Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] It all started with a 1918 Victrola.
[00:00:03] So if you guys aren't aware, Victrola is a record player, but the one that I have at my house is from 1918, so you can't plug it into the wall. You actually have to hand crank it to get it started. And then you lay the records on it. It plays. It won't play any record made past, like, 1926.
[00:00:21] So there's not a lot of cool music you can listen to on this thing.
[00:00:25] But I am profoundly proud of this piece of furniture in my house. It's the only piece of furniture that I've had any say in.
[00:00:33] My wife does not love this, but it's not going anywhere, mainly because it's a family heirloom. It belonged to my great, great grandfather, whose name was Granville Basil Durham. And my wife knows this. But many of you may not. If I learn a fun fact, I'm all in. That becomes my life for the next three or four weeks.
[00:00:54] It doesn't matter if it's just a new sport or a new history lesson. Whatever it is, I lock in. And so, because I was given this Victrola, I got really obsessed with genealogy.
[00:01:08] I was just so obsessed with finding my family line. I knew that I had a great head start because my great grandfather had given me this Victrola. And I was determined that on my two week free trial of ancestry before it charged me, that I was going to find all the answers to my family history.
[00:01:27] Unfortunately, I hit a dead end. And that was in the 1600s with Thomas Durham Senior.
[00:01:34] We know that he popped up in Virginia in 1686. We know that he was born in 1649. We have no idea how he got here.
[00:01:43] Even the area that he popped up in was very hard to settle.
[00:01:47] I was determined that I could use AI and ancestry and I could figure this out. I could figure out where Thomas Durham came from. So I started Googling and I ended up on a website that was written about nine years ago from a professional genealogist that was trying to solve the mystery of Thomas Durham Sr. And I was like, this is it. So I read the article and I thought, this lady wants me to cold email her that I'm related to him.
[00:02:12] So I typed up an email and gave forth all of my family records and said, ma', am, the mystery you've been looking to solve, I can help fix.
[00:02:23] She responded three days later, which was surprising.
[00:02:27] She was excited that a male derm. I guess in the genealogy world the Y chromosome passes down better than in the female that she had tested a few different derms but had no connection. So she offered to sponsor me to take the ancestry test that was $400. So I was like, this is awesome. I also have never met this lady, so who knows what's happening here?
[00:02:54] So I did what any person would do, and I just emailed her my address and told her to send it to me. I figured we were this far in with the address, it's okay. So I took the DNA test. I sent it off. I think maybe I can be framed for a crime by the government now, but I'm awaiting these.
[00:03:09] But genealogy, in a lot of ways, just gets me excited because I feel this deep connection with these people that I've never met. I feel like, in a way that their story is intertwined with mine, and that really provides just like this cool. Like, I feel like I know them when I don't. And in Corinthians, here, Paul is talking about a different kind of connection. Maybe not genealogy and DNA, but he's talking about the church body as a whole. See, in Corinth, it was a very eclectic group of people.
[00:03:40] It was started, it restarted as a community in the Roman Empire with freed slaves. So a lot of freed slaves went to this area. So it was very low income at first.
[00:03:50] It's also an isthmus, which, if you guys remember from geography school, that is just connecting two large pieces of land.
[00:03:58] And that was significant because the trade route, if you could take your boat, put it on wheels, and get it across the 8 km of Corinth on the other side, you could save yourself about 200 miles in the trade via water. And so that led to a lot of different people passing through Corinth. It became like an entrepreneurial hub. We see that with Paul joining the tent making business that was already established there.
[00:04:23] It's really like kind of a melting pot in some ways, which is awesome when we think about the body of the church and of Christ. But as we see, we're in chapter 12, right at the end of chapter 11, Paul is actually rebuking this church because of their elitism.
[00:04:42] They are treating members differently based on wealth or financial status. They're excluding them from the Lord's Supper.
[00:04:50] Paul was saying that there were divisions all over the church.
[00:04:54] And so he goes on to chapter 12 and brings up spiritual gifts. And these spiritual gifts are to bring unity to the church or to build up the church. And we know this because he's all leading to chapter 13, which is the famous chapter of love and that these gifts without love are meaningless. And so in this section here, we see gospel unity is three things. One, it's distinct.
[00:05:20] Two, it provides security, and three, it demands sacrifice.
[00:05:25] So first we see that the gospel unity is distinct. So look with me at verses 12 and 13.
[00:05:32] For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves or free.
[00:05:48] And all were made to drink of one spirit.
[00:05:51] So the first thing we notice here is there's many members.
[00:05:54] This. This church cannot exist by yourself.
[00:05:57] This is not something that you can do from your living room. This is why virtual church is a great tool to be used, but it doesn't replace church attendance. We need to be with the body, with lots of members, for a lot of different ways.
[00:06:12] The distinction of the Gospel is that it brings people who are vastly different together.
[00:06:19] Now, quite a few things in our society do that.
[00:06:23] Sports do that, hobbies do that. But all of those things change.
[00:06:27] They change over time. Your sports team loses or coaches change.
[00:06:32] And with the body of Christ, we can be confident that this connection is not going anywhere. It's the same today as it was yesterday and forever.
[00:06:43] What else do we notice about the members there? We notice that they're Jews or Greeks, slaves or free.
[00:06:52] They're different. They don't all have the same story.
[00:06:55] They're all bringing different pieces and memories and experiences together to create this community.
[00:07:01] And we see that they're baptized here into one body.
[00:07:05] So what Paul is meaning by that, he's not just meaning baptism, as we just saw, but also that they're immersed in the body together.
[00:07:14] They're there. They're connected. They're experiencing these things together. We see this when he says that they're made to drink of one spirit.
[00:07:22] That's referring to just common refreshment or enjoyment or blessings that we all share. We all get to experience those. We all get to stand and clap when the baptism waters are moved. We all get to serve alongside each other at vbs.
[00:07:38] And with this, we see a diversity of the people that are gathered, a diversity of ethnicity, age, skin color, talents.
[00:07:47] Look with me at verse 14 through 16. For the body does not consist of one member, but of many.
[00:07:53] If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body.
[00:08:05] That would not make it any less part of the body.
[00:08:09] Notice that if the analogy Paul is using here with the body, if we were. If it was a body made completely of ears, it would look insane.
[00:08:19] Like, imagine this church with just 600 derricks. I know that's a scary thought, honestly, in a lot of ways.
[00:08:26] But if everybody looked like me and thought like me and was me, I mean, one, we'd never get through a worship service because we wouldn't stop talking long enough. We couldn't preach for 40 minutes because the congregation wouldn't hush. We couldn't worship. The same four jokes would get very old if there were 600 of us. Part of the fun of new members is the four jokes haven't been used yet.
[00:08:51] And then 600 derricks would just have an opinion about everything. It would be exhausting to listen to all the time.
[00:08:58] That's why we need people that are different than us.
[00:09:03] An example of this is a friend of mine, David Perry. We went to church together in town. That church doesn't exist anymore. We're not creating division here.
[00:09:13] And for those couple years, we didn't speak. We were on the setup team together. There was maybe 15 of us.
[00:09:21] I don't know if we ever said hi to one another.
[00:09:25] It wasn't intentional. It was just we kind of went to church and went on.
[00:09:30] Sarah and I moved to Georgia. We came back and I knew Grant Martin, and he said, I'm going to David and Megan Perry's Bible fellowship group. You should join us. I remember walking in and being like, this is the same guy that I went to church with.
[00:09:43] And the Lord was determined that we were going to be friends.
[00:09:46] So David really likes physics and woodworking and lifting weights.
[00:09:52] I don't like any of those things, to be honest with you.
[00:09:55] In fact, not only do I not like those things, I strongly dislike most of those things.
[00:10:01] But we were at his bfg. We ended up being neighbors for a few years. And over the years, the Perry family has been an unbelievable blessing to our life.
[00:10:11] And without the gospel, we're robbed of that, because if it were up to me, I would just find friends that like the same things as me that get along with me.
[00:10:20] And I would never have to go out of my comfort zone to find anybody that was different.
[00:10:26] But gospel unity gives us the connection of the gospel, and then it allows us to see other people's talents. It allows us to experience what other people are good at, and it grows us in the connection.
[00:10:40] It's one of those things that if we push back against this kind of diversity, that we're sabotaging ourselves.
[00:10:49] We're cutting off our own limbs for the sake of preference, for the sake of opinion.
[00:10:55] And see, what does this look like for us? It looks like going to a BFG where not everybody maybe is your friend.
[00:11:03] Now, the goal of a BFG is to become friends, but the goal also is to pursue gospel friendship. You need people that are different than you, that think different than you, that challenge you in ways that annoy you, that is good for your soul. It's good for you to realize that the diversity in the gospel is good.
[00:11:27] Now, we have to be careful. Diversity is not the end goal.
[00:11:32] We don't pursue diversity. We're not looking to be the most eclectic church. We pursue Christ.
[00:11:41] When we pursue Christ, we get diversity. We get gospel unity, but only when we do that. When we make these other things our idols, we have to be careful because we're losing the plot.
[00:11:52] The point is that we get Jesus. And because of Jesus, we get to experience gospel unity. We get to experience these deep friendships that would have never happened without the gospel.
[00:12:04] And this takes effort. It takes a certain bit of energy.
[00:12:09] This is going out of your way to introduce yourself to new people. This is maybe sitting in a new section that you don't usually sit in. I know that's especially difficult for me. I really like my spot and my seat.
[00:12:20] But we see that the gospel unity is distinct. And next we see that the gospel unity provides security.
[00:12:27] So look at me with me at verse 18 through 20.
[00:12:31] But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.
[00:12:38] If all were a single member, where would the body be?
[00:12:42] As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
[00:12:46] This is God arranged the members of the body, each one of them, as he chose.
[00:12:52] So that means that we can't take any credit for what goes on here.
[00:12:57] There's 600 people in this room. It's not because Pastor Jeremy is talented.
[00:13:03] It's not because we're so organized.
[00:13:06] It's not because the vbs.
[00:13:10] It's not because of the VBS decorations.
[00:13:13] There's nothing that we have done that would encourage this type of response.
[00:13:21] God has brought us all here individually, each member. He has led us here.
[00:13:28] And that gives us a great sense of security, which in a lot of ways, in culture, we're in, like, a security crisis.
[00:13:36] Everyone's wondering, what's my purpose? What do I need to do? I'm not finding it at work.
[00:13:44] I'm nervous I'm anxious. I can't figure out what I need to do on a daily basis. How do I lead my family?
[00:13:50] Well, the church in a lot of ways is the answer to that.
[00:13:54] It provides the security that we're looking for. God has providentially brought us here and set us here together.
[00:14:03] So that is the purpose. Our purpose is to have roots and to stick together with one another and pursue the gospel.
[00:14:12] And that also means that the person that annoys you the most, God put them here and probably for you.
[00:14:22] And remember also that you're the person that annoys somebody else the most. That's how that works. It's always a two way street.
[00:14:29] And that's good. It's good for us to know that this isn't something we could take credit for.
[00:14:37] Because how shallow would it be if we could just fill this room with similar interests or hobbies, or being charismatic with how we preach the word.
[00:14:49] All of that stuff is fleeting. It would lead to just loneliness on the other end.
[00:14:55] We need each part of the body to have different talents and abilities.
[00:15:01] We see this in verse 21 through 24.
[00:15:04] The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you.
[00:15:08] Nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.
[00:15:13] On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem weaker are indispensable.
[00:15:18] In those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor. And our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty which our more presentable parts do not require.
[00:15:29] We see the theme of reliance here. We need each other. Paul says, we cannot say, I have no need of you. That means there's nobody in this church that you can say, we don't need you.
[00:15:40] If you cleaned up for the VBS decorations, you realize we need everybody.
[00:15:44] Sometimes even with everybody, it feels like we need more bodies.
[00:15:48] Well, Paul is distinguishing here that we have a reliance on the people that God has divinely placed with us.
[00:15:58] And he goes on to say that parts of the body that seem weaker.
[00:16:02] So he's not comparing gifts here. He's not saying that some are not worth anything and some are. In fact, he's pushing back totally against the attitude of thinking that your gifts are more important and that your gifts somehow bring something to the table that others don't. And he uses the body as the example here. I mean, think about this. Not often do we think of how our organs are keeping us alive.
[00:16:27] Now, As a type 1 diabetic, some of us think about our pancreas maybe more than Others.
[00:16:31] But you don't see your liver doing what it does. You don't see your heart.
[00:16:37] But that doesn't make those things insignificant.
[00:16:40] In fact, they're vital. They're indispensable, as Paul would call them.
[00:16:45] It's also one of those things that we need to check our hearts with when it comes to our gifts. Do we think that they're necessary? Do we feel that the church can't move on without us?
[00:16:56] Do we serve in hopes that someone praises us on the other end and says, wow, how great that was?
[00:17:04] And what Paul is saying here is that the gifts that may not seem flashy or important are super important. And we see this all the time in and around the church. We see there's so many things that go on behind the scenes of planning, of staffing, of organization, of running to the store, of fixing. All of those things are happening so that the pastors can get up here and preach, so that we can lead worship, so that we can organize ourselves as a church. And so many of those things go unseen. But they are indispensable, as Paul says. And this is why we see security important in church membership. This is why church membership is so important. It provides that security.
[00:17:50] It says, I'm not going anywhere. It says that I'm showing up. This is the group of people that I've decided to covenant with and I will not leave. This is why when we don't get our way or we don't get a preference, we have to stay. It's more important to stay after you don't get what you want, because that's what provides security, the security in knowing that these church members aren't leaving, that Christ has called us here together, and regardless of the circumstances, we can link arms and continue on. There's no. There should be no loneliness here because we have a church body that has committed to spread the gospel and committed to be with one another.
[00:18:33] I remember when Sarah and I were joining the church, they said, I believe it was Austin Padgett that reached out to me and he said, we have to have a meeting. And I was like, oh, no, is there going to be a quiz? I hope there's no quiz.
[00:18:46] And I remember meeting in Purdy's with Austin and my wife and he asked us some questions and just explained what the church, what the church believed. And we went through it. And I remember leaving and going, man, they take church membership super serious. And I remember growing up, when we became a member of a church, we just kind of walked to the front and Signed a card, and here we are.
[00:19:08] And I think that seriousness made me reflect on why it's important.
[00:19:16] Why are we taking this so serious? Why is this a step that's necessary? But we see this throughout Scripture, that we are placed here by God with other members of the body. We're part of the body that all of us together are working together for the body of Christ, who Christ came and died for.
[00:19:35] So it has to be serious. That's why church attendance is serious. It's not in a legalistic way. It's in a. Your body and soul needs you to be here.
[00:19:44] We need to be connected to worship.
[00:19:47] As Clay said, with our lights off that we usually keep them on during worship. So many times, worship is not for us. It's for everybody else. It's to hear everybody else singing with us. It's to stuff dumpsters as full as possible with foam cactuses together.
[00:20:04] And that's what builds this togetherness and this unity.
[00:20:07] So we see that the gospel unity is distinct. We see that it provides security.
[00:20:12] And ultimately we see that gospel unity requires sacrifice. Look with me in verse 24, the end of 24 to 26.
[00:20:21] But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that members may have the same care for one another.
[00:20:32] If one member suffers, all suffer together.
[00:20:36] If one member is honored, all rejoice together as God has composed the body that there would be no division.
[00:20:43] We can't fight about what we think, who we think is more important or not important. This is what God is saying. He did this. We don't get to decide what's most important and what gets used and what doesn't get used, because Christ has already put that together for us. So we have the freedom to just live and to do church together.
[00:21:03] Composed here in the Greek means to affect a harmonious unit. And what a perfect example of the body of Christ is an orchestra. Everybody brings their own instrument. They play together, and it's a beautiful sound.
[00:21:16] We see this in worship.
[00:21:19] If it was 600 derricks in here, the worship would sound horrendous. But it's not. When all 600 of us lift our voices, the sound is beautiful because we're all together and working in worship.
[00:21:32] We see that there's no division.
[00:21:36] How can there be no division?
[00:21:39] It only happens through sacrifice. It only happens when I put my preferences aside.
[00:21:45] It only happens when I'm not showing up on Sunday saying what can be about me.
[00:21:50] It's only when I go, all right, I can be inconvenienced. I can maybe park 700 yards from the building in a weird area that the parking team told me to. And that's one of those things where as it requires us to sacrifice, that's what builds the togetherness that we suffer together.
[00:22:11] We suffer together at VBS Week when it's Friday and we're all just exhausted. We suffer together when we volunteer to go to church, church camp and those kids stay up all night.
[00:22:24] That's the sacrifice that's needed.
[00:22:27] It takes sacrifice of time. It takes sacrifice of our energy.
[00:22:30] It takes sacrifice of our money.
[00:22:36] We stay when preferences aren't met. We sacrifice time to babysit when someone has a baby.
[00:22:42] We give up travel ball tournaments so that we can gather with our church family.
[00:22:47] We sacrifice weeknights to serve at Awana.
[00:22:50] We clean our house relentlessly so that our BFG can come over.
[00:22:56] We cook meals and deliver them across town or to a different town so that we can take the burden off one another.
[00:23:04] We sweat to death at the fourth of July event, or at least I do.
[00:23:08] And we are reminded in 96 degree weather that we love our church family as we're just soaking in the sun.
[00:23:18] We mourn together. When the diagnosis comes, we sit in each other's living rooms and weep over sin or over the pain.
[00:23:30] We encourage one another as we go through the challenge, the challenges of parenting or the challenges of marriage.
[00:23:38] And as we sit in our Bible fellowship group and we talk about how life is so hard or how maybe our foster kid went home, or that we're angry or that our family's dysfunctional or so many just painful times.
[00:23:59] We sit with one another and we don't have division because we are aware of the gift of gospel unity. We're aware of the preciousness of what the Lord has given us.
[00:24:12] But this can't happen without intentional effort.
[00:24:15] It takes intention to do this. The church wasn't built by accident. As we see God. God placed this on purpose. So we're not going to be able to serve the church accidentally. We're not going to stumble into this kind of gospel unity because it's not natural.
[00:24:33] This does not happen without Christ. And so we're not going to just show up and all of a sudden everybody just agree on things. It takes intentional effort to pursue our inconvenience for the sake of Christ.
[00:24:49] But we sacrifice our time and our energy in so many different ways to this church because it's an example of what Christ did for us.
[00:25:00] Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice.
[00:25:04] He sacrificed his son so he. So we could have gospel unity.
[00:25:08] His sacrifice should lead to our sacrifice. This is why we take time, our pto, to go on mission trips.
[00:25:15] Because Christ set the example of giving up everything for us. He. He united a group of misfit sinners with the creator of the universe.
[00:25:27] He sacrificed his son.
[00:25:31] And some. Some of you today, or maybe this is a foreign thing to you, maybe this is strange, maybe you've never experienced gospel unity, or worse, maybe you've only experienced division in the church growing up, and maybe you have some ill feelings towards that and you are hurt by some of the things that have happened.
[00:25:52] We get the ultimate encouragement that that's not how things are supposed to be.
[00:25:56] Because of Christ, there is no division. And so when we know that there's division, we know that's not Christ.
[00:26:04] And that's so important because as we pursue life with one another, we have to give each other grace.
[00:26:14] We give each other grace in the same way that the Lord has given us grace when we're offended or when we're inconvenienced.
[00:26:22] And maybe you've only seen community in small things like sporting events or interests or maybe politics. Maybe that's the only time that you've experienced any bit of unity or you've seen disunity. Well, I encourage you today to do something about that in the sense of pursue church membership, pursue Christ in a way that, that you haven't before.
[00:26:49] Sign up for a Bible fellowship group or sign up for an equip group, maybe with people you don't know.
[00:26:57] I remember walking into my Bible fellowship group for the first time. It was at the o' Brien's house, and I had never met the o'. Brien's, and I'm scared to death of being late. So I was very early and it was just me and Sarah, and I was like, this is so awkward.
[00:27:14] And I remember walking in and I was like, I'm gonna have to come up with small talk. This is gonna be difficult. And the o' Briens were unbelievably hospitable.
[00:27:22] And then I met so many other people in that BFG that I'd never met. And every single time, I walked away with going, they're so much different than me, but man, I love that I know them. My life is. My life is sweeter because of them.
[00:27:36] And so Christ's sacrifice on the cross paid for our sins so that we could experience this gospel unity. We can experience the celebrations, we can experience the baptisms, we can experience the prayers, the new building one day, Lord willing, maybe a parking lot one day.
[00:27:59] That seems maybe crazy at this point. I don't know.
[00:28:03] But we get the joys of this. We get the joys of deep gospel friendship because of Christ.
[00:28:09] And so for some of you, maybe DNA connection and genealogy is not exciting.
[00:28:16] Maybe it's boring, but maybe it's painful, maybe it's awkward. Maybe it's something that is not something you want to pursue.
[00:28:26] And I may or may not solve the Thomas Durham senior mystery. It's unlikely. I don't know.
[00:28:32] The test results are still pending.
[00:28:36] But ultimately there is a DNA.
[00:28:40] There's a DNA that took our place on the cross so that we have that connection.
[00:28:47] It's more important than a family heirloom that's in my kitchen. It's more important than a DNA link to a guy from the 1600s.
[00:28:56] It is the only connection that matters. It's the only connection that lasts.
[00:29:04] It brings us all together. The blood of Christ is the ultimate DNA connection.
[00:29:08] It is the ultimate gospel unity.
[00:29:13] And I pray that today that we take gospel unity serious, that we recognize what a gift this church is.
[00:29:20] I'm so encouraged every time I serve here because I look around and there's a hundred people are serving with me, and it has been such a blessing. And I pray today that we understand the sacrifice that Christ made for us so that we can sacrifice for the gospel unity in this church.
