Sermons

Getting the Gifts Right (1 Corinthians 12:27-31)

 

start from 12:27; see 12:12, 14, 18, 20; Rom.12:5.

  1. Appreciate the gifts rightly.
    • 12:28. Eight kinds of gifted people are listed. This is like verses 8-10, but there is a hierarchy of value or of profitability.
      1. Apostles are first. See John 19:35; 1 Cor.9:1; Acts 1:21-26. Without a knowledge
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Sermons

No Envy, No Superiority (1 Corinthians 12:14-26)

 

John Wesley said that there is no such thing as solitary Christianity. To be a Christian means to be a part of the body of Christ.

  1. There is one body and many members.
    • 12:14, 18, 20, 25-26.
    • note the empathy in verses 25-26; see 2 Cor.11:28.
    • God’s gifting in
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Sermons

The Humbling Of God (Philippians 2:6-8)

 

Christ as our example as in 2 Corinthians 8:9. B. B. Warfield:

O that we could once for all grasp the meaning of the great fact that self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice express the divine ideals of life … Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world. And self-sacrifice will lead us, His
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Sermons

Tolerance In Church And Society (Rom.14:1; Eph.4:15; Rev.2:20)

 

2 Corinthians 10:3-5 and 1 Chronicles 12:32.

  1. Tolerance by itself undermines both truth and love.
    • Eph.4:15. George Orwell hit the mark near the end of Nineteen Eighty-Four where Winston is told: ‘You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.’ G. K.
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Sermons

All Baptised In One Spirit (1 Cor. 12:12-13)

 

  1. There is one body, but many members.
    • 12:12-13. Christ only has one body; it would be monstrous to have two, three, four, five bodies. Put the language issue to one side, there ought not to be Jewish churches, African American churches, white apartheid churches, – not if they are
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Sermons

Progress In History (Eccl 19; 1 Tim.4:15)

 

2 Corinthians 10:3-5 and 1 Chronicles 12:32. Progress has become a rather tangled concept.

  1. History changes but progress is not automatic.

      In 1784 Immanuel Kant saw history as ‘a steady and progressive though slow evolution of its original endowment.’

    • Chicago celebrated world fair, called ‘a century of progress’, in
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