That crunchy coffee? There we
go. You can open your Bibles to 1
Corinthians 11. 1 Corinthians 11. Our Father, bless this gathering.
Send your Spirit among us. Lord Jesus, you promised your
disciples you would not leave us as orphans, but you would
come to us. And we understand that you come
to us by way of your Spirit. So we pray, be with us. Guide us into your truth. Remove
from our minds, from our hearts, all those things that would distract
us from entering into true spiritual worship that pleases the Father. Most of all, Lord, remove from our conscience the
guilt of our sins. It is written that in the new covenant, you will forgive our sins and
our iniquities, you will remember no more. But Lord, there is one
who accuses, and he reminds us of our sin. And in reminding us of our sin,
he tries to convince us that we're cut off from you. And Lord,
we know that apart from Christ, we would be cut off from you.
But Lord, silence his testimony, the testimony of the accuser. Indeed, as is written in your
book, may we overcome him. by the word of our testimony
in the blood of the Lamb. Let us come before you with the understanding that by the blood
of Christ our hearts have been made pure, that we are accepted by you,
that there is no wrath in you toward us. And we pray that in the name
of Christ, amen. We'll begin reading in verse
17. In the following directive, I
have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that
when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you,
and to some extent, I believe it. No doubt there have to be
differences among you to show which of you have God's approval. When you come together, it is
not the Lord's supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes
ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry. Another gets
drunk. Don't you have homes to eat and
drink in? Or do you despise the church
of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say
to you? Shall I praise you for this?
Certainly not. For I received from the Lord
what I also passed on to you. The Lord Jesus, on the night
that he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks,
he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, after supper,
he took the cup, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my
blood. Do this whenever you drink it
in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread
and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Therefore, whoever eats the bread
or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be
guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself
before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone
who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and
drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are
weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if
we judge ourselves, We would not come under judgment. When
we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that
we will not be condemned with the world. So then my brothers,
when you come together to eat, wait for each other. If anyone
is hungry, he should eat at home so that when you meet together,
it may not result in judgment. And when I come, I will give
further instructions. It seems as though in all the
things that our Lord commanded His church to do, they run to
one extreme or another. And the same is true when it
comes to the Lord's table. Now, when the Lord's table was
instituted, It was simply a part of an observance that they had
been doing for roughly 1500 years. They were having the Passover
meal. And in the Passover meal, they
ate unleavened bread. Now, as the Passover was originally
set up in Egypt, There was no assigned drinking of wine, but
that became a part of it over time. They called it the cup
of thanksgiving. And it would come, as you noticed
as we were reading here, at the end of the meal, after they'd
had the traditional Passover feast, or I think cedar or seder,
I'm not exactly sure how they pronounce it now, but that Passover
meal together, after they had that, then they would have the
cup of thanksgiving. And so, the night before our
Lord was crucified was the night that Passover was to be celebrated,
and so he and the disciples met in that upper room, And during
the meal, he broke the bread and said, this is my body, which
is for you. Something they probably did not understand in all those
Passover celebrations they had had throughout their lives. They
probably didn't understand that aspect, and maybe even that night
didn't understand it until later. A lot of things our Lord told
his disciples, they didn't understand it until later, after he had
risen from the dead. after the Holy Spirit had come
and given them guidance into all truth. And then after the
eating portion was done, he took that cup of thanksgiving and
he blessed it. And he said, this is the new
covenant in my blood. Every covenant is ratified by
blood. And so with the new covenant, It would have been a relatively
simple affair. I'm sure that there were some
wealthy homes in Israel that could really put on a fancy Passover
feast. But when you consider it, the
prescribed menu, unleavened bread. So you couldn't come up with
fancy bread for it. And it was to be a lamb, a lamb
that was roasted. And you were to eat all of it.
or dispose of whatever, nothing was to be left when you were
done. One way or another, it had to be gone. So it would have
been difficult to make it a really ornate observance, though I'm
sure some people found a way. And you know, they do the same
thing with the Lord's Table. Nearly every church that I've
been associated with Talk about the churches I was raised in
and even the church that Bonnie and I went to after I graduated
college. And we were there until the Lord
called me to pastor a church. But the Lord's table was always practiced
with a level of solemnity. And I mean by solemnity, not
just that they were being serious about it. They could be downright
morose. But this is something that connected all of them, the,
what would you call it? Well, the plates and dishes,
always made to look fancy. They'd be made up of, some had
actual silver, you know, silver plated ware anyway, and usually
and he lids involved, had a cross on top of them, you know, and
everything looked so nice. Now, I'm saying all this, I can't
even remember what ours looked like. I know they didn't cost
a lot because we didn't have money to spend on it, but what
I'm saying is they always tried, it seems like humanity always
tries to put some form of fleshly glory on the things that God
has kept rather simple. We can't seem to grasp the idea
that God is not impressed with the same things we're impressed
with. Whether the dishes, the serving
trays are solid gold or a weaved basket, clay pot, whatever, That
means nothing to the Lord. But some churches have so aggrandized
the Lord's table that there's not just all this fancy equipment. They'll have kind of a parade
down the aisle, and I've seen it, you know, the leader of it,
whoever be the pastor, actually in those churches they'd call
him a priest, but you know, he'll be carrying a staff in his hand
and have a special hat on, you know, and all this pageantry
going on. Can you imagine the poor disciples
trying to pull something like that off? The disciples of the
Lord were not wealthy people. And then sometimes it goes the
other direction, where people don't take it seriously enough, and they observe the Lord's table
with a flippant and careless attitude. Now here's the thing
about all the matters about which our Lord has given us commands. I mean, he said, do this in remembrance
of me. That's a command. We're supposed
to do this. We're going to celebrate the Lord's table here in a few
minutes. But how do we know how to do it? How can we know what
attitude we should have as we come to the table? Because you can see that Paul
really didn't give any kind of detailed description of just
exactly how to do the Lord's Table. He mentioned some things
not to do, and we'll get into that. But he didn't say, you know, get the finest plateware
you've got, make sure that you hand-select the best of your
men you know to pass them out or anything like that. But he
did give us a principle to guide us in our attitude, guide us in an understanding
of who should participate. And it's found in verse 26. For whenever you eat this bread
and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Now, proclaiming the Lord's death
is serious business. I don't mean it's morose, it's
serious. When I preach, I take it seriously. I prepare. I look at scriptures, compare
scriptures with scriptures. I think about it. I mull over
it. Like Tim James, he said, I'm
not smart enough to meditate, I just kind of mull over things.
That's how I kind of feel about it. You know, I mull over these,
go over them in my mind. I tried to discover what's the
real point that's being made in a particular scripture. And
when I was thinking of this particular scripture, this did come to my
mind. Here is what is actually pretty
much the middle verse in this passage I read to you, and that
which serves like the hub of a wheel to describe everything
else. When we're doing this, When we
observe the Lord's table, we're proclaiming the death of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Now, let me tell you some things
we're not proclaiming. We are not proclaiming that the
night before we celebrated the Lord's table, we didn't, you
know, it'd be a Saturday night, we didn't act quite as wild as
we might have acted were, the next day, not going to be the
Lord's table. Now, I was not raised in, you
know, the Reformed tradition of this area, so I'd never heard
of that, but I do remember early on talking to some people in
this church, and one person told me that one of
their relatives was visiting, well we better get home get early
and get home early and not drink too much because it's the Lord's
table tomorrow. That's how you prepare for the Lord's table.
Are we saying when we celebrate the Lord's table that we have
put on our, and I use this in quotes, holiest attitude? That we come to the Lord's table
being as good as we can be? Do we come to the Lord's table
proclaiming that we have any right to participate in anything
pertaining to the Lord? Is that what we're proclaiming? Some churches are so strict about
who should participate that hardly anyone does, for fear that if
they did participate Maybe God would strike them dead.
After all, Paul said that some here, you know, they weren't
doing things that should be done. He said, some of you are weak
and sick, and some of you have fallen asleep. I don't want that. So let's just, you know, if you
can do it wrong and die, let's just not do it. But the very fact, think of this.
The very fact that what we're proclaiming is the Lord's death
means this, we do it as sinners. Because if we weren't sinners,
there would be no need of the death, would there? Wouldn't
be any need of it. We don't eat this bread and drink
this cup because by virtue of some act of faith or however
somebody wants to describe the experience of salvation in this
life. Because of that, we have stepped up a level. When we proclaim the Lord's death,
we are proclaiming our sinfulness, because it's our sinfulness that
caused His death. I remember when that movie, The
Passion of the Christ, came out. And believe it or not, that was
almost 20 years ago. And most of our brethren wouldn't
go to see it, but I'm one of these guys, I've told you before,
I can't stand a closed door. I gotta look and see what's on
the other side. And I watch these religious shows and religious
movies. Sometimes I just wanna see if
they get it right. Most of them don't. Most of them don't. But I remember
when it came out, because Mel Gibson's father was known to
be an anti-Semite, and evidently, since then it's been proven that
Mel Gibson, the guy who produced the movie, directed it, he's
got some of that in him too. But the Anti-Defamation League
for the Jews came out against it, said they're blaming the
Jews for Christ's death. My thought was, well. It wasn't
the whole Jewish nation, but the leaders, yeah, they did conspire
with the Romans to put him to death. That's just a historical
fact. Of course, that doesn't make
you and me any better, because I think this was probably within
the first year or two I was here, I made the point one time, I
said, the only reason you weren't trying to crucify him with the
rest of the mob, the only reason you weren't doing that is because
you were born in the wrong place and 2,000 years too late. It's
the only reason. And so when they say, oh, the
Jews did that, the Romans did that, you know who did that?
You and me. And one of the interesting things
about that movie, The Passion of the Christ, there is a scene,
you know, as the crucifixion begins, and all you can see is
what is supposedly an arm and one hand of the Lord out there. And then you see this spike and
bang. And what most people didn't know
was the one who was holding the hammer And the nail was Mel Gibson,
though you never see him in the film otherwise. And I don't know
what that man believed. I'm not trying to convince you
that Mel Gibson is a Christian. But he understood one thing.
It was him who nailed the Lord to the cross. They wanted to
say he was blaming it on the Jews. He blamed it on himself. He was in the picture in only
one other spot, and that's when Judas hanged himself, and in
the movie he screamed, and that was Mel Gibson's voice. Whatever
else Mel Gibson seems to have a sense of his own sinfulness,
what he's done about it I don't know. But here's the point. We're showing forth his death.
And we know full well who caused it. Yes, God ordained it. God required it. But it was our
sin that made it a necessity. For there is no way that God
could show his love toward us apart from the removal of our
sin. We don't come to the Lord's table
as righteous people. We don't come to the Lord's table
as Christians who have obtained a certain level of supposed self-sanctification. We come to the Lord's table testifying
that in ourselves, we are nothing but sinners. We're worthy of
the very death that we're proclaiming. But we're proclaiming, we won't
die that death. Christ did. So really, we're not proclaiming
anything good about us at the Lord's table. We're showing forth
His death. First of all, we are showing
forth the fact that He died. And if He died, that means He
lived. And that's an amazing thing in
and of itself. Think of it now. This is God. This is God who was perfectly
satisfied within Himself before He created the heavens and the
earth. He didn't create the heavens and the earth because He was
lonely. He didn't create the heavens and the earth because
there was some obligation laid upon Him to do it. So then why
did He do it? I don't know. He just did. It seemed like a good idea to
Him. So He did. But that God who knew no pain or suffering, who was completely satisfied
with himself and within himself. He took on our form coming into
this world, and in taking on our form, he experienced all
the limitations that come with it. and he was tried in every point,
just like you and me. Now this is both to our rebuke
and to our comfort. If we fall into sin, I say fall,
it's more like we jump into it, but you know what I mean. When
we sin, we might think, well, you know,
If it weren't for my sin nature, I'd never do that. Well, that's
true. Well, if it weren't for that temptation I had, I was
just tempted. So was the Lord, and he did not
sin. We don't have an excuse for our
sin. We have forgiveness, we have redemption, we have atonement,
but we don't have any excuses for it, ever. He was tried, and he succeeded. He was tried in every point. Do you realize there's no temptation
you have experienced that our Lord did not experience it? There's
no trouble, there's no sorrow you have endured that our Lord
did not endure the like sorrow and trouble. And probably in greater portions.
than you ever had. I remember when Brother Bruce
Crabtree was preaching Brother Don Fortner's funeral. But he talked about how our Lord
goes before us, and everywhere we go, he was there before we
were. And he said, even in the tomb,
we will find his footprints there. And is that not true? He's been to the tomb. Of course,
he's the only one that has a set of footprints going in and coming
out. But you know something? Because there's a set of footprints
going out, so are we. We're coming out of ours at the
appropriate time. We proclaim his death as necessitated
by our sin. We proclaim his death as effective. His death accomplished something. did not make our salvation possible. It did not say because the Lord
Jesus Christ died you can be saved if you'll do such-and-such.
Our Lord Jesus Christ said it is finished. What was finished? Redemption, atonement. It was
done. Redemption paid the debt, paid my debt. Atonement, Puts
away wrath. Well, if it's put away, it's
put away. According to the scriptures,
this death, which we proclaim by observing this ceremony, this
death made it so that I don't owe God. This could sound awful,
but it's the truth. I don't owe God anything, not
under law. Everything God ever required
of a human being, so far as I am concerned, so far as all of God's
elect are concerned, everything, every requirement has been fulfilled. There's nothing more to do. I'll remind you again of that
story. I don't know how many times I've told it in the years
I've been here, but sitting there at 13th Street Baptist Church
with my mind wandering as it normally does while Henry was
preaching. And I cannot tell you anything
else about this particular sermon. But cutting through the fog of
my wandering mind, came these words, if Christ paid my debt,
I don't owe it. It startled me out of my fog. And since then, countless times,
I've brought that saying back to my mind when the accuser of
the brethren accuses me. And believe me, he's got a lot
to work with. There's a lot that he can accuse
me of that historically is true. But none of it is true in the
presence of the blood. None of it. Our Lord Jesus Christ said, I
do always those things that please my Father. And you know what
the gospel teaches us? that that is true with regard
to all of God's elect. You say, wait a minute, I know
I do things that the Father doesn't like. Historically true. In Christ, no. Because in Christ,
his righteousness is imputed to you. Now imputed sounds like
a theological word. But all it means is to say about,
or to say upon. If I say, you're nice, I've imputed
niceness to you. And God has said this, and this
is why the gospel, why it excels any other form of religion that
man has been able to devise. In the gospel, God brings things
to, into being that are not. The
writer of Hebrews describes that or illustrates that with creation.
He created the worlds out of nothing. And you know what else? You know, you said God said,
let there be light, and there was light. And God said, with regard
to all of his elect in Christ, you are righteous. Let there be light, and there
was light. You are righteous, so you are
righteous in his sight. Now, I'll be honest with you.
I've been preaching the gospel a long time. It's still a little
scary to say a thing like that, because we still got that old
fleshly thing, wait a minute now, you can't be clean. to be righteous. You might be better than other
folk, and the devil would love us to think that. But come on, y'all. You can't
be saying that simply God says it, and it's so. Go back to creation. Time and several times there.
It says, and God commanded, or said to Allah, and it was so. And that Greek word that gets
translated counted, or imputed, or credited, it just means to
say upon. The blood of Christ, the death
of Christ, declares everyone in him to be without spot, without
blemish, without accusation, without condemnation, righteous,
pure, and perfect. And if that seems too much for
you to swallow, think of this. Could you be accepted by God
at all if that weren't the truth? Will God accept anything less
than flawless? Faultless? Did Christ just kind of clean
us up a little, you know, kind of make us a little presentable
so we weren't so bad? Or did he, by his death, make
us utterly perfect in the sight of God? Perfect. Oh, I hate my sin, I really do. Trouble is, I also like it, because
I'm a man of two natures, like all believers are. But that which has been born
again by the Spirit of God hates sin, hates my sin. But I do not ever have to fear
the condemnation of God because of my sin. Why? The apostle wrote,
there is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of
life in Christ, and that was just a long way for him to describe
the gospel, The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set
me free from the law of sin and death. I've been set free from
that law that condemned me. I'm not under its jurisdiction.
I'm not under its judgment. Why? Because the very one who
gave that law took my nature, took my form upon himself. made
himself of no reputation, made himself a servant, and he was
obedient even unto death, even unto the death of the cross,
the one who truly never did anything wrong, suffered for all my wrongs. Therefore, there are no wrongs recorded
in my account with God. And as overly bold as that might
sound, if it's not true, I am as lost as the devil himself. This is truly a black and white
situation. Most of life we have to live
in the gray, because that's just the way this world is. But here's
one when it is one way or it's another. You are absolutely without
sin in the presence or in the sight of God, or you are as sinful
and wicked as the devil himself in the sight of God. That's the
only two options. So when we have the Lord's table,
we're not saying I'm good, we're proclaiming God's death, or excuse
me, Christ's death, which says that I was a sinner in need of
his death, but also says because of his death I am no longer a
sinner in the presence of God. As the Apostle wrote, now unto
him who's able to present you faultless and full of joy in
his presence. We proclaim his death and one
thing that his death did was see to it that all his people
are on the same level. People love differences. They
love to be able to claim that somehow or another they're different
from other people, and whatever way they're different, they're
going to glory in that. That's our nature. And God says there is no difference. The Apostle says, beginning at
the end of verse 22 of Romans 3, there is no difference for
all sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are redeemed. All of God's people sin. They
sinned in Adam. They sinned from their own nature.
There's no difference among us. We fall short of the glory of
God, and we've got to meet that standard. It's a pass-fail thing. We all fail. And all of God's
people are redeemed by the same blood. And therefore, all of
us are, in the sight of God, the same. Righteous. Perfect. Flawless. But men want to make differences.
And that's what he was actually rebuking them about because what
had happened is over the years, their celebration of the Lord's
table just got incorporated into what we might call a fellowship
meal. You know, a few weeks ago, we stayed after service and had
a meal downstairs. Well, they would do that and
then just kind of incorporate the Lord's table into it. There's
nothing wrong with doing that. But here's what they did. Everybody
bring food. In the early church, just like
in the church of today, you had rich people and you had poor
people. In fact, I've read that the church in the Roman Empire,
there was a lot of slaves in it. They had nothing. And the rich people, they would
come in their fancy clothes, and they would bring their fancy
foods. And when it came time to eat,
they grabbed their good stuff, sat together, They started to
chow down, while the poor people just stood there with nothing. They just, you know, yeah, I
guess we're all Christians, but, well, we're the us Christians,
they're the them Christians, you know. And what they did was,
remember, Paul, he says here in verse 18, I hear that when
you come together as a church, there are divisions among you,
and to some extent, I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences
among you to show which of you have God's approval." That's
a sarcastic statement on the part of Paul. He's saying, I
hear there's divisions among you. Well, I guess there have
to be divisions so you can prove who's better than the other.
And that was his sarcastic rebuke because that's exactly what they
were doing. We're better than the others.
We'll go over here and we'll have our little Lord's table
over here. And those, well, just leave them to do whatever they
can. Divisions within the body. You know, now all sin is sin. We're not going to try to make
a hierarchy of sin, but this I've noticed, particularly in
Paul's letters, it seems that the very worst thing you could
do, so far as church conduct and everything, is create divisions.
Divide yourself up. And another place I believe is
in 2 Corinthians, he says, who makes you to differ? Well, God
has made some differences among people in terms of the spiritual
gifts he gives them. But so far as their persons are
concerned, they're the same thing. Same thing. But these were saying,
some of us have God's approval more than others. therefore Paul,
listen to what Paul says in verse 20, when you come together it's
not the Lord's Supper you eat. Yep, you may have unleavened
bread, you may have wine, you may be calling it the Lord's
Supper, but that's not what it is. Why? You've excluded some
people. You've bunched yourself together
according to your you know, cultural dynamics or whatever you think
you are in society, and you've disregarded your brethren. Now, there's different kinds
of division within the church. None of them is acceptable. None
of them. And what's interesting is Paul's
instructions on what to do with a divisive person. And by the
way, in the King James Version, the word heretic, it means a
divisive person. That's what the word actually
means. And he says, an heretic, warn him once, and then twice,
and then have nothing to do with him. Which is essentially to
say, OK, he wants to make a division, let him have one that only includes
him. He didn't say berate him, he
didn't say put him under, quote, church discipline, whatever that
is. He said, just back up. He wants to be special? Let him. I look at our group of people,
and there's differences among us, as the world counts difference.
But you know something? All of us are exactly the same
on the one issue that matters, in Christ. Every believer's in
Christ. Verse 22, he said, don't you
have homes to eat and drink in? Now some have said, believe it
or not, and again, people can make a rule out of anything.
Something like Gloria, they say, you shouldn't eat in a church
building. Eat at home. Church shouldn't
have fellowship dinners. Folks, they didn't have church
buildings back here. They were meeting in homes. His
point was, if all you're going to do is get together and have
a nice meal together and divide yourself up as you are divided
in the world, then just eat at home, invite the people you want
to have, you know, and you all have your own party however you
want in your own house. But when you come together as a church,
every one of you is on the same level. Every last one of you. the intelligent, the not so much, and everybody
in between, the rich, the poor, the cultured, the unsophisticated,
all one in Christ, the man, the woman. Kind of surprises me. Paul says,
in Christ Jesus, there's neither male or female, and yet you'll
see how many religious organizations make a big deal about men and
women in the church. I know there are some instructions
regarding them. In fact, just previous to this,
there were some things about propriety, but they had nothing
to do with the essence of what a person is in the sight of God. So he goes on to say, verse 27,
so whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in
an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and
blood of the Lord. Now the King James says, eats
unworthily, and that's where people got the idea you have
to be worthy to come to the table. No, in a manner that's not consistent
to what you're declaring. That's what he means. We're proclaiming
the Lord's death till he comes. And if you observe the Lord's
table in a way that's inconsistent with the gospel you're declaring
by it, You're sinning against the body and blood of the Lord,
against the essence of the gospel. And so it says, a man ought to
examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the
cup. Now does it mean examine himself and see if there's any
sin in him? Folks, that doesn't take an examination.
We already know that's there. Do you really have to look deep
in your heart to find sin? I have to work real hard to cover
it up. I don't have to work hard to
find it. Let a man examine himself and
get himself in some kind of super holy attitude before he can come
to the Lord's table. Notice the next line here. For
anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord
eats and drinks judgment on himself. Now, there are some who believe,
I know the Catholics are this way and there may be some others,
that believe that the body, this actually becomes the body and
blood of the Lord. They say, you're not discerning the Lord's
body. That's not what he means. Remember what these people were
doing? Dividing. Dividing the body. What's the body of the Lord?
The church. And so they would sit at the
table and divide. They would say they were observing
the Lord's table, and yet they did not recognize all parts of
the body as being united with them. They were using the Lord's
table as a means to exalt themselves one over another. Brethren, when
we come together, if there's anything that this Lord's table
ought to teach us, it's this. We're all one. Brother Bob Coffey preached a
message one time called Same Mud, Same Blood. As you know,
it says we're made of the dust of the earth. That's what he
meant by mud. And then we're all redeemed by the same blood.
You and I, we're all made out of the same mud and we're redeemed
by the same blood. And nothing else about us matters. And if we make it matter while
observing the Lord's table, if we make our observance of the
table, To highlight any other differences, what are we doing?
We're not recognizing the body of the Lord. And notice how serious our Lord
got about this. Some of them were weak and sick
and some had died. Why? Because they came to the
Lord's table and in the past week they'd done something particularly
naughty and shouldn't have come. because they came to the Lord's
table thinking they were better than someone else. That's what
was unworthy in their manner of coming. So let a man examine
himself. I'm not going to examine you
because the place that needs examined I can't see. Man looks
on the outward appearance. And you know, that's not a rebuke,
that's just a truth. That's all I can see is your
outward appearance. God looks on the heart. And nobody
has any clue about your heart other than you and God. That's
why it's said, let a man examine himself. When you come to the table, why
are you coming? When you come to the table, How
do you regard your brothers and sisters in the Lord? Are you
one with them, or do you hold yourself above some of the others? It says, if we judged ourselves,
we would not come under judgment. And friends, anybody who will
do an honest assessment of himself will have to conclude, no, I'm
no better than anybody else. I may have more money. I may
have more education. I may be better looking. I usually
don't have a problem with that one, but some might. Brethren. Sin made us all the same. And the blood makes all the elect
the same. And the only question when it
comes to any of the Lord's observances is this, am I a believer in Christ? Is he my hope? This death we
proclaim, is this my hope of eternal life? And has that taught me that my
brothers and sisters who may not act sometimes the way I think
they should, or who said something mean to me, or don't understand like I do, Do I think that puts me above
them and gives me greater access? If that's what's on your heart,
don't participate until you learn that by the blood we are one
body. Every one of us loved exactly
the same as one another and hang on to your pew, as Brother Mahan
used to say, hang on to your pew, we're about to jump a creek.
We are as loved, as accepted, as approved of as Jesus Christ
himself. Do I say that with pride? I certainly
hope not. I say it because it's what the
scriptures say, and I say it because if it isn't true, we're
all lost. So to whom is this table open?
Everyone who knows what it means. Everyone who believes what it
means. We were sinners, dead in trespasses
and sins, but Christ bore our sins in his body on the tree.
And because of that, I am without sin in the sight of God. And
so are all who are in him. And it doesn't matter whether
this week has been a so-called good week or a bad week. It doesn't matter whether last
night you were doing what you should or what you shouldn't. You're not saying anything to
me. You're saying something to God.
You are proclaiming Christ's death to God himself. Heavenly Father, bless your word.
In the name of Christ we pray, amen. John, if you and Bob would
come and help us with the Lord's table.