Sunday Worship Service April 23, 2023

Call to Worship Jeremiah 7:2~4
Hymn JBC # 626 I gave My life for thee
The Lord’s Prayer
The Lord’s Supper
Offering
Scripture 1 Corinthians 16:1~12
Prayer
Sermon “A great door for my work is open”
https://youtu.be/CrrI2PzPkPU
Prayer
Hymn JBC # 554 All the way my Saviour leads me
Doxology JBC # 674
Benediction


The church is said to be one body. It is also compared to the human body.
Romans 12:5 says, “so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. “
Both Romans and the letter to the Corinthians, where we got today’s passage from, were written by the evangelist Paul to the respective churches in the places that the books are named after.

In 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, Paul writes the following:
“12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.”

Whenever someone believes in Christ as Lord, decides to live in obedience to Christ, and is baptized as an expression of faith in this truth, that person, no matter who they are (or what nationality or status they have), becomes connected to and a part of the church body.
　However, for some people, hearing that we are but a part of the body may hurt their pride. They may take this to mean that we are like replaceable parts of a machine.
In other words, it’s like saying that even if we weren’t around, someone else could take our place. That is how I felt when I first heard that I was a part of the body.

　However, the reason the Bible compares us to the parts of a body is completely different.
　The reason we are compared to parts of a body is not because we are like replaceable parts of a machine. What it means is that we are a part of Christ’s body, where the head is our Lord Jesus Christ and we are each made to be irreplaceable by His grace.
Furthermore, each person connected to Christ, specifically each member of the church, is also a irreplaceable existence to one another.
During our April 9th (Sun) Easter worship, we remembered the resurrection of Jesus Christ together in joy and celebration. One brother also join the church body in accepting Christ as Lord through baptism.

That person became irreplaceable both to us as well as to Christ. We must remember that believing in the same Lord and joining Christ’s church is that special.
The first verse in today’s Bible passage in 1 Corinthians 16 states the following:
“Now about the collection for the Lord’s people: Do what I told the Galatian churches to do.”

The “Lord’s people” referred to here are the saints of the church in Jerusalem.
　We can only guess from what is written in the book of Acts as to what scale the worship was like in the church of Jerusalem. However, we know it was the first Christian church.

After Jesus died on the cross, resurrected, and ascended into Heaven, His disciples stayed in Jerusalem.
It also states in Acts 1-2 that the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples who stayed in Jerusalem, and that was the beginning of Christians gathering, in other words, that was the start of the church.

　The belief that Jesus Christ is Lord first began among the Jews. In the Bible, people other than the Jews are referred to as Gentiles. Paul’s mission was to share the gospel of Christ to these Gentiles.
Through the work of evangelists like Paul (through their going to other lands to share the gospel of Christ), faith in Jesus Christ no longer was just among the Jews, but spread to other countries and lands.
After that other churches were also planted outside of Jerusalem. The Roman church and the Corinthian church were both planted in this same manner through evangelism to the Gentiles.
Just as the non-Jews were called Gentiles, the members of the first church in Jerusalem were called the Lord’s people, as stated in today’s passage.

Those who believe in Christ are all equal in standing, but at the time, people held the Jerusalem church in special regard and respect due to it being the first church as well as it was where Peter, who directly followed Jesus and learned from Him, was.
I think people may have thought of the Jerusalem church as special because of the reality that the Lord God used the saints in Jerusalem to share the gospel of Jesus Christ to people in other lands.
I think we also tend to hold the person who first shared the gospel with us, or our home or mother church in special regard in a similar way. To the Christians at the time, the church in Jerusalem may have been like their mother church.
Paul is lovingly referring to both the Jerusalem saints and to the Lord’s people as those who believe in the Lord.

In reality, Paul actually clashed with the Jerusalem church (with Peter, who was the first leader of the Jerusalem church) over differences in opinion about evangelism.

In Galatians 2:11-12 it says the following:
11 When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.

Cephas is Peter. From James means from the Jerusalem church.
The church in Antioch was the church that sent Paul and his partner Barnabas on their missionary journey. It can be said that the church in Antioch was Paul’s mother church.
　When Peter first came to Antioch, he would eat together even with people who were not Jewish. However, when other people came from Jerusalem, Peter stopped eating with Gentiles.
At the time, fellowshipping with Gentiles, let alone eating with them, was forbidden to Jewish people.
However, Paul confronted Peter, saying that that type of attitude is not suitable for one who believes in Christ.
Besides this, Paul’s opinion also differed in opinion with the Jerusalem church about evangelizing to non-Jews (Gentiles), and had a heated debate.
In the beginning of Acts 15, some people began spreading the problematic teaching that you must first be circumcised in order to be saved. The passage states that “This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute with them,” (them being the members of the church of Jerusalem.

Despite these issues, Paul still referred to the members of the Jerusalem church as the Lord’s people. To Paul, they were God’s irreplaceable family and people who believed in the same Christ.
　Today’s passage mentions “the collection.” At the time in Jerusalem, there was a lot of poverty. According to Acts 11:28,
Even though they had differing opinions and heated debates, Paul considered the members of the Jerusalem to be Christian and members of God’s family.
When they were impoverished, Paul went to churches in other areas and asked for support (funds) for the believers in Jerusalem. That is the background of today’s passage.
The same can be said about us as fellow believers today. We have various ways of thinking, positions, and preferences, but we believe in the same Jesus Christ and are tied together in the same church as the Lord’s people.
I hope that we can treasure the fact that through faith in Christ, together as the Lord’s people we make one body through bonds of faith.

After today’s passage in 1 Corinthians 16:5, Paul talks about his future evangelistic hopes, even as he keeps the believers in Jerusalem in his heart.

Verse 9 (still part of today’s passage) reads as follows:
9 because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me.
Through Paul’s eyes of faith, he saw a great door had been opened to him. Through believing the gospel of Christ and proclaiming said gospel, this door had been opened to him.
There were many who opposed him and attacked him there. Paul met with lots of persecution and difficulty in his evangelistic work. Living in faith is not always peaceful or smooth sailing. Rather the opposite may be true more often.
However, despite this we do not need to fear. The Lord God, the resurrected Jesus Christ is with us. We also have our family and friends in faith.
Paul also, as he wrote in today’s passage, had Timothy, who “is carrying on the work of the Lord, just like me,” and his brother (in faith) Apollos, who was a fellow evangelist.
　In this way, believers in Christ are never alone.
I hope we can walk together in faith, being protected by the Lord and connected in the church.