve given 1 Corinthians 12-14: “Worship Issues”).
For 2,000 years, the Church—the people who belong to God by faith in Jesus Christ—have had and have dealt with their share of issues.
As I was reading these verses over and over in preparation for this week, something struck me, something I hadn’t seen before.
The Bible’s like that.
It’s like a jewel, multi-faceted.
Turn it this way and that, look at it from this angle and then that, and you’ll see the text in different ways.
It’s all a matter of perspective.
I was just a kid, really, when I started pastoring a small church in Middle-of-Nowhere, Kansas.
I didn’t know anything other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
I hadn’t yet realized how badly the church can hurt individuals.
It took me a few years to realize that.
It took me even longer to realize how badly individuals can hurt the church.
As I was reading these verses, two phrases jumped out at me.
I hadn’t paid them much attention before.
I’m not even sure I had noticed Paul uses each phrase twice.
There must have been something going on in Corinth.
I’ve spent my life in the church, so not only can I imagine people saying something similar to what’s said here, I’ve heard people say them (in one form or another).
Sadder still, I’ve said something like this, more than once.
The first phrase is found in verses 15 and 16:
Do you see it?
“I don’t belong.”
This comment is made here hypothetically, but there’s no doubt that this was being said by some in the Corinthian church:
“I don’t belong.
I just don’t; I never have.
I don’t belong.”
The second phrase is found in verse 21:
This one stings.
To hear this kind of thing, to be dismissed, to be turned away, to be asked to leave.
That hurts.
“We don’t need you.”
Think about how awful, how fractious a thing this is to say to someone else, to your brother or sister in Christ:
“I don’t need you!”
This is a major issue.
We can surmise that this was a problem in Corinth from what Paul is saying, from his having to remind the Corinthians that the Church is a body—each member belongs, each member is needed.
You Belong to the Body
There might be no better feeling than belonging.
It’s good to find your place.
It’s nice to find your spot on the team, to break your way into the community, to be a part of something.
Paul, here, insists that each member—foot, hand, ear, eye—is part of the body.
Each part plays an important role, and it is essential for each one to play the particular role for which it was created.
If any part were not to fulfill its proper role, the whole body would suffer from its absence.
Paul uses rhetorical questions to stress that the body needs all its parts, including eyes, ears, nose.
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