Lord’s People

Transcript:

Good morning & Greetings in Jesus’ name. Welcome to this amazing new day. I pray that today we will grow in our identity. We will grow in our confidence. We will grow in the assurance that we are loved.

No matter where we are from, no matter how old we are, no matter what our gender is, no matter what culture or race we have been part of, no matter what denomination or Christian network you are associated with, you are still loved by Jesus. What sets us apart as a unique, favored, loved child of God is that God made me. God made you in his image. God made us with precision, with plan, with design, with a purpose in mind. This happened all the way before creation, even before the foundation of the Earth was laid. He chose us, he set his eyes upon us. Let me take you to 1 Corinthians 11:11, Paul is breaking down a big dividing wall in the Church at Corinth when he says, “But among the Lord’s people, women are not independent of men and men are not independent of women.” He’s saying that the dividing wall of gender bias, this dividing wall of showing the other person is superior or the other person is more important. That will not work in the Church. We are not independent of each other. We are interdependent. We are dependent on each other to submit to the Lord, to receive help, to grow in grace, to grow in understanding, to grow in revelation. But if you read the whole chapter, we may kind of get an idea that Paul is saying that men are more important or that men are better or that men have more freedom, whereas women don’t. That’s the picture that a lot of people go back with when they read 1 Corinthians 11, and several other portions of the New Testament where Paul wrote about how women cannot do certain things or preach certain things or pray in certain places. And when we read them out of context, we can have a completely wrong understanding. We may think that men are the ones that get to dominate in spiritual circles. Men are the ones who get to have the final say. Everybody has to submit to a man and that a woman is unqualified to exercise her Godly authority. Whereas that’s not what Paul is trying to explain here, if you understand and read it clearly, he’s talking about the order in marriage. The order in marriage is that a woman needs to submit to the husband, and the husband is under the leadership of Christ. He’s not talking about the Church. In the Church it doesn’t work in terms of gender. In the Church, authority and submission doesn’t work based on caste or all the culture or community that you belong to in the Church. You submit to the leaders, to the elders, to the responsible people that God has appointed as shepherds in the Church.

And that is why he’s talking about this in verse eleven. He’s saying, but among the Lord’s people, among believers, among the gathering of the Saints, among the Church members, that cannot be the same. He’s saying, in the context of marriage, the woman needs to submit to the man and the man needs to submit to God because that is the order of creation. But he says, but when we bring it to the Church, when we bring it to the Lord’s people, that’s not possible because women are not independent of men and men are not independent of women. That is why at another point he would say, in Christ, there is no male nor female, there is no race, there is no looks, no wealth, nothing holds. The fact that you and I, we are uniquely loved by God, uniquely cared for by God, uniquely protected and provided for by God, that is what sets us apart. It is not our gender, it is not our culture. It is not our community. So this morning, whatever it is that divides you or makes you want to push yourself away from your community, from your Church, from the people that God has blessed you with, I want you to remember this. It cannot be so among the Lord people. It cannot be so In the Church of Jesus Christ, every person in the Church, whether they are emotionally stable or not, whether they are financially well to do or not, whether they are mentally stable or mentally challenged, whatever background, even if they are physically unable to do certain things that others can do, whatever their challenges or strength may be, they are loved. They are cared for by Jesus. And in the Gospels, Jesus said something very serious. It was a warning.

In fact, he said, if any of you would cause the least of these, the least of my brother and the least, the least important one, the least significant one among them, to sin or to be offended or to hurt them, then he says, it would be better that a milestone was tied to your neck and you’re thrown into the sea. Jesus is saying, There is no hope for you, bro. If that is going to be your lifestyle, that you will hurt the least of these, the least of the brethren, then it is a dangerous way forward. My prayer is that as a community, as a Church, we will understand this truth. We will value one another.

We will love and serve one another in spite of knowing that God is created as different, in spite of knowing that the woman or the sister or the girl or the brother or the man, each of them, have their own identity and their own strengths and unique callings that God has given them. We serve each other. We love each other. Knowing that, completely acknowledging that because among the Lord’s people, we are not independent, we cannot have an attitude that says – I don’t need you. Let’s pray, Father, We thank you for this revelation. Give us the Grace to submit and to say yes to oneness among the Lord’s people. To be one with the rest of the body. We give all the praise.
In Jesus name. We pray. Amen.