Tag Archives: body

Sunday August 14, 2022 Romans Week 63 Romans 12:3-8 Pt 2 “Humility and Spiritual Gifts”

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Sunday – August 14, 2022

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Word On Worship – Sunday – August 14, 2022

Romans 12:4-6
“For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly…”

While he was president of Princeton Seminary, Dr. John Mackay was heard to say, “Commitment without reflection is fanaticism in action. But reflection without commitment is the paralysis of all action.”  These two extremes have always threatened the ongoing ministry of the church of Jesus Christ. There are those who are content to learn doctrine but sense no urgency to put what they know into practice. On the other hand, there are the pragmatists who want to know only what seems to work but  are too busy to reflect upon the principles which underlie their activity.

There are many Christians today who are up to their necks in activity and ministry, but who unfortunately have little idea what it’s all about. There are others who would encourage us to get away from cold and sterile doctrine and saturate ourselves with experience. As we approach spiritual gifting, we see that Paul avoids both these extremes. He avoids the extreme of reflection without commitment by challenging every Christian to a life of service. He avoids the danger of activity without reflection by instructing us that the Christian experience is the outgrowth of a transformed mind, a thought-process molded not by the world, but by the Word of God.

These two great dangers are at the heart of the exercise of spiritual gifts. The first is in not devoting ourselves to doing that which we are gifted to do. The second is exercising our gifts in a way inconsistent with the grace of God, the very grace that is to motivate and be manifested by them. We must be challenged to devote ourselves to the function for which God has gifted us and to the ministry He has called us. And we are to do so in a manner pleasing to Him and consistent with the task in the overall plan and purpose of God.

Paul’s words raise an important question I call to your attention, for it require an answer which only you can give. I urge you not to leave this text without arriving at an answer for yourself. Paul is speaking to believers about the spiritual gifts God has bestowed upon each of those who have become His children, by faith. First and foremost, have you received God’s gift of eternal life? Have you been born again? If not, then the subject of spiritual gifts is but an academic exercise, a purely hypothetical question. If so, then you have received, along with the gift of eternal life, a special enablement to serve God through His body, the church. Do so, to the glory of God.

Sunday August 7, 2022 Romans Week 62 Romans 12:3-8 “Straight Thinking on Spiritual Gifts”

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Sunday – August 7, 2022

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Word On Worship – Sunday – August 7, 2022

Romans 12:3-4
For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.

The subject of spiritual gifts is relevant and vitally important to Christians today. Some evangelical Christians believe and teach that spiritual gifts are no longer applicable, that spiritual gifts were given for the church in its infancy. If this is so, how can spiritual gifts now be extinct when the Book of Romans clearly teaches they are necessary for the functioning of the church? While some may differ as to whether all the gifts are necessary in this age, it is very difficult to understand how none of the gifts are needed.

If I understand Paul’s teaching correctly, spiritual gifts are needed as long as we are living on this earth as members of the body of Christ. Spiritual gifts are those endowments of power which enable us to carry out the vital functions of our body life in Christ as members of His body. These endowments are a supernatural enablement so that supernatural results are produced. It is only when our Lord returns, when the church is taken up into glory and fully perfected, that the need for spiritual gifts will cease. Paul’s teaching assumes that teaching about spiritual gifts is both basic and fundamental to Christian living. Peter likewise looked at the exercise of spiritual gifts as a crucial matter. We should take spiritual gifts no less seriously than did the apostles.

But why does Paul tell us that we are to think “so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith”? There are several reasons. First, we live and walk by faith. Faith is essential in our service and in the exercise of our spiritual gifts, just as it is in every other aspect of our lives. Second, the results of our ministry may not be evident or apparent to us, or even to others. The results of the ministry of spiritual gifts are spiritual. They may not be revealed until eternity. We must act on the basis of faith, even though the results are not visible to us. The results of our ministry may be unseen, and faith deals with the unseen.

Because the exercise of a spiritual gift may be unseen, faith is required. Most often the ministry of spiritual gifts is described in terms of the function of the human body. In the human body some members are visible and prominent such as the hands and the eyes. But there are other unseen members like the heart and lungs, which while being unseen are essential to maintain the body. These unseen members are the “vital” organs. Likewise, the vital members of the body of Christ may very well be unseen. Each member of the body of Christ plays a part in the work of the body, as a whole. This the Christian believes by faith and demonstrates to the glory of God.

Sunday – December 5, 2021 Romans Week 32 Romans 7:14-25 “Who is This Wretched Man”

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Sunday – December 5, 2021

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Word On Worship – Sunday – December 5, 2021

Romans 7:19-20
“For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

Paul describes in the Book of Romans a great struggle—one with which only Christians can identify and one with which all Christians can identify. The Christian’s agony comes from realizing that our sinful flesh refuses to respond to the requirements of God’s Law. Those things we as Christians despise, we find ourselves doing and those things we as Christians desire, we fail to accomplish. No matter how much we may wish to serve God in our minds, we find ourselves sinning in our bodies.

My body generally does what I ask it to do, although to my chagrin, it does it slower and not nearly as well as it used to do. It is a frightening thought that someday it may not respond to my requests at all. But it is one thing to have our body not do what we tell it to and quite another to realize that our body is very obedient to something else. Every Christian who reads Romans 7:14-25 should immediately identify with Paul’s expression of frustration and agony due to the weakness of his fleshly body: “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). We are confronted with a dilemma as we try to live righteously. If there were no answer for this question, who would dare to press on with living a holy life?

Christians and non-Christians alike struggle, but they struggle with very different things. The non-Christian’s enemy is God and ultimately the struggle of the unbeliever is their struggle with God. Their distress and troubles are a manifestation of the wrath of God. We were born in our transgressions and sin; we were at enmity with God—sin is not the problem. For the Christian, sin is the enemy and that changes only at conversion. The struggle Paul is describing is his personal struggle with sin, as I understand it, as a believer.

Some of our most tender nerves are touched by Paul’s teaching in verses 14-25. The truths taught here could be taken as the most depressing and hopeless realities of our lives. But Paul does not dwell on the weakness of our flesh in order to discourage us. Rather, Paul exposes the weakness of our flesh as the root problem that prevent Christians from living the kind of lives God requires and which we, as Christians, desire in our innermost being. Paul exposes the weakness of our flesh to prepare us for God’s provision for godly living, the solution found in Romans 8. Those of us willing to honestly identify with the agony of Romans 7 will be ready for the ecstasy of God’s gracious provision for living righteously in Romans 8. Let us welcome these words of encouragement as a revelation from God, for these verses are God’s good news for sinners.

Sunday – October 27, 2019 Gospel of Luke – Luke 23:40 to 24:35 “Dealing with the Death of Jesus”

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Sunday – October 27, 2019

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Word On Worship – Sunday – October 27, 2019

Luke 23:50-52
“Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, 51 who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea and he was waiting for the kingdom of God.”

We should be very interested in the story of Joseph of Arimathea, the man who buried Jesus. No one knows where Arimathea was located, but the designation helps distinguish him from other Josephs. He was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, the body of 70 men who governed the religious and many of the civic matters in Israel. It was the Sanhedrin that had condemned Jesus to death, although Joseph had not consented to their plan. Probably he had not spoken out as vigorously as he should have. John 19:38 tells us that he was a secret disciple of Jesus, for fear of the Jews. His fear had caused Joseph not to take a bold stand for Christ, even though in his heart he knew that he should have done so.

But now, after Jesus was dead, when His followers had gone into hiding, Joseph gathered up his courage (Mark 15:43), went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus so that he could give Him a proper burial. If he had not done so, Jesus’ body probably would have been thrown on a garbage heap and burned, robbing us of some of the major proofs of the resurrection, as we’ll see. We can thank Joseph for honoring Jesus with a proper burial and for giving us many evidences for our faith.

I believe Luke is commending the faith of Joseph and the women, seen by their concern for Jesus body and burial, at a time when this was a most unpopular, and even dangerous, thing to do. Faith in Christ requires an identification with Christ, which includes an identification with Him in His death. In their actions, they stood with Jesus, and apart from the Jewish religious leaders. Saving faith requires those saved from their sins stand apart from a world that has rejected Jesus, and stand with Him who was rejected and put to death. Joseph, Nicodemus, and the women are a picture of what faith requires by those who would be saved. Faith is expressed by an identification with the Jesus who died on the cross of Calvary. No wonder there is no focus on the eleven at this point, whose faith may not have failed, but whose faith surely is not praiseworthy at this point in time.

It does remind us that even when those who are chosen to lead fail to do so, God always has someone in the wings. Joseph was a man whom the disciples would never have considered a prospect for discipleship. He was a prominent member of the Council which, as a group, rejected Jesus. He was a man of influence and apparent wealth. And yet he was the one whom God had prepared so that the body of Jesus would be honored in death. God always has a person in place, but this is often not the person we would have expected to be God’s choice.

Sunday – November 11, 2018 Gospel of Luke – Luke 11:14-36 “Evidence That Leads to Many Verdicts”

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Sunday – November 11, 2018

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Word On Worship – Sunday – November 11, 2018

Luke 11:34-36
“The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Then watch out that the light in you is not darkness.“

I would have to agree with those who say that “you can prove anything you want from the Bible.” This is not to say that the Bible proves all points of view. It is to say that many who view the biblical evidence miss the point. The beauty of this text is it not only shows us how far men can stray from the truth, but it reveals to us why they do so. Here is a text of great importance to all who would seek to know the truth, to come to the verdict which the biblical evidence leads us. Let us listen well to the words of this text, for doing so can keep us from going astray, and it can help us to understand and to help those who have missed the point of God’s Word.

As I look at all the Scriptures it would seem that a man’s ability to understand what God is saying and doing is entirely dependent upon his ability to “see” the truth. Truth is not the problem, but man’s receptivity to the truth is the problem. The Bible is replete with evidence, but the eyes of man are simply not able to see it.

Man’s inability to see is attributed to at least three sources. First, man himself is responsible for his unreceptive heart toward God and toward spiritual truth. That seems to be the thrust of our Lord’s words to the crowd “See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness” (Luke 11:35). Man’s blindness is also attributed to the work of Satan, who blinds men’s minds from the truth (2 Corinthians 4:4). But blindness is also a work of judgment on God’s part, for He has blinded the eyes of Israel as a temporary judgment, due to their persistent unbelief (John 12:39-41).

How, then, does one who is blind come from blindness to sight, from darkness to light, from death to life? I believe that the answer to this question is clear in the Bible. Man cannot, in and of himself, heal himself of his blindness, for it is a blindness of heart. Instead, God, through a gracious and miraculous act on His part, opens our eyes to see the truth. I believe that Paul’s physical blindness and the reception of his sight, was symbolic of his spiritual blindness. Once a person has come to faith in Christ, it is the Scriptures which expose the light in our lives, and which reveals our sin. The Scripture “sharpens our focus” as it were. On the one hand we must ask for God to “open our eyes” as we come to the Word, so that we may see in it the things God has for us (Psalm 119:18). On the other hand, the Scriptures serve to open our eyes, to show us life as it is, ourselves as we are, and God as He is (Hebrews 4:12-13).

Sunday – October 8, 2017 Series Week Four: “Who Is In Charge Here?”

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Sunday – October 8, 2017 – Read the Word on Worship

Sunday – October 8, 2017 Week Four: “Who Is In Charge Here?” from Sunrise Community Church on Vimeo.

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SERIES: “The Church- Can We Have It Our Way?”
Week Four: “Who Is In Charge Here?”

Word On Worship – Sunday – October 8, 2017 Download / Print

Colossians 1:18
“He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.”

I want to answer the question, “Who runs this church?” While this may be a review for some of you old timers, those who are relatively new in this church may not understand how we operate as a church government. Many people wrongly assume that as the pastor, I run the church. I may be the teaching Elder here at Sunrise, but to assume that the pastor runs everything in the church is not only wrong, it is dangerous.

Many people also wrongly assume that our church government is patterned after the U. S. government and operates as a democracy. The pastors and the elders are the elected officers, similar to the President and Congress. At church business meetings, members can voice their opposition to whatever they don’t like and vote according to their preferences. While that system is fine for America, at the risk of sounding un-American, I must say God is not an American. He didn’t set up His church as a democracy, where the most powerful factions control the purse strings. We’re not free to impose our American ideas about government onto the church, unless we find those ideas in the Bible.

Another model that has greatly influenced how American churches are governed is that of American business. Most businesses have the chairman at the top, with his board of directors beneath him and the stockholders as the voting members of the corporation. When that gets carried into the church, the pastor is viewed as the CEO, the elder or deacon board are the directors, and the congregation represents the stockholders, who have their annual meet­ing to vote on how the business should operate. With that model, the answer to the question of who runs the church is, “The pastor does, along with the board of directors.” But, the stockholders have a say in things, and if the company isn’t going the way that they wish, they can vote those guys out of office.

While there may be a few similarities between the business and government models and the church, the biblical picture of church government is different. One major difference is that the church is not just an organization, but also a living organism. Webster defines an organization as “an administrative and functional structure.” He defines an organism as “an individual constituted to carry on the activities of life by means of organs separate in function but mutually dependent.” That describes the church. We are a living unity, the one body of which Jesus Christ is the head. Each member is a vital part of that body, separate in function, but mutually dependent on one another and on Christ, the head. Biblical church government is to allow Jesus Christ to truly function as the living head of His body. None of us should be seeking or voicing our will about various matters in the church, unless we are very convinced that our will coincides with God’s will as revealed in His Word.

Sunday – December 27, 2015 Revelation 10:1-11 “The Bittersweet Book”

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Sunday – December 27, 2015 – Read the Word on Worship

Sunday – December 27, 2015 Revelation 10:1-11 “The Bittersweet Book” from Sunrise Community Church on Vimeo.

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Word On Worship – Sunday – December 27, 2015 Download / Print

Revelation 10:9-11
“So I went to the angel, telling him to give me the little book. And he said to me, “Take it and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.”  I took the little book out of the angel’s hand and ate it, and in my mouth it was sweet as honey; and when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter.”

You’ve heard the old adage, “You are what you eat.” Well, it’s actually true. When you eat a burger, your body metabolizes it. It assimilates and converts it to energy and the building material to create flesh and bone. That burger eventually becomes a part of your body, whether you like it or not. You bear it on your body. The same ought to be true with God’s Word. You should begin to act and look more like Jesus Christ. Every day and in every way, people ought to be able to say: “I’m becoming more like Christ.”

This angel tells John that this book “will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.” This is a sweet and sour scroll. God’s Word can be bittersweet and hard to digest. Sometimes God’s Word can give us heartburn; other times it is sweet to the taste. We must understand that prophecy and Scripture, as a whole, is bittersweet. There are sweet promises in the Bible, but there are also bitter warnings. God’s Word can bring joy to our heart but at times it brings sorrow. It both blesses us and burdens us. People get excited about studying prophecy. Unquestionably, there are some exciting things about this book — a sweet taste. But it also burdens the believer about his unsaved family and friends and is a stern warning of judgment to come to the unbeliever.

This revelation was pleasant at first because it was a revelation from God. Please note that John tastes God’s revealed Word. It is not enough to see the book in someone’s hand or even to know what it contains. We must assimilate it and digest it. Too many Christians do not make the Word part of their inner being. Yet, our privilege as believers is not only to read the Bible but also to assimilate it into our lives. God won’t force-feed us with His Word; rather, He exhorts us to take it from His hand, eat it and assimilate it into our lives. The Word of God is the food of the Christian. It is compared to bread (Matt 4:4), milk (1 Pet 2:2), meat (1 Cor 3:1-2), and honey (Ps 119:103).

Still, as John meditated on it and comprehended the fearful judgments that it predicted, he became distressed. Have you ever experienced the sweet and bitter dimensions of God’s Word? We read of God’s love and mercy toward us, His eternal plan of salvation, His promise to give us a future and a hope, and the assurance of eternal life. That’s sweet. But then the Word also speaks directly to areas in our lives that may require change. Maybe your behavior or lifestyle dishonors God and is in direct violation of His Word. Maybe you have excused a bad attitude or a critical spirit in your life. At times, God’s Word can be a painful tool of correction. But it is always redemptive. It is always for our good. I would suggest to you that you haven’t really learned the Word until you live the Word. So how are you living? What difference has the book of Revelation made in your life?