Baptized into one body
1 Corinthians 12:1-13 · Vern Peterman · Nov 22, 2009
1 & 2 Corinthians, No. 24
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926147591752

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. Glad you could join us here. Boy, can you believe it's almost next year. As we look towards next year, I want to make you aware of the electives that we'll be offering starting in January. And one of those will be Great Doctrines of Salvation.

And as long as we can keep them from fighting, Mike and Courtney will be teaching that. And we might need to have somebody volunteer as a referee, so we'll see there. There is also a class on Galatians. One of the kind of standard practices we have with planning these electives, we always have at least one of the electives is studying a Bible book, just specifically one of the books of the Bible, and be Galatians this next time. And that will be co-taught by Roger and Bob and Randy and Brad.

And so you may want to consider that. And then the third one will be questions and answers. This will be questions about a particular topic, a particular passage. And I will try to field that myself. And that keeps me from fighting with myself or anybody else, right? So at any rate, consider those.

We do have some sign-up sheets. I mean, you've never heard of those, right? Sign-up sheets in the hallway, and we'd like to have you begin getting those down. One of the ways in which that helps us is if you can get your name on there, that helps us plan for what kind of space do we need, what space is best for which class, and get the materials prepared if that has to be the case. So to the extent that you can sign up sooner rather than later, that really helps us.

Much appreciated. Now. As we move into our topic here, I think I'm going to need to have to talk to you about some of these things. It's very important. We're going to be talking about the body of Christ, and having things united is better than in parts. And we're going to be discussing things like different body parts, in some cases those parts being the entire body. And that comes next week. Anyway, there are other reasons for us having to talk about these things.

So it is very important that we do so. Okay. And so I know even though it's maybe a little difficult for some of you to do so, we would like you to take a look at these. We really need to have a look at them. Okay, you have on the first page of your handout...too many of you are shaking your heads. I don't know what the problem is here. You have on page one of your handouts a slide that we have shown before and have included in the handout.

I particularly want to include it here because the quick, simple outline of the book of 1 Corinthians is that Paul went between oral reports to written letter responses, to oral reports to written letter responses. And that's what he's doing right here, starting in the passage that Wayne read for us, and on in through chapter 13 and chapter 14, which will take us into the beginning of next year. We will be addressing these chapters and addressing Paul's response to the question about spiritual gifts. And so one of the things to keep in mind, this is only the beginning. We're just at the start of a topic that's actually pretty big and very interesting and very appropriate. Right in the middle of it, right in the midst of the discussion, Paul breaks into chapter 13, oftentimes nicknamed the love chapter. And interesting when you get to the spiritual gifts issue, that seems to be a pretty important thing to bring up. And so we'll be moving into that as well.

The believers in Corinth had written this letter to Paul. It contained a series of questions. He's responding to their questions because they have reason to ask him, you know, what's this all about? Can you give us some clarification here? He responded to their questions about spiritual gifts and that covers, as we mentioned, chapters 12 through 14, the entire section there. And it turns out that the response to the questions, rather than being some ancient and archaic and obscure kind of issue, is one that is deeply relevant for the church today. And not at all one that is simply relevant to the church even. It even answers questions that the whole world is asking right now.

And one of those is, what is the definition of love? What is love? And he goes in the midst of this question answering onto this topic of answering with a continuity and a completeness that is rare. What is love? Now, so the question is how did we get here? How did we get where we are? So we need to ask that question and kind of give a little bit of history. I won't go into any detail, but a little bit of history of How did we get here in this question of spiritual gifts to where things are today? And here's why we want to take a look at it.

Some of the central questions that he's addressing have to do with two particular gifts, what's called the gift of tongues, and as we'll see it actually should be called the gift of languages, but we'll use the term tongues because people are accustomed to that, and the gift of prophecy. Those two gifts are particularly in focus. Now the way he does it, however, is to talk in more detail. But those two gifts, one or both of them, have been claimed over the last 19 centuries, particularly after the time of the Apostles into the second century was a man named Montanus.

He had two women followers who left their husbands to follow Montanus, and Montanus had these tongues and particularly prophetic revelations, and he said that rather than what the Bible says, that Jesus Christ was coming back to Asia Minor, what is now western Turkey, and that just happens to be the place that he lived, too. So very interesting.

That pattern, by the way, is not unique. Here is Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon religion. As he travels across the United States, he stops at a particular place and says, this is the place where Jesus is coming back. And that started another particular branch of the Mormon Church called the Temple Lot. So that has been reproduced.

There have been additional claims to tongues and prophecy, particularly with what I call a growing resurgence in the last two and a half centuries. We'll go over in a little bit more detail what those involve. In the last hundred years or so, there have been three waves of this resurgence. One is about the year 1900, the Pentecostal or first wave, And one of the places that it kind of hit the front page is this is a scan of the Los Angeles, what was called the Daily Times at that particular point in history.

And this is from 1906. And so this was where it showed itself up in Southern California. And what's interesting is that the group started to split apart from there because at the same time that they had this tongues and prophecy phenomenon, they also had seances and talking to the dead and various other occult phenomenon taking place. And that rather divided the group up and moved it away from Southern California to some degree. The Assembly of God Church started in 1914. So that was a denomination that was developed about that time. There were other Protestant Pentecostal denominations. And what's interesting, I have a picture here.

This is my grandparents, Earl and Eva Jennison. This is 1945, the end of World War II. But my grandfather during the 1920s was an Assembly of God pastor. My grandmother joined him and so they were both pastors in the Assembly of God Church. Now here's something else that's interesting. Both during the time of Montanus in ancient times as well as in modern times, the tongues and prophecy and other charismatic phenomenon have often, not always, but often been accompanied by women taking leadership. And this was an instance, my grandmother was also called a pastor alongside my grandfather.

The Four Square Church, we have one of them right down the street here, began by Amy Semple McPherson back in 1922. So there's another denomination of the Protestant Pentecostal kind. Now the characteristic here is that Pentecostalism, in great part during this time, remained within certain Pentecostal denominations.

And the idea was primarily this, that after being saved, having the baptism of the Holy Spirit was thought of as evidenced by speaking in tongues. And each person then needed to have this second blessing, various terms, the second blessing, this baptism of the Holy Spirit, and they needed to seek it separately from salvation.

Well, then the next wave came. This is the second wave. In 1960, Dennis Bennett, who was an Episcopal priest, announced to his congregation that he had experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This happened in April. And he really intended to be a fairly quiet thing. It wasn't. And it actually caused him quite a bit of distress. But this is wave two.

Why is this different? This is different because rather than having just Pentecostal denominations, It jumped the denominational lines and went over to other non-Pentecostal groups. So then you end up having people from other groups, and I'll say it jokingly, you end up having these Baptocostals, right? So other denominational groups then began having these various expressions. Now, there's one limitation that they had and these expressions, though they're called charismatic, the expressions were all things that you might in some degree see described in scripture. That is, it wasn't anything outside of scripture, even though there may be a dispute as to whether or not it should have been carried on. It was at least something that had the appearance of being described in scripture.

The third wave, 1980, was begun by John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard Churches, Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel, asked John Wimber, you know, you're doing some things that are kind of outside what we want to get involved in, so he asked him to please part ways. So John Wimber founded the Vineyard Churches. The reason this is called third wave is because the expressions that come out of this are outside of what is described in scripture by any thought or imagination.

This is the kind of thing drunk in the spirit. This is holy barking, holy mooing, holy crowing, holy barfing. And I'm not kidding. So these kinds of expressions, you can't find them in scripture. Those are the third wave of charismatic. That's, as far as I can tell, the latest wave that we have in the historical count here.

Now, in order that we have some means of discussion, there is a legal size table on spiritual gifts that's available on the cabinet to the right as you exit this room, or page size on page 4 of your handout. You can take a look at that. If you look at that and say, I can't read that, you might want to try taking a look at the legal size. There is a great deal of detail. And this morning, we're not going to go into all that detail. And you might be going, whew, OK? We're going to just, for starters, look at what's in this part of the chart. And that is shown in this way on page one of your handout. It's about half a page.

It shows on the top half those gifts that we would say are apostolic era gifts. They are gifts that are clearly displayed during the time of the Apostles. And then we have on the bottom half of that gifts that were displayed, yes, during the time of the Apostles, but also, I think, intended for afterwards, including also the time where we are right now. And one of the things that you'll notice, and we'll address it shortly, is there are four columns, different passages that list different gifts. We're in the first of those.

None of those four lists there, in the four columns on page one of your handout, none of those lists is exhaustive. Paul starts to, instead of just addressing tongues and prophecy immediately, he gives a kind of a big picture view. And so that's why in chapter 12 he has actually two lists. And so the first one is in the passage we're looking at here, and then the second one we'll look at next week. We'll actually, this week, not go into any detail as to what all these gifts are about, but we'll talk about them in more general terms and what the real issues are.

When we get to not just that column there with the two, but all four columns, what we see, I'll put it up like this so we can see them all, what we see in this chart is that there are four lists in Scripture. 1 Corinthians 12 has two of them, this week and next week. Romans 12 also has some, and Ephesians 4. Other passages also talk about them, but these are the four passages where they are listed. No single list gives us all the gifts. You have to take the four passages and put them together in order to get the full picture of what the spiritual gifts are. Now, the Corinthians had to ask their questions for good reason. They weren't just saying, hey, I think I'm curious. They had some good reasons to be puzzled.

Their culture, there in Corinth, placed an emphasis on experiences. They thought it was really good if you had this or that special experience. And they also, like our own culture, had I, me, my, and mine as very important. It's like, you deserve a break today, right? and have it your way. That's the message they got too, it just wasn't in neon lights and TV commercials. It was, in some respects, a culture like our own, where having certain experiences may be important and where the focus is very much on individuals and satisfying oneself.

The problem among the believers, and I call them fleshly believers, not because I'm making that assessment, In chapter 3, the beginning few verses, Paul himself says that they're fleshly believers. The world had sold them on such gifts, these spiritual gifts, as an experience that makes me better. So Paul tells them that the spiritual gifts aren't about what you're doing, it's about what God is doing. And it isn't about making you better as an individual. It's about the body of Christ and building up the body of Christ. It was a perspective that they had to learn about and get adjusted in their thinking.

While I'm dating myself here, back in the 60s there was a TV ad jingle. Some of you may remember it. It may be so long ago you've forgotten it, but anyway. It goes something like this. My dog's better than your dog. My dog's better than yours. And then they go on to throw this pitch. My dog's better because he eats kennel ration. By the way, that's the way I said it. Ration, not ration. And so they had finally the grand finale.

My dog's better than yours. Well, interestingly enough, The Corinthians did that exact same thing with gifts. So they said, my gift's better than your gift. My gift's better than yours. My gift's better because I am arrogant. My gift's better than yours. And I'm not using that word arrogant just as my own assessment.

That's what Paul said more than once. That was their mindset. and they really wanted their gifts to be better. He even tells them, you people seek out the best gifts. That's what you tend to do. That's when he introduces, but I will show you a better way and begins to tell them about love. It has to do with love. You guys need to learn about that.

The other reason why the Corinthians really needed to ask the question about these spiritual gifts was because they had a number of pagan religions in the middle of town. They had these temples, and at the temples some versions of these gifts of tongues and prophecy, and sometimes other gifts, were present at these temples, and here's one, the Temple of Apollo with the high point, Acrocorinth they call it, in the background. Temple of Apollo was one of those places where they spoke in tongues at that temple. And so when people would have something that seemed to be similar, in the church and say, I don't understand, what's going on?

So Paul needed to clarify, look, that's one thing and this is another. So that's what he begins to explain in this passage here. And that's also true today and actually has been the case for many years. There have been expressions like this among churches and people who call themselves Christians.

Something like the gift of tongues is or has been present among the shakers. Many of you, when you think of shakers, you often think of shaker-style furniture. But it's not because the furniture shakes. It's because they shake. And so that was one of the places where especially the gift of tongues was presented. in that group.

They did have a problem, however. The group died out. Why? They didn't believe in marriage at all. So, anyway, that's why we don't have the groups now. All we have left is the furniture. Now, another one is the Mormons. And, interestingly enough, the group that introduced tongue speaking that is still in existence today in the United States is the Mormon Church. Joseph Smith and his follow-on leader, Brigham Young, both spoke in tongues. So that's still a continuing practice among some portions of the Mormon following.

Hindus are also another group out of India and the surrounding Geography there also speaks in tongues, but that's just really a sampling. Islam has tongue speaking. Various tribal religions in different parts of the world, Africa included, also have tongue speaking. Even atheists are able to exhibit tongues.

The reason is, it turns out that there is a smaller percentage of people who can be trained to do this with very little instruction. They pick it up quickly. Oh, that's what you do? And they pick it up quickly. There's another percentage, a larger percentage, 60 to 70 percent, who have to have some training. And then there's a smaller percentage, fairly small group, who it doesn't matter how much you train them, they can't do it. Okay?

And so very interestingly, the phenomenon frequently referred to as tongues is something that isn't exclusively within the Christian realm at all. It's something that has in more recent times even been studied using CAT scans and things of that sort to determine what's going on anatomically and physiologically. There have been anthropological studies done on which cultures have this. There have been linguistic studies and one of the things that appears to be the case is where this phenomenon of speaking in tongues is being carried out now, I would say with some rare exceptions, It's a repetition of the same set of syllables again and again. There will be a limited set of syllables repeated kind of at random or within some kind of a pattern. And it's interesting, even within the United States, England, and the English-speaking world, those particular patterns seem to be almost universal through most of those people. It has to do with the cultural training for the brain.

Now, in the first few verses, one of the issues that Paul addresses is he talks about Jesus as Lord as a genuine statement. He also gives the example of Jesus as accursed. Why is he saying this? See, most of the believers, as he spells out in chapter 12, verse 2, They'd come from a totally pagan background.

All these pagan religions. You have Apollo, you have Artemis, and sometimes even some of the Egyptian religions. They worshiped stone and metal idols, and certainly the stone and metal idols couldn't say a thing. They couldn't speak a thing. Even though Paul had already expressed, this is back in chapter 10, that these idols were actually a demon behind the idol, they still couldn't say anything.

But when people speak, whether they're cursing Christ or acknowledging him as Lord, the true expression, or what they're really intending to say, has a spiritual source behind it. That's Paul's point here in these first few verses. There is a source behind the expression. Key point. Unlike the idols, God does communicate and what we say is by spiritual means and motive. That's his point. People will say Jesus is a curse or Jesus is Lord. There is a spirit behind what they say.

Now certainly it's possible for someone to act. And if you pay them enough, they'll say almost anything, right? And some can even act very well. I've seen some very good acting of someone behaving, when they're paid to, like a Christian. It's still acting. What Paul is talking about is not acting, but the genuine expression. No one says Jesus as Lord is a genuine expression, except that there's the Spirit of the Lord behind it.

In verses four through six, there's a certain Hebrew parallelism. What do I mean by that? There's a repetition of certain phrases and words, and then a slight variation. So verses four through six read like this, and you have a slide similar to this on page two of your handout. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit. And there are varieties of ministries. and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things and all persons.

What's Paul's point? God does the distributing of gifts to those who believe as He wills. He's the one that works through us with the gifting and the ministries that He has presented and He's brought about. It's what He does. Notice in this set of verses where there's a repetition. It's what God's doing, not what we're doing.

Part of the problem that the Corinthians were having is they were thinking the gift is all about me. Hey look, I got this gift. Doesn't that make me cool? Doesn't that make me better than anybody else? What if I get that one? Won't that make me even better still?

So Paul's point here is, look, it's the Lord who is doing something. If something is actually happening spiritually, it's because God's doing it, not because you have something to be proud of, not because you have something to draw attention to yourself. In the end, all these draw attention to the Lord, or at least that's God's intent. It's God who works all things and all persons. Everybody in the church body if they're doing something that God intends, is doing it because it's God's work, not because they have something that they can say, hey, look at me, I've got this gift. It is also all brought about by grace. We don't merit any of it. Whatever the Lord has given us to do, we don't merit any of it. It is all of grace.

I'm going to move briefly here to Romans 12, because Paul makes a good point in the beginning of Romans 12, 3-6. For through the grace given to me, and then he begins to give some instruction about spiritual gifts. But then in verse 6, he talks about since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, you get the impression that grace is given, right? Grace given.

Each of us is to exercise them accordingly. As something we merit? As something we earn? No. As grace given. Entirely by grace. I don't earn it. I don't merit it. I get no extra credit. Okay? It doesn't work that way. It's all grace given. It's all of grace. Grace given is a term that Paul uses about ten times. You have it on the list of passages there on the bottom of that slide on page two. He keeps using it again and again. Grace is given. Grace is given.

That's the basis of these spiritual gifts that he intends that we use among ourselves here in the church body. Now, back to these moving body parts that move independently. The diversity is for the sake of unity. See, what was happening with these believers in Corinth is they were using the diversity to divide.

And Paul says, no, you need to understand something. Each of you is given different gifts for the sake of the unity. That's key. That's key. Each of us is gifted differently, not in order that we go off in different directions, but that we exercise those gifts for building one another up, for the sake of the unity. The Corinthian believers didn't understand that because they were looking at the gifts as something that I have, something that I do, something that makes me better.

Paul's point, however, is to urge them to unity. You have the diversity, he says, but God has a purpose in it because he wants to build the unity of the body with that. So on the one hand, he has to urge them to unity. What was the first thing he said to do? This is chapter 1, verse 10. He says, I urge that you say the same thing, be of the same mind and of the same judgment. None of the spiritual gifts is intended to do anything different.

Unity. On the other hand, he has them recognize that God himself, through the Spirit, has given a diverse set of spiritual gifts. And he's going to talk more about some of them are more high profile. Some of them are very quiet. They're all needed. All valuable. Every single one of them.

Have you been lying awake at night thinking about the piston in your car? You don't see it very much, do you? You probably don't have very many conversations with your piston. You don't take it out at night and lay it under your pillow. I hope you don't.

It's something we don't see, but we desperately need it. And that's the same thing here with the church body. No, don't lay somebody underneath your pillow. In the same thing with the church body, there are things that go on around here that are just as much needed as the things that are seen and visible. Very much so. Very much so. The diversity is for the sake of the unity, for the sake of the well-being of the church body.

Now, we need to talk about something else. Why do we do this? A prosecutor who is doing his or her job needs to show motive, means, and opportunity. And no, I'm not talking about prosecuting you, but we need to show motive, means, and opportunity here this morning, too. What do I mean?

As believers, our motive for ministry is not about our individual benefit, but about graciously benefiting the body of Christ. That was the one issue that they needed to get settled there at Corinth. It's not about what's in it for me. It's about what's in it for the body. It's about everybody else, not me.

Secondly, the means by which we have these gifts, the receipt of them, is all by God's doing. He's the one who distributes them as He wills. The means of our carrying out the gifts is also by God's doing, by His enabling, His empowering, and His energizing. He is the one who provides the enabling, empowering, and energizing for us to carry everything out, not only in all of our Christian lives, but among ourselves in the exercise of these gifts in the church body. We each, and here's the last one, we each have this gracious opportunity and are in fact rewarded for it.

1 Corinthians chapter 3 verses 10 through 15 we looked at. Here's the amazing thing. The Lord has given you a gift or gifts to minister to others in the church body and to the extent that you rely and depend upon him such that his life is shown all by grace That's rewardable eternally. Isn't that amazing? The Lord rewards us for simply letting Him use us, all of grace. That's eternally rewardable.

Each one of the believers in Corinth was looking after, Oh, I want that gift. Oh, give me that one. Hey, that one's pretty snazzy looking. Okay. This one is really flashy. I like that one. They wanted something that would make them look unique, stand out, and look special and better than all the rest. There was pride behind it.

Paul is saying that each one of them has a gift that they didn't choose. You didn't pick which one. They didn't gain by their own merit, the Holy Spirit grace gave to each one. Each one is given at least one gift for the benefit of the body, but no believer has all the gifts. There is no super believer.

He also tells them, this is in verses 8 through 11, he keeps emphasizing the same spirit. He lists a few of the more flashy gifts, and that's interesting about where he starts with. He starts with the gifts that are more flashy, high-profile, more miraculous looking, more impressive, so that they would understand the unity of the body and the single source of the gifts. He says, you guys are looking for all these apparently or supposedly flashy gifts, you don't realize they come from God. It's not something you generate. You don't take any credit for it. You get no brownie points. You get no notches in your Bible. These are spiritual gifts because God gives them. You see, that would be in contrast to the pagan religions.

People would seek out specific expressions. They had actually, in some cases, even pay money in order to get one of these particular talents or gifts. Also, those gifts, as they appeared to be in the pagan temples, were by different spirits or gods. This person would speak this way because of Apollo, and this person would speak that way because of Aphrodite, and this one over here by another spirit. So Paul has to keep emphasizing, no, listen. You don't understand.

It is the same spirit who provides all these in the body of Christ. This is no mix-or-match deal. This is no bazaar where you go and kind of choose which one you want. It's also, unlike the pagan gods, not a matter of benefiting themselves or making themselves look better, but it's to benefit the body and make the body of Christ better. In verses 12 and 13, towards the end of the passage there, his focus is, we are the one and only body of Christ. This is focusing on the unity again. We are a diverse many, but in that diversity and in that many, we are but one body of Christ. Just one. We are the local expression of the body of Christ.

Do you remember, why? About two and a half months back, we had Ida and Winnie here from Uganda. Some of you may remember that. They stayed with Nancy and I for a couple of weeks. And before that, I think Phil and Sue Ellen had kept them for a couple of days, which we greatly appreciated.

But you know, they're of the body of Christ too. There's one body. Just one. Diversity? Oh yeah. but one body of Christ. Christ, who is the head, is but one as well, not two heads, just one. Christ is the head, we are the body, and there is just but one of those. Diversity, yes, but by one spirit and with one body and one head, I would add.

When each one of us first believed in Christ, a great many spiritual changes took place. I was looking this last week and I noticed we've taught who you are in Christ as an elective twice now. And why do we do that? Because who we have become once we believed takes a while to catch up to.

It is an amazing thing to discover, oh, all I did was believe that Christ died for my sins and was buried and rose again. And I find out that I've been identified with Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seating. I'm part of the flock of God. I find out that I'm a child of God. All these things are true of me. But all I did was believe. God did the rest.

One of those changes, and just one of those many changes, Actually, if we were to number them, there are many, many dozens. One of those changes was to place us into the body of Christ. And that's his point here in these last couple verses of the passage. He placed us into the body of Christ.

Isn't that amazing? One person says, I believe that Christ died for my sins and was buried and rose again. And among all the different things that happens to that person, though they don't necessarily know it, is that God places them into the body of Christ. That miraculous event takes place, whether they know it or not, when they believe.

And that's all they did. Though many, we are all together the one body of Christ. It doesn't matter what part of the globe we're in. It doesn't matter whether we're here, because we actually have some people who aren't here, who are ordinarily among us. They're all part of the body of Christ. It's a spiritual unity. Being in the body of Christ is by grace. We didn't earn it. We didn't merit it. We didn't work towards it. This wasn't on the layaway plan, by the way.

It was all by grace, grace given, as Paul puts it. He makes the distinction in verse 13, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free. You see, in Paul's day, some of the biggest social distinctions were among the Jews and the Greeks. And the Greeks was kind of the representative Gentiles, non-Jews group in that day. And some of the social Distinctions would come out.

Here are the Jews. They would go to the marketplace to buy something. They'd ask about the clothing. And the proud Gentile merchant would pull up some piece of clothing and say, yes, it's a mixture of this and that particular cloth. And the Jews would say, no! The Jews would want to be sure. that nothing forbidden had ever touched whatever they're going to put in their mouth. And so the Gentiles would get upset. What's the matter? You don't like my bacon?

The two groups would get alienated from one another easily. It was also slave or free. A slave was wholly owned by another. What they did and what they didn't do was all dictated by the master. They could be sold on a moment's notice. They could also be terribly mistreated. The person who was free was an entirely different social group. Even if poor, they were better off in many cases than the slave.

So while the Jews and Gentiles would be divided and the slaves and the free would be divided as well, Those distinctions were not to be made in the church. You come together in the church, and the man who is Jew sits down with the man who is Gentile. The man who is poor sits down with the man who is wealthy.

All the social distinctions go away in Christ. So now that we are believers, our identity is in who Christ is, that is our first identity. We're in Him. Ever think about that? You might say, well, I am this and I am that. And we have different roles defined and we have different identities. But above it all, above it all, the believer is in Christ. That's your primary identity. So Paul makes that point here. Above all the things that might make people have a different identity in society, what counts most is that believer is in Christ. That's the primary identity.

I went to a high school where they had an odd language that they spoke in this little valley, a little language called Bundling. And they have a whole set of names for the people who live there. You see, I live near this town called Polico. That was the name for the town in Bootling. And so I'm a Poliker.

Just to give you a sampling, if I were to say, I'm going to take a hike to Boonville and I'll call you up on the phone. I'll say, I'm going to take a pipe to the region and call you up on the Bucky Walter from Boont. Or, Old MacDonald had a farm. Abalo Kimi had a region in the Drury Zo and on that region he had a borp.

So, a different language. But guess what? My identity first is in Christ. And you may be very glad of that. I am too. That's my first and number one identity. I'm first and foremost in Christ. There will be a day, and I hope it's today, I'll walk through heaven's gates, and all those other identities will fall by the wayside. And they'll say, Poliak or who? All those identities will fall by the wayside. It is who we are in Christ that will last past heaven's gates. You have another thing, and that's a pattern. We call it a chiasm in that last verse.

For by one spirit we were all baptized into one body of Christ, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free. We were all made to drink of Christ, of one spirit. This chiasm, just to keep it clear, is like a mirror image. like this beautiful fall scene here, in written form. So that's the way Paul writes this verse. But the point is this, it's by the ministry of the Holy Spirit who indwells each one of us believers here today, all the time, that we are placed into that one body of Christ and are made to have the life of Christ living in and through us. That's God's intent. You might wonder about that last phrase, made to drink of one's spirit. Here's what John 7, 37-39 says, quoting Christ.

It says, Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. And by the way, this is in the temple courtyard. The temple courtyard's about the size of six football fields. So you imagine, here's the stone floor courtyard and he calls across the courtyard, anybody who's thirsty, come to me and drink.

They must have wondered what he was talking about. He who believes in me, as the scripture said, from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water. But this he spoke of the Spirit. whom those who believed in him were yet to receive. That's Acts 2. That's where that's recorded. For the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified. He had not gone, at this point, in a resurrected body to the Father. The key point here, as Jesus makes it, it's by believing in Christ that one receives the Holy Spirit and is baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body. There is no second blessing to seek. There is no second blessing. The ultimate question about whether or not you have all the spiritual gifts that God wants for you to have is have you believed? Nothing else to look for. It's have you believed? Have you believed that Christ died for your sins? Have you believed that He was buried? Have you believed that He rose on the third day?

That's the issue. That's the question. If you have believed that Christ died for your sins and was buried and rose on the third day, then I can assure you what Paul wrote in Ephesians 1.3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing and accepted in the heavenly places in Christ. for those who believe. It's that simple. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage here, certainly lots of details, but in the end, it comes down to recognizing You have blessed us with every spiritual blessing from that very moment that we believed. Nothing more to seek than to seek Your face. and to behold you. And we do that even now, even this morning. We give you thanks for all the gracious and marvelous and awesome ways that you've blessed us, each individually and as a church body, with every spiritual blessing. Amen.