Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 28, 2019 | Special Guest Warwick Cooper - Transforming The Body

Transcript

April 28, 2019 | Special Guest Warwick Cooper - Transforming The Body · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning.
0:01
SPEAKER_00: My name is Warri Cooper, and uh I come all the way from Canada just to be with you.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: I don't know whether you realize it, but we have a built a wall up there.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh you didn't hear?
0:12
SPEAKER_00: But it's made out of ice, and uh this week we it melted, so that's why the colds come down.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: See, I got a theory about everything.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: But I was here seven years ago.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: I don't know whether you realize there's a pattern here.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: I I preach here at Tobeka Babel Church every seven years.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: How many were with were here seven years ago?
0:33
SPEAKER_00: Wow, okay.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: Shall we review the Old Testament walkthrough then?
0:37
SPEAKER_00: Maybe later, okay.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: But it is good to be here and to fellowship with you.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Um a middle-aged woman had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital, and while in the operating table, she had a near-death experience.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: Seeing God, she asked him, Is my time up?
0:59
SPEAKER_00: And God said, No, you have 43 years, two months, and eight days to live.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, upon recovery, the woman decided to stay in the hospital and have a facelift, liposuction, and a tummy tuck.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: She had someone change her hair color.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: She she since she had so much more time to live, she figured she might as well make the most of it.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: After her last operation, she was released from the hospital.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: And while crossing the street on her way home, she was killed by an ambulance.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Arriving in front of God, she demanded, I thought you said I had another 40 plus years to live.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: Why didn't you pull me from out of the path of that ambulance?
1:47
SPEAKER_00: And God replied, I didn't recognize you.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: Does that hit home?
1:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm not so happy with the body I've got.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna improve it.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: A little tuck here, a little tuck there, whatever.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: I use that to illustrate what I like to talk about this morning.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: And we don't talk about this too much because it's kind of, you know, I don't know, not safe.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about our bodies.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that in the New Testament the mind is referred to 121 times, the soul 129 times, but the body 253 times more than the mind and the soul.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: I want us to seriously think about how we use our bodies.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: The title of the sermon is The Transformation of My Body.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: God is into it.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: God wants my body.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: He gave me it years ago, and I still have it, and I'm still going to have it.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: Um you not know, 1 Corinthians 6.19, that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: You are not your own, you were bought at a price, therefore honor God with your body.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Growing up has a great deal to do with taking control over my body, and very quickly becomes a matter of influencing other bodies, like my parents.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: Our bodies are essentially a part of who we are.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: And no redemption that omits the body is full redemption.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: John says, those who deny that Christ has come in the flesh cannot be Christian.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: God became, took upon Himself a human body, started as a baby, just like all of us.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: So the physicality of the Christian faith, we often think of it as a lot of ideas, and of course it is.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: There's a philosophy, there's a lot of stuff that fills our minds, but I'm talking about our body, which is probably the most obvious thing about us this morning.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what you're thinking.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: I'm not even going to try to guess.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, hello, are you are you still here?
4:32
SPEAKER_00: I know I've been in church and my body is there, but my mind is like on the other side of the world.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: But that's the first obvious thing about us our body.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: We make judgments by how we how we look, how we take care of our body.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: The body is not just a physical thing.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: As it matures, it increasingly takes on the quality of its of its inner life.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: I have five children and 14 grandchildren, and God's grandchildren are God's way of thanking you for not killing your children.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't know whether you realize that.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: No, I didn't say that.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: Love my children, love my grandchildren.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: My youngest daughter has seven children.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: She's wanting to have a dozen, and the way she's going, she'll do it, probably.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: But I we were at her home the other day, and she was she was giving out these little, they were called crazy breads to to her kids.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: And on one, she mistakenly put two, and the six-year-old and the four-year-old put one, and as soon as she put it on the four-year-old, the four-year-old, his whole body became rigid.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: His his his his face turned into anger, and she started crying.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: What's the matter, honey?
5:51
SPEAKER_00: She's got two.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: It's okay, honey.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: Look at this.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: And she took the two over.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's okay now.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Everything's fine.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: There's no interiority, there's no internal thinking for a four-year-old.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed that?
6:06
SPEAKER_00: You know exactly what they're thinking.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Because it comes out on their face and their body and everything.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: Unlike us who are older, you could say the craziest things in front of us, and there's not nothing happens on our face.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh, inside a lot.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: But we've discovered we've got this, we've got this fence around us.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: You can't get in.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm not letting you in.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: Last time I let somebody in, it just didn't work.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: And so we have this internalizing of our faith to the point that that we don't even know how to use our body anymore.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: It's too risky.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: I want us to look afresh at our body this morning and ask, are we taking good care of it?
7:04
SPEAKER_00: Are we using it like God intended us to use it?
7:10
SPEAKER_00: It is the most obvious thing about us.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but obvious is good.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: I've been a marriage counselor for 40 years, and I just loved talking to married couples who are struggling with their marriage and stating the obvious.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: They called me Dr.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: Obvious.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's pretty good.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, every every happy marriage is identical.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: There's understanding, there's love, there's appreciation, there's communication.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: Every unhappy marriage has a couple of things that they need to deal with.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: And if you can't if you can't deal with those, it's not, you know, usually the woman says, oh, it's not more than a couple of things.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: My husband says a thousand things.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: No, no, probably not.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: Just a couple of things.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: And if you can't deal with them, you go to somebody, not necessarily a professional counselor, you don't have to, but go to someone who has some insight in the obvious.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: Someone who has can kind of look at you and say, you know, maybe you could be spending a little less time at work.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no, that's not a question.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: Oh, oh, we've kind of touched a nerve here, right?
8:20
SPEAKER_00: It's the obvious things that we escape right by.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: Our bodies are obvious.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: Really obvious.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, we live in a society that focuses on the body.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: Really?
8:36
SPEAKER_00: Really?
8:36
SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe, maybe not here in the States.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: In Canada, we do.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: Um we worship youth and and and beauty.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: And and body hatred is the opposite side of that coin.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: It shows itself in fear and shame and disgust and and even anger.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: We call people fat.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: By the way, the new word for fat is fluffy.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: I like that.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm not fat, I'm fluffy.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: Or people, as we get older, we kind of feel ashamed because we're aging and we can't do the things we once could do, and we feel, for some reason, ashamed that we're getting older, and we don't want to deal with death and and dying because that's just too uncomfortable.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: But that's part of life.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Part of life.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: And we live in a life culture that strangely is dying all around us.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: But we want to make it look like it's living.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: So a society focused on the body, the failure and death of the body is the ultimate insult.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: This is a crucial insight for understanding the modern Western life and culture.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: So, what do we do?
10:01
SPEAKER_00: What does the church have to say about our body?
10:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, I listen, I got I got some good news.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: The church has a lot to say about your body.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Jesus had a lot to say about your body.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: Um I would like to share four steps that my good friend Dallas Willard uh wrote about.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: I I I call him a good friend, but I've never met him.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: But I've read his books, so he's my good friend, okay?
10:27
SPEAKER_00: And he gives us four points, and I want to just share those with you because I think I think there's some tremendous insight from Scripture.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: And the first thing he suggests that we not ought to do, because he dealt with this in counseling, you gotta eventually deal with this.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Number one, we must actually release our bodies to God.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: Now, every church does this, and they've been doing this for like ever since the church began.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's been part of the of the Christian gospel.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: When Christ comes into your life, before Christ came into your life, you were living for yourself.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: You were enjoying life as good as you could.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: You were trying to make sense of life as as good as you could.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: But then there comes a time in your life when when God kind of interrupts your plans, and you see for the first time that you stand guilty before God.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh the word sin is a religious word.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: It explains, like no other faith or religion has ever explained, why we are in the condition we are, because we're fallen from our place of innocence.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: And sin has corrupted us.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: But there comes a point in your life, if if you, in fact, it has come in your life, where you give your life to God and you say, Thank you, Lord, for dying on the cross for me.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: Come into my life and and take over my life.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: May my agenda be your agenda, may your agenda be my agenda.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: I want to live for you.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: And what does the church do?
12:05
SPEAKER_00: Almost the very first thing the church does is they say, now, if you really want to live for God, uh you need you need to share this good news with everybody.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: And one of the best ways of doing it is this next Sunday, we're going to have a baptism.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: And anyone who hasn't done this, you need to do it.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: And we that the church takes your body and and they they they they they try to drown you in a in a in a thing of water, right?
12:33
SPEAKER_00: Right?
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Most churches do.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: But but I've never been there where they've actually drowned people.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: But the but the metaphor is you're dead.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: You're they they put you under the water.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: And then within seconds, usually, not more than three minutes, uh then they raise you up again.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: And the the metaphor is uh I died to myself, my body is now not my own.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: When I come up of the water, I I'm I'm now living for God.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: Take my body and and use it for your glory.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm living now, not for my agenda, but for your agenda.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: So every part of my body that has been buried with Christ in baptism now rises again.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: Romans 12, 1, I offer your body as living sacrifices, which is your reasonable service.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: So what we're saying here is everyone gathered here this morning who have been baptized, they've said at one point in their life, I gave my body in death, and now I'm living not for myself, but for him.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: That's why when we sing these worship choruses, it there's something that resounds in our heart.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: This is like, wow, forever grateful for what God has done.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: For what God has done.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Stop using my body for my own good.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: I am not sinless, but I sin less because I've been walking with Jesus for many years.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: I sin less.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: He had a pastor's heart, and he he kind of gave a test to his church about how you how you discern if you're if you really have presented your body to Christ.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: And and his test is how you use perhaps the smallest member of your body, and that's your tongue.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: He says the real test to determine if you're if you've really given your body to Christ is how you use your tongue.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: He says, the tongue is also a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: He says the tongue is probably the last bodily part to submit to God.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: No one can tame it.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: But from it comes a myriad of evils.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: It is only as we habitually subject the tongue to the grace of God as instruments reserved for him to do his will, that grace comes to inhabit and govern it.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, the effects spread throughout the body.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: He says, if anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: The tongue of the righteous is a choice silver.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: Other members of the body, though not as central to life as the tongue, have their own tendencies and associated feelings to act wrongly.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: How do we use our tongue, our speech?
16:38
SPEAKER_00: How have we used it this past week?
16:42
SPEAKER_00: My body doesn't belong to me.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: I can't say what I want to say.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: If I'm filled with his spirit, I say what he wants me to say.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: There's sometimes a big difference in that.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: So we have to go to the second point, not only to release our bodies to God, I remember doing that.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Lord, this is my this is not mine.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: Use me as an instrument of your peace.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: But the second point that Dallas points out is stop idolizing your body.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: We we live in a in a culture that idolizes the body.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Christ wants us to take our hands off of the controls of our life.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: You care for your body as an instrument of God as it serves others and cares for others.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: You don't worry about what will happen to it.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: Some people I know are so worried about getting sick or aging.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: Is there some way we could reduce the aging process?
17:52
SPEAKER_00: Take good care of your body within the framework of values clearly laid out by God.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: But don't live in fear of your body.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: What am I doing to you?
18:03
SPEAKER_00: We're captivated by the body.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: We exercise for no other reason just to make us look really good.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was in my late 20s, living in India and traveling one day.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: I had a day off and I was uh walking through the streets of Goa.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: Goa's on the west coast of India, and uh I saw this big advertisement all over the city.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: It was uh advertising a Mr.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: Goa contest, you know, like a muscle building contest.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: I thought, wow, I've never seen a muscular Indian.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: This is, I should go, I have a time off.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: And so I went to the stadium where they had it, and they taught me into taking part.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: Stop laughing, okay.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: The guy said, Oh, you definitely will win.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: This is very good.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: You come, you win.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: Because it was an international goal, then they were all Indians, so I made it international.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: And they were all really skinny guys, and they wore these huge khaki army shorts that looked like skirts.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: It was just really amazing.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: The guy that won, not me, I I know, I know you're surprised.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh the tallest guy won.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I thought, you know, the world is like that.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: We're competing to be number one, best body, best this, best that.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're short, if you don't have the right dimensions, you you feel like you'll never match up.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: We idolize the body.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: Even though we say, yeah, I know everyone's different, everyone's different, but they're not like me.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: And so our bodies, when they get older, we we start feeling shame, which is really crazy.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, may you maybe here you're 75, 85, you have a lot of mileage in your speedometer.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: So what?
19:55
SPEAKER_00: God still wants to use you as you are, as you get older.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: Use your body to the end.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that um even though you get older, uh uh and some things don't work as well as they used to work, right?
20:11
SPEAKER_00: You can't do the 26-mile hike anymore or run.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: But did you know that the taste buds are renewed every 10 days?
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that?
20:19
SPEAKER_00: That's that's good news, folks.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: That's that's God did that deliberately for older people.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: So if you if you want to encourage an older person, make them, you know, an old-fashioned uh apple apple pie or something like that.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: And and they'll be uh tasting it with the taste buds of a 10-year-old.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: It would be wonderful.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, wonderful.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's a little aside here, okay?
20:39
SPEAKER_00: But but don't God knows everything about our bodies.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: He knows the aging process.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: And there's no time that we should say, well, that I I can no longer use anything, any of the members of my body for him.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, sometimes as we get older, other things start working.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: Our speech becomes more gracious.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: We become more loving in our in our terms of endearment, in our affirmation.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: People are dying for affirmation in our country.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: And we're just a nice group of people, right?
21:15
SPEAKER_00: Our prime minister is just he's the cutest guy we we could we'd find there.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: And we that's why we elected him there.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: So don't get into politics.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: But but we're just a nice group of people up there in Canada, and we want everyone to think really well of us.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: Um I I I was in a little town south of the border once, and and in a little restaurant, and the and the waitress came by and said, uh, are you from Canada?
21:39
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: I said, You know, we had a guy from Canada here last week and he he left his jacket.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: Could you could could you take it back to him?
21:47
SPEAKER_00: I kid you not.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, let me see.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: What color of jacket was it?
21:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, red.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, that that belongs to Phil.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: He had the house on the corner.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: So I I took.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Jacket and wore it for many years.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay, stop idolizing youth and idolizing the human body.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: And thirdly, don't misuse your body.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: Because that's too easy to do.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: For many years, I counseled in a federal penitentiary.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: Our prisons are mostly filled with men.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that?
22:29
SPEAKER_00: And our psych wards are mostly filled with women.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: Now don't get angry when I said that.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: That's just the facts.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: Men tend to explode.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: Women tend to implode.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: Which is worse.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do either, you know.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: But when I get together with a group of guys in prison, not to excuse what got them in there, but there's some serious things they did to get in there.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: Excluding that, they're just a group of guys, like I meet with every Wednesday morning up in up in Canada.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: Just a group of guys.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: They're trying to do life together.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: Only a lot of guys don't have anyone to do it with.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: Brother, father, friend?
23:31
SPEAKER_00: Most guys say, Well, no.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: I got a lot of acquaintances, but not a lot of, I don't think I have any real friends.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: They're sitting beside other people, but but there's walls up.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: And so they get into some kind of addictive behavior.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: Drugs or drinking, you name it.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of ways that we can self-gratify to make our bodies feel good.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: But we shut everybody else out.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: Paul wants us to present our bodies to him and don't misuse them.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: Don't be overcome by addictive behavior, gossip, sarcasm, jokes.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: People use humor guilty to keep people away.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: It's very effective.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: I was in a restaurant the other day, and this lady comes up and I said, May I see the menu please?
24:37
SPEAKER_00: She said, The men I please has nothing to do with you.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sorry.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: That just came out.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: I I don't care whether you're laughing with me or at me, as long as you're laughing, you don't get to know me.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: You get it?
24:53
SPEAKER_00: Why are some of the unhappiest people in our culture comedians, professional comedians?
24:57
SPEAKER_00: Why do you find Robert Robin Williams, one of the funniest comedians of all time, in my mind, took his own life?
25:08
SPEAKER_00: Such a happy person, brings a lot of happiness to a lot of people, but deep down inside he's very unhappy.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: No one's in.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Past his barriers.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: Don't misuse your bodies.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: Use your bodies for God's glory.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: The human eye can look into the sky on a clear night and see the Adramada galaxy, which is 2.5 million light years away.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: Some people can look into the eye of another person and see there's hurt there.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're one of those people.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: And even this morning, you've detected there's someone here that I think they're going through a hard time.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: God gave me the eyes and the sensitivity to see that in a look or the way they did this or whatever.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: I need to do something.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: Not everyone has that gift, not everyone has a perception like that.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: Some of us are like, we like talking to people because God gives us perception.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: We can help people.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: Having trouble with your marriage?
26:16
SPEAKER_00: Everyone thinks everything's fine, but it isn't actually fine.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to go to a counselor because they charge too much.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: But you need some help.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: And that's why God has set people in the church with the sensitivity to that.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: That's using your body.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: Using your body, using your eyes, using your lips to affirm people.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: I have a men's group every week we meet, and one of my biggest burdens is to get older men mentoring younger men.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: Great need.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: I've got a lot of young guys who want to have older men to mentor them.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: The older guys are saying, Well, I was never mentored, I don't know what to do.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, just follow God.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: God's calling you to mentor a younger guy.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Do it because, guys, we need help.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: We need help.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: You ask a woman how many close friends does she have?
27:12
SPEAKER_00: She could probably list five women just like that.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: You ask a man, how many close friends do you have?
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Well, you mean from childhood?
27:24
SPEAKER_00: Don't reckon I have any.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Why not?
27:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, can't trust them.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: My stuff.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I got into a southern accent there.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: Southern people are good people, but but that's true.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: We I don't know whether I can trust another person.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: Can you be trusted?
27:46
SPEAKER_00: You be that person.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: Don't misuse your bodies.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: Use your bodies for God's glory.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: Release your body to God.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: Don't idolize your body.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: Don't misuse it.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: And number four, properly honor and care for it.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: Properly honor and care for your body.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord for the body.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ Himself?
28:25
SPEAKER_00: Shall I take, shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?
28:29
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 6.13?
28:31
SPEAKER_00: The answer is obviously no.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: Should I kick a sleeping baby?
28:36
SPEAKER_00: No.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: God wants you to take care of your body.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: Like a cook takes, a chef takes care of the instruments in his or her kitchen.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: You ever watch those, those, those chef shows?
28:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they don't just have food there.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: They have some of the greatest instruments around.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: They've got blenders, they've got knives, they've got I mean, unbelievable.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: They're all tools that are used by a master chef to make this tremendous meal.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, God is the chef in this world, if we could use that illustration.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: And he wants us to be instruments of his peace, to go where there is darkness, and instead of cursing the darkness, light the light.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: All the darkness in the city can't put out the light of one candle.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: And you're that one candle.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: If you're a knife, be sharp.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: Take time to sharpen your mind, your thinking.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: Some of us aren't knives, we're ladles.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: I love the picture of a ladle scooping out a huge bowl of soup.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are like that.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: You're just gushing with love.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: And you got more love than anybody else, and you're just pouring it out on people, affirming them, doing things for them, caring for them.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: All you're doing is doing what Christ wants you to do.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: You're an instrument of God because you're using your body.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: God says, I want your feet.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: I want to use your feet this week to walk over across the street and speak to your neighbor.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: But Lord, you know my feet, you know my feet don't work as much.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, use them to the degree you can.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: I gave those feet to you.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: Take good care of them.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: Be an instrument in my hands, and I will use you.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: When I first came to know the Lord was at a very young age, 13.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: Remember walking down the aisle, the evangelists called people forward.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: And at the same time of becoming a believer in Jesus Christ, I felt God was calling me to be a pastor.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: Honestly, honestly.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, I had no idea what that meant.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: I thought, wow, pastors, they're like next to God.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: Everybody loves them, everybody respects them.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: There's you'll never you'll always have a job.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: It'll always be a little bit of heaven.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: Boy, was I wrong.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: No, sorry.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: No, I was somewhat right.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: But it took me half a lifetime to realize God was not calling me into a job.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: God was calling me into a role.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: So whether people call me pastor or not, doesn't make any difference.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: That's a job.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: I believe there's people here that you may not have the job of being a pastor in a church, but God's given you abilities to pastor people, to shepherd people, to care for people, like a shepherd cares for sheep.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: And if God's called you to do that, you may be working at this company during the day, but you're really never more happy and satisfied than when you're talking with someone and nurturing them in their faith and walking alongside them and affirming them and caring for them.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: And that that just really turns your crank.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: You're using your body, all of it, as an instrument of God's peace.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: How do we know God loves us?
32:39
SPEAKER_00: We say God loves you, right?
32:41
SPEAKER_00: And we it's true, but how do we know that?
32:44
SPEAKER_00: Because we show that to people.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: If this is a church where we every Sunday we say, God loves you.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: But if you were a stranger, no one would ever talk to you.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: What kind of love is that, right?
32:59
SPEAKER_00: If we really believe God loves this community, we will walk into our community.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: We'll hug our community, we'll show them our love.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: God wants us to use our bodies for his glory.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: That means that we have to have enough margin in our life to do it.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: Because if we have no margin in our life, God calls upon us.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: You know, I want you to go and take a bowl of soup to that person who's uh not well.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh and we say, Well, I'd like to do it, Lord, but I got no time.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: That's why, that's why God said, You need to take one day in seven and rest, the Sabbath rest.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: God didn't rest on the Sabbath because he was tired of all the work he did.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to demonstrate that's how we should be living our life.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: Take time to enjoy our life, take time to rest, to thank God for the six previous days, to enjoy his presence.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're doing here this morning.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: Coming together with other bodies who are the body of Christ, and and rubbing off on each other and encouraging one another.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: Yes, if you didn't go to church for three months, you'd still be a Christian, but you would pretty be pretty lonely.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: We need each other.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: There are people here this morning, I'm sure, just a little discouraged.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: And they're thinking, Well, would any do you think anyone knows?
34:42
SPEAKER_00: Anyone cares?
34:44
SPEAKER_00: And and God is saying, because He can't, He can read our thoughts, we can't.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: That's why God is telling you, you know, that lady, that guy, why don't you go up and maybe light and invite them over for lunch or something like that?
34:58
SPEAKER_00: God, God works in the body, He's in control.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing more beautiful than a body that's that's in control and satisfied.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: The Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal commented, I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact that they cannot stay quietly in their own room.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: We need to pause and remind ourselves that when we became believers, we gave him our body.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: And now God wants us to use him, use our use our every member of our body for his glory to be the hands, the feet, the mouth, the eyes of God.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: Don't be so driven in our work that we cannot, that we cannot find time to use our gifts.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know what your gifts are, find out what they are and use them.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: May we demonstrate this week that we really are the body of Christ.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: Will you stand with me as we end our service and as we go from this place?
36:07
SPEAKER_00: God has something in store for us.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: He wants to use us for his greater glory.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you that you speak to us at moments like this and through other people and through circumstances.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: Lord, may we have ears that hear.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: May we have minds that listen to you.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: May we have tongues that speak of your praises, that affirm others, encourage others as you have encouraged us.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for what you're doing in this body here in Topeka.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for what you're doing in our families.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: Lord, reduce any sense of shame that we have because that's not from you.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: Lord, give us that sense of peace that passes understanding and enable us to use our bodies for your glory this week.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: And all God's people said, Amen.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: And God bless.