The Body of Christ: It's Not About You

Sermon by the Rev. Matt Kennedy

1st Corinthians 14:12-20

The Church of the Good Shepherd

I was with a man who has stopped going to church. "Tell me why I should go to church?” he asked, “God is everywhere. I can pray any time I want. I don't need to be in church to experience God's presence. I feel him everywhere I go and sometimes more than I ever feel him at church. So what's the point? I never get anything out of it. I was just going to go. Isn't it better for me to not go if I don't feel anything?" I've heard that so many times that I think I answered too impatiently. I didn't reason with him like I should have. I quoted the bible at him. In the book of Hebrews 10:25 , God commands believers not to “neglect” the weekly gathering of the saints. That command was given specifically to a local body of believers who would've met every week, probably on Sunday, to worship, hear the word, and share communion together in what we call church. So, if you're a Christian and you love the Lord Christ, you're to demonstrate that by obedience to his commands, one of which is not to neglect the weekly gathering of the saints at church."

He accepted what I said. My answer was fine. If this were a perfect world the fact that the Creator and Sovereign Lord of the Universe saw fit to command his people to "go to church,” to give him 2 hours out of 168 a week, should be enough. But we're not perfect and we often question God. And God takes the time to reason with us to help us understand his commands. My friend's question was a "why" question and a very pragmatic one. Instead of sitting for an hour and a half in church listening to people talk and sing about God, wouldn't it be better if I were somewhere really experiencing God?

At first glance, our reading from 1 st Corinthians doesn't seem to address the question, but, in this passage God establishes a principle that explains the purpose of our meeting together each week and how vital church is for your growth as an individual and our growth as a body.

Has anyone ever seen someone speaking in tongues? Does anyone have the gift of tongues? I don't but my mom does. Tongues is a special prayer language that connects you on a deeply intimate level with the Father. If you've ever wanted to express something so deep and personal that you couldn't find the words, then you understand why God gives this gift. People with the gift of tongues don't have that problem. The mind is bypassed. The speaker doesn't have to interrupt his prayer trying to think of what to say. As Paul describes it in v. 14. when " I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful." Tongues sounds like babbling because it bypasses the mind. The spirit wells up and pours out deep and powerful prayers that communicate and connect with God on the deepest level possible for human beings.

People who have this gift experience God in a way that others cannot. They rightfully treasure and nurture this gift. The Corinthian church put so much stock in it that much of their weekly gathering was given over to people speaking in tongues. There are still churches today where this goes on. You walk in and everyone is babbling away and rocking back and forth.

But, the vital thing to note here is that tongues is a private gift. It's meant, Paul says, to be a personal experience.

Almost every other spiritual gift, teaching, preaching, intercession, serving, administering, healing, requires other people, requires being bound up in a community to exercise them. Tongues does not. That's why Paul says in verse 12-14, "Excel in gifts that build up the church. For this reason, anyone who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret what he says. For if I pray in a tongue my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful." Paul does not say that tongues are bad. Tongues are good. But the gifts that should be used the most are the gifts that build up the church. Tongues may make you feel really good. You may have a private personal experience of God that blows your mind, but its far better, says Paul, to exercise a gift like service or teaching or administration. When people speak in tongues they get more out of it personally than any sermon or teaching or service ministry could possibly give them and yet Paul says don't do it in church, the place where we tend to think experiencing God is most important? If I were in Corinth with the gift of tongues, I would've thought, "Well, what's the point? Why shouldn't I neglect the gathering of the saints if I can't get this experience out of it?"

Read on, "So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind. If you are praising God with your spirit, how can one who finds himself among those who do not understand say, "Amen" to your thanksgiving since he does not know what you are saying. You may be giving thanks well enough but the other man is not edified." Don't speak in tongues in church unless you also have the gift of interpretation and you can share your prayer with the body. Why?

Because if not how can those without the gift say, “Amen,” yes, we agree with you in prayer! We're getting close to our principle here. Let's read on, "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you, but in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in another tongue." Wow, listen to what he is saying, I'd rather build up the church a little, than have an overwhelming experience for myself . Here's the principle. "Church is not about me. " Church is about Jesus Christ and his body, his family into which I've been called. You may experience God on a mountaintop more than you do in church on a Sunday morning, but if it's personal experience alone that you're after then you've missed the point not only of worship, but of Christianity itself. You suck up edification and encouragement and mountaintop experiences but just like a pond with no outlets, you become to stagnant. You take in but never give out. That is not what Jesus saved you for.

When you surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit filled you with gifts for ministry to pour out on the church . He set you down in a body of believers to learn to love and sacrifice for other people in the same way that Jesus loves us and sacrificed himself for you. You cannot do that if you're not in a church, bound to specific group of people. You won't do it. You'll go to church when you feel like it and hang out with the people you like, and never learn that core, crucial, vital lesson, the first principle of faith, "its not about you." It's not about me. We come to church to exalt and glorify and praise God, to put him high up and first, to offer our whole selves to him in prayer and song and study. We come to church to put others first and to put the needs of the community above our own. We come to pour out what God has given us for the glory of God, to show what God has done and can do through and for the benefit of our brothers and sisters. God uses this body to shape and form you into a living sacrifice; someone who lives to give, first to God then to others and then to self, just like Jesus.

As we've said before, this is especially true when you don't like someone who's here. There are people in this church who annoy one another. That's good. If there is someone in this room who especially gets on your nerves, that's a blessing. God has put that person here for you so that you can learn to love them and to use your gifts to serve them anyway in the same way that Jesus loves you and does good to you even when you're not so nice to be around. When you come to Jesus Christ you find someone who doesn't care how much money you have or how you look or how popular you are or your past, his love is not limited by your neglect or rejection or irreverence toward him–he loves you and pours himself out for you regardless. And he puts you in the church so that you'll to do the very same thing for others, so that you'll learn not to let other people's looks, money, or annoying habits, or rudeness or bitterness or past or even their bad treatment of you get in the way of your love for them. You learn to give of yourself rather than to seek what others can give you. You can't do that by yourself. You can't do that on a mountaintop or in the woods, you can only do that in a local community of people, meeting regularly, bound together for eternity in love with and being loved by Jesus Christ. Only here can you learn that the Christian life is not about seeking fulfillment for yourself but about seeking God and loving others.

Here's the secret. So far we've been talking about you giving, you putting yourself last and you might ask, well what about me? And that's a good question. What about my experience? The secret of the Christian life is Spiritual fulfillment is not something you can grasp by seeking it. You can't look for and find spiritual fulfillment. Spiritual fulfillment the by-product of a life dedicated to serving Christ and his body. If you are seeking fulfillment, you won't find it. If you seek to love and serve Christ, if you seek to love and serve others before yourself, if you put yourself to death and take up the cross, then and only then, you find life. That's why Paul didn't want the Corinthians to get hung up personal experience. You can spend all of your life seeking a high and catch momentary tastes here or there but never really grasp it. But when you seek God first and dedicate yourself to serving his people, you'll never stagnate. The more energy and strength you pour out the more God pours in. And you'll find that you can't out-give God. If I could go back in time to that conversation, I would answer the guy who asked, “Why go to church” with this, "You come to church to grow up," to move from the sugary candy of spiritual highs, to the good solid food of self-giving love, from the "me" centered universe of the old self, to the Jesus centered universe of the new self in Christ. You come to learn it's not about me.