-Transcript-
00:39 Amen. Thank you for joining me. Today we are talking about the body of Christ.
00:45 What is the body of Christ and why is it so important? You know a body, what does it do? It works together in harmony, productivity, all working in alignment with what? With your brain, right? You want to pick up a pen off of the table. Your brain is sending a signal to your muscles and your muscles to your arm and all this to your joints and to your fingers and you’re picking that pen up and you’re putting it back down and it’s a remarkable thing to do. You know if it wasn’t so difficult for you to pick up a pen and we don’t even think about this, right? We just do it, which is another miracle of God.
01:27 Amen. If it wasn’t so difficult then all of this automation, all of these robots and all these things would be able to have that dexterity. Yet it’s incredibly hard.
01:38 Yes, there are robot claws. My son loves robot claws. There’s claws, there’s manufacturing automations where these machines are able to move parts and pack bags and so on and so forth.
01:53 But when you look at the fine dexterity movement, it’s still not able to even be programmed by the smartest people here in this world and over many years. And yet we can just do it like that because the body is working in harmony and we’re doing it. Why? We’re doing it to be productive.
02:11 We’re doing it to benefit our body. Amen. Exercise is wonderful.
02:18 Something I keep telling myself I’ll do tomorrow. Every day I’m like, man I need to work out and then I’m looking outside I’m looking around I’m in my easy chair that my mother-in-law gave me. Thanks mother-in-law.
02:29 And now I don’t want to go outside today or I don’t want to go on the machine. It’s good for us. Why is exercise so good for us? Because it helps us get our blood pumping.
02:39 It helps oxygen go throughout our body. It does all of these wonderful things. And exercise is possible by the whole body working in harmony, right? When you think about running, the arms moving a certain way.
02:52 And I’ve understood, read and understood over the years that there’s a way to move your arms when you run. And your legs moving and your spine upright and your lungs taking in air. All of these things working in harmony for this positive result.
03:12 Amen. And you know exercise is one. Of course you know I love talking about food, eating and cooking and eating is another one.
03:18 Using all of these gifts that God gave us to do that. And if you look at a really good cook or a really good chef, they really have great ability to do things with their hands and with their feet and move around and with their eyes. All working together making calculations.
03:36 You know it’s almost like a scientist. Amen. A good chef is almost like a scientist and they’re making all these calculations to create this wonderful product.
03:44 All of this is done by the body. And the body is this remarkable thing that God gave us, right? And in church we hear about church body, body of Christ. Every so often we take part in the Holy Communion where the bread and juice they symbolize his body, Christ’s body.
04:02 Amen. And yet we don’t understand oftentimes much about the church body. It’s said so often you kind of just hear it and move on.
04:13 But we’ve been given a body to understand how all these parts function together, dictated by our head, by our brain. We see this idea in our daily lives hundreds and hundreds of times over and again we probably never even notice it. And yet we see the church body mentioned in Scripture many times and sometimes we don’t notice that.
04:31 Not thinking about the deeper meaning. And so today we’re just going to talk about what the body of Christ is and why it’s so important. Because it’s incredibly important.
04:41 It’s in a way difficult to fit all of this in one message. So this isn’t the only part of dealing with Christ’s body, understanding the body of Christ and understanding what God’s put before us here. It’s not the only part but I hope it it helps and is a blessing and is a good summary of what the church body is.
05:00 And most importantly I hope it fires you up to get in the Word and read more about it and to pray to God and thank him for the church body. Because the church body is absolutely beautiful. The concept is incredible.
05:10 It’s really incredible. You know we see Christ crucified in bodily form and resurrected unto new life. We we see that picture painted in the Bible so clearly.
05:21 You see it everywhere. You see it in pictures. You see it in illustrations.
05:28 And you see it jewelry and all of these things. This image right? And that is more than an image. Amen.
05:33 In fact that really happened. And when that really happened 2,000 some years ago, when we’re saved we enter into that death. Our earthly spiritless body dies and our new spirit-filled body is raised again with Christ.
05:52 And we were told this is our fate when we accept Christ as Savior. That we become a new creature in Christ. Now we are here on this earth for a season but as I understand God’s Word we are we have a place in heaven when we’re saved.
06:04 Amen. When we accept Christ as Savior. When we believe on Jesus Christ for what he did.
06:09 Now hear me clearly. If you don’t know what he did you can’t believe on him correctly. Amen.
06:16 You have to understand what he did. And that starts with understanding our own sin debt. Our own need for a Savior.
06:21 We realize that we’re sinners in need of a Savior. We realize that what Christ did is he went to the cross with a substitutionary death. The idea is Christ said I’ll die for all these sinners for all time because I have no sin and so I’ll be the replacement.
06:33 I will make it okay with God. I’ll reconcile the sinner to God through my death and resurrection. All we have to do is believe.
06:42 And when we see that and we understand that and we accept Christ as Savior, our names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. We now have a place in heaven. Oh how I get fired up to say that Clark Covington has a place in heaven.
06:49 Amen. All those listening today, if you’ve been saved, your name is in the Lamb’s Book of Life. It’ll never be blotted out.
07:02 It’ll never be erased. It is a wonderful thing to understand that your place is already in heaven. And we understand that how? Through the body.
07:07 We understand that through what happened with Christ obediently, willingly giving his body to be broken for us. Amen. And I always like to give a caveat.
07:21 None of his bones were broken. That was also in prophecy. But he obviously suffered the most brutal death of all mankind on the cross and was dead three days in the grave.
07:30 Amen. The body, three days in the grave. And then he was risen again, miraculously by God, risen again, resurrected to new life.
07:38 And walked the earth 40 days and 40 nights. And in that time, I’ve heard great Bible teachers like Les Feldick explain, and I believe this lines up with Scripture, that in that time you can see a picture of the resurrected body that we’ll have when we are brought up in the rapture or when we’re raised again. At the time, if we don’t make it to the rapture, Lord takes us home early.
08:02 That resurrected body, oftentimes that’s used as an example of Christ after he was resurrected, where he could kind of like, they didn’t see him go through the door, but he was there. And so you’re saying he can kind of just move through time or move through space in a very unique way. But then He ate with them.
08:18 Amen. He ate with them. They’re on the beach there.
08:22 He ate with them with fish and so forth. And he walked with them and talked with them, and they didn’t even know he wasn’t a human necessarily as we would know it. And so that gives us a picture of the resurrected body we’ll have once we’re raptured out of here.
08:36 But today we’re talking about the body, the church body, the body of Christ, why it’s so important, the church body. And our text verse here is Ephesians 4:16, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, making increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. So what does this mean? Who are the body of Christ? That is the church, those that are truly saved.
09:06 And again, how do you know you’re truly saved? I walked through it a little bit earlier in this message that you realize you have a sin debt. You realize that you cannot pay that sin debt. You realize you’re a sinner and you need a savior, Amen, that you are not right with God, that you fall short.
09:22 And you say, well, how would I know? Oh, God gives many laws and rules in his Bible, Amen, in his holy word that you can look through. Have I ever lied? Have I ever cheated? Have I ever looked at someone with lust? Have I ever coveted or desired something I don’t have? Have I ever made an idol? You know, on and on and on and on. And there’s a lot of them in there, gossip is in there.
09:41 You ever gossip? Okay, you committed a sin? You know, all of these things, Amen. There’s so much in there that is a sin. And so we have to be honest with ourselves.
09:51 And if we’re honest with ourselves and preachers know this, if you’ve been preaching the word, you know this, the more you get in the word, the more you realize how much of a sinner you are, Amen. So we just need to kind of hit the beginning of it to understand, okay, I have a sin nature, I need to be saved. And then trust me, later on, you realize, wow, that sin nature is profound, Amen.
10:11 And you know what Christ did for us? He died for our sins. So we realize our need for a Savior, we realize that Christ died for our sins, was resurrected, walked the earth 40 days and 40 nights, ascended up to heaven, and is at the right hand of the Father today. We believe on that.
10:24 We believe on what Christ did for us. We’re saved. That is the body of Christ, the church.
10:30 Oftentimes when you say church, you’ll think of a building. We’re living in these last days where the church building is quickly seeming to fall apart for a lot of churches. I mean, you can’t go because of COVID restriction or people no longer want to go to church or there are people that will one time have been in church that are now out and all these things.
10:50 So how do you know who’s the church? How do you know who’s the body in these crazy times? And again, you could have an older saint of God that is rightfully or smartly trying to protect their health and saying, okay, there’s something going on. I need to stay at home so I don’t get sick. And only God knows, you know, maybe God put it on their heart to stay home.
11:11 Does that mean they’re not saved? No, it doesn’t mean they’re not saved. Or how about in, you know, the church is scattered in a place where China could be one, where they’re restricting church services. I could go on and on.
11:23 The point is the church or those that are truly saved, that’s the church, the body of Christ, those that are truly saved, okay? So if you have Christ living within you, Amen, if you have the Holy Spirit living within you because you accepted Jesus as Savior, you are part of the body of Christ, amen? And that is why oftentimes you might hear preachers say, oh, the church, you are the church or the church is within you or, you know, whatever that saying would be. That’s where that comes from, the idea that all that are saved, they are the church. And yet each individual, right, is the church or part of the body of Christ, but collectively we become one body in Christ, right? So God works every part together for the overall good of the body.
12:08 If you saw me, you would say he has one body, a large one, but one body, okay? And then if I said, well, I’ve got my hand over here and my foot over here, you’d say, yeah, but that’s still part of that one body. You can’t say, well, the foot is part of another body. No, it’s the same body, Amen And that’s the idea is we have all these different parts to the body of Christ, all these different people, Amen And even though the Bible teaches very clearly that a remnant is saved, that a remnant is God’s people.
12:37 You look at a map, you look at Israel, it’s tiny compared to all these other countries. And that’s a picture of how God’s people, it’s like the remnant, the little bit compared the minority, as some would say. And as we wind down part one of this series on the body of Christ, reflect on, are you saved today? Make sure that you’ve worked your salvation out with fear and trembling as the Bible says.
12:58 Trust Jesus as Lord and Savior, understand your need and trust what he has done for you already on the cross at Calvary. You know, it’s a wonderful thing to be part of the body of Christ. And there will be no unbelievers in heaven.
13:12 There’ll be nobody that does not believe on who Jesus is and what he has done and their need for him and that has not accepted him as Savior that will be in heaven. I’d love to see you in heaven one day, my friend. I know I’m going because I believed on Jesus Christ and I’ve been saved.
13:28 And I compel you today to trust him as Savior. And if you have, then to tell others about him. That’s what we’re called to do here so that we can increase that body and strengthen that body through love and through edification, through learning and through teaching and through understanding His word.
13:46 God is so good today. He’s been so good to me. He’s been so good to you.
13:50 And let’s do our very bare minimum service by believing on Him and telling others about Him before it’s eternally too late. You’ll be blessed for doing that. I thank you so much for listening.
14:01 And we’ll talk again about the body of Christ in part two very soon. Thank you so much. Take care.
14:07 God bless and Amen.