There are times when I will sit down every quarter, usually every quarter, and work out my sermon schedule, and the Lord gives me great freedom on where to preach. Right now, obviously, we're in the Book of Acts. I had no freedom there. I was compelled by the Spirit to preach through the Book of Acts. But I also have been given great freedom to choose some of the mini-series we have done, such as Jonah. and some of the other series that we have done. And then there are times like this one where I have no freedom. And the Lord will bring something to my mind and I will be under great compulsion to preach this text or this topic. And this is one of those moments where I had no freedom. I had to be obedient to the Lord. What I'm seeing is We as a church are changing. Some people look at the word change and they go, I don't want any part of that. Why do we have to change? It was just fine the way that it was. Well, I'll be honest, if we don't change, we will die. I have been a part of several churches in my life, three in which I was on staff, and you know what's amazing? Every time that I would leave a church, I would look back and see how drastically different it was. Look, I look back on our church now. When I first started, almost seven years ago, You know, there was like 60 people here, and that was a good Sunday. And then COVID hit. And we didn't see most of them back. I was doing this little bit of research and looking at our roles. God has done something great here. Where we have seen an explosion But so many of the people who are here, many of you who are here, were not here seven years ago. That means the church changed. And it changed for the better. And as I look at our church now, I'm realizing that we don't have a great understanding of what the church is to be. And I'm concerned for our church. I'm not waving a flag of panic. I don't see any great disaster on the horizon. But when we don't understand what the church is and how to do it, guess what we do? We make it up as we go. And if there's anything that we should not do, it's make up church as we go. Especially when God has laid out specific, clear guidelines and principles and commands for what we are to look like. So we're going to answer some questions in our series. First is, what is the truth? What is a church? See, rather than wait for a problem to become a mountain, you want to deal with it when it is small. And if we can deal with some of these these misconceptions or wrong thinking or bad habits, while they're small, they don't become the mountains that we have to then scale. They don't become the wedges that split churches. You know, I know that we have some people here this morning who have come from other churches because those churches have failed. I am a firm believer that we need more churches, not less. And so when a church fails, it breaks my heart. One thing that concerns me greatly is that when people leave a failed church and they come here, what happens is they'll bring bad thinking, bad habits, bad actions, not because they're trying to change churches here, but they just bring things with them. And then there are people who have been in a church for a long time and they say, well, we've never done it that way before. And that's just as dangerous because if you don't change, you die. So this is to be a warning and a call to obedience. This is both instruction and a gentle rebuke in some things. You will find yourself rebuked in some things that you perhaps have been thinking. For nearly seven years, I've stood in this pulpit and proclaimed the word of God faithfully to you, and I have seen great fruit. I have seen you grow in your knowledge of God. I have seen you grow in your excitement. We have people serving all over the place now. We have people serving in places I never thought they would. But we also have the other side of things. We have people joining the church. Woo-hoo, I love that. We have people getting saved. I mean, what are we here for except to see people saved? We have people getting baptized. This is wonderful. And yet we're coming together, and as I'm talking with many of you, and as you talk with our elders, we're coming together and we're going, you know, I wonder how well they understand their place in the church. Not just service, but just your role. Why are you here? Why did God set up this institution the way he did? And so, we're gonna begin by looking at the body of Christ and answering the question, what is the church? The body of Christ is the most common metaphor used in scripture to describe the church. And we rightly say the church is the body of Christ. And I resisted myself. I wanted to do the whole, remember when Jay Leno had his talk show, he'd send people out to talk to people on the street and ask them simple questions. I behaved myself, I did not do that. But I do wonder, if I were to go and pull you, could you answer this question? What is the church? Could you give me a simple definition of what is the church? Could you lay out the marks of a New Testament church? See, you can call yourself a church and not be a church. If you don't do and have the marks of what the New Testament calls us to do and to be as a church, we're not a church. We're a gathering of people, certainly. But we are to have certain marks, and we will look at those in a couple of weeks. Do you know the function, how the church is to function? What is the way it is to function? Now, there are different approaches to this, different church governments, different ways of ordering church, and that's okay. There are strengths and weaknesses in all of them. Could you lay out for us the purposes of the church? See, here's what I'm learning. We can preach Christ and we can preach scripture, we can grow in our theology and have a very weak understanding of the church. And I think this has been a big problem for a long time. And I've come to recognize that now we have to deal with this. I've also come to recognize I need to preach on this far more often than I do. And I think sometimes when you are so close to something, you just assume that people know these things because as you're preaching or talking or doing, you have these fundamental things, these launching pads from which you are working and you think then they will grab onto this and it just doesn't work that way. So we're going to deal with more, it's called ecclesiology, the study of the church throughout the year. Because what I don't want is great theologians who don't know how to function inside of the body of Christ. And so we are going to look at how we can work together in unity, in harmony, in peace, in truth for the purpose of God's glory. So let's begin by looking in verses 12 through 14 at the integral unity that we are to have. For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body being many, they're one body, so also was Christ. For by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and have all been made to drink into one spirit. For in fact, the body is not one member, but many. Now Paul is gonna say the same thing three different ways here. This is Paul making sure that we grasp what he's after. The Corinthian church was, to use a cultural term, a hot mess. They had all kinds of foolishness abounding in them. 1 Corinthians is actually the second letter Paul writes to them. We don't have the first letter, so the second letter is what we call 1 Corinthians. And the third letter is what we call 2 Corinthians. I know that's confusing, but that's just the way it works out. And so Paul's written a letter to the church. They write back to Paul with all these questions and concerns, and Paul responds back to them with this letter. And he deals with the first 11 chapters. Paul is dealing with these problems and these issues. And now he turns to the remedy. If we're going to work this out, Corinthian church, you're going to have to figure out a way to get unified. You have to come together. You can't be running off in all your different directions. You can't have the rich up here and the poor down here. You can't have the free man up here and the slave down here. You can't have a Jew up here and a Gentile down here. You can't do that in the body of Christ's work properly. So Paul says, Here's how you, a fractured, foolish, selfish people move forward in unity. You see yourself as one in Christ. And I know for Americans who love their individuality, it's hard for us to step back and see ourselves as a single unit, not an individual. There's nothing wrong with your individuality, but you will see at the end of this message where Paul lays out the order of things, the whole outweighs the one. And yet, what do we see in churches every week? We come because of me and what I want, and what I'm after. We go to church like we go to Walmart. It's convenient. It gives me what I want, what I need, and it's a one-stop shop. I don't wanna have to go to church and to Bible study. I just wanna go to one place. And we go to Walmart thinking, who's going to do this for me? We don't go to church like that. We can't think of church like that. We are to be a unified body, all working together for the same goal. And this Western materialism has poisoned the church. First of all, we are one body, one unit, but we have many members. That word members simply means the limbs of the body. So think arms, legs, your shoulders, your knees, your toes. All of that. We make up one body. Paul says, same with Christ. We are one body in Christ and yet we have many members. Not everyone does the same task, but we are one body. I like the way he puts it in Romans 12, four and five. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function. So we being many are one body in Christ and individually one with another. Here's a simple definition of the church. The word ekklesia, which is where we get the word church, or called out ones, is really what it means. It is a group of God's people that he has called out of the world for his own glory. We gather together to worship God and to evangelize the world. And we do this in many different ways. We do it through preaching. We do it through evangelism. We do it through missions. We do it through ministry of music. But we are called out of the world to be different, to be separate for God himself. So here's the first key point I want you to grasp. Church is not about you. American. Western. American. Church is not about you. We have people who hop around different churches, right? I go to this church here. I like the flavor of this preacher. I like the worship of this song leader. And if I find out that this person's playing on this day, I make sure I'm not there, because I can't stand the way that they do it. And they just hop around. And it's all about what they like. And they then want to turn around and go, why am I not mature? Why am I not growing? Because you're not rooted and grounded anywhere except your emotions, your feelings, your thoughts, your desires. And we're not unified with any one group of people. Sometimes I'll get these requests for counseling and they will come and they will say, well, I have people who are talking about me here or they're saying these things here and none of it's true. And I'll ask them, well, how do you know these people? Why go to church here, and I go to church there, and every once in a while I see them here at Bible study. I'm like, well, where do you belong? I don't know. Well, maybe they're wondering what you're doing. Maybe they're seeing you flip in and out, and they're drawing wrong conclusions. Why don't you settle somewhere? It's amazing how many people will do this. This is not a call for every single person in Trumbull County to settle at Calvary Bible Church. This is not the right church for every single person in Trumbull County. This is why God has given us many local churches. That's why we need more churches, not less. And I am not the right pastor for every single person in Trumbull County, nor do I need to be. But we must recognize that the body of Christ is one body. That is a universal church. Who has ever believed? And this body of Christ is made up of many members. That's your local church. And there are many local churches. There is a necessary and careful distinction needed here. You need to know the difference between the universal church and the local church. Only God knows who's in the universal church. Only God knows all those names. They are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. The many members of the one body are all in the local church, yes, but God knows who belongs in the universal church, who truly makes up the body of Christ. But the body of Christ is made up of the local churches all throughout the world. Now, here's the weird thing. Not everyone in the local church is a part of the universal church. Well, how does that work? Well, you can go to church and go to hell. You can go to church and not believe in Jesus. You can go to church for the cookies, not the gospel. You can go to church for the music and not for Jesus. And so you can go to church for all the wrong reasons and be even a member of the local church and not be a part of the body of Christ. Look, there are people who will join a church, and we don't, our job as a church is to say, you have a believable testimony. But it is God's work to determine who belongs in the universal church. It is man's responsibility to care for the local church. And so this is why we're careful. This is why we seek to do everything biblically. I mean, the reality is, the only, requirement to join the church is to be a Christian. Now, we do have different theology than, say, a Presbyterian church. We're not going to baptize an infant. And some people want that, and so they would fit better inside of that local church. And so there's the beauty of local churches. But we are to care for the souls in the local church, which is made up of both the redeemed and the rebel. And so this is why I continually proclaim the gospel, because I know this fact, I know this truth. That there are people who come to church every Sunday, they hear the word of God and they think, yep, I'm good. And their heart is so far from God. They just don't believe it by faith. We belong to the universal church because we've been baptized into the body of Christ. This is a unique metaphor that's used here. It's used in Ephesians chapter 4, and it's used in Romans chapter 6. And it means to be immersed in the body of Christ. You are not your own. You belong to Jesus. I mean, Acts 20 verse 29 says that Christ has purchased the church with his own blood. You're not being drafted to go and live however you want. You have been bought at a steep, high price that you would serve your king. And so Paul speaks here of Jews and Greeks. For by one spirit, we were baptized into one body, whether you're Jew or you're Greek or you're slave or you're free, we've been made to drink into one spirit. Here's the beauty of God's church. It's made up of every category of people in the world. Jew and Gentile, the two categories the Bible uses to describe people. Those from the line of Abraham through Isaac and those from every other line that ever has been formed. And there's slave and there's free. And you think about it, there's really only two kinds of people in the world, those who are free and those who are enslaved. And you can be enslaved by a person, you can be enslaved by a government, you can be enslaved to your own self and your flesh and your desires. But here, it doesn't matter if you're a slave to someone else or if you're a free man. Christ shed his blood to purchase both. So the idea of slavery here, some people look at this and they go, oh, I don't like that, oh, you can't talk about slavery today. Well, you need to get out of the 21st century and put yourself in the first century. Because slavery there wasn't racially charged. It was motivated by debt to someone. It is estimated that in the first century, one out of every two people were slaves. Now, slavery wasn't a lifelong, Commitment. You were a slave as long as your debt was paid. And once the debt was paid, guess what? You were a free man. The economy did not depend on slavery in the first century. And so, it's a very different approach towards slavery than what we have. Where we think of slavery of people going to Africa and rounding up thousands of men and women, shipping them across the ocean and making them live as personal property, never to be set free of it, for nothing more than the color of their skin. That's not first century slavery. And so all of these categories of people, Jew, Gentile, slaver-free, drink into one spirit. Here's the idea. We all get our refreshment through the Holy Spirit as we read the Word of God. That's what this means. You know, this is why we can go on mission trips and we can go to New York City and work with African people and we can read the Word of God together and both leave edified and nourished and refreshed. They don't do church at all like us. This is why you can go to Dominican Republic and you don't have to speak Spanish. But when you understand the Word of God, guess what? We're both nourished and refreshed and edified. And there's this mystical union between us. We're just, you're my brother. I don't speak your language, but I know I belong with you in Christ. And what's amazing is when we get to Revelation, around the throne, there are going to be representatives of every, every tribe, every language, and every nation. So let me just give you one encouragement. When you hear people running around on a soapbox, talking about ridiculous, foolish things like white privilege, and you've got to pay reparations for slavery, and all of these nonsensical things, and we have to redeem our past, guess what we get to say? You know what? God's already done that. And when you try to force something that you can't do, they're not trying to bring about right now what God promises in Revelation through a sinful means. Just preach the gospel to them and tell them, look, what you're trying to do, God's going to do. He's already doing, and He's doing it better than you can do it. Get a better view here. Look at what God has promised. Every tribe, tongue, nation, skin color, it's all gonna be there. So stop trying to outwork God. Get in line with the work. But see, it all comes down to selfishness and their own ideas and wealth and power. They don't love God, they love themselves. So here's what I want you to see in this first point. Three different times, Paul says, the members make up the one body, which means we are to be unified. And it's not just that we should be unified. It's the best idea to be unified. No, no, no. Here's the command. Be unified. You might not like the person in front of you, behind you, to your right, to your left, but you are to be unified with them. This is not about personality. This is not about temperament. This is not about culture. This is not about generations. This is about Christ. Because what happens when we are not unified, the world looks at the church and laughs and mocks and scoffs, not you and me, but Christ. That's the offense. So I want to address our newest friends and members for just a moment. Because over the past 12 to 15 months, we've seen a good number of people coming into our doors. And I'll be the first to tell you, I'm glad you're here. We're excited you're here. We love that you're here. But you're here because you left your previous church for a reason. And Calvary is not your old church. Now you say, well, yeah, duh-huh, right? I say that for this reason. People bring habits and patterns with them. We want you to be here. And we want you to bring your talent and your gifts and your skills with you. But we want you to look around at Calvary and say, okay, what's the culture here? Calvary is not that church or this church or whatever church. We're different. And that's a good thing. because different churches reach different people. You're here, you seem to enjoy it, so ask yourself some questions. What is it about Calvary that's different than the previous church? What is it here that you're saying, I can get on board with this? What do we do different I am making no claim that Calvary's any better than any other church. We got our own issues. We got our own problems. We got our own hangups. And if anyone thinks that our church is perfect, let's just not put ourselves under the microscope too much. As someone has once said, if you find the perfect church, don't join it, you'll ruin it. But the reality is that we're not perfect people. We're imperfect people pursuing a perfect goal. which is unity. And so my encouragement is to those of you who are new here, we want you to be a part of this ministry and we want you to bring your skills, your goals, or your gifts, sorry, and your abilities to bring about the goal of worshiping Christ here. And I've not seen anyone come in here and say, we need to change this place, we need to be more like this, that. I've not seen any of that. But I know that habits die hard. And they can be ingrained in us. Perhaps the hardest thing to let go of is thinking that there's something really wrong with everything that's going on because what you saw before was wrong. We're not trusting leadership because leadership burned you. I've been a part of that before. We desire here at Calvary to be biblical. I don't see myself as any higher up on the food chain than you are. I have a different role. I have an oversight and a leadership role, but I'm not better, more distinguishedly honored than you. And let me explain how that works in the illustration of verses 15 through 19. The apostle Paul writes in these verses, if the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? If the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as he pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be? This is a great illustration. And Paul uses some humor here. He's like, look, just because the ear says, I'm not an eye, is he really not part of the body? Well, of course he's part of the body. He's an ear. He just is acting foolishly. Or if you are a hand or a foot and you want to be a hand, it's still part of the body. Imagine if you didn't have any feet. How would that work? What if you didn't have any ears? What if you didn't have a nose? What if you didn't have arms? I mean, you think of this and say, well, this is ridiculous. Well, this is because God has ordered the body perfectly and beautifully, the way it should work and the way in which it should move forward in unity. And this is God's work of setting it all out. This word set is the exact same word that we saw last week in Acts 13, 48 with the word appointed. God has appointed it, set it out according to His pleasure. It's according to His desired outcome, it's what God wants. Here's what God is teaching us here again. Guess what? Church is not about you. Church is about Christ. It's about the whole, not the one. That doesn't mean the one doesn't matter, but it means the one has to find their place inside of the whole. Now let me tell you how this can go bad. Years ago, I was overseeing a vacation Bible school ministry at our church, and I decided that we needed to mix it up a little bit because the same people were doing the same things. It was just the same stuff. So, I decided I was going to move three ladies who were always in crafts to different ministries. I split them up. The jobless went out and they came with torches and pitchforks. They bombarded into my office, all three of them, all at once. What is this? I said, it looks like a job list for VBS. Well, what are we doing on these spots? Well, why can't you do those spots? We don't do these. We do crafts. And it was really quite a tug of war. And I remember, I was like, I'm not giving in to these ladies. Well, they went above me and they got their way. I took a beating for that, by the way. For moving people off of one area of ministry, and this is what one of them said to me, I don't do anything but crafts. It took my breath away. And I, The whole thing happened and I was so discouraged. And talking with the leadership of the church, I said, why are we allowing that to continue? Because now you've got a whole generation of younger people who will never see the point of serving a vacation Bible school because you've got this attitude. Because they've got such a clamp on something. This is mine. Rather than bringing someone else along and training and discipling, no, this is mine, and you can't have it until I'm gone. That's how churches die. And so if we don't change, we will die. See, God has granted each person a necessary place as he has pleased. We all have the same gifts. Listen, you have the gift of teaching. You don't have it maybe to the same level as I do, but you can read, can't you? You can form sentences, can't you? You can talk to kids. I know they're scarier than adults. I know that. They're terrifying. I tell Maddie all the time, I'd rather talk to adults and kids. but you can read, you can form sentences, you can care for children. You can teach one week in Sunday school. There's no reason why we have one person who has to do that every week. If you can gather supplies, you have a little bit of extra money, you can give to a project here at the church. It could be the North Carolina Relief right now, it could be Bella. It could be to a missionary, it could be to the benevolent fund, it could be to any number of things. You could do that. It doesn't have to be an upfront position. Some people are saying, I'm just not a front man. That's fine. There are a thousand ways to serve behind the scenes. Because you know, kidneys aren't seen, are they? But they're vitally important to your body. If someone wanted to learn how to be a carpenter, they might go and read some books on carpentry. They might watch some YouTube videos and learn how to do carpentry. They might even talk to a carpenter. They can't say they know carpentry until they what? Work with wood. And make some big mistakes. And cut the wrong angle. And learn, measure twice, cut once. And even then. So when people will be asked to do something, they'll say, I'm not going to do that. I don't know how to do that. I don't want to do that. Here's what that sounds like. Let's say you get a little cut in your body, just a little cut. And your platelets are going, that's our job, but you know what? Let the spleen deal with it today. What's going to happen? You're going to keep bleeding. Or what happens if you get a cold and your white blood cells say, whatever. You know, the appendix doesn't do anything. We don't even know what he's here for. Let him do some work today. Now listen, you laugh at that. If we would laugh at that being in our own bodies, why should we ever allow it to take place in Christ's body? And so when we approach to ask you to do whatever, would you consider? We're not saying you have to. We're asking you to consider. But we don't even walk away and we're told no. You're here for a reason. You're needed. You're necessary. God placed you here. He has set you here for a reason. And it's not so you can come and be entertained and hear good preaching and go home and say, I feel good about myself. Church is not about you. Church is about Christ and it's about his glory and lifting him high. And we do that here corporately. We're not all one member. Now look, I understand perfectly that there are some people who are better teachers than others, and that's fair. But when we have a need, we step up and we serve. Because it's not about you and me. And it's not, it's about kids and it's about people, yes, but it's about Christ. Remember what Jesus tells his disciples, that which you do for the least of these you've done for me. And so, we're gonna close here by looking at the importance of each member. First of all, we see the condition in verses 20 to 22. But now indeed there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you. Nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. No, much rather those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. Here's the condition. No one member is more important than the other, no matter how high their status. And I will tell you, that there are churches who will honor those members that are higher intentionally. There are churches that will have some people lifted up because that's the way they want it. And then there are some churches who will say, no one is doing these things and so we just have to sort of function this way until we can figure out how to do this. Either way, the body is not functioning well. And so I want to explain to you that you, even though you might seem insignificant, you may not have all the knowledge that other people have that should not keep you from doing your part in the body. See, just as God gave you two arms, 10 fingers, two feet, 10 toes, two legs, one nose, two eyes, and one mouth, so he has given this assembly you. and he has given this assembly to the body of Christ. So let me talk to the long-term members for a moment, those who have been here for a lot longer than even I have. I know what it's like to have someone come up to you and to hurt you and to look you square in the eye and to say you add nothing to this place. Take a back seat. I know what it's like to have that happen. I also know what it's like to be on the other side, to have long-term members look down on those who are new. As I just explained, these ladies saying, this is my ministry. We should be bringing people along. There's nothing wrong with saying, you know what? I do this, but this is your passion. Let's do it together. How much better? than to have one person doing all of the work and then to get tired and they get overwhelmed and say, I'm done with that. No, let's do it together. God's way is so much better. So yes, I've been looked down upon for my youth, for my zeal, for my efforts, but I've also had people say, you know what? I don't do it as well as you do, so you just do it. Well, you don't do it as well as I do because you've not been trained, you've not been taught. But here's the biggest issue. A lot of times we're just not willing. We don't want to because, you know what, that means I have left to do. And I've already got so much going on here, there, and everywhere. I'm not saying that you have to quit all those other things, all those other areas, family, and jobs, and life, and passions, and desires, and hobbies. You don't have to quit all those things, but how about we reorient our priorities, that Christ would have the preeminent position in our mind, and that we do something for Him, and we would be a part of the body. See, here's my question. What if I were to let those comments that had been made to me stop me from doing my ministry? What if I just told you, you know what, figure it out. I'm gonna take a break. I'm not gonna do my job. Every one of you would go, oh no, don't do that, right? So here's my question. Why don't you see yourself in the same way? Why don't you see yourself in the same way? That if you're not praying for the church, that if you're not serving in Awana, that if you're not serving in the hospitality committee, which is our ministry of the week, that if you're not serving in the young families ministry, if you're not discipling someone or being discipled, why don't you see yourself the same way? Because we have an unhealthy view of the church. No one is more important than anyone else. God has put you here for a purpose. Second, look at the character that is to be seen in verses 23 and 24. And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor, and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty. But our presentable parts have no need, but God composed a body having given greater honor to that part which lacks it. Here's the character. Every member of the church is vital in their role, even if they seem insignificant. Our bodies are amazing. But we don't consider every part of our body to be honorable. He mentions the parts that are less honorable, that which have a low status. When's the last time you thought about your nose hair? I'm serious. When's the last time you thought about it? Probably when you trimmed it, right? Do you know how important your nose hairs are to your overall health? They are filters, not just of germs, but of your lungs. Don't pluck those babies out. Now listen, I'm not about to compare anyone to a nose hair. However, what happens when you are plucked out is the body suffers. This is the character of the body of Christ. We work together for the glory of God. I am not saying that there are not men in the church who have a higher honor for what they're doing and they're doing well, but I am saying that they are not more valuable than you. And so we have to see this clearly for us to be able to stand up and say, you know what? By golly, I'm going to do my part. I'm going to do my part. Finally, we see the care in verses 25 to 27, and we'll close with these verses. There should be no schism in the body, no division, but that the members should have the same care for one another, and if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, and if one member is honored, all the members are rejoicing with it. Now, you are the body of Christ and members individually. Here's the care. Whatever happens to your brothers and sisters, you should feel it. You should feel it. Romans 12, 15 tells us to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. We should be so unified, beloved, that when someone is hurting, we're hurting with them. And when someone is rejoicing, we're rejoicing with them. That's how this works. And you could be doing both at the same time. That's just the way that this works, it's beautiful. Members individually tells us that individual people make up the individual local churches which makes up the body of Christ. But we have to understand that order in reverse. It's the body of Christ first, for the glory of God. It's the local churches which make up the body of Christ, and then it's us, individuals that make up the local churches. If we can get our perspective that way, Looking at the whole first, it's different, it's a game changer. It frees you. And I understand there's criticism, I understand there's heartache, I understand there's difficulty, but let me remind you, you are not your own. Just as a leg doesn't operate apart from the command of the head, so we do not operate apart from the command of our head, Jesus Christ. We don't have the authority to disobey the orders of Christ. We are to do as He's called us to do. See, our individuality must be seen inside of our being owned by Christ. And He has purchased us with His blood, and we come to the table. We come to recognize that we're here only because of Jesus. And if it wasn't for Him, we wouldn't be here. And we wouldn't have this motivation, we wouldn't have the conviction, we wouldn't have the desire or the compulsion to change and to bring glory to God. We wouldn't have any of it without Him. So as you come to the table this morning, as you prepare our hearts for the elements, I'm asking that you would ask the Lord to search your heart and see where you must grow, how you must think of church differently. I'll be honest, I have to think of church differently. as we all do so that the whole body functions the way that it should be. for the glory of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning, and we thank you for this incredible message of body being unified. It is my prayer that Calvary would be a unified body moving together in harmony, in peace, and in truth, that we would be a lighthouse to this world, and this community right here, that when people would see us, they would see Christ. Because we're not thinking about ourselves first, but him. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.