Let me tell you about the most unattractive body part I ever saw. I explain first that it was not a human body part. My wife and I were in France years ago, and it was one of our first visits. We were in Paris and had been there just a few days. We wanted to eat dinner, and we found a little restaurant someplace. We went into the restaurant and the menu was presented. Now I had studied French and knew French. I saw a word which I knew was lamb, and I thought, “Hey, that’s great, lamb.” The French cook lamb very well, and so I said to my wife, Linda, “Let’s have lamb.” She said, “Alright.” So when the waiter came, I gave him our order, and as I said it I pointed to the item on the menu. The waiter made sure this was what we really wanted, and then he said, “Alright,” and went away.
When he came back with these things each of our plates had two of them. They were about the size of half a tennis ball. They were gray, and looked like slightly dirty milk. They were convoluted and were sitting side by side. And my wife and I, deep down in the pit of our stomachs, knew what they were, but we were not going to say. We looked at those things, took a deep breath, and started to eat them. Each bite was better than the next. After about three bites, we decided that we were eating on the side a very delicious salad. So we left the things. You know, that was such an unpleasant experience that we did not name what those things were until years afterward. In a private conversation we said, “You know, I don’t think we’re ever going to order brains again.”
In my opinion, the least attractive part of the whole body is the brain. But try taking the brain out and see what is left. Paul is saying, “No matter how unattractive you think your gift may be, or how insignificant you think it is, or even how unattractive you may think you are or how insignificant you may feel yourself to be, you are necessary to the body of Christ. If we lose you, if your gift does not function, the church of Jesus Christ is poorer for that loss.”
Let me make three applications. The first is to be content with what you have been given. If you are not content, what are you telling God? You are telling God that you know better than He does. The second is not to exalt one of God’s servants over another. If there is anything we are guilty of in the Church of Jesus Christ, it is that. What do we have but what we have been given? If God gives us talents that put us in a place where people see it, well, it is all from God. And if God gives us talents that put us in a job where nobody sees us, that, too, is from God. Let us not exalt one Christian over another. Let us not say, “Oh, look at that wonderful leader,” or “Oh, listen to that wonderful speaker,” or, “Oh, look at that person who is so good at doing that.” When we call attention to a particular person and their gift it is generally the thing we wish we could do. But in doing that we fail to exercise our own gift.
The final application is to be conscientious. Use your gift. Do not be like the man who had been given the talent and then buried it, and who, when his lord came back and asked him what he had done with the talent that he had left with him, said, “Oh, I knew you were a hard man, gathering where you didn’t sow. And so, I took your talent and I buried it in the ground. Here it is. You can have it back again.”
The Lord said about that servant that he was wicked and slothful. He was wicked because he ascribed evil to his master which his master did not have, and he was slothful because his problem was not a misunderstanding of what his master wanted, but the fact that he was too lazy to use what the master had given. Let us not be slothful or wicked. Let us use what God has given and look forward to that day when we will stand before the throne of Jesus Christ and, by His grace, hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”
