You Aren't On Your Own
Notes
Transcript
Big Idea of the Message: Individualism is hurting the home, church, and community, and Christians need to understand that their lives do not belong to themselves.
Application Point: God desires to use each Christian in a very specific role within the body of Christ.
Intro
Intro
Puppy hasn’t been all that coordinated
Legs sliding out when he sits
Wiping out running through the house.
Toddlers can be Like this too
Ever watch on eat?
Can be super funny.
It can look like a disaster zone
Food and mess everywhere
All over the floor
the high chair
themselves
How do they even get food in the places they get it?
It’s because they are still working on those motor skills that help them get the food from the plate to their mouths.
They are still developing the coordination to hold their fork or spoon and then bring it to their mouth.
Often, that can be the way Christians act with one another:
out of sync and often leaving a mess behind because of the lack of harmony.
We are in the third part of a four part series
1 Cor 12
21st Century Theology
First week - Worldview
Puzzle
Putting together
Just some of the pieces.
Last week - moralism
There is an objective standard
We are going to be held accountable to it
We can’t meet it
This week -
The poison of individualism
For just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body—so also is Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and we were all given one Spirit to drink. Indeed, the body is not one part but many. If the foot should say, “Because I’m not a hand, I don’t belong to the body,” it is not for that reason any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I’m not an eye, I don’t belong to the body,” it is not for that reason any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted. And if they were all the same part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” Or again, the head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that are weaker are indispensable. And those parts of the body that we consider less honorable, we clothe these with greater honor, and our unrespectable parts are treated with greater respect, which our respectable parts do not need.
Instead, God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the less honorable, so that there would be no division in the body, but that the members would have the same concern for each other. So if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
What is Individualism?
What is Individualism?
Individualism is an existential belief that says, “I’ve just gotta be me!”
While there is nothing wrong with someone being themselves (who else are they supposed to be?), the problem is when self is elevated above reality or truth.
While the gospel is for the individual, the gospel-centered individual now has responsibilities to a community called the church as well as to a world without Christ.
What we are talking about is not the erasure of the individual, rather the elevation of the individual to unhealthy, and sinful, place of prominence in our lives.
Individualism has many expressions.
It can be that a person who places self above others, including their spouse and children.
Submit to one another in the fear of Christ
Eph 5:21
submitting to one another in the fear of Christ.
Husband, wives, and kids
It can be a person who does not see the necessity of corporate worship because “I can do the same thing at home.”
Hebrews 10:24-25
And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.
It could be the person who imposes their spiritual freedoms at the expense of a weaker Christian.
1 Cor 8:7-9
However, not everyone has this knowledge. Some have been so used to idolatry up until now that when they eat food sacrificed to an idol, their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not bring us close to God. We are not worse off if we don’t eat, and we are not better if we do eat. But be careful that this right of yours in no way becomes a stumbling block to the weak.
Food sacrificed to idols
It could be the person who embraces caring for their own or their family’s needs but neglects their responsibility to the larger community, thinking, “They will have to fend for themselves!”
Ananias and Sepphira
Acts 5
It could also be the person who has too much national or political pride and neglects to see the world for what it is—people who God loves who need him.
Scripture - One Body
Scripture - One Body
In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul describes the church as a body that is made up of individuals.
Though the Body is made up of individuals, everyone works together and is dependent on one another.
Paul suggests the image of foot saying to the hand that there is no real need for a foot: “I should just leave!”
the Foot can not exist separate from the rest of the body.
What happens if a foot is removed?
It is no longer living
It, very quickly, begins to rot
And while Paul is using this as a sort of hyperbolic example, we function this way, don’t we?
We think that we, as the foot, or as the lungs, or as the lymphatic system, or as the gall bladder, can operate separate from the body.
But if we are cut off from the body we are no longer alive.
And, in fact, we begin to rot.
Different parts of the Body have different functions, but together make up one Body
Each member of the body has an important role to play
Foot
Gets us around
Towards Food and good things
Away from bad things
Ear
Helps hear what is going on around us
Survival
Pleasure
Eye
Helps us interact with the world sort of like the ear, but also totally different
Heart
Moves blood around
Liver
Cleans things up
We literally couldn’t survive without some of these things.
We need them all
and they need each other
Our bodies are interdependent
Anatomy and Physiology
Not just the parts
But the systems that interlink
Christians are described as the body of Christ.
Just as physical bodies are made up of different parts which are joined together, so Christians have a unique bond to one another.
Each member has a role to play, and each is important.
We are interdependent to one another in the body
Want to say that while we are talking about the body of Christ, and I think that that is the most important thing that we could be talking about right now, it is the same in the broader culture.
We are interdependent
Pandemic has shown that
Strikes?
Even though Christians have unique functions within the body, those functions require cooperation for the body to work properly.
Unity is essential.
What happens if one system in your body goes off and does it’s own thing?
We call that Disease!
This passage stresses that each believer has a role to play in the body of Christ and no role is too small or too big, each working for the benefit of the gospel of Christ so that Christ’s name be glorified.
Christ is the head of the body (Colossians 1:18).
He is also the head of the body, the church;
he is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead,
so that he might come to have
first place in everything.
He is the vital necessity, the preeminent one.
He controls the body’s function.
Without the head, the body cannot work.
What to do with this?
What to do with this?
Simon and Garfunkel song “I am Rock”
I am a rock
I am an island
I've built walls
A fortress deep and mighty
That none may penetrate
I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain
John Donne
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Individualism is a poison that tells us that we are the most important person in the room
Jesus actually was the most important person in the room
But
For Believers: We need to lay ourselves to the side and submit ourselves to the Body, under the headship of Christ.
For non: Consider, really consider, whether you are the rock, the island, that you think you are?