Overall Question: What makes a group of people a spiritual community that God can approve?

Memory Text: 1 Corinthians 12:27 NIV “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

Sunday – God Wants a People
Unapproved community building – Genesis 11:1-4 God’s Word to the Nations “1 ¶ The whole world had one language with a common vocabulary. 2 As people moved toward the east, they found a plain in Shinar [Babylonia] and settled there. 3 They said to one another, "Let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used bricks as stones and tar as mortar. 4 Then they said, "Let’s build a city for ourselves and a tower with its top in the sky. Let’s make a name for ourselves so that we won’t become scattered all over the face of the earth."”
Genesis 11:4 COMMENTARY FAMILY BIBLE NOTES It is natural for men to seek to be distinguished, and as natural to seek it in a wrong way and for a wrong end. In doing this they will be disappointed. Would they be truly great, and permanently honored, which they may and ought to desire, they must seek these blessings, not in the indulgence of selfish gratification, but in learning and doing the will of God.
Approved community building – Genesis 12:1-3 CEV “1 ¶ The LORD said to Abram: Leave your country, your family, and your relatives and go to the land that I will show you. 2 I will bless you and make your descendants into a great nation. You will become famous and be a blessing to others. 3 I will bless anyone who blesses you, but I will put a curse on anyone who puts a curse on you. Everyone on earth will be blessed because of you.”
Genesis 12:3 SDA BIBLE COMMENTARY As his spiritual offspring, Christians today share in the blessing imparted to Abram (Gal. 3:8, 29). The blessing vouchsafed to him would finally unite divided families on earth, and change the dread curse pronounced upon the ground because of sin into a blessing for all men. All further promises to the patriarchs and to Israel either clarified or amplified the promise of salvation offered the entire human race in the first promise made to Abram.
1 Peter 2:9-10 CEV “9 But you are God’s chosen and special people. You are a group of royal priests and a holy nation. God has brought you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Now you must tell all the wonderful things that he has done. The Scriptures say, 10 "Once you were nobody. Now you are God’s people. At one time no one had pity on you. Now God has treated you with kindness.”
1 Peter 2:9 SDA BIBLE COMMENTARY As God set the Jewish nation apart to bear witness to the principles of His government, so He later called the Christian church to be a “holy nation” to represent Him on earth.

Monday – Privilege of Belonging
1 Corinthians 12:12-27 ESV “12 ¶ For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body––Jews or Greeks, slaves or free––and all were made to drink of one Spirit. 14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." 22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. 27 ¶ Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

Tuesday – Responsibility of Belonging
Ephesians 4:1-13 BBE “1 ¶ I then, the prisoner in the Lord, make this request from my heart, that you will see that your behaviour is a credit to the position which God’s purpose has given you, 2 ¶ With all gentle and quiet behaviour, taking whatever comes, putting up with one another in love; 3 Taking care to keep the harmony of the Spirit in the yoke of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, even as you have been marked out by God in the one hope of his purpose for you; 5 One Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 One God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all. 7 But to every one of us has grace been given in the measure of the giving of Christ. 8 For this reason he says, He went up on high, taking his prisoners with him, and gave freely to men. 9 (Now this, He went up, what is it but that he first went down into the lower parts of the earth? 10 He who went down is the same who went up far over all the heavens so that he might make all things complete.) 11 And he gave some as Apostles, and some, prophets; and some, preachers of the good news; and some to give care and teaching; 12 For the training of the saints as servants in the church, for the building up of the body of Christ: 13 Till we all come to the harmony of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to full growth, to the full measure of Christ:”
Ephesians 4:12 COMMENTARY BY ADAM CLARKE All these various officers, and the gifts and graces conferred upon them, were judged necessary, by the great Head of the Church, for its full instruction in the important doctrines of Christianity…In most Christian Churches there appears to be but one office, that of preacher; and one gift, that by which he professes to preach. The apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, are all compounded in the class preachers; and many, to whom God has given nothing but the gift of exhortation, take texts to explain them; and thus lose their time, and mar their ministry.
1 Corinthians 16:2 Holman “On the first day of the week, each of you is to set something aside and save to the extent that he prospers, so that no collections will need to be made when I come.”
1 Thessalonians 5:14, 17, 25 Holman “14 And we exhort you, brothers: warn those who are lazy, comfort the discouraged, help the weak, be patient with everyone. 17 Pray constantly. 25 “Brothers, pray for us also.”
Hebrews 10:25 MKJV “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some [is], but exhorting [one another], and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”
1 Peter 3:15 MKJV “but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and [be] ready always to [give] an answer to everyone who asks you a reason of the hope in you, with meekness and fear;”

Wednesday – Unity in Diversity
John 14:6 NLT “Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”
Ephesians 4:3, 13 NLT “3 Always keep yourselves united in the Holy Spirit, and bind yourselves together with peace. 13 until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ.”
Diversity in heaven – Revelation 21:12-14, 19, 26 NRSV “12 It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites; 13 on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. 14 And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. 19 “The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every jewel; the first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald. 26 People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.”
Revelation 22:2 NRSV “through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

Thursday – the Church’s Foundation
Matthew 16:18 NKJV “"And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
Matthew 16:18 SDA BIBLE COMMENTARY “From very early times the figure of a rock was used by the Hebrew people as a specific term for God.”
Matthew 16:18 COMMENTARY BY ALBERT BARNES Christ did not mean, as the Roman Catholics say he did, to exalt Peter to supreme authority above all the other apostles, or to say that he was the only one on whom he would rear his church. See Acts 15, where the advice of James, and not of Peter, was followed. See also Ga 2:11, where Paul withstood Peter to his face, because he was to be blamed--a thing which could not have happened if Christ, as the Roman Catholics say, meant that Peter should be absolute and infallible. More than all, it is not said here or anywhere else in the Bible, that Peter should have infallible successors who should be the vicegerents of Christ, and the head of the church. The whole meaning of the passage is this: "I will make you the honoured instrument of making known my gospel first to Jews and Gentiles, and will make you a firm and distinguished preacher in building my church."
Ephesians 2:20 20th Century NT “You have been built up upon the foundation laid by the Apostles and Prophets, Christ Jesus himself being ‘the corner-stone.’”
Ephesians 4:15-16 20th Century NT “15 But holding the truth in a spirit of love, we shall grow into complete union with him who is our Head—Christ himself. 16 For from him the whole Body, closely joined and knit together by the contact of every part with the source of its life, derives its power to grow, in proportion to the vigor of each individual part; and so is being built up in a spirit of love.”
Revelation 1:12-16, 20 NKJV “12 Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and in the midst of the seven lampstands [One] like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. 14 His head and hair [were] white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; 15 His feet [were] like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; 16 He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance [was] like the sun shining in its strength. 20 “"The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in My right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches.”