How to Build a Beautiful Body-Part A

There's not one style of ministry.

There's not one method of getting things done. There's not one way that God works. And there's not one group that God works through to the exclusion of everyone else. Well, I get the idea as I read this that God loves variety.

He loves variety. And I get that not only from here, but I get that from looking around at the natural world. And welcome to Connect with Skip Hytik Weekend Edition.

Today we continue our series about the church as Skip shows us what it means to be spiritually fit. Have you seen those diet pills they advertise on TV? Aren't they amazing? They allow you to eat whatever you want, do absolutely no exercise, and eventually you'll look like a bodybuilder or a swimsuit model.

It's incredible. It's also what's known as too good to be true. In order to have a beautiful body, we have to work, exercise, and discipline ourselves. And those same principles are true for a healthy church body. So stay with us to find out more today. But before we get started, we have an excellent resource from Levi Lusko this month.

Here's more. Listen to this daring promise from the young American president, John Kennedy. Why some say the moon? We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things.

Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. NASA engaged 400,000 people to accomplish this challenge, but this was not the most audacious claim or accomplishment in history. That honor is reserved for one man, Jesus Christ, who promised to die for the sins of the world and resurrect to overcome death. Listen to Levi Lusko speaking about his new book, The Last Supper on the Moon.

I wanted to show a connection between the battle for outer space and the quest to conquer inner space and how the cross, like the Saturn V launch vehicle, is the only thing that can bridge that gap. And as our secular society is realizing, there are downsides to turning from God, turning away from church. You know, you see people leaving the church in droves in and out.

What do you have in tandem with it? Higher anxiety, higher suicide rates. You have even a lowering of emotional intelligence. We're not in church. We're not in the Bible, but we are on screens.

And what is it doing to the insides of us? Well, there you go. The Last Supper on the Moon is an epic new hardcover book by Levi Lusko, and it's our resource offer this month. Receive your copy when you give a gift of $35 or more to support this program. Just go to connectwithskipp.com or call 800-922-1888.

That's connectwithskipp.com or call 800-922-1888. We'll begin today in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. So if you'll mark your Bibles, we'll join Skip Heitzig as he reveals an unpleasant truth about ourselves. Now I think it's a universal fact, at least in this country, that most people don't like their own body. I think probably every one of us has some feature that we noticed growing up, and we notice it every time we look in the mirror and we think, if I could just change that one thing, or two or three, but at least one. In fact, a poll was conducted that asked people the simple question, if you could change one thing about your life, what would it be? And the answer almost overwhelmingly was, my physical appearance.

My weight, my body type, my face, my age, my hair. That's easy to do these days. But they wanted to change their physical appearance. And this is the reason why the dieting industry is such a powerful 40 billion dollar per year industry. Because of that truth. This is the reason why ab machine ads dominate late night television. And why health club gym memberships still seem to be pretty strong even in a failing economy, because we want to change that.

Mark Twain once said, the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not. Now I think most Christians feel much the same way about their spiritual body, their church. I think every Christian would probably look at the church and their church and say, okay, it's alright, but it could use some improvement.

And they would be right. The church can always use some improvement. The church is always growing.

And today I want to show you how it can be improved. Now all of this today centers around a phrase that is found three times in the writings of Paul. It's the phrase, the body of Christ. The body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4, Colossians 1, that metaphor is employed. That the church is like the body of Christ. It is one of Paul's favorite descriptions, and I would even say that is the Holy Spirit's description.

You see, when the Holy Spirit wanted to describe what a church is like, he didn't say it's an organization or an institution. But it's like a body. It's an organism. And we have to realize that that's what the church, that's what we're called to be. A living, breathing, life-enjoying organism.

Far more than an organization. A corpse is organized. I mean, it's all there. Everything's together and nicely organized. But it's dead.

It's lifeless. But a church is an organism. It grows and it moves and it changes. Chapter 12 is a chapter that compares spiritual gifts, better term giftings, spiritual enablings, with the complexities of the human body. Now my early college was spent studying the sciences like integrated zoology and human anatomy and radium physics. And I got to look at the human body close up and discover David was right on when he said, We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Boy, are we. The average human body has 100 trillion cells. There are more cells in your body than there are galaxies in the entire universe. And in every single cell, it's like a city in itself. And every cell is a nucleus and every nucleus is that material DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, 46 segments, 23 from mom, 23 from dad, that program every single cell how it is going to act from the moment of conception to demise.

How you're going to age, what you're going to look like, how tall you're going to be, etc. All that is pre-programmed in. And it's so intricate that if you were to translate that densely coded information from each cell, from a single cell into written form, it would fill a library with 4,000 books. 4,000 books. If you were to do a live reading of that information of one cell and you could read three letters per second, it would take you 31 years reading day and night, nonstop.

31 years. That's just one cell. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, this body of ours, but as wonderful as it is, it's also complex. And because it's complex, it can get messy. We can get sick. There can be diseases.

And that's exactly why Paul is writing this book. You see, the church at Corinth was this beautiful expression of the body of Christ in Corinth, but over time it got diseased. It became an ugly body.

It grew sick. It was torn by divisions. They tolerated immorality. They relaxed in their discipline.

They were taking each other to the secular law courts. And Paul writes this book to address those issues. And in chapter 12, he tells this local body how to become beautiful once again. Four principles to make or build a beautiful body. Now we're going to read a lot of text this morning, and I'm going to give you these four principles.

I'm not going to belabor, by God's grace, any of them, but simply apply them. The first is to recognize variety. I think you've noticed if you look around that we're all a bit different. Our tastes are a bit different. Our capacities are a bit different.

So watch this. Verse 4. There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. There are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. Now those three verses are what we call appositional statements. They're grammatically parallel statements.

Basically saying the same truth with just a little bit of twist on them. Many gifts, one source. But the way it's constructed, it's if he's giving honor to the Trinity. Verse 4, it's the Holy Spirit that is in view. In verse 5, the Son, the living Lord. And verse 6, God the Father. Paul wants us to know that the triune God is involved intricately in the body of Christ. One body, many gifts.

Let's go on. Verse 7. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as he wills. Now without entering into the argument, to argue, is he speaking about natural talents here or supernatural giftings?

That's really not the argument in view at all and I don't want to enter into it. It's enough to say that these are divine enablements for us to do God's work on the earth and specifically in the church. They're divine enableings. And the greater point here is that there's not one gift. There's not one style of ministry.

There's not one method of getting things done. There's not one way that God works and there's not one group that God works through to the exclusion of everyone else. Well, I get the idea as I read this that God loves variety.

He loves variety. And I get that not only from here, but I get that from looking around at the natural world. You look around your world and it's different. You go to different places, it all looks different. There's different kinds of terrain. There's ocean, there's mountains, there's desert, there's rainforests, there's tundra.

And aren't we glad? Because if every place on earth looked exactly the same, where would you go on vacation? It'd be very boring. But God loves variety. And as I look around and I notice the variety of plants and animals, scientists say there's over 10 million different species of plants and animals in our world.

Only 2 million of them have been named and catalogued. God loves variety. And when it comes to the church, God loves variety.

There's a bunch of gifts listed. Some count 9. Others doing a fuller count of the New Testament listings will count 15. Others will say 19. Others will say 22 gifts of the Spirit. And it's funny how people will argue over that number. Again, I don't think that is the point.

I think the point is this. You, as a Christian, have at least one of them, if not more. And there is an infinite number of possibilities with our different personalities and God's giftings for there to be a wonderful show of that variety. Unfortunately, Christians have adopted a strategy that says save them and stick them in a mold. We'll get them saved, we'll see them come to Christ, and then we'll put them in our mold. You must read this version of the Bible for you to be correct. You must like this kind of music to be holy.

You must say words like this instead of enjoying the variety. There's an old story, a children's parable, that pictures the tools in Jesus' carpentry shop having a meeting. And Brother Hammer is the one presiding over the meeting. And before the meeting, the other tools think that Brother Hammer should leave the meeting because he's too noisy.

He's a hammer. And Brother Hammer says, well, if you want me to leave, then Brother Screw also has to leave because you've got to turn him around and around to get him to do anything. Brother Screw objects and he says, okay, listen, if you want me to leave, then Brother Plain also has to leave because, you know, everything he does is on the surface.

He has no depth. Brother Plain says, okay, if I have to withdraw, then Brother Rule must also withdraw because he thinks he's the only one who's right. He measures everyone against himself. Brother Rule says, okay, I'll leave, but if I have to leave, Brother Sandpaper has to leave.

He's so rough and he rubs people the wrong way. Well, as they were arguing, in walks Jesus to build a pulpit from which to preach. And wouldn't you know it, Jesus used the hammer and the screw and the plane and the rule and the sandpaper. All of the tools that weren't getting along with each other, the variety of the bunch to do his work. I suppose the message behind that little parable is that God reserves the right to use people you don't get along with.

And we might look at them and wonder, how can God use that person? Answer, because he's God and he likes it. He loves variety. There's no clones in the kingdom. There's variety in the kingdom and he made each one unique. Now, something else about verse 4, 5, and 6. Not only are there different gifts, but there's different ways the gifts are exercised. That's sort of the thought behind those three verses together.

This is what it means. You can get two people and both of them have the same spiritual gift, but it comes out different. You could have two men that have a gift of teaching, both of them pastors. But I'll guarantee you, if you give the same text of scripture to Chuck Swindoll and to Raoul Reese, you are going to have two completely different sermons. Both have the gift of teaching.

Both exercise it very uniquely. Or evangelism. There's a Billy Graham who can speak to stadiums. There's people who can do one-on-one evangelism.

Again, variety. When Jesus healed people when he walked the earth, how did he do it? Was it the same canned approach every time? Did he read the healing book that says, place right hand on left shoulder, look eye to eye and say these words?

Yay! No, he didn't do that. In fact, it seems like he didn't do the same any time. Sometimes he'd lay hands on a person. They'd be healed. Other times he'd speak a word. And as he spoke a word from afar, they were healed. At other times, the person would be leaving the scene and it says, as he left, he was healed.

Then there was a time Jesus made a spitball out of mud and stuck it in a guy's eye. That's unconventional. That's different. Variety. Don't fight variety.

Enjoy it. God made you and he tossed away the mold. Each is unique. Each is unique.

Recognize variety. A second way to make the body of Christ beautiful is to emphasize unity. Now look at the next two verses as a unit. Verse 12, For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body being many are one body, so also is Christ.

For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. Now this truth gives balance to the first truth. Unity balances out variety.

Can you see a problem? If we're over here celebrating and recognizing our variety and our uniqueness and our individuality, that can lead to anarchy. Because you've got a bunch of members of the church all doing their own thing without a cohesiveness about it. So variety, to be balanced, needs unity. We've got to exercise our gifts, but we've got to do it together for the same purpose and the same goal.

There has to be unity. Now in the church, this is how it works. We have, just like a human body in the church, there's a head. And the head isn't the pastor, the head isn't a bishop or a pope or an elder. The head is who?

Christ. He's called the head of his body, the church. So just like in a human body, the head is sort of like control central. Everything comes from the brain and that nervous system, getting the message out to all the different parts.

So is the church. Jesus is the head, and he sends out the message and the impulse. And I see the Holy Spirit as the nervous system.

Conveying the wishes of the head to all of the members so that they operate smoothly together. Conveying that network. Now your body, your human body, if it's healthy, is a great example of how unity works.

It's marvelous. Now this is a very simple, in fact, very simplistic illustration. Stomach sends a message to the brain. Hunger, hunger, hunger, hunger. So the brain tells the legs, walk toward the barbecue. The legs do it, they walk toward the barbecue. Closer you get, your eyes now spot the meat. Your nose smells the onions cooking into the meat and the green chili next to that. And then the brain says to the hands, grab it.

Put bread on it and lettuce and stuff and stuff it in your mouth. And you're satisfied and life goes on happily. So variety of gifts and unity of purpose brings profit to all.

Just like a human body. That's the point of verse 7. Let's revisit that. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all. Did you get that? For the profit of all. The gift that God has given to you and the gift God has given to me isn't for individual gratification.

Hey, I got a cool gift, do you like it? It's for mutual edification for the profit of all. Now for that to happen there must be communication.

If members don't communicate to each other and there isn't that coordinated effort, it's going to be very jerky in movement and very spastic and not smooth and not coordinated. It'll be very destructive. When my son was a toddler he put his hand on the stove. I got the phone call, I was out of town and my wife said, you wouldn't believe what your son did. Electric stove, red hot, tea kettle about to go on.

He is curious and he puts his little hand on top and pushes it on the electric stove top. And for a long time he bore that spiral mark on his hand. Well luckily he had a gift from God. It's called pain. Pain is a gift. Because as soon as he felt that and that little pain message hit his brain, he shouted to wake up the neighborhood, pulled his hand off. And I am so glad because imagine if something inhibited the message getting from the hand to the brain that this is really hot and destructive.

That's what leprosy was all about. The person couldn't feel any longer. He couldn't feel the pain. He couldn't feel what was happening to his limbs. The message system was not working.

There was no communication. And so there was eventual death. I had a friend when I was growing up, a good friend, who got MS, multiple sclerosis. And I watched him deteriorate. And I talked to some doctors about his condition and the way they explained it to me is that there are hardened patches that form on the cortex of the brain and the cortex of the spinal cord and so that the messages, the impulses aren't making contact.

And that's why his movements were so jerky and eventually he was completely paralyzed. Well, unfortunately, that's what the world so often sees when it looks at the church. It doesn't see this beautiful, wonderful, in-shape body with smooth, coordinated efforts. So often it sees striving and fighting and a weakened church. And that's one of Satan's greatest desires. That plays right into his desires.

One of his biggest traps is that he would get us to fight each other because now we're so distracted fighting each other that we're forgetting who the real enemy is. Next time we'll get more advice on how we can build a better body for Christ. And I'll let you know how to get a copy of today's study here in just a moment. But first, Skip wants to invite you on a very special trip. Lenya and I are taking a group to Israel in 2022 and we want to invite you to join us. We'll visit places like Nazareth, the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, and Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and the Garden Tomb. And that's just a fly-by look at the itinerary.

Find out more about the trip at inspirationcruises.com slash C-A-B-Q. Thanks, Skip. And if you want a copy of today's message, How to Build a Beautiful Body, give us a call at 1-800-922-1888.

We'd be happy to send you a copy on CD for just $4 plus shipping. And come back next time as we have more bodybuilding tips to help the church get spiritually fit, right here in Connect with Skip Weekend Edition, a presentation of Connection Communications. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, a connection, a connection. Connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.