Good evening. Could we please turn to our theme verse in Matthew 9? We are going to read verses 35 to 38.
And Jesus was going about all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. And seeing the multitudes, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and downcast, like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”
And then if we could turn to the Gospel of John, chapter 4. We will start in verse 10.
Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
Verse 35, the second half.
“Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest. Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal, that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.”
And then if we could turn to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, verse 31.
But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. And all the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, “Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave Me drink. I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me. I was sick, and you visited Me. I was in prison, and you came to Me.” Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, “Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? And when did we see You a stranger and invite You in, or naked and clothe You? And when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?” And the King will answer and say to them, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.”
And then if we could read three passages—three short passages—about the body of Christ. We will start in Ephesians 4, and we will just read from verse 11.
And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
Romans 12. We will read verses 1 and 2, and then 4 through 10. Well, let us read verse 3 as well.
I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. For through the grace given to me I say to every man 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. 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. And since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let each exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith; if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Give preference to one another in honor.
And finally, if we could turn to 1 Corinthians, chapter 12. And we will start in verse 7.
But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
And then we will move to verse 11.
But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills. For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.
Let us bow for a word of prayer.
Lord, we thank You for having already been so faithful to us in the things that You have wanted to say. Lord, we pray tonight that our hearts will be open to You. Lord, we pray for the power of Your Word to be able to speak into our hearts. Lord, we thank You, because in three messages already You have reminded us that all of this is built upon a love that comes from the deepest part of who You are for us. So, Lord, we want to tremble in the presence of such a wonderful fact as we consider all the things that You have prepared. So we thank You, Lord, and we hide ourselves under Your love, in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, if we could start again by the well in the city of Samaria. There was a well that was called Jacob’s Well, in Sychar of Samaria.
And in John 4, as our brother mentioned this morning, we find that our Lord Jesus is there. And His disciples have gone off to prepare for a meal.
And at this period of time, a woman comes, holding a water pot, because she came for her thirst. It was the burden of daily life. And she came not only with the burden of daily living—meaning, “I’m thirsty in the heat”—but she came with other burdens as well. She had been with five men, and the man whom she was with at the moment was not her husband. He may have been someone else’s husband. And so she came carrying a burden.
The water pot that she had with her might have been able to cure her thirst, but it could not cure her sin. And so, of course, the Lord knew, and He was there, and when she came, He saw her.
And in love—this wonderful love which we have shared about already—He began to talk to her. And the marvel of it is, He began to share with her all the true things of her life. But, as has happened to so many of us, there was no condemnation. Rather than being pushed away by the clarity of her failings, something drew her in.
Why do we know this is true? Because this was the Lord’s intention. It was to come to where this person was, and to draw her in.
Now, there were many reasons why this interaction should not have been happening. On the one hand, there were earthly reasons. He was a Jewish man, and she was a Gentile woman, and these kinds of conversations did not happen between two types of people such as these.
There was also a heavenly reason why such an interaction should not have happened, because we sinners do not belong in the presence of a righteous God. But here, at this well, this marvel was happening.
And the invisible propulsion of the conversation was this non-measurable love that the Lord has for those of us who are lost. It wipes out all of the barriers. He pointed out her sins, but He pointed them out under the covering of this love.
The water that she was hoping to draw from the well with her water pot—there was some water, a source, a spring, that she could not reach. And so the Lord told her that if you knew who was speaking to you, and you asked, He would give you a water that would cause you never to thirst again. And so much so that the result of taking of this water would cause you to have a spring of life in you that would be eternal, and that no one could take away.
And so she, of course, said to Him, “Give me this water.” And then she looked on Him, this Man who ought not to be having this conversation with her. A thought came into her mind when she said, “We know the Messiah is coming.” It was an inkling in her heart. And then He said, “I who speak to you am He.”
And she left her water pot, because it was of no use anymore, and she ran back to her home to tell them that she had met the Messiah.
The disciples by this time had come, and they had seen her too. But they had seen her with human eyes, with the wrong eyes. And what they saw was all the things that we had already said. She was the wrong earthly race, and she was the wrong gender. This should not have happened.
But the Lord, He sees them, and He tells them something of His heart. He tells them, “Lift up your eyes. Don’t look at the ground. Don’t look with human eyes. Lift up your eyes. Look on the fields. They are white, ready for harvest.”
And then He tells them that if you go out into this harvest and you reap, you will reap unto the economy of heaven. You will reap something of such tremendous worth that nothing on this earth can compare in being able to measure its value. And then He says, “And if you do so, the sower and the reaper will rejoice together.”
He was telling them something of this harvest that was so precious, and that was: see the harvest as I see the harvest. See this woman who, on this earth, through your eyes, has no value—the wrong gender, in the twisted time in which this differentiation would occur; the wrong race; to human eyes of no worth—but to His eyes, it is the reward of heaven, so precious without measure.
And He was telling them, if you engage in this calling, that the sower and the reaper will be bound together in joy. So change our mindsets. Don’t think from the banking system of the world. Think from the economy of heaven, because in the economy of the world there will be loss. It will cost you, if you choose to go out into the field. It will cost you your time, and it will cost you your energy, and it may cost us our reputation. But we will draw a wage that is of eternal life.
So, brothers and sisters, He was conveying something of the greatest importance in His heart.
The Lord Jesus, at that moment, was walking into the field, and His eyes were on those who were in need.
Now, as our brother this afternoon was sharing with us, that is precisely what He was doing this weekend: that He is coming among us, and He is walking in the field. And we are just like that Gentile woman. We are those in the field. We are invisible in the economy of the world.
We are sinners who need salvation. There are some of us who have been searching for what is true in our life. There are those of us who are downcast, and we need hope. There are those who have been thrown down, cast down, and we need to be picked up. We are saved, some of us, but we are lacerated, as the Lord said when His eyes came upon the sheep.
But, brothers and sisters, if we look up and we look into the field, we see Him there, that He is out in the midst of His field, and He is ministering to His sheep—all of us who are in need.
Now, James wrote about this, about his brother. James wrote that his brother, when He would teach something, He would do that very thing. And so when He would see those who were in need, He was there. He lived as He taught. It came from inside of Him. It came from this love that we have described, which came from the deepest part of Him—in His bowels, in His guts. It was in Him. It was deeper than His heart. It was deeper than circumstances. It was so much so that it drew Him into action.
So it was in Matthew 9, our theme verse. When He looked out on the fields, and He saw the sheep—all of these people—and He saw them with the compassion that came from the deepest part of who He was. And He instructed us: pray, and go. As our brother shared with us this morning, go and do likewise. It was to pray and to go, to see and to do.
But the wonder of it all was, we were sheep who were lost, and it was to the sheep whom He found that He now calls: you once were those who listened, and I came and found you, and now it is time for you to go out to be laborers. You are those who are the recipients of grace, and now there is a call that comes to be the conduits of grace.
And that is to say that we are all the same: that those of us who were sheep are not different from those of us who will be laborers; that there is not a class that is one, and another class that is another. He was letting us know that we are all together as one. And if we would look up into the field, and if we could see for a moment with His eyes, we would be driven by a deep love that we would never have known apart from Him.
He was sharing with us that, “I can see this, and I know in My heart, in My mind, what I would want to do.” But in the wisdom of His grace, He has given us the chance that we might be His body: that what He wills in His mind, and what He commands in His mind, the body of Christ might move and take action.
Our brothers have shared that our theme verse is a connecting point between chapters 8 and 9 and chapter 10—the connecting verse between seeing Him, the Lord of the harvest, and His charge.
And in chapters 8 and 9, we are called to see as He sees. And in seeing, in chapter 9, the way He acts, the way He goes out, in these seemingly at times mundane actions, we begin to see principles of the functioning of the body of Christ, which we would like to share about briefly this evening. And then in chapter 10, we begin to receive the instructions to follow Him out into the field.
And I have a suspicion that the Lord, this time—sometimes the Lord gives us all a different series of verses, and sometimes it seems that He puts us all in the same space—to emphasize something that is deep in His heart. So we would like today to share, first, about chapter 9, to see the principles of the body of Christ in the harvest.
Now, when we see the Lord among the harvest, we see Him among His people, seeing those who are lost, those who are in need. And we shared already that there is not a class that is distressed and downcast versus a class of laborers.
If I can give an example of this, I have a patient whom I have been taking care of for twenty-four years. When I began taking care of her, she was eighty. And she, this year, was 104 years old.
When I would see her, she would ask me, “How is your family doing?” And I thought, “Well, this is very polite,” and so we would engage in some conversation.
And then one year—and as many of you know, in our family we have had some health challenges for our daughter that have required many surgeries. And so there was one year when she came, and it happened to be that period of time. So I told her about my daughter, whom, of course, I love. And she asked for her name. And then when I saw her again the next time, she said, “Well, how is she doing? How is Lily doing?” And I told her, and then she said, “I pray for her every day.”
And I said, “Thank you.” Again, what a nice thing to say. And then it began to be that each time I would see her, over the course of years, she would ask, “How is Lily doing? I pray for her every day.”
And there were times when it was very hard. You know, all of us who have gone through challenges for our kids, you come in with burdens. And I always used to tell her, “I feel like I ought to be paying you a fee instead of you coming to see me.” And she would say, “I pray for her every day.”
And then, about a month ago, she was hospitalized. Now, when you are 104 years old, there is no such thing as a simple hospitalization. And she was hospitalized at a different hospital than ours. And so that morning, before work, I drove to go see her, because I did not know what to expect.
And when I saw her, and they chatted with me a little bit about what was happening, and I got a peek at the X-ray, and I knew that was going to be a hard journey out, if at all. And she was not able to breathe very well. So I leaned over to her, and I said, “Dorothy, I pray for you every day.”
I felt such an honor to be able to say that to her, because, brothers and sisters, she had come out into the field for me.
And what we see here, brothers and sisters, is we are all together. There are no classes. There are no levels. But we begin to see, in the work of the Lord, that we are all together, one body, and instruments of His will. And so I felt such an honor to be able to give back to this person who, quite so many times, came into the field for my family.
So what we see here, brothers and sisters, is that the field is a place of life’s needs. But we cannot see the field clearly if we do not see that at some point in our lives the body of Christ reached out for us, because it is the great equalizer. All of us are in need. All of us have been downcast and distressed. And at some time, the Lord sends someone after us.
Brothers and sisters, I am so thankful for this place. I did not even come to the meetings when I was growing up, but I listened to the messages. And the brothers who were here—Dana was joking about it, the bread and the baloney and the bread—but in the preparation of the Word, the Lord had sent out those to find us who were in need. He has always been faithful to do that.
And He wants us to look out into the field, to see that there are those out there who need salvation, and there are those out there who need support, and those who need to survive. And to see them with His eyes is different from seeing them in a picture book or in a movie. We see the Lord of the harvest in His field.
And in this way, we begin to see the functioning and the importance of the body of Christ in these days: that what is in His mind and in His heart does not stay captured there, paralyzed, but that those of us whom He has come out to find may learn how to function according to the principles of His body.
So we would like to look in chapter 9 at three seemingly mundane stories, each of which demonstrates something of one of these principles.
So we will start in Matthew 9, and we will read the first story.
And getting into a boat, He crossed over and came to His own city. And behold, they were bringing to Him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, “Take courage, My son; your sins are forgiven.” And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, “This fellow blasphemes.” And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why are you thinking evil in your thoughts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise up and walk’? But in order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—then He said to the paralytic—“Rise, take up your bed, and go home.”
Brothers and sisters, this story is shared in Matthew 9, in Mark 2, and in Luke 5. It tells the story of a number of friends. And I do not know how many they were, but I always assume that there were four. There may be more, or fewer; I do not know. But they had a friend of theirs who had been paralyzed. And what that basically means was that something of the head could not communicate with something of the body: that the intention may have been there, but the ability to be able to move, and extend and flex his muscles, had been lost.
Now, the Lord Jesus had come back to His hometown, and He was speaking, and at this moment He was in a home of some sort. And the crowds had gathered in. And so these friends brought their friend on a mat and carried him close, and they had a shared intention: we are going to bring him into the presence of the Lord Jesus, because we believe and know that the Lord has the heart to heal.
And so as they brought him near, they realized that there was such a crowd that there was no way to get close. And so the—however many of them—concocted a plan. We are going to climb up onto the roof. And we are going to somehow get the mat up, and our paralyzed friend up onto the roof. And then we are going to peek in through the front door and figure out about how many paces west and north he is from the corner we climbed up. And at that point, we are going to dig a hole through the roof, and then we are going to lower our friend down, on his mat, into His presence. It was a coordinated plan. And so they did it.
And I do not know how they did it. But somehow, one of them must have gone up first, and then another, perhaps; and they threw the mat up, and then somehow they extended his arms—the two on the ground—and they lifted him up, and they pulled him up, and then they dragged him to where they thought the Lord was, and they dug through.
And you can imagine the Lord in the house, and suddenly this dirt starts to fall, and He looks up to the ceiling, and a little hole of light comes through, and then a bigger hole, and then a bigger hole. And then He looks up, and there are two silhouettes—or I do not know how many—the friends looking down. But what definitely happened was, the silhouette of a paralyzed man came down on a mat into His presence.
Now, with human eyes, those in the room would have looked up. They would have seen the mat, and they would have seen the person paralyzed. But the Bible tells us that the Lord saw with heaven’s eyes, and He saw something different. The Bible tells us He saw their faith.
Now, this is a very fascinating set of words: “their,” being more than one person, plural, and “faith” being singular—that there was a unity of the faith; that He was seeing something that was one among many. And that thing that He was seeing was a heavenly fuel, an empowerment that came of God, and was manifested fully only through more than one person. It was one manifested in many.
And, brothers and sisters, this was so important, because the single unifying faith caused them to spring into action. That unified faith, which was coupled with this believing that He was who they hoped He was, caused them to go, get him from his house. “We heard Jesus is coming. Get up.” Well, he could not get up. “Come with us. We are going to bring you there.” And did he resist? We do not know. But they brought him together, and they lowered him down.
And the unity of the faith is one leg of a tripod of the characteristics of the body of Christ, which is here, if we turn to it again, in Ephesians 4.
In Ephesians 4, in verse 11, this common series of examples: some as apostles, and prophets, evangelists, and teachers. And it reads that until we all attain to the unity of the faith—that there is a bringing together of many of us that lay hold of one thing and will not let go; that we have a hope that who He says He is, He is. And it is something that causes us to be driven forward, that leaves behind who we have been, and draws us into the one we will become.
And so the unity of the faith is a manifestation of this body of Christ, along with a knowledge of the Son of God. That is to say, that we know Him. We have been with Him. And we have experienced something of Him that allows me to know the Person. And so that becomes a characteristic feature of the body of Christ.
And further, that we are grown up to a mature man. And this speaks to action.
Now, when my boys were younger—and I like to try to fix things in my house—my wife used to say that after I fix something, then she has to call someone to fix the thing that I fixed. But my boys would try to help me. And when they would try to help me, I would not only be lifting a 2x4, but I would be lifting them, holding the other end of the 2x4, because they were not at an age of maturity.
But there would come a time when they would have grown up, and they would know at least what my intention was, and they would be those who could help me lift things towards that goal.
And so what He is letting us know here is that, in the nature of the body of Christ, which is Ephesians 4:11-13, there are these three core components that together measure up to the stature of our Lord Jesus:
But how do we come to this moment?
Brothers and sisters, earlier in this section, when we go through that He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and evangelists, it is purposeful. And in verse 12 He tells us that these who have this particular service are for the equipping of the saints for the work of service.
That is to say, that every saint is a minister. Every saint is a servant. The idea that there ought to be those who are ministers and those who are recipients is foreign in the body of Christ. Each one of us is a servant and carries a ministry. It is very important.
Brothers and sisters, we have been those sheep without a shepherd. It is true. We may be that way right now. And the Lord sees with compassion, and He will come out for us. The body of Christ will reach out. But when that happens, we are drawn into something more. The church is the body of Christ, that at His command we might be able to walk where He commands, that we may be able to reach, that we may be able to grip and not let go. These are the functions of the body of Christ.
And the way that we get there is that we engage in serving where we are, in simple ways. These ones who had the more visible ministry were unto the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, because the ministry belongs to the saints. The work, the servanthood, belongs to the saints, and we are all called to be part of this body of Christ.
So that, when that day comes, there is a mature man who knows the Son of God, all bound together in a unity of faith unto His purpose, according to His commandment.
So, brothers and sisters, this is a first principle of the body of Christ, seen in these four friends who had a unity of faith, a belief in the Lord Jesus, and they had matured to a point to be able to function.
A second. The second is in Matthew 9. We will read verse 9. Now, this is a really tender part of the story that our brothers have shared about already.
And as Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man called Matthew, sitting in the tax office, and He said to him, “Follow Me.” And he rose and followed Him. And it happened that as He was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax gatherers and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, “Why is your Teacher eating with the tax gatherers and sinners?” But when He heard this, He said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: I desire compassion, and not sacrifice, for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Brothers and sisters, a very beautiful story that was told in the third person, but it is an autobiography. Now, I think many of us are familiar with the story, but I just like to review it, if this is new to you.
The land had been conquered by the Roman Empire, and the Roman Empire survived because of taxation. And so they were looking for men and women who were very smart. They needed to be able to speak multiple languages. They needed to be good and accurate in accounting, math, and finance. They also needed to have a heart that loved money. And so they were looking for those who might betray their people.
And what that means is that they permitted them to overcharge on the taxes. So, by way of example, if I sat at my tax collector’s table, and a family came that owed $100, I was permitted to ask for $120. The $100 I would keep in the books, and the $20 I would pocket. It was a betrayal of their people. They were also thieves. They stole from their family, and their friends, and their neighbors, and they were perceived to be the most vile of sinners.
Now, those who chose to become tax collectors did not just stumble upon it. It did not happen by chance. They calculated this. They knew what the cost was, and they knew what the loss would be. And they chose to serve the occupants of the Promised Land.
Matthew was one of these people. He was smart. He spoke multiple languages. He had an accurate and precise mind, and a good memory. As our brother shared, he became the scribe among the disciples.
And one day this young tax collector came to a little mountain, a little hill, and he saw the Lord Jesus. And he listened to Him give a message that we all now refer to as the Sermon on the Mount. And he took such an accurate accounting, he wrote it all down.
And when he wrote it down, I do not know if he wrote it for himself. I can imagine that would have been the case. I mean, every single thing the Lord was saying would have spoken to him, and to us. And so he wrote it all down for himself first, and then, by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, for all of us.
Among the things that he wrote down, he wrote:
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Now, you can imagine that others around him would have said, “This is the farthest man from being pure in heart.” But I think at some point, when we get so bogged down by our sins, that actually the reverse begins to happen, that something pure suddenly is born: that this is not right, that I am lost. And I think many of us have felt this way, where we got to the very end, and for the first time in a long time we turned around, and we looked for something more.
And so I think what happened was, he had come to a point where he was looking for something more. And so he saw “pure in heart,” that there was something about this young rabbi. Yeah, I cannot explain.
And so, in the struggle of his mind, he went to work. And so one day he was sitting at his tax collector’s table, and the Bible tells us that the Lord Jesus came to him. He came to him, and Matthew wrote, “He saw me.”
There was no hiding it. Sitting at my tax collector’s table, I am doing my work. It is who I am. And He saw me.
And then Matthew recorded that he heard two words, and he was slain. And the Lord said to him, “Follow Me.”
Now, brothers and sisters, Matthew could have sat there and said to Him, “Lord, every single thing that they say about me is true.” But the Lord saw him through and through. Nothing was hidden from His eyes, and Matthew knew it. And so he got up, and he left his table, and he followed Him.
The Lord came to show us that we cannot love from a distance, that we cannot reach into the field from far away, that He came to where we were, and He saw us as we are. And I think every one of us can bear testimony of this truth, that He saw us just as we were. And it was as if we could say, “Lord, I laid myself bare before You. There is nothing hidden from Your eyes.” And the Lord’s call to us, no matter where we have been: “Follow Me.”
It is a calling to be, from a recipient of grace—which is real to us—to a conduit of grace.
Now, that very day, Matthew became an instrument. And so he went to tell his friends to come to his house, because all of his friends now were tax collectors, right? Because who else were they going to hang out with? So they all came to his house, and he was dining with them, dining close.
And of course, the high and mighty came, the religious, and they saw, and they looked down from the bridge of their nose at these people, and at the Teacher who had dared, as our brother reminded us, to dirty their traditions and all the things they held holy. And He was dining with tax gatherers. And the Lord knew what was in their hearts. And He said to them:
It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick.
And then He tells them, “I desire for you to learn compassion, and not sacrifice.”
Now, this is so important, brothers and sisters. Three messages—pardon me. Three messages the Lord has been emphasizing this to us: that the foundational component of our theme is a love that is so deep, and beyond emotion. It is in the deepest part of who He is. It is so deep that without it, He is not who He is.
And so the Lord is telling them, “I desire for you to learn compassion, and not sacrifice. I am having this meal with them not because of duty, not because of pity, not because of goodness, not because of religion. It is not because of obligation, and it is not because of guilt. It is because of loving-kindness.”
And that, brothers and sisters, is why He came to find us. It was not because of these other things. It is the driving motivational force of the body of Christ: this love that does not let us go.
And so He compares it. Matthew remembers this, and he compares it later. He compares it to what he heard in Matthew 7. And if you turn to Matthew 7:21, it is a verse familiar to us.
Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me.”
So what He was saying was, this sacrifice that you exhibit when you, quote-unquote, do good—you highlight all the things that you have done for Me. You record them down. You check off your checkboxes. “What I am giving up for You, Lord—see, it says it on this paper.” But the Lord was saying that the driving force for the body of Christ is a love that is the deepest part of who we are.
And if we could turn to Romans 12, we will see a couple of points about offering and love in the body of Christ. So in chapter 12, this is our second passage about the body of Christ. The portion on the body of Christ starts in verse 4. But the description of the member starts in verse 1.
So in verse 4 we are told:
For just as we have many members in one body, and all the members do not have the same function.
And so what we are told is that in the body there are many members. And I am so thankful, because you look out from my vantage, and I can see all of you, to be counted among you and with you. The body of Christ has many members, and they have many functions.
Now, already we saw that there was a member of the body of Christ who was a tax collector, and he had a function, because he had access to fellow tax collectors. We will later meet Nicodemus, who is a Pharisee, and he had access to the Pharisees.
There are those, brothers and sisters, of ours who have been saved in the prisons, or in a variety of places where perhaps you and I have never gone. But we are members one of another, bound together in one body.
And so He was telling us, there are many members in the body of Christ. In verse 5:
So we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
He is telling us that we are connected, that there is an incompleteness without any one of us, that the body of Christ needs to have a reach into many different places. And in His wisdom He has saved so that there is access; He is within reach. And so He was saying that we are all members one of another.
And later we would read that when one suffers, we all suffer, that we are all bound together.
And then the question, though, becomes, well, how then? What is the character of a member of the body of Christ? And how then do we understand love, to learn compassion and not sacrifice, as they displayed it? What is the right sacrifice?
And He tells us in verse 1, as a prelude to His description of the body. He tells us the members: we ought to present our bodies a living and holy sacrifice, which is our spiritual service of worship.
They sacrifice by saying that, “I am giving You of who I am—my time, my money—that I am giving something of myself to You. And look at what a great loss it is to me.” But the Lord is telling us, as the body of Christ, that there is a different offering. And He is telling us that the members of the body of Christ, we need to offer ourselves to Him, that we are His. We belong to Him. Basically, “Lord, do with me what You will.” This is what He was saying is the offering. It is a different offering, brothers and sisters.
And it is in this offering that He is desiring us, so that there is nothing left that I have, that I am not measuring what I am giving up for You, because, Lord, the whole of it belongs to You. So this is a first characteristic of a member of the body of Christ in sacrifice.
And the second thing that He tells us in verse 2 is that we ought to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, so that we may be able to prove what the will of God is.
Now, when we are members of the body of Christ and the will of God comes in commandment to the body, the body will move. The body will act. And we together have the chance to prove what that will is by what is accomplished, by what is actioned, by what is activated.
And so, by being a part of this amazing body that is in the church—this functional aspect, connected to the Head, obeying the will—brothers and sisters, we have the chance, in our life, which is an amazing thing, to prove the will of God: to be able, in our going out, to demonstrate what He wants, so that the good that is in His heart to do may be accomplished, and that there could be a light in the world.
And then in verse 3 He tells us that the members of the body of Christ ought not to think more highly of themselves than they should.
Now, brothers and sisters, there is nothing more detrimental to the functioning of the body of Christ than when we think we are important, that we have a special calling. The ministry belongs to every member of the body of Christ. There are places that we cannot go, that someone else will go.
Brothers and sisters, we are members one of another. We have one Head. And we cannot think, and we ought not to think, more highly of ourselves than we should. It is the most destructive thing in the accomplishing of His will.
Now, it is important at this moment, if we could, brothers and sisters, take a moment and ponder if that thought is in our heart. Because I think many of us, even if we do not actively think it, there may be a little bit of that poison there. And if that is the case, we need to ask the Lord to help us for that to die.
So these three, brothers and sisters, are the characteristics of the members of the body. And they are bookended, first, by the offering, the sacrifice that the Pharisees did not have. And He finishes it in verse 9.
Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love, giving preference to one another in honor.
This is the characteristic of the body of Christ, that there is a love that is without hypocrisy. And that love that is without hypocrisy—the original word means that we are acting. We are actors. We are two-faced. And He was saying, the love in the house of God, in the body of Christ, is a love without hypocrisy. And it is manifested by being devoted to each other, preferring one another.
Now this is, for me, easy to understand. And I apologize for the silly example, but when I was a boy, I loved the Transformers. And I know that many of you who are in your fifties probably loved the Transformers also. We had our favorites, and I had a favorite, who was one of the airplanes, whose name was Skywarp. He was purple. And I loved him. And I used to rank them in preference, and Skywarp would be first, and I liked Hound, who was the Jeep, and, you know, others. You may sympathize with me, if you came up in that period of time.
But, brothers and sisters, what it means for us is, when we see one another—well, maybe Skywarp was not a good example, because Skywarp was a bad guy—but when we see one another, we would see Skywarp. We would see those whom we prefer first. We care about them, and we hold them highly. It is a silly example, but what it really means is that I have those things that I prefer. No one could tell me that I do not. But in the house of God, with this type of love, it is a love that causes others to be preferred over ourselves.
And so this is the nature of the body of Christ. And when it is not there, the body of Christ cannot function as we ought to.
Third, and this is the last. This is in chapter 9. I am sorry—if we could turn back to Matthew 9, and verse 20.
And behold, a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak; for she was saying to herself, “If only I touch His garment, I shall get well.” But Jesus, turning and seeing her, said, “Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well.” And at once the woman was made well.
Now, this was a woman, brothers and sisters, of a very common background. We do not know her name. Of the things she had, she sat in a corner on her road, in the Lord Jesus’ hometown. And she was there, no name, hemorrhaging for twelve years, which means that she was likely anemic, which means she was likely fatigued. And she was an outcast, and she was an invisible person, huddled on the side of the road.
But she heard that He was coming. And in her heart she developed an intention that was not seen. So as the Lord Jesus came, and she knew who He was, she snuck into the crowd and maneuvered her way close to Him, and she reached out and touched the fringe of His garment, or the hem of His garment.
Now, brothers and sisters, the hem of His garment was the most peripheral point of who He was. It was the furthest away from the Lord. But it was the point of the farthest of His reach. And so she came in, and she reached out for Him, to find Him.
Now, the hem is sort of around your feet, and it was probably not too clean, and probably not that glorious of a place.
But in Psalm 133 we are given a picture of the body of Christ. And it is a picture of Aaron. And in the picture, Aaron takes the precious anointing oil, which is the Spirit, and it is anointed upon his head. And it comes down upon his hair, upon his face, and upon his garments, over his torso and his waist, and all the way down to his hem. And there is an overflow of the anointing oil, so much so that if you were to hold the bottom of his hem and squeeze, the precious oil of the Spirit would come out with abundance.
And it is a very beautiful picture of that Spirit that saturates the entire body, from the crown to the hem.
And we were told in the Old Testament that the hem of the high priest had a bell and a pomegranate, and a bell and a pomegranate. And so it would ring of the life of Christ in the pomegranates, and the fruit of the Spirit. And so, from the top to the bottom, the Spirit would saturate out.
And here we see a picture that the Lord Jesus was within reach. It is to say that when the Lord reaches out into the field, there is no portion of the field that He is not intending, if there is a single person who is in need, to be too far away from them, that they are able to reach out to touch the hem of His garment.
It is so much so that there is not a single person or place where they will not have heard that the Lord Jesus is passing by.
And that means that we need to be there—at our workplace, in our families. We need to be there among our friends. We need to be available, that when someone needs to reach out, the Lord Jesus is within reach. This is very important, brothers and sisters.
And when we are out there, that we remain connected, that the body has a reach to where He has placed us. And that when people come into contact with His life among His people, the power of the Spirit would be able to come in and make a change in lives.
And it is an amazing moment when she touches that farthest point, yet within reach, and the Lord turns around, and she is caught. And then the Bible tells us He sees her, and He calls her: “Daughter, I see you, daughter.”
The Lord is always within reach. And, brothers and sisters, it ought to be in our hearts that where He has placed us, we might be a conduit of His grace.
The picture of this is in 1 Corinthians 12. And if we can turn to it, our third chapter about the body of Christ. We read from verse 4.
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. And there are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills. For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ.
Verse 14:
For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.
Verse 25:
That there should be no division in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
So, brothers and sisters, this is a portion of the Scripture that tells us that the body is empowered by the Spirit. And the Spirit designs, and in its wisdom it prepares. At some point, one of the members will have a word of wisdom. At another point, a word of knowledge. For some, they have faith for all of us, right? How much we need them. Sometimes something so daunting comes up that those of us who are of little faith, we cannot even believe it, and one person has enough faith to carry us all forward. Sometimes there are miracles. It is the same Spirit that distributes.
The other is that each one of us serves a different purpose, none more important than the other. If we had a biceps, but we did not have a deltoid or a triceps, we would always have sharp elbows, or a punching arm. All of these together, we need one another for the proper functioning, so that we can carry the Spirit into the field. And the hem and the fringe of His garment was the farthest reach.
Now, brothers and sisters, it is true that the house of God is a precious, precious place, where we live together and we have a family life together, and we support one another. But there is also a danger. And there is a danger today that we close off, and we are only together, that we do life together and enjoy one another so much that the field is not seen.
We should rejoice because of the love in the house of God. There is nothing like it. But we ought to have the heart that there are those who need to come in. Some of them are unsaved. Others are saved but have never known.
And so what we need to do is, we need to have a sense that the body of Christ has to have a reach, and that reach needs to go where He has placed us.
And it does not necessarily mean, brothers and sisters, that there is a contact evangelism every day at our work. But the people with whom we work ought to know who is our Master. And we ought to bear the responsibility in how we behave. It is a reflection of Him, that we are to be a light in the world, that we reach out, always His. We belong to Him through and through. We are covered in His love, and we are empowered by the Spirit. We have been offered on the altar. We are growing through serving. We have been made humble by our challenges, so that we are always within reach of those who need a touch of the Lord.
In the world today, it is such an important time for the people of God to shine a light. And this is the calling of the body of Christ.
The ministry belongs to each one of us, that in our serving together we may learn what it is to have the unity of the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, that we might be able to reflect the stature of Christ; that we have exercised unto this maturity through serving where we have been planted; and that when we look out to the field, it is always with a love without hypocrisy; and that we have offered ourselves on the altar; and that we are wary of thinking highly of ourselves; and that we remember that wherever we go, the Spirit has empowered us to be able to relay the presence of God to those around us.
So there are three simple stories, as the Lord walked among the harvest. He said, “Look up. See that the harvest is ready. See the Lord of the harvest in the field.” And might we follow Him there.
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, we come before You this evening, and Lord, we entrust these words back to You. Lord, we pray that You would protect Your Word and allow it to bear fruit in our lives. And Lord, we ask that You would help us to see as You see. Lord, that You might change our hearts so that we might follow You. Thank You, Lord. We give You praise in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Let us take a few moments to respond to the Holy Spirit, and if the Lord leads, you could pray out loud; if not, just remain before Him.