Turn to 1 Corinthians 12. 1 Corinthians 12. And I want to read about members of the body. We've been noticing in this, uh, epistle how many, especially in this chapter, eighteen times we have the body mentioned, and you have the members mentioned thirteen times. So we'll read the verses beginning at verse twelve. and you can underline those words if you like, where the members are referred to. But as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. I think that's the only time in the Bible you see that forceful mention of the church being the body. So also is Christ. That body of believers gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus, that's Christ. And so here you have that remarkable expression, so also is Christ. Christ is using a human body to express the union between he and a church. Verse thirteen, for by one spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, because I am not the hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, because I am not the eye, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were the hearing, where were the smelling? But now God has set the members, every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the bodies? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of thee you. Nay, much more those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary, and those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor, and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. For our comely parts have no need, but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that part which lacks, that there should be no seasons in the body, but that the members should have the same care one for another. Whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. This is a remarkable passage, and I thought to be able to open it up that you might be blessed. The natural body and the Christian church is our subject. You that have that in verse twelve. the natural body used as an illustration of the spiritual body. Now there's a remarkable passage over in Psalm one thirty nine. where God gives us the description of the human body. Here God is the divine architect and designer of the human body, and David is describing that marvelous machine, the body, a living organism, how God designed every member in the human body. And I'm going to read this passage to you. When you go home, get your Bible and read it for yourself. It's in Psalm one thirty nine and verse thirteen: For thou hast possessed my reins, thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect, and in thy book all my members. Now we've been talking about the members. All my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God. How great is the sum of them. Here you find David, and he's writing about the marvels, the mysteries of the human body. How God in the beginning, when as yet there was no part, God designed this wonderful organism, the living body. And there are the two organisms in the world. One is the human body, the other is the Turk. Wonderful organism. When you stop to think of that body of yours and its chemical or mineral analysis, what it's composed of, I think many years ago, a certain Dr. Craig, who was addressing a large audience of toy scientists in Chicago, and he gave the chemical analysis of a human body, and he was a Christian. And he said if you take all the chemicals and minerals of a human body when it's reduced to ashes, it amounts to about ninety eight cents. That's not very much to be proud of, is it? Seeing that big, beautiful, masculine body, or that lady's body, and reduce it to dust and ashes, today I presume it'd be worth two dollars. When he said this, it was about ninety eight cents. So we don't have much to brag about here. After you die and you're put in that coffin, I don't know how many years it takes, but if you were to take the lid off that coffin, it'd just be the almost the shape of a skeleton and a little path of dust and ashes. You could sweep it up into a small just dust fan. That's what the human body is worth without God, not much. But what makes it so different? God has placed the very germ of life in that dust. When God's children, one of them dies, by the Bible doesn't speak of a Christian dying, it speaks of a Christian falling asleep. That is, his body falls asleep, not his soul. But that which goes into the coffin is the chemical analysis of a human body. So much sulfur and salt and so on. But in every pile of dust of a child of God, there's a germ of life, and that body will be resurrected on the day the Lord Jesus will come. God put the breath of life into that body he formed, and how did he form it? Out of the dust of the ground. God needed material to form that human body, and he took out of the dust of the ground, and he formed the body of Adam. He had it back in his mind in eternity past, as you have in those books. And when he had it finished, he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. From that moment, blood began to circulate in that body. And God says the life of that flesh is in the blood. And the life of your flesh is in the blood that streams through your blood vessels. But God had something greater in mind than that. God had a church, a organism, and it was going to be for Christ to be his bride throughout eternity. And if blood is the basis of our physical life, the spirit is the life of the body of Christ, which is the church. When the Lord Jesus shed his blood, he died. When he was raised from the dead, it was by the spirit, for flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And so our bodies that we have this morning are physical organisms. What wonderful organisms they are. Light is circulating, and because that light which is in the blood is circulating, you're alive. But someday, if the Lord does not come and he undertakes this call, life has been. And if you're not a Christian, you're not worth anything to God. There's nothing in your dust that God appreciates. He gave you that wonderful organism, the human body, with all its members and all its health, and you waste it, lifespan with that marvelous machine. Nothing for God. Nothing for God. How wonderful, then, to use this body. Get faith and let the members of your body be instruments in God's hands. And he tells you that over in Romans chapter six. He says, those very members which were instruments of unrighteousness unto condemnation, let them now be the instruments of righteousness unto holiness. God is looking upon when he created Adam and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. He had in his mind an organism of human beings. It began on the day of Pentecost when a hundred and twenty human beings were baptized by the Spirit. We'll have more to say about that tonight. And the hundred and twenty became like one body, united, and that was the birth of the church. It was a living organism. And just like you have many members to this body, so in a church, a local church, there should be the different members. One can do this, and one can do that, one can do the other thing. And he was into this argument, and I want to try and develop what we have here. How wonderful to think that in our human bodies today, there is life, physical life. But if you want to live forever, you're going to have spiritual life. You've got to have spiritual life, and that spiritual life comes when you are born again. Born by the spirit. And here are two verses I want to release. Over in Ephesians two one, and he says to these Christians there, and you hath, in the past tense, and you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and in sins. What was dead in trespasses and sins? Their souls. Dead in sin. No response to God. They were dead in sin. When somebody dies, there's a separation. You can't talk to a person who's a corpse, they can't talk back to you. And an unsaved person is separated from God because of sin. There's no fellowship, there's no communion. But when the person accepts the Lord Jesus Christ, they are quickened by the Holy Spirit of God, and life is in that heart, the very life of the Lord Jesus Christ with the partakers of the divine nature. He says, you have been quickened who were dead before you were saved. You were just a person living for this life with no contact with God at all, no link, no relationship. But he says you're quickened from the dead into life in Jesus Christ. So how wonderful when a person gets saved and that spiritual life is now coursing through their body. But there's another text I want you to notice it, and this is in Romans eight eleven. But if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you. Here you have the soul being quickened at conversion, but you have your body being quickened on the resurrection more. Quickened by what? He says the very same spirit that quickened the body of the Lord Jesus Christ on the resurrection morning, that same spirit, that same power will quicken the body of the Christian and will be made light unto him. What a wonderful prospect in life that God will do with every Christian who falls asleep what he did to his son, raise him from the dead. We have the blood coursing through our physical bodies now, and when that blood stops, and the heart seems to cease to pump it, you're dead physically. If you're a Christian, you've fallen asleep to have that body raised on the resurrection morning. And when the Spirit of God enters into those ashes, your body is going to be changed into the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ, all by the Spirit. We're quickened, our souls are quickened by the Spirit when we accept the Sages. Our bodies will be quickened by the Spirit when Jesus comes. How wonderful all this is when you see the design that God has for these two marvelous organisms. The organism of the human body and the organism of the church. This head is the head of this organism, this physical organism. It can't function or coordinate without the head, and the church cannot function without its head. And who's the head of the church? Christ is the head. And just as your head receives signals from all parts of your body, and the head sends back answers to some of those questions, so it should be in a local church where Christ is the head, and questions come up from the members of that assembly to the head in heaven he sends back in instructions. If you, in your physical condition, were to drop a big chunk of iron on your toe, I'll show you how quick these signals fly. That toe would send up an ouch to the head. And what would the head do? The head would say to the hand, do something about that injured member. And the very moment that flash hits your brain about something happened to your soul, how quick your hands move to do something about that. That's why he said in this chapter, if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. And how quick those signals fly in and out of the brain, up from the body to the brain, from the brain down to the body. That's the way it is with your human body. That's the way it should be in the church, and that's what he's talking about here in these verses. The marvels and mysteries of the human body. You should read that passage over in Psalm one thirty nine, you would find three things. God has gathered together three of his marvelous attributes. He's gathered together his omniscience. He knows all things. He has gathered together his om- omnipresence. He's right there. He's spent back, he says this, his omni- omniscience, thou knowest, in verses one to six in Psalm one thirteen. Thou knowest, omniscience, he knows everything. Omnipresent, thou art there in verses seven and the twelve. Omnipotent, thou hast possessed, there's his power. Here's God's all knowledge. Here is God's omnipresence, he's there. Here's God, here is God's power, he's all powerful. God has congregated these great attributes of his together to compose. He did the human body. Let us plural make man in our image. And in connection with the church, the body, the Spirit of God, the Son of God, and God the Father, all their marvelous attributes are working to establish this thing known as the church, this body of Christ, this living organism. And then we're subject to the head. How smoothly things can operate. Then each member is subject to this head. When you think of your body, you've got a brain, a heart, and remember you've got ones, some ones, and then you've got some twos, and then you've got some tens. You've got one brain, you've got one heart, you've got one nose, you've got one tongue. Lord have mercy, I'll do it at two. But God says, I'm going to give you a tongue, and I'm going to put it behind an ivory wall, and outside that ivory wall, I'm going to put two lips. God knew the dangers of the tongue. And so man has got one brain, one heart, one nose, one foot. Of course, man has advanced a lot since David wrote that. It used to be you had one bladder, but now man get- help you to get along without that one. One time you lost that, you were through. One pancreas. Even now they can enable a man to survive without that. But you lose your head and your heart, and you're through. Everything in the human body depends on your head and your heart. The head, the seat of intelligence, the heart, the place of affection. And let your head be cut off and your body gone. Death, separation. Let your heart stop, and you're done. How marvelous the human body is. Christ is our head in heaven. And we read in the Bible that we're on his heart, so we're part of his heart too because we're part of his life, and the heart is the love, and the mind is the think. And so here is a human body, a beautiful type of the serpent. Then you have two eyes, you have two ears, you have two lungs, you have two legs, you have two arms and two kidneys, and if you want to mention two nostrils, you've got seven too, 7 pairs. Then you've got ten toes, and you've got ten fingers. Of course, they include the toes, big toes, and the thumbs in with the fingers. And these ten toes and ten fingers stand like sentinels, protecting the rest of the body. This is how God has designed the human body. Could you think of anything designed any better than the human body? You know, when you start to think of these things, how wonderful all these faculties are, how wonderful to have possession of them. For a man to have possession of all his members, all his faculties, a healthy brain sending out signals throughout this wonderful organism. It's a wonderful thing. You have in Romans twelve and one what God wants the Christian to do with this wonderful organism. He tells us to present our body a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God is our reasonable, our intelligent service. Your members, your faculties, they're healthy, what potential? You go to some of these nursing homes, you don't have to go there, and you'll see some once wonderful bodies. They're wonderful no more. Some of them have lost their mental faculties. Some of them are physically crippled. At one time, they could do great things. There was real potential in that young body. Endurance. They could do almost anything. Not any longer. It spent its time, and now it's mentally dis- disabled. How sad, but how wonderful when you're a Christian. You've got something better to look forward to. You've got the day ahead, then you'll be like the Lord Jesus. You'll have possession of all your faculties then. You'll be able to see him, you'll be able to worship him, you'll be able to hear him, you'll be able to serve him. How wonderful to anticipate that day when the world is crumbling as it is, in every aspect, to know once before that I'm going to have a body like unto his glorious body, without spots or wrinkle or any such thing. My, the money that's being spent in cosmetics today to get rid of those wrinkles. But in that day, we'll be without spots, without wrinkles. Then you're like him. No sign of age or deterioration. This is wonderful when you stop to think of this body and how it's a type of the church. You see, go to these spas these days and these body building clinics and so on, health clubs. My, they'll stand in line to get in there to do something to this body to make it last a little longer, to look a little better for a little while. I wonder if we're doing as much with the spiritual body. This body of mine, and if you're a Christian, that body of yours belongs to the Lord, and he speaks of your body as the temple of the Holy Spirit. Are you concerned about the temple of the Holy Spirit? Are you trying to lengthen out your life and be able to maintain your faculties in order to live for the Lord and let the Lord use your body? Or would it all be left in a little pile of dust and ashes and a lost soul throughout eternity? You know, the church in Corinth was a hospital, and all those Christians were patients, then they should have been the staff. There were so many things wrong in Corinth. It was a sick church. They were crippled in any way, in many ways. And yet, you know, Paul says they came behind in no gifts. They had all the gifts, and there are twenty of them in the New Testament. We'll be speaking them on on Sundays to come. They had all these gifts, but they were so disorganized. They were so sick, they couldn't function as one. The idea of the body was out. They had gifts, but they were not coordinated, and it was a veritable toxic. When you think of all these members, how these things that we've been mentioning can function, you have unity in diversity and diversity in unity. Here's diversity. I've got one body, but how diverse my body is. I've got hands and feet and various faculties, and when they're all coordinating, then you've got unity, you've got harmony when they're not coordinating, you've got confusion. That's what they had in Corinth. Warning them, I'm not the author of confusion. Sad situation. You know, it's very interesting when you notice these five members in verses fourteen to seventeen. I want you to know, you have the feet, the mind, the eyes, the ears, the nose. And all these members are public. You don't go around with a mask on your face. All these members are public. Your feet, you can see your hands, your eyes, your ears, your nose. These members are public, and in the body of Christ, these are very public. Your walk, your feet, your hands, what you do, your eyes, what you see and look like, and your ears, what you hear, and your nose, your nostrils. These things are mentioned right here together in these verses. That's remarkable, isn't it? And all can see what you do. People are watching, not so much listen to what you believe, but what you do. That's what they're looking for, because these gifts are public. Now I want you to notice some remarkable things. You have these three linked together. The eyes, the nose, and the ears. That's quite interesting. Three of these three things are in that one verse, the eyes, the ears, and the nose. I think it's in verse seventeen: If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were the hearing, where were the smelling. So you've got the eye, the ear, and the nose mixed in that verse. You know, today people say, well, because I'm not like that brother and don't have his gift and ability, I'm no use to serve. I don't have what he has. I don't have what she has. Why would? And so here's an argument going on between the nose and the ears and the eyes, because I'm a nose. And I don't want a big one, because sometimes people can put folks' noses in where they have no business. And there should be a little argument about which is the best member. Well, you can use an illustration of glasses, because the glasses you wear more or less unite these together. And an argument going on between these three members. The ear says, well, I'm the big shot around here. Everything hangs on me. The nose said, what are you talking about? Everything rests on me. The eye said, what are you talking about? Both of you are there for me so I can see. Is that right? And the nose gets into this argument. He says this, you eyes, you shut up. I'm the big shot around this place. I said, all right, I'll shut up and I won't see anything. And says the nose, well, let the man who owns those glasses wear them now. And he did. And the eyes couldn't see where he was going, and so the man fell and broke his nose. That's what happens when each member is not in his proper place. Trying to outdo the other part. I'm not what he is. I'm not what she is. We're all in the same body. And we serve in our place. That's what God wants us to do. Be in our proper place and not try to envy others or be jealous of others. Be what you are. If all were the eyes, you'd be something fit for a museum. I'd hate to see a body that was all eyes. I'd hate to see a body that's all ears, listening for all the garbage that you get. I'd hate to be a body that was all a tongue, a mouth. Each one has a place. And it says the head doesn't say to the feet, and I don't have any of you. You're inconsequential as far as I'm concerned. I don't have any of you. The head's saying that to the feet. Reminds me of what happened one time, and I heard a missionary tell this. He said, in where he was laboring for the Lord, there were a lot of wild animals, and whenever you went out, you had to take a gun. And he said, I went out on a mission one time, and I had my gun. He said, I had one slug in the gun, and I thought it was a pretty good shot. And he said, a lion appeared on my path. And he said, I had my gun ready. And he said, I knew that if I missed, what was going to happen? So he said, I took good aim. And he said, I missed. Now he says, my didn't head didn't say to my feet, I have no need of brother or sister so and so. I can make it on my own. The time will come when you will have need of that brother or sister. This is the truth of the body of Christ. He's taken the human body and he's likened it unto the church, all being controlled from the head. You know, the brain is consistently receiving signals and sending out the answers we mentioned a while ago. And I think the brain, more or less, its reactions, reflexes, and what reflexes they are. I believe all these things, such as our emotions, our fears, our reactions, our hate, our love, and all these things, they begin in the brain. We think things. We think so and so's got something against us. We think we're being wrong. We think we're being passed by, or spoken against, and we begin to hate when there was no need of it at all. It all begins up here. But if we had the mind of Christ, for he's the head of the church, there wouldn't be any of those things. And a lot of our emotions, our resentment, our reactions, our reflexes, are false signals coming from our own mind and not the mind of Christ. These are some remarkable things that God has given us in his word concerning the church, which is his body. One time, a boy talking about people saying I can't do anything. This boy, when he left high school, he was still in high school, he was going to spend his summer months making some money. He was an ambitious young fellow. And so the only job he could get was the water boy for the railroad gang. Of course, this is going back a few years. And you know, when he got that job, the only one he could get, he made up his mind, I'm going to be the best water boy this gang's ever had. And he saw too that he had cold water, and he was right joining on the spot, and those men got the water. Well, you know, the gang boss noticed this young fella, and he got him a promotion. That young man ended up the president of one of the greatest railroads in the United States, just because he had that principle, if I'm a water boy, I'm going to be the best. This is the principle of boss, no matter how insignificant my job may be, let me do it well. That's what the Lord said about Mary. She hath done what she could. And there are three things about Mary. She did what she could. She didn't try doing something she couldn't do. And she had done it well, he said. And she's done it now. And I don't know any better way. If you're a Christian, you have some talent. Do what you can with that talent. Do it now, and do it well. For that's all the la- Lord can ask of anyone. And he gives you the strength. It was a well-to-do family, and they had a nice home, so they hired someone to come, maid, to come and clean the house, do other little jobs. And the lady of the house kind of irked on certain occasions, would complain to the husband. She said, she's about the slowest maid I ever had around. And evidently the maid was aware of the fact that she was being watched, uh, not too satisfactorily. One day she said to the person at the lady's house, I know I don't work fast, but you sure enough can see where I've been. In other words, she did it well. She could, there was a mark there where she had been handed. And that's a big point. That's the thing God wants. Whatever you're doing, do it well. And that lady did her job. She did it well. She left her mark. And that's the Lord wants us to do. Now, God may not have called you to preach, but there are a lot of things you'll see in these gifts you see reading the Bible about help. Everybody can be a help. There's always a niche that you can fill in the things of God. Some folks search their responsibility to serve the Lord just because they don't have a big gift. Something that's going to be tempting, something that's going to be noticeable, that will bring them a lot of honor. But God has given us our gifts. Whatever it is, use it. And when every gift is being used, then the body is going to function. This organism is going to do great things, just like a wonderful machine. We have more to say about that tonight. One man, his wife had two boys, and uh, when the husband came home one night, the wife said to him, you know, uh, she said, I'm afraid Junior is lazy because she said he's always after Freddie and giving him orders about doing nothing and doing. What does she do? Father, of course, he was heavily favorable to Junior. The mother criticized him for being lazy, giving orders to his brother and telling him what to do. The father raised up his head. That's not laziness, he says, that's executive ability. I guess he said that because the young boy with a chip off the old block. Executive ability, giving orders, let somebody else do it. My, we got a lot of gifted folk that way. Let someone else do it, executive ability. God has given you something to do, and he wants you to do it. My question to you this morning, are you in the body? Not are you a member of a local church, but are you in the body of Christ? You're either in the body or you're out of the body. That's what the Bible teaches. Before you can do anything for the Lord, you've got to do something above, accept them or reject them. No man can serve two masters. If you're not a Christian, you're serving the devil, and that's all that can be said. There are only two masters in the earth. No man can serve both at the same time. The Lord said, if you're going to serve the devil, you go ahead. If you're going to serve me, give me all you've got. That's the way the Lord says. No man can serve you not. He that is not with me, says the Lord Jesus, is against me. He that's not with me is against me. No middle road here. The Lord is making that plain. You're either in Christ or you're in your sin. You are not within. You're not within, well, just simply means you're without. You're either in Christ or you're out of Christ. And there's no middle road, there's no walking the fence in this. And better never had to, never been born than to be born and die without Christ. That's what the Lord Jesus said. Better had it been for that man if he had never been born. To think that you were born into this world, an object of God's creation, a specimen of his power and healing. He gave you that body that functioned in younger years like a well-oiled machine. But now it's breaking down in parts. And it's about run its course. And are you going into eternity to meet that God, having given you that body for a lifetime, and not one thing did you accomplish? Not one thing did you do to glorify God? You kept Christ out of your life. You lived for me. Me and no one else. That's exactly what he's talking about. I hope this morning you'll see your condition out of Christ without a savior. I can't think of anything more melancholy to go through this world without having known Christ and possessing a body that he by nature gave, only to waste its energies and waste its talents and end up just a handful of dust. For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return about two dollars worth of furniture in minutes. That's it. Have a lost soul. If you're an intelligent person or a businessman, you ought to be able to figure out that question. You can't do anything else but lose without knowing Jesus Christ and realizing this body belongs to him. And I don't know anything happier than to look back after a life lived for the Lord when you're on your dying deathbed and say, Lord, I gave it all I had. I used my body for you. Then you can close your eyes and see the absence from the body present with the Lord. Oh, what are we doing with these, our bodies, this wonderful organism? I hope you'll realize this and face up to it, and face up now. Accept Christ as your savior if you're away from the Lord, get back to him, and let the rest of your life be used and bring it in the glory out of that organism that he loaned you for life's sleep span. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we come into thy presence. We ask thy blessing on thy good. We thank thee for it. Thou the wonderful architect and designer of the human body. How great thou art, what thou canst do with a human instrument. All the eternity is there. But oh, to think of thinking, how he's preventing millions from even from coming to know thee. And to waste their time and talent, wasting this life and losing the next. Bless thy word to the salvation of souls, we ask, in Christ our Savior's name.