You're the Body of Christ [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Since God gave you Christ, to die for you in your place and to become the penalty in your place and to become the curse in your place, that you can count on this, that this God who's already given His all to you is going to bestow upon you wondrous gifts.

That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series called Ephesians as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program today, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org.

That's PastorAlan.org or call 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. You have been so positioned with Christ that therefore let your life be fitting. Let it match who you really are. That's the way Paul speaks about all of our ethical behaviors and the demonstration of Christ in us to the world. In other words, if you're royalty, you live like that. Don't live like a pauper.

That's what he's saying here. So live this life that's going to match that and then immediately he begins talking about humility and gentleness. You need to know that in the Greek world, the idea and in the Roman Empire, the idea of the gentle, humble person, that was not applauded.

Instead, the idea of the perfect man was of someone who didn't have humility but had almost a prideful confidence in all things. And so this is a virtue that is unusual in the midst of a Greco-Roman world for Paul to even lift up. But it becomes essential for what Paul is getting ready to say about unity. Because what he says here, he says, be eager to be eager, verse three, to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

I like the translation of one commentator, Marcus Bart. He says, take pains to keep the unity. Because unity is so, so important. Let me just reflect with you a little bit about the idea here of maintaining unity. Unity is something that is so sweet that there is a commanded blessing upon unity. The psalmist says how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity. It is like the dews of Mount Hermon come to the arid places of Mount Zion.

It's refreshing. But more than that, there is as if an oil, the psalmist says, is poured out upon the head and runs down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard, and upon the robe. What is a picture of is when there is unity, that there is an anointing, there is a blessedness, there is a joy, and there is a power of the Holy Spirit that accompanies that unity. Oh, God is an absolute genius.

He has made us so that when we are at our most united in the Spirit, we are at our most joyful and most powerful. Unity comes about when in the first place you share something in common with someone, right? Isn't that the way you do? As soon as you meet somebody that you're meeting for the first time, what do you do to be able to have a conversation?

You try to find some point of commonality, something that you have in common. We took Bennett back to Baylor and we decided to make a vacation out of it. We took a southern route. We went through New Orleans. We went through San Antonio and just had a fine time driving across the country.

When we were in New Orleans, we took a carriage ride tour of the French Quarter. The fellow that was driving our carriage and giving us our tour, I got to talking to him afterwards. He said, where are you from? I said, North Carolina. He said, oh, I got a sister who lives in Salisbury. He said, in Winston-Salem. I said, yeah, I've brought my car up there into Winston.

We get it serviced by a mechanic there. I said, oh, so you know Winston then a little bit. Yeah, I know Salisbury. All of a sudden, we feel like we're friends just because he comes to Salisbury every now and then. I don't know anything else about him, but you've got something in common. It goes to a whole other level if you actually are aligned with someone like you're part of their team.

It becomes like, oh, we're really united now around this because we're on the same team. It's like I've often said, I was at Carolina in 1982 and won the National Championship. You notice I just said, I said, we won the National Championship. Michael Jordan was in school with me.

He never did get the opportunity to meet me, but he and I were in school together. We won the National Championship. You say, well, did you play on the team?

No. I went to some of the games. Were you at the National Championship game? No, I didn't get the ticket for that, but I was watching on TV and I ran to Franklin Street when we won. No, we won, right? Here's how the thing is so strange is that you don't have to have gone to school to Carolina to be able to say, if you're a Carolina fan, you say we won, right? The thing that's amazing about this is that just by aligning yourself with a certain team, all of a sudden you're united. See, there's still hope for some of you.

You could convert this day and then you could say we won the National Championship in 1982. But point being is that once you're on a team together, there's something that deepens about your unity, right? But there's something more than that that goes on in the process of unity and that is that there is a common goal in mind, a vision that you share, a mission, something that you're to do and a battle that you're to fight that is going on and it becomes clear, right? And so there's something that's extremely unifying when you start recognizing that we are coming against the same enemy, right?

Soldiers and foxholes are united. Years ago when our church was sued and spiritually, and I'm not saying this of the people that were suing, I'm saying this but I really mean this, the devil's intent was to destroy our church, to destroy us financially. And instead what happened was we didn't get destroyed financially, but you know what happened during that several years of intense lawsuit when we were being persecuted? Our church, whatever little pieces where we weren't unified, all of that dissolved and we just became completely unified.

You know what happened? I mean, people that might've had little differences with one another, they started locking their arms. They say, listen, we might disagree about that, but man, you sue our church. No, we're going to turn our faces together and face it like a flint because, and we want to be more unified than we ever been before. What Paul says elsewhere is that we do not fight against flesh and blood. We're not fighting against people. We're not fighting against institutions.

We're not fighting against governments. We are fighting in the name of Jesus against unseen dark powers and principalities over whom we have been given authority in Jesus' name. So what begins to happen when there is unity is that the thing that you have in common and the battle that you have to fight, it is so essential that you be united, that the things that are smaller differences pale in comparison to where you are united in Christ. But there is something more about unity and that is that this unity runs so deep that Paul describes it mystically. He describes it as you are his body because the way that you are united is not just because you hold something in common or because you face a common enemy. It is because you have body of Christ, a shared life.

That's the image. Why is my hand and my foot, why is the hand united with the foot? Because of a common heart and the same breath that fills every cell with oxygen and every cell carrying the same DNA. That's how each cell, how in the world does a cell know to be a liver cell or a kidney cell?

How does it know? Because there's a DNA that is the same in every cell but imparting specific instructions to each cell. This is, if they understood cellular biology in the first century, I'm convinced that Paul would have used that image but instead it's like your hand and a foot. You in the body of Christ, when you get united in the Spirit, there is something that is so unified because one force of life, the resurrection power of God, the very person of the Holy Spirit is within you pulsating the life of God inside each and every one of us. That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series.

How you see yourself determines how you live. In an 11 message series, Pastor Alan Wright takes you on a thrilling journey through the letter to the Ephesians. It'll flood your soul with good news and empower you to discover who you are in Christ. When you make your donation to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll not only send you the digital downloads of the entire transformational Ephesians series, but we'll also send you a printable copy of Pastor Alan's booklet, highlighting the most important scriptures about your identity in Christ. Make your gift today and discover a whole new way of seeing your life.

Isn't it time to finally find out who you really are? The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. I love church.

Big of the world out there that is denigrating church and thinks you know, avoid church and hates all religious institutions and all that. Don't even understand the mystical, supernatural, glorious revelation of who we are as the body of Christ is the most beautiful thing imaginable. Wow. And it's worth protecting. It's worth protecting.

That's what Paul's saying. Bear with one another in gentleness. Why? Because if you don't learn to bear with somebody, you're not going to ever have unity with them. Come on. Learn to bear with people, right?

You want to stay married? Learn to bear with your mate, you know? Okay. Yeah, right. I don't particularly like that particular thing. Yeah, but I bear with, I bear up under that. That's fine.

That's fine. You're going to stay in any kind of relationship. You'll learn to bear with one another, right?

That's what he's saying. But he's also saying, take pains to keep this unity. I feel strongly about this. There's always been something in me, you know? I mean, I can be very mild-mannered, you know, and very Presbyterian, but, you know, I'm not going to very Presbyterian, but man, something threatens unity. I mean, this goes back deep with me. This goes back to a kid from a broken family and who knows the pain of when strife comes and all of that.

And so, man, I feel like, you know, as a shepherd, I want to be a protector of that. When I was just in high school, I probably told this story years ago, but when I was in high school, I was on tennis team. And my senior year, the coach of the tennis team was also a basketball coach. And our basketball team was in the playoffs and went on to win the state championship.

So tennis overlapped with the basketball season. And so the coach couldn't be at the very first few couple of weeks of practices. So he asked me if I would sort of be in charge. He said, Alan, he said, how about you get people divided up at who they practice with? And I even like for you to run some sprints with them and just make sure everybody's got tennis balls and, you know, and I'll be checking in with you. And so I said, well, I'll be sure.

I'll be glad to do that, coach. And so somewhere in about the third day of practice, one of our best players, he was just, he just was a bully. I mean, he just was, hey, this had a worse attitude. And I already didn't like the guy. And, and I was down on court number one. And I looked down there on court number three.

And all I saw, I didn't, you know, this is my problem was I didn't see everything. I just saw the end result. But I saw this bully of a guy take a ball and just hit it as hard as he could, not during a point, just almost after the point hit as hard as he could in a little freshman that I don't know what was going on, but I'd had it. I had just absolutely had it. I saw that. And I just, I ran down across three courts.

I went down there and I got in this guy's about twice my size. And I got in his face and I said, I've had it with you. I said, we don't need that kind of behavior on this team. I said, get out of here. You're off the team.

And this guy, what are you talking about? He went over and he picked up his rackets. He was slumped off the court. And I walked back down the rest of the team's like, what are you doing? And I walked back and said, what have I done? And at night I was sitting there with my family having dinner and the phone rang and I answered the phone and he said, is this coach right? I said, yeah.

Is coach Brown? He said, yeah. He said, so how was practice today? I said, you heard, didn't you? He said, yeah. He said, you know, when I asked you to get people assigned to their courts and give them some tennis balls and maybe run some sprints, I wasn't inviting you to kick off one of our best players off the team.

You know? And I said, I'm sorry, coach. I just, but I, I, I, he did eventually get kicked off the team, but anyway, I'm just saying there's always been something that's, I mean, I think Paul is like this, like the unity is so important, right? I always felt this way in our home.

I felt this way in our home. It's like, well, listen, lots and lots of room and freedom for you to try and fail. Lots of room for that.

Lots of room for uniqueness and creativity of who you are as an individual, as a child, lots of room for that. Lots and lots of grace, lots and lots of yeses. Yes. You want to try that? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. But you introduce strife. You try to tear down another person in the family.

No. But then he goes on to speak about diversity. These next verses that he speaks of.

Oh, they're so exquisite. Verse seven. Grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Marcus Bart and his comment, commentary on this has re-translated this to say it this way, that the gift of the Messiah is the measure.

Cause I think what Paul is saying here is similar to what he says in Romans eight, verse 32, when he says, if God did not spare his only son, how much more will he give all good things to us? In other words, when he says, but his grace, verse seven was given to each of us, according to the measure of Christ's gift. I think what Paul means is you understand the kind of grace that you've been given. You have been given grace that is in accord with the lavish nature of the gift of God to you in Christ Jesus.

In other words, since God gave you Christ to die for you in your place and to become the penalty in your place and to become the curse in your place that you can count on this, that this God who's already given his all to you is going to bestow upon you wondrous gifts. The word grace is the word chorus. One of the most beautiful words in any ancient language chorus, which finds no real translation, except we just call it grace. And so the grace is, or the chorus Mata. So therefore every Christian is charismatic.

Every Christian has chorus and every Christian here for has chorus. Mata has gifts. God gives gifts. And these gifts are, are diverse, diverse as is the body of Christ. And every one of the gifts is essential. Paul says here and in first Corinthians, like in the body, the hand can't say the foot. I don't need you.

That's ridiculous. Then the gifts are absolutely essential. And one of the things therefore that's really important is to have a growing understanding of your gifts and to ask the Lord for the stirring of those gifts and the increase of those gifts and to use your gifts because gifts grace only makes sense as it is flowing.

That's, that's what, that's the way God works with us. He gives and he is delighted to do that. And all of life, all of life and all of joy in the end is more blessed as you give. I wish I had time to talk about this, but the fact of the matter is that when are people at their happiest when they're giving? Do you know how the mother, there've been studies shown when a mother simply nurses her baby, there's an actual hormone response in the mother, she's happy. There is, as you feed your baby, you're overjoyed. When you have a gift and you use your gift, you serve with that gift, you experience joy.

Why? Because that's the way God made you. It's the way he made you. It's more blessed to give than it is to receive.

It's the way he made you. So what, what, what is being described here is a diversity within a unity and both are equally important. Tim Keller has a great illustration of the diversity of gifts. He said that when he first passed his first pastorate, he was a young man and he went as a pastor in his first week there. Of course he had noticed that not far, literally almost across the street, there was a kind of a poor neighborhood. It was a trailer park community that was quite impoverished. And here he'd come to pastor's Presbyterian church.

It was so close by. And the first week that he was there, a man came by his office and said, Pastor Keller, welcome. And they sat down and talk. And he said, listen, they said, I'm going to tell you from my perspective, the problem with this church, the problem is that we've got right across the street, people that are lost and are going to hell without Jesus. And we don't have any evangelistic outreach and we're not doing anything about it.

And we're not sharing the gospel with them. And they're right across the street. And, uh, and Keller said, okay, well, thank you. Thank you. He said, literally, he said, next day, somebody dropped by his office at Pashco.

Welcome. He said, let's see, I'm gonna tell you what the problem is at this church. The problem is you see, there's a trailer park across the street and there are elderly people there, and there are poor people there. And there are children that are hungry that are there.

And this church is not doing anything to go over there by way of social outreach to them. Alan Wright and today's teaching. You're the body of Christ. It's from the series on Ephesians and Alan is in the studio and back here in a moment with additional insight on this for your life.

And a final word, how you see yourself determines how you live in an 11 message series. Pastor Alan Wright takes you on a thrilling journey through the letter to the Ephesians. It'll flood your soul with good news and empower you to discover who you are in Christ. When you make your donation to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll not only send you the digital downloads of the entire transformational Ephesians series, but we'll also send you a printable copy of Pastor Alan's booklet, highlighting the most important scriptures about your identity in Christ. Make your gift today and discover a whole new way of seeing your life.

Isn't it time to finally find out who you really are? The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Alan, you're the body of Christ. I assume there is some responsibility that comes here, but ultimately this is about taking our diversity and our unity, and it has to all work together. Well, and we'll finish up with that story from Tim Keller there, but it is a picture of what I've seen so often in the church is that sometimes we have some people that think, well, the problem is we don't care about evangelism, or some say the problem is we don't care about the poor people, and the fact of the matter is that God's done this amazing thing. I've realized this now after decades of ministry. He really has put a different gifting inside each person, and it makes us have different passions, but what happens when these all come together? That diversity that joins together is what makes the body so incredible.

See, that's what the image is. It's like if your whole body were nothing but hands, you'd be in bad shape because you also need feet, and you need eyes and ears. We need it all, but it's all connected, but so different unity and diversity. We're the body of Christ here on earth, and it's an amazing thought, but it surely is the gospel. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.