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LOYALTY (4 OF 4)

by Steve Jones

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12:1-31


Title: Loyalty (4 of 4)
Series: Olympic Team Jesus
Author: Steve Jones
Text: I Corinthians 12

MESSAGE SUMMARY: For a church to have great teamwork it needs loyalty. In I Corinthians 12 Paul breaks loyalty down as follows:

1) Loyalty values 21-22

2) Loyalty protects 23-24

3) Loyalty supports 25-27

INTRODUCTION: In the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, Jesse Owens won four gold medals in front of 110,000 spectators and a sea of swastikas. As an African American, his success undermined Hitler's propaganda of a "Master Aryan race." Luz Long was a champion competitor for Germany in that same Olympics. He came the closest to beating Owens in the long jump, taking silver to Owens' gold. But amid the propaganda and animosity of the times, these two competitors formed a bond of friendship. After Owens won the long-jump competition, he and Luz Long walked arm-in-arm off the field towards the dressing rooms. That was a great act of courage for Luz Long in Hitler's Germany. In 1942, during WWII, Luz Long penned what would turn out to be a prophetic and haunting request to Jesse Owens: "My dear friend Jesse, My heart is telling me that this is perhaps the last letter I will ever write. If that's the case, I beg one thing of you; when the war is over, please go to Germany, find my son Kai and tell him about his father. Tell him about the times when war did not separate us and tell him that things can be different between men in this world. Your brother, Luz." Luz was wounded during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 and died in a military hospital. In 1951, Owens, in response to Luz's request, sought out and met Kai Long and told him that the friendship he'd had with the boy's father was the most valuable treasure he had kept from his Olympic experience. "Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded; friends gather no dust" Jesse Owens.

We're in a sermon series entitled "Team Jesus" where ...

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