Pursue love
1 Corinthians 14:1-19 · Vern Peterman · Dec 27, 2009
1 & 2 Corinthians, No. 28
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492615166021

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning on this last Sunday of 2009. And we're going to proceed into the passage here shortly, but I'm afraid we have a rather serious matter to address first. Brad, I'd like you to come up here. Oh, this is serious. No chuckling. Now, Brad, rumor has it that you're leaving us. Are you mad? No. No, I didn't mean mad angry. I mean mad crazy. Of course. Okay, all right. You're not mad, but you're mad. Okay, all right. Okay. All right. Well, tell us about your madness.

Well, a lot of you all know Fort Collins Bible Church in Fort Collins, which is connected actually to Holly Hills by quite a few people's relationships and bloodlines. They were looking for someone to teach up there and we have been in discussion with them for the past month or two and decided to move up there and serve there. So, well, we're not going to let you go away just like that. Come over here and let's pray for you.

Okay? All right. Lord, we just are thankful for the time that we've been able to share with Brad and April and their kids. And we just pray for them as they head off and take on this ministry. And we just entrust their time to you and for what you have in front of them. And we're just thankful in the midst of this that you are indeed trustworthy. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. I hope that wasn't too serious. Thanks. OK. All right. OK.

I need to tell you, when I was young, I needed a lot of guidance. There were various things I needed guidance on. Things about this is wise to do or not to do. So, you know, it's things you just got to be careful of, especially it gets really cold, you know. And as I got older, there were other things I needed guidance on, you know, things you got to be careful of and watch out for.

In fact, that's a bridge I used to jump off of into the river, you know, head first, you know. Yeah. What we told people was as soon as you feel the water, just as soon as you feel the water, you need to make sure to arch your back really quick. So you go sideways. Please do that very quickly. One fellow didn't.

Anyway, Paul's going to give us some guidance here. He talks in this chapter, and you'll notice the numbering here is through the whole. I'll have several slides that address the whole chapter. He's going to talk about the gifts, the spiritual gifts. He's going to talk about love and give us throughout the chapter some guiding principles. So he's going to talk about spiritual gifts. He's going to start off with addressing the very thing that he spent all of chapter 13 dealing with and weaving some messages there around the subject of love, the love of God. And he's going to give us some guiding principles that we'll see, I think, the first couple of here in today's passage.

And it'll be next week's passage next year. when we step into the last half of that and get to the third guiding principle. Just to kind of walk through what we've been through and where we're headed, we saw in chapter 12, Paul had given the believers in Corinth a general introduction to the spiritual gifts. A lot of it was to give them an understanding of spiritual gifts, for example, were given by the Holy Spirit, and it wasn't something that people could pick and choose from, but was given sovereignly by the Holy Spirit. We said that there were gifts that were fitting to the apostolic era, as well as gifts that continue on and are fitting to our current time, now that the Apostles have all been taken home and they've completed their task.

Page four of your handout again has this chart for your reference and personal study. You may find it of interest and and value, just to kind of take a look through it because it explains some details. It gives a description of each one of the gifts from the era of the apostles until the current time and divides those up. It gives you an example and what would be the result of that gift being exercised.

And so feel free to look that over. Now, the other thing here in chapter 13, we saw that Paul had explained the need for and the nature of love. The very first thing he used, several verses to get across, was love is absolutely essential. It's not like a desirable item. or something that would be an advisable thing to do. He says it's absolutely essential. You can have all sorts of things that are desirable, maybe even admirable and attractive, but without love, he says, it's nothing. It gets nowhere. It accomplishes nothing spiritually. He talked also about the nature of love, the fact that love lasts forever, the fact that love is of the Three, faith, hope, and love, the one thing that endures for eternity, because it's God's own character.

Here in chapter 14, Paul provides some guiding principles on the use of gifts of prophecy and tongues. And I think one of the things we'll need to talk about is, well, OK, since those died out 19 centuries ago, what do we need those for now, or why do we need to study it? And we'll talk about that specifically. So here we have these antique spiritual gifts on this chart that's on page four. The first half of those are gifts that were relevant and given in the first century during the time of the Apostles, but have since been set aside because they are replaced by the completed New Testament or the fact that the Apostles' job and those who accompanied them is now complete. So you might ask this question, all right, since that was 19 centuries ago, why does it make any sense to spend time learning about how those gifts are supposed to be used back then? Is that relevant to us?

And I will answer yes, and we're going to see why in more than one way. But certainly we're going to start off with, one, there are those who claim to have these gifts now. So this is corrective. If you get somebody coming up to you and saying, hey, I have the gift of an apostleship. And there are people who have that. We've got churches in each direction down the street. The next church in each direction claims that some of these gifts are in operation now. So it is something current. There is additionally these guys who come two at a time to your door.

And in spite of the fact they're usually about 19, they have this little plaque that says elder. I don't know how that works out, but anyway, the guy who wrote the book that they claim to front and to go by claims to be a prophet, some 18 centuries after the New Testament era. So, at any rate, there's reason to be able to answer them and to say, wait a minute, gift of prophecy in any biblical sense is no longer in existence.

That's a false prophet. There are people who come to you, maybe you've heard that, God told me. You're looking, where's that in the Bible? God told me this, God told me that. Other instances of people claiming something out of the apostolic era gifts.

And we'll look at that. The second reason is that Paul provides some longstanding and presently in operation principles. We'll get to the first two of those, building up and understanding today. And then we'll proceed on, although we won't drop those first two, we'll proceed on with the order and orderliness in the gathering of believers that ought to be typical of our gathering together. So those are at least a couple of reasons why this book is relevant, and we'll see some others here.

So now, the big three. Are we talking about a really big number three? No. This chapter has big three principles, Paul says, are to guide all of our gatherings in the body of Christ. And that is, and this is true for right now, this is true for us who gather together here, this is true for the place where Brad's going here, from here on out, building up our gathering together, whether it's in a larger group like this or for smaller contacts, ought to be for the purpose of building up the body of Christ.

Hopefully not quite like this, but anyway, you get the idea. A building up of the body of Christ. Secondly, understanding. The communications between us ought to be for understanding. And one of the things that frequently gets lost is a lack of this principle in gatherings among some people in Christendom. That understanding is important, as we'll underscore as we walk through here.

And finally, and we'll see more next week, order. You have that laid out even on the inside of your bulletin. There's a certain orderliness to it. Don't worry. Some of you may be bothered by the organized church. We try not to do that. But some sense of order, okay?

Now, along with these key principles, Paul gives us some real insight into who the gatherings of the body of Christ are primarily for. So the question is, is the gathering here in the church primarily to be for unbelievers, for those who don't believe? Is it primarily for those who don't believe and don't understand, and should we be having evangelistic services every time?

Some churches go to that. They have an altar call whether they have an altar or not. And they'll have seeker-sensitive meetings. They'll say, well, Christians, you can just stay home because we're meeting here this morning in order to reach unbelievers. Should we do that? Or should we instead meet for the sake of believers? Which is the biblical one?

And he's going to answer that question. Not this week, next week. But nonetheless, that will be an important thing that we'll address here. He starts off this chapter with pursue love. He says, go after it. And he gives that as an imperative. This isn't just kind of some advice, you know, I'd really like it if you did this. He says, no, you must pursue love.

He had just finished explaining what love is and also what it's not in chapter 13, the first seven verses. In the greatness and forever duration of love, of faith, hope and love, love is the one thing that endures. He said that gifts of tongues and prophecy and knowledge, they would be done away or cease of themselves in the case of tongues. So that's why he starts off this chapter, 1 Corinthians 14, by telling them to pursue love.

And literally it means this. You must pursue the love. He actually puts the definite article in front of it there. It's not just some vague love thing. It's the specific love, the love of God. That's what he's talking about. Pursue it. Go after it. Pursue the love.

And a key point here is nothing about the use of the spiritual gifts in the body of Christ is to be done outside of love. Nothing. That's why as love, right in between these two chapters and in the middle of this passage on love, he still continues to bring up, from the beginning to the end, these spiritual gifts. Nothing about the use of the spiritual gifts or the ministries among us, in whatever form those take. or to be done outside of love. We could put it this way to take the lesson from chapter 13, even with building up understanding and order that he's just about to lay out here. Without love, we're nothing. We get nothing done spiritually.

Love is still an essential as we step through this passage and begin dealing with these spiritual gifts. He's not leaving love by. He's saying pursue it, stick with it. It's got to be there all the way along. Love, after all, is the one thing that remains when these spiritual gifts that are temporary are gone. Without love, it's a big fat zero.

So he started off this chapter telling about things that might be desirable among us. He talked about even if I do this and even if I do that, things that everyone would say, oh, that's spectacular. As desirable as those things might be, they're worthless without the love of God. If you look at what are the ultimate examples of love, what's interesting is Paul in a couple of, at least in what our order of books shows up as sequential books, says something very similar.

Galatians 2.20, the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. That's the ultimate of love, is it not? In the very next book, Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. Loved and gave. Loved and gave. It's the ultimate in the expression of love.

Even though Paul is going to explain here some very valuable principles, as we said earlier, they're to guide us in the body of Christ, he starts off the chapter with a real simple statement. You must pursue the love. the specific love. A key point here is we cannot be passive or presume love. He doesn't just say, well, you guys will get it and just move on. He tells them before he gets into all the details here, just pursue love. One of the things that Nancy and I will do in marriage counseling is we will Tell people about the principle of, how am I going to protect love? Don't just assume it's protected. How are you going to deliberately protect it?

And that's part of what Paul is saying here. He says, pursue love deliberately. Let it indeed be the thing that gets expressed among us here in the body of Christ. So Paul urged that they build up the body. How? By believers' understanding. And this is a principle that we can use right here and now. By the believers' understanding.

Rather than the use of tongues, which required someone with the gift of interpretation in order for others to understand what they were hearing, Paul urged, rather than blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, he urged the gift of prophecy. Why? Because the gift of prophecy was a direct communication, a direct communication to people. People could hear the words and therefore be edified or built up directly from hearing the words.

Today in our own body, what do we have? Various gifts that are direct communication. That's ultimately what he's urging. He says people need to understand this stuff. Building up the body of Christ is basic. It is not something optional, or it is not just, that'd be a nice add-on. Oh, wouldn't it be nice? He says, it must be taking place. That's exactly what we're gathering for.

One of the questions we want to address here briefly, is there such thing as private tongues? The beginning of this passage and the end of this passage each address the idea of private tongues. What do I mean by that? In case you haven't been exposed to that, the idea is someone will speak a language other than the one that they ordinarily speak.

It's one that is fairly commonly used among people in charismatic Pentecostal circles and even outside of denominations where it fits. There are some today who claim or support the idea that there is a private gift of tongues, because Paul here, at the beginning and at the end of this passage, talks about tongues being spoken by itself. Paul's point here is not that there is a validity to those gifts. His point in stating the use of tongues by itself is to make the point that those gifts don't benefit others, which is what spiritual gifts ought to do. Spiritual gifts are not designed to benefit just me. It's to benefit someone else in the body, or outside the body in some cases. So verses 13 and 19 also will address this issue similarly. Now, one of the things that we will do in order to bring the point home here, we'll have this edifying or building up brought up repeatedly in this chapter, verses 3 through 5.

The one who prophesies speaks to men directly for edification, exhortation, and consolation, but one who prophesies edifies the church so that the church may receive edifying. You get the impression that edifying matters, right? One of the key points here in the beginning part here is you find out what will be the result of this gift of prophecy. The one who prophesies speaks to men for edification, to build them up, for exhortation, urging, or coming alongside them in some capacity, which might also be encouragement or comforting, and consolation.

So, multiple ministries by direct communication. That ought to be the result. Frequently, when we think of prophecy, we think of predicting the future, but that, especially from this, is actually a secondary or minor, comparatively speaking, part of that ministry.

The next thing we see in verse 12, and it actually shows up in verse 17, though I don't quote it, is the edification of the church again. Let all things be done for edification. And as I've said here before, and I told the Revelation elective here, let does not mean allow anywhere in the New Testament from Acts to the end.

All things must be done for edification. It's an imperative. All things must be done for edification. All the spiritual gifts are to build up people in the body. That's the intent there. We're also going to see it as we proceed on in 2 Corinthians 12 and 13. The spiritual gift of Apostle was given to Paul to edify, to build up the church. Ephesians 4, 12 and 16, which we'll be looking at briefly at the end of the message, also says that spiritual gifts are to edify, and it lists several spiritual gifts that are in that direction. One of the things he brings up in verses 6-19, aim for clarity of communication in the spiritual use of the mind. versus what takes place in a number of the charismatic churches.

I don't know, some of you may or may not have had exposure to what takes place in some of these churches. I have, having grandparents who were both Assembly of God pastors and having other friends and relatives from that background. It's everything from something on the order of tongues and both private and I've seen it where everybody in the whole place is speaking in tongues all at once. Holy barking, holy mooing, holy barfing, holy spirit glue, drunk in the spirit, I mean all that stuff, lots of different things.

But his point here really sets that all aside. Aim for clarity of communication. The holy barking, believe me, doesn't get there, right? Aim for clarity of communication and the spiritual use of the mind. The problem, and he makes the point here, the problem is it's easy for Christians to miss this and bypass the use of the mind. He says that's not supposed to happen.

Verses 6-12 emphasize and focus on the need for clear communication from the one who speaks in a language, and by the way, the word for tongues and languages in this chapter is the same Greek word, so tongues isn't some special category, it's a language, to those who are receiving the message from the one speaking. And then in 13 through 19, we see a focus on the need for the one who is hearing a communication to be able to use his mind to understand. That word mind gets repeated Mind, M-I-N-D. It gets repeated in that passage. Why? For emphasis, to make it very clear. The principles in these verses are most needed and relevant in the church today.

And it's possible that you say, well, I don't have that going on. It's possible that you say, well, that's not part of my experience. I need to tell you a few different things. One is, it is possible for a church like this to have an invasion from the outside. Some people here can testify to what I'm about to tell you.

I was an elder at a church, probably roughly about this size in Carson City, and a vineyard church had a church split. The vineyard church had approximately 1,000 people, and because the pastor was, well, he had his hand in the till. From what I heard, he still does. Many people left the church and they came to the church that we were at.

We suddenly had twice as many people from the outside who were used to all the holy barking and holy mooing and holy barfing and all that stuff. That's what they wanted. That's what they were used to. All of a sudden it overwhelmed the church and the church was not able to stand against it because very few people understood what we're talking about right now. It is important that we understand this. There are other reasons why it's relevant. We'll take a look at it. Verses 6-12 also address here this idea of spiritual gifts are for communication and they ought to be able to communicate clearly.

And so Paul spells that out. To convey that need for clear communication, he uses musical instruments, and he does so in two ways. The first is more in a musical and orchestral sense, where those instruments need to put out their sound clearly, not muffled or not indistinct. The second thing that he does is he uses it in a military sense, as would be used with military trumpets or bugles. to call people into action. So he uses that figure or illustration in order to get the point across.

Paul then says, with all the human languages in the world, and by the way, that's the same Greek word as is translated tongues, so it's the same thing. Throughout the world, it is still important to get the intentional meaning across to those who are listening. Hearing a bunch of babble is not edifying. It is not uplifting. There's an additional reason here.

He's going to use in verse 11 this term barbarian. Barbarian, interestingly enough, you know how in English we say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah for kind of like a bunch of stuff that a lot of times you don't understand? In Paul's day, what they would say is not blah, blah, blah, but bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar. And so they put that together and that's the source of the word barbarian. And so, a barbarian, what do they do? They go, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, just like we go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You understand that? Okay. So, he actually gets the point. This babbling and coming up with, I don't know what that guy is saying, is exactly the problem. Okay? Spiritual use of the mind. Now, this is important. I'm not talking about being real cranial and cerebral here. I'm not talking about being just intellectual. Well, God's Word does not encourage to be cerebral about their life in Christ, not at all.

Paul's repeated point in these verses is that we are to use our minds fruitfully for spiritual profit. What did Paul write to Timothy about in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17? The Word of God is inspired and profitable for, and he goes on and lists these things, when people use their minds to have it communicate. When they use their minds. Having the mind engaged is critical. In the spiritual use of the mind, it's important to remember over the centuries and in our own day, it's been a temptation to believers to swing from intellectual to mystical extremes.

People get real brainiac. I've heard it said that people who go to seminary take five years to thaw out. People get real brainiac and they got all this stuff memorized, you know, and they get these Ph.D.'s and demons and everything else, and pretty soon they have to go see the doctor, it sounds like. Anyway, they get all these degrees and they just pack their gray matter.

Does it accomplish anything spiritually? It might not. It might not. But the other problem is going to mystical extremes, recognizing, oh, just packing my gray matter doesn't do it, so let's just set the Bible aside and let's have experiences and feelings and things like that. Spiritual growth, Paul says, and that's individually as well as a church body, spiritual growth comes through engaging our minds.

I'm not talking about being cerebral. I'm not talking about having the Bible be a dead end in your head. Don't be a dead head. I'm not talking about rock music either. Some Christians will swing to spiritual data storage and analysis. My hard drive is very smart. I've got tens of thousands of files on the Bible, but you know how much spiritual growth goes on in my hard drive? Nothing. My hard drive, I'm afraid to tell you, is worse than spiritually dead.

It just doesn't do anything spiritually. And sticking in our brains, to use my brain as just a place for storage for biblical data and analysis, doesn't get anywhere either. Doesn't matter how much Greek and Hebrew you learn and all sorts of different tricky and wonderful things, sticking it in your gray matter is not the point. It goes nowhere. Then, on the other hand, some Christians will swing to the other extreme of mysticism. Oh, shoving my head full of information and doing all this analysis didn't do any good, so let's shove the Bible aside and let's have some mysticism instead. I'll just have some contemplative spirituality.

And there are, at seminaries and at churches and at Bible colleges, there are those who are moving that direction. Bethel College, just this year, at a conference on finding common ground between Christianity and Buddhism. Hey, let's get together and figure out how we can make these things kind of melt and melt, right?

Hey, let's have this or that experience. And let's put the Bible aside. It's just kind of a point of tangency from the Bible, which is sort of inspiring, but not really inspired. Get the difference? Now, still others try to balance out these two extremes by embracing them both. This is unfortunately what's happened at Dallas Theological Seminary.

They've said, okay, come here and pack your head and read all these books and take all these tests, but just to make sure you're balanced, we're going to give you a bunch of mystical contemplative spirituality. And by the way, that's required. And if you embrace the extremes, then you'll be okay. It's kind of like saying, well, we need liquid, we need fiber. So here, have a glass of water with your sawdust. It is a mixture of extremes. Putting them together does not make for a balance. You have an extremely average situation, not balanced.

God intends that His written Word would be an essential means for our knowing Christ, by growing in Christ and being transformed into the image of Christ. He meant for it to have spiritual effect. That's what He intended. Here's Peter. 1 Peter 2.2. What does he say?

Long for the pure milk of the Word that by it you may grow, not just know. Right? That by it you may grow. What do we do with God's Word? Not just sit there and pack it in our heads and get all sorts of great techniques for analysis and fill our binders and bookshelves full of it. But what? We behold the Lord Jesus Christ. That as a work of the Holy Spirit, we are transformed as we behold Him. to be transformed into the image of Christ. God wants his word to be spiritually effective in our lives. And just packing our gray matter full of it is not going to do it. And bypassing it with experiences and feelings and contemplative spirituality isn't going to get there any better either. Critical principle here.

It is the function of the Bible, this is a quote from Major Bible Themes, is the function of the Bible to interpret experience and feelings and everything else, rather than the function of experience to interpret the Bible. What typically happens, and boy this happens in lots of contexts, is people will take an experience or a feeling that they have and read that back into scripture. And as soon as they do that, you know what happens? They have overridden what God's word says.

They have said, God, my experience is better than your revelation. Your Holy Spirit may have inspired this, but I feel inspired in my feelings. I feel inspired by my experience. And I'll go with that. And then read that back into your Word. I won't trust your Word. I'll trust my feelings. I won't trust your Word. I'll trust my experience. We've used this illustration before. I think it's helpful.

Biblical faith is founded in the revealed spiritual facts of God's Word. The foundation is the spiritual facts based in reality. What God has said in His Word. We put our faith, our belief and trust in what God has revealed. Our feelings, our experiences, our traditions, our relationships, our impressions are all subject to that. First, it's faith in the facts. When Paul said, we walk by faith, not by sight, that sight is all these other things. That sight is all the things at the human level, things that we see, things that we feel, things that we experience, what other people are telling us. We walk by faith in the revealed facts of God's Word.

That's biblical Christianity. Another illustration that we've used to get this point across is with facts, faith, and feelings. The facts are like the train tracks. That's what guides where the train goes. The locomotive, which hopefully is driving the train, sits on the tracks, or at least we sure hope so, right? Rather disconcerting when it doesn't. The caboose is at the end.

That's the feelings, or add to that the other things that I put in there, the traditions, the impressions, the emotions that we feel. Now, one of the things that becomes very clear is Scripture gives us insight into the believer's minds. And while I give the illustration here, I'm not talking about just the gray matter.

Our mind's position is given in 1 Corinthians 2.16. We looked at that some months back. We have, positionally, the mind of Christ. Our mind's process.

This is Ephesians 4.23. You'll be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Not just the gray matter, but the spiritual aspect of your mind. This is not mysticism. This is not just having an experience. This is what does God's Word say That is a renewing of my mind. Romans 12, 1 and 2 also goes there. Very similar renewing of the mind message in that passage.

And thirdly, our mind's place. So we have a mind's position, our mind's process, and our mind's place. Colossians 2, 2 and 3, set your mind where? On things above. That's the place where our mind is to be, not on the things that are on earth. We have a position. We have a process. We have a place.

The use of the minds has to do with our identification, our fellowship, and intimacy with Christ. Not to get cranial, not to get cerebral, and not to shove it all aside in order to have a relationship with the Lord. God intends to use His words so that we might have intimacy with Him. And that intimacy Ephesians 5 is the model for Christian marriage. Got understanding? The point of Paul's words in verses 13 through 19, the last part of the passage, is that just tongues by itself did not convey anything to the minds of other believers.

What's interesting, an analysis was done of those who claim to do tongue speaking And what they found is that there's typically three to six phonemes, that is groups of sounds, that are kind of randomly arranged with a lot of S-H sounds and a lot of L sounds, and a lot of A as vowels. So, sha-sha-sha-sha-la-la-la, sha-sha-sha-sha-sha-la-la-la-la. You edified by that? Chandelier, chandelier, that's another one.

To be a benefit to others, which is God's intent with spiritual gifts, the words must be understood by the ones receiving them. Which my Shondala Shondala didn't do much of, right? An essential part of building up the body of Christ is that others understand what is said. And that's true whether you're talking about what we're doing right here now, or whether it's the personal interaction when we say amen and everybody's talking. It's the other's understanding what is said. If Amen is said and we all get up and everybody turns to the other one and says, Shandala, Shandala, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that doesn't do much good, right? It doesn't build one another up.

Understanding one another is essential. Another point, and it's something that the Corinthians didn't seem to get, at least until they got Paul's letter, It's the body of Christ is not all about what's in it for me. Now, there's another reason why this passage is really relevant. Matter of fact, the whole 12 through 14 in 1 Corinthians is really relevant because we've had a culture that has been teaching us to ask what's in it for me.

We have a culture where we assume that the world owes us things. You recall hearing the advertisements, you deserve this. Of course, they don't give it to you free, right? But you deserve this. You deserve that. There is a culture of entitlement. I am entitled to this. It also breeds a sense of not being thankful. Why? I can't be thankful because it's owed to me, right? It's owed to me. Of course, Jesus had to die for me. He owes it to me. Uh-uh. Okay? Not so good.

Though there are believers who come to church gatherings with the question, what's in it for me? God doesn't intend that we look at the church or spiritual gifts or anything in the gathering of the body of Christ with that question in our minds. As we have in the cartoon illustration, the universe does not orbit around me. It is not what I want, what I expect. It's not what I'm entitled to. That's not the way the body of Christ works. It's not, I have my hand out, what are you going to put in it?

It is instead, as we gather, an opportunity for one to give to the other. That's the definition of our gathering together as believers. The body of Christ is not an organization. It is an organism. Paul continues in this passage to talk about the body, as we saw in Ephesians some time ago, and the elective looked at this recently. Christ is the head. We are the body, together, corporately. By the way, corporate, I don't mean to use any business terms, okay? All right.

Our functions with one another, the gifts that we exercise, the ministries that we have, are like parts of the human anatomy. And that's exactly the comparison Paul made in chapter 12. They are all needed to build up the body of Christ as we grow up into Him who is the head. All needed, every single one.

Ephesians 4, 11 through 16, which I believe you have on page 3 of your handout here, says, and he gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers. Here's the listing of spiritual gifts. What are the gifts for? That's where he goes on here with the next part. For the equipping of the saints for the work of the service. By the way, so what's the pastor? Is he there to do the work? No. The pastor is there to equip the saints who are to do the work. You're the one who's in the ministry, not me. I'm not on the ministry. I hope that doesn't bother anybody. Okay? I'm not. Never have been. All the time I've been here. I'm not on the ministry. You are. Okay? It is my place to equip you for the work of the ministry.

To building up of the body of Christ. Notice as you go through this passage, same message we see in 1 Corinthians 14. Building up and building up. Also, same emphasis. Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ. And as you go through this, and we have it in underlined form in your handout there, what's underlined is all the emphasis on growth and maturity. Growth and maturity keeps coming up in the passage. Spiritual gifts contribute to building up, growing and maturing the body of Christ, all of which centers on knowing Christ.

Spiritual gifts are not to ask the question, what's in it for me? Matter of fact, nothing. They're for everybody else. The ministries are for everybody else. Not what's in it for me. Not what will you give me. What will you give me that I'm entitled to?

But it's for ministering because the whole body needs what you have to offer by God's grace. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage, as we see the things that you spelled out, we just are thankful how you have graciously provided for every ministry that you asked us to step into. Even the works that you ask us to do are works that you not only have prepared beforehand, but you enable and empower and energize us to carry out. And we thank you that we are motivated, Lord, by grace. And as we look at these things, we give you thanks. We give you praise. In Jesus' name, amen.