The Final Great (10 of 10)
Series: Church Life
Dr. Ernest L. Easley
Acts 11:19-21
As we continue our series of messages under then heading of CHURCHLIFE, take your Bible and turn with me to Acts 11. To a large degree, so goes your CHURCHLIFE, so goes your CHRISTIANLIFE! This idea that you can be a Christian and have nothing to do with the Body of Christ is not found in the Bible.
Think about your physical body for a moment. The members of your body (feet, legs, arms, hands, etc.) were created to serve a purpose, enabling your body to fully function. Take for example your hands. God formed your hands to be attached to your arms for a purpose. Your hands can only find purpose while attached to your arms. Remove your hands and your hands no longer serve the purpose for which they were formed. Remove your hands and your whole body suffers and cannot fully function.
That's what we read in 1 Corinthians 12.12, "For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ." Verse 27, "Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually." The Bible describes the followers of Jesus, not only as "the church," not only as "the bride of Christ"; it describes us as "the body of Christ."
The church IS "the body of Christ." Speaking of His body, we read in 1 Corinthians 12.18, "But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as he pleased."
Do you know why 90% of SBC churches are in decline today? Do you know why SBC churches baptized more in 1967 than we did in 2012? The same thing that holds back the ministry of RSBC: missing body parts!
We have some feet missing.
We have some legs missing.
We have some hands missing.
We have some arms missing.
The body cannot fully function with missing members. That's true for your physical body and it's true for the Body of Christ.
As chairman of the EC of the SBC, I help with the orientation ...
Series: Church Life
Dr. Ernest L. Easley
Acts 11:19-21
As we continue our series of messages under then heading of CHURCHLIFE, take your Bible and turn with me to Acts 11. To a large degree, so goes your CHURCHLIFE, so goes your CHRISTIANLIFE! This idea that you can be a Christian and have nothing to do with the Body of Christ is not found in the Bible.
Think about your physical body for a moment. The members of your body (feet, legs, arms, hands, etc.) were created to serve a purpose, enabling your body to fully function. Take for example your hands. God formed your hands to be attached to your arms for a purpose. Your hands can only find purpose while attached to your arms. Remove your hands and your hands no longer serve the purpose for which they were formed. Remove your hands and your whole body suffers and cannot fully function.
That's what we read in 1 Corinthians 12.12, "For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ." Verse 27, "Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually." The Bible describes the followers of Jesus, not only as "the church," not only as "the bride of Christ"; it describes us as "the body of Christ."
The church IS "the body of Christ." Speaking of His body, we read in 1 Corinthians 12.18, "But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as he pleased."
Do you know why 90% of SBC churches are in decline today? Do you know why SBC churches baptized more in 1967 than we did in 2012? The same thing that holds back the ministry of RSBC: missing body parts!
We have some feet missing.
We have some legs missing.
We have some hands missing.
We have some arms missing.
The body cannot fully function with missing members. That's true for your physical body and it's true for the Body of Christ.
As chairman of the EC of the SBC, I help with the orientation ...
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