How to Function as a Member of Christ's Body

So we heard about being a committed member of this church and that is open to all who are willing to fulfill what scripture says is a part of every believer in Christ's body. So let's turn to this passage we were looking at in Ephesians 4 and verse 15. Maybe begin at verse 14.

We must no longer be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine etc. and by the craftiness, by trickery of men and craftiness and deceitful scheming. See, one mark of little children is they can't walk steadily, stumble and fall and crawl.

But it says we must grow up. And how do we grow up? Here it's written so clearly. Verse 15, speaking the truth in love, we'll grow up to the head which is Christ.

That means we'll become more like him. It's very easy to remember. God has not given us ten points.

Dear brothers and sisters, remember two things. Always be truthful. Don't ever try to give truthful and loving.

That's what it says here, speaking the truth in love. If you ever you try to give people an impression of something about yourself which is not true, there's a word in the Bible for it, hypocrite, actor. We must never try to give, certainly in the church, anyone an impression that you're more spiritual than you really are.

If you know you're defeated in your thoughts, and defeated by lusting, don't get up here and speak like some prophet in the open type of sharing as if you're giving some profound message. I'm not saying you should not share. Even a baby can share.

But have low thoughts about yourself and you'll be a greater blessing than if you pretend to be very spiritual. Usually the danger is with newer believers and young people especially. Even if young people are being believers for 10-15 years, young people tend to want to impress and show very very dangerous.

Then you're not speaking the truth because it's not true in your life. Speaking the truth doesn't mean I'm gonna say two plus two is four. It's not just that.

It's more than that. It means I'm not giving an impression about myself which is untrue. That means when I give people an impression about myself as more spiritual than I am, I'm not speaking the truth.

I'm speaking a lie. My life is telling you I'm speaking words which are conveying a lie to people that I'm so spiritual when I'm down here. It's like giving people the impression I'm actually in the 10th grade when I'm actually in the third grade.

That's a lie. So we got to be humble about this and it's better to think less about yourself than more. If you're unsure spiritually, am I in the fifth grade or the third grade? Assume you're in the third grade.

Much better, safer than assuming that I think I'm higher. And you can see that I've seen, I hear sometimes, you know, I mean I've served the Lord 60 years. I got a little bit of discernment.

When I listen to people, I can make out this guy's just trying to impress everybody. He's got nothing. It's not coming out of his life.

It's coming out of his head. Maybe he's sharp and that's a great danger of people who are in a Silicon Valley Church where everybody's brilliant. You can get all types of brilliant thoughts from the Bible to impress people.

Beware of it. Don't be a baby. Speak the truth in love for people.

Desire that they will grow. See a mother makes food for the children. Think of a mother making food for four or five year old children.

She's not trying to impress them what a great cook I am by arranging it all very beautifully. That's not what children need. That's you get visitors coming to your house.

You arrange your food nicely to further impress them. But a child, the mother is concerned that the child must get nourishing food. Doesn't matter whether they're impressed with the way I present it or what type of plate it is presented in.

The mother is concerned the child must get nourishing food. And that is the brother or sister who say, Lord, if I share anything in this church or I speak to people even private, I don't mean just sharing in the meeting here, even privately, I don't want to impress them. I want to bless them.

Make that your goal. And I'll tell you, it'll be amazing how much God will be able to use you, even if you're a very ordinary brother or sister. God will use you to bless this church.

You'll be a committed member, even if others don't think so. And others who claim to be committed members are not. So it says you're speaking the truth in love.

Like that, we grow up to the head. So ultimately, it's not by my connection with people frequently meeting the Rabelle Fellowship. It's by being connected to the head.

It says here, it's from the head, verse 16, that the whole body is fitted and held together by what every joint supplies. So the meaning there is, you know, I'm glad that the New Testament speaks of Jesus spoke about the body. The Holy Spirit speaks about Christ, the church is the body of Christ.

And to me, I've meditated on that for 60 years. I became a Christian 65 years ago, and very soon, that's amazing, very soon, I had a burden to see a body of Christ being built. I said, I want to see a church which is like a body, because that's what I saw in the New Testament.

Not an organization, not a group of people sitting together like in a theater, you know, like, and they go to a cinema theater, and everything, everybody's watching what's happening in front, and then they go home. So you come to church, and everybody just listens to what's happening in front, and go home, and they have no more connection till they come to the next cinema, a movie on the theater. That's, a church must not be like that, where people regularly go to the movie theater, go regularly to the church, because they're entertained by what they get there.

In a cinema theater, nobody's connected to the people sitting there. But in a church, we are, more and more we had to be connected, the more we come here, this is a committed member, connected to the other ones here. A little baby can't coordinate the movement of hands and feet and all, but as the child grows, it's able to coordinate.

See how artists and all can do such delicate work. A child can't do that. A child can't even write the alphabet properly.

One mark of growth is, it can coordinate. And the reason is, not because these two hands spend a lot of time together. How do these hands, for example, an artist, or a sculptor, or someone who's building something with both hands, how does he get left hand and right hand to work? Especially you see that in a piano.

I'm amazed at good pianists, how they coordinate the sound. How does the left hand and the right hand work exactly? It's not by they're spending a lot of time together. It's not by pianists saying, we must, I must hold hands frequently, so that these hands work together.

That's garbage. That's what we think. If I spend a lot of time with that brother and visit him, and we're good friends, and we are always happy together, and we think we'll be fellowship, it's nonsense.

It is nonsense. I'll tell you how, whether it's playing the piano, artists or sculptors, it's because this hand is perfectly connected to the head. And this hand is perfectly connected to the head.

And from the head, they work so perfectly together. That's why you can't work together with somebody else's hand, because his hand is not connected to my head. So that's what it says here, growing up to the head, Ephesians 4.15. And from the head, verse 16, the whole body is fitted and held together by the joints and everything.

Then each individual part, verse 16, is contributing something which results in the whole growth of the body. And how do you know whether you're, whether you or I are contributing to the building up of the body? It's not just those who stand up here in the pulpit, who contribute to the building of the body. It says here, according to the proper working of every individual part, this is a committed member, a committed member is in verse 16, every individual part is doing something for the growth of the body.

Now, you may have an understanding that you're a committed member because you come here faithfully every Sunday and sit here and sing the songs or maybe put a little money in the box. But that's not a committed member. A committed member is one who's doing their part in secret, in private.

When you're not sitting here, you're concerned that the church must be built up and you keep your connection with the head. So even if I never meet you for the whole week or for weeks on end, I can work perfectly with you if you're connected to the head and I'm connected to the head. These hands may never have held each other for one week or two weeks, but when they want to do something together, it works perfectly because they're both connected to the head.

So when does that fail? When one of these members loses its connection to the head, that's called paralysis. One hand gets paralyzed, then the other hand has to lift up and hold it and make it rise something. That is the condition of many believers, and we must make sure that it doesn't happen.

What is a paralyzed member? Its connection to the head is gone. And when its connection to the head is gone, its connection to the other members are also gone. It cannot work together with others.

So when you find a brother who's not able to work together with others, and one proof of that is they're always critical. They're always finding fault. Something's wrong with this, and the elders are not doing it right.

I mean, God never gave you the grace to be an elder. Just humble yourself and say, God gave grace to somebody else to be an elder, and God has borne witness to his ministry, and God has borne zero witness to your ministry in all these years. Humble yourself and recognize them as the one God has given you, because there's a tremendous human tendency to be rebellious.

It's good to judge ourselves. Lord, I want to have a low estimate of myself, but I want to do my part to build the body of Christ. And you don't have to be an elder.

It says here, every individual, it first speaks about leaders. Ephesians 4.11, apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers. Now, you may not be any of those five.

You may not be an apostle or a prophet or a shepherd or an evangelist or a teacher. It doesn't matter, because it says they equip all the believers. These are very few people in the world who are apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers.

But they equip thousands of believers so that the believers, did you see that in verse 12? The believers build the body of Christ, as we heard today. And so, we can easily do our part to show ourselves as committed members by walking with the Lord. So, in that connection, I want to turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. This has been the thing that opened my eyes many years ago.

I was seeking the Lord as a young Christian when I was maybe 23 years old. I'd just been baptized a couple of years earlier. And I said, Lord, I want the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

I want the power of the Holy Spirit in my life, because I know that that is what changed those frightened disciples into powerful witnesses, just like that. Not that they went through school for 10 years and became powerful witnesses. No! They were scared, locked up in a room, afraid to witness for Christ.

And in one moment, the Holy Spirit filled them. They threw the door open and they were changed completely. That's what the baptism in the Holy Spirit does.

It's not a gradual growth in 10 years of school. It's a sudden filling with the Holy Spirit that changes everything. It's like a fire that lights up and suddenly the room is hot.

I said, Lord, I want that. And I found various groups emphasizing various different ways to seek it by praying and crying out and all that. Okay, I don't despise any of them.

It's good to pray, and I also prayed. But the Lord pointed me, and I've said this before to those who've heard me before, to the example of Jesus. Always Jesus is the example.

How did the Holy Spirit come and anoint him at the age of 30? The Holy Spirit anointed him, as I said last Sunday, because for 18 years before that, or 30 years before that, he submitted to the authority God had placed over him, Joseph and Mary. Were they perfect? Completely imperfect. I'm sure the Holy Jesus could have seen 101 faults in Joseph and Mary, just like you may be able to see faults in some other believers, because you've got such sharp eyes and you've got a clever brain.

You're a Silicon Valley person. You know you're sharp and you can make out the faults in other people. Good.

Jesus was sharper than every Silicon Valley expert. He could see Joseph and Mary faults thoroughly, yet he submitted to them. 100%.

And God watched that from heaven, and he was faithful in temptation. He testified to that entire life by one action when he allowed John the Baptist to put him in the water and baptism. It was a symbol of how Jesus had lived his entire life.

I allow other people to put me to death. That's the meaning of baptism. United with him in his death, it says in Romans 6, baptism.

Baptism is a picture of burial of the old man, burial of my old life, burial of my self-will. The old man is my self-will. So Jesus, all his life, allowed his self-will to be buried and killed by others, and he testified to that by allowing symbolically John the Baptist to put him in.

He didn't resist it. And when he came out, it was God raising him up, even though it was John the Baptist who lifted him up. Symbolically, it was God raising him up, and immediately a voice from heaven saying, I am delighted, well pleased in you.

And the spirit came upon him. That's when God spoke to me. If you are willing to accept other people pushing you down, keep quiet and don't defend yourself, and don't try to show how clever you are and just humble yourself, and allow me, God said, to raise you up.

Allow me to give you a ministry, not that you seek one yourself. I will anoint you with the spirit, but all your life, even after you're anointed with the spirit, you must choose the way of death, death, death to self. And the day you think you have graduated from that class, and you don't need to die to self anymore, in that day, my anointing will depart from you.

I never forget the Lord telling me that, and I'm scared. Okay, 2 Corinthians 4.10. That's why this verse is very precious to me. 2 Corinthians 4.10, always carrying about in my body the dying of Jesus, dying to doing my own will, dying to get offended when somebody said something to me, dying to want to have my own way and to push my way up, dying to trying to exalt myself in the church or exalt myself over others, dying to have all types of opinions that I have about different people, dying to all that.

You know, we can have so many opinions in our mind, and that's what prevents you from living a spiritual life. Die to it, my brother. What are you gaining by having opinions of every Tom, Dick, and Harry? Nothing.

Ruining yourself. Die, and the Spirit of God will mightily use you. I'll tell you, I was a very timid, fearful person who was scared to stand in public.

The Holy Spirit changed me, just like the Holy Spirit changed those apostles on the day of Jesus. When Jesus went down, the Lord raised him up and anointed him, and then the life of Jesus will be manifested in us, verse 10, and that is the way we can bless others. And not only that, the life of Jesus, when death works in us, verse 12, life will come in other people.

That's through the Holy Spirit. This is how we become committed members of the body of Christ. My right hand is a committed member of this body.

How do I know that? It listens to the head. Not that it's always holding hands with all the other members of the body. No, committed to the head.

This left hand is a committed member of this body because it listens to the head. My leg is a committed member of the body because it's connected to the head, and therefore every part of my body functions together. That is the church of Jesus Christ against which Jesus said the gates of hell will never succeed against that church.

That is the church we are trying to build here, a body. My brother, sister, do your part to build the body. Amen.