to you for a while here this
morning, and I hope not long, from the book of the Philippians. It's Galatians and Ephesians and the book of Philippians. And I want you to turn with me
to the third chapter. of that book, the third chapter
of the book of Philippians. And I want to read verse 15, and see if I can make anything
out of this verse that would glorify God and be prophet to
our souls. The fifteenth verse of the third
chapter. Now, the fellow writing this
is the fellow I just talked about, the Apostle Paul. He wrote about
thirteen or fourteen of the letters in the New Testament. 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians,
Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and on. 13 of them, books. He wrote them, inspired of God,
put them down, preserved them these many years, these last
2,000 years. Well, he's the guy doing the
speaking here, the writing. He says, let us, let us. He didn't say, let everybody,
but he said, let us. referring to a particular people,
let us. Let us, therefore, as many as
be perfect. Let us, therefore, as many as
be perfect. Be thus minded And if in anything
you be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you." But what strikes me here is this
one word, perfect. He admonishes us, as
many. as be perfect." Well, you know
there are many questions among religious people and many questions
among those that are saved by the grace of God concerning who
can come to the Lord's Who can come to the Lord's feast? Who
is it that is fit to sit at the Lord's table and eat of the bread
and drink of the wine, showing forth the Lord's death till he
come again? Who are qualified? Who are fit to to come to the
feast. Many say and question, Am I fit
or unfit to come? Now, we have the Lord's table
the first Wednesday night of every month, and we've been doing
that for at least 40 years. It's second Wednesday. Every
second Wednesday of the month. That'd be twelve times a year.
And I'm sure that those that are here probably say, am I fit to come? And that's set at his table. and partake of the Lord's Supper. Am I fit to come? Well, I can tell you this for
sure. I'm certain about this. I may
be uncertain about a few things. I'm not uncertain about the Word
of God. I believe that every word of the Word of God is true. It comes from God. It's true. But I can tell you this thing
for sure, that if you wait until you are better, you'll never
come. You say, Am I fit to come? I
don't know. I have some bad thoughts. I've
said some things hastily. I haven't done what I ought to
do. I haven't loved God like I ought
to love Him. I haven't loved my brothers and sisters like
I ought to. I haven't loved my children like
I ought to, my wife like I ought to. I don't know. Am I fit to
come? Am I fit to come and sit down
and partake of the supper of the Lord, His supper. He's invited men to come to His
table. Am I fit to come? Well, if you
wait until you're better, you'll never come. Now, listen to me
here this morning. There is no more fitness required
to come to the Lord's table than there is to come to Jesus Christ
for pardon and for salvation. If a person is fit for one, he's
fit for the other. If he's fit to come to the Lord
Jesus Christ, to be saved from his sins and be clothed in the
righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ and have endless eternal
life in Christ and be entitled to the blessings of heaven if
he comes to Christ empty-handed as a beggar in poverty, having
nothing to offer, nothing to give, no confidence in himself
or anything else. If he comes to Christ, then he's
fit to come to the Lord's table. Do you see what I'm saying? If
he's fit to come to the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved, he's
fit to come to the Lord's table. If a person is fit for one, he's
fit for the other. But if he comes, there must not
be any hypocrisy or pretense or saying with his lips that
which is not in his heart. Some say, I'm afraid of falling
into sin after I've been to the Lord's table. I dare not come. I'm so weak and I'm just afraid
if I come to the Lord's table and come to that feast and sit
there with the brethren and remember the Lord's death until He comes
again, I'm afraid that as I go from the place where the table
is set, that I might have some bad thoughts and I might say
something that is contrary to Christian living and maybe I
won't come. Well, now, I'll say this again.
If you wait until you're not afraid of such things, you'll
never come. If you wait until... You have no sin whatsoever, you'll
never come because you're a saved sinner. You're a saved sinner. Your sins have been paid for
by the Lord Jesus Christ. The debt has been paid in full. Your sins have been washed in
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and he hath made you clean. You are washed whiter than the
driven snow. You are so clean that even God
himself cannot find a flaw in you because you are in Christ. Now, if you wait until you are
not afraid of such things, I might fall. then you never will come
because you still have a sinful nature. And you'll have that
sinful nature sticking fast to you until the last dying breath
that you take. When you're seized to breathe,
That's when you'll cease to sin. When you come down to die, death
will take away that nature. But as long as you're alive and your bones are clothed with
muscle and tissue and there's life in your body and soul, You'll
sin. So if you wait until everything
is exactly perfect with your nature, you'll never come to
the Lord's table because it won't happen. It won't happen. You'll sin. We sin in word and
thought and deed. There is no more fitness required
to come to the Lord's table than there is to come to the Lord
Jesus Christ for a full and complete salvation. Well, the only way
to obtain pardon and forgiveness is by coming to the Lord Jesus
Christ. We come to Him today. We come to Him tomorrow. We come
to Him the next day. We come every day again and again
and again and again and again. And we'll do that throughout
our lifetime. We'll continue to come to the
Lord Jesus Christ. And if we come to Christ for
salvation, then we're fit. to come to His supper, because
we come to the Lord Jesus Christ with no confidence in the flesh. Our confidence is in Him. Well, let me try to explain what
I'm trying to say. Over here in the book of 2 Corinthians,
I think it's chapter 11 of the second book of Corinthians, chapter
11, verse 27 and 28. No, that's not what I want. Go on over here. What I'm looking
for. What, Pat? Yeah, maybe I got
the wrong book. 1 Corinthians chapter 11. Yeah, that's it. It's about the
Lord's table here. Beginning there at verse 23. Paul said, I received as the
Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus,
the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread." This is
the institution of the Lord's Supper. He took bread. And when
he had given thanks, he broke it, broke the bread. His body
was broken, although not a bone, his body was broken. And he said,
Take each. He said, This is my body. He
didn't mean literally it was his body. This is my body. It's a type
of me. This is what's going to happen
to me. This is my body, which is broken for you. Broken for
you, you sinners. Poor, helpless, hopeless, wandering
sinners who have no hope of eternal life. It's just broken for you.
And he said, This do. This do. Do it! In remembrance
of me. Every time you do it, Every time
you do it, you remember that I died for you. You remember
that it was your sin that nailed me to the tree. You remember
that. It wasn't my sin. I had no sin. But you remember
who you are. You remember what a worthless
wealth you are. You remember that it was your
sins that was laid on me that I suffered for. I didn't suffer
for my sins. I had no sins. I'm suffering
for your sins. I'm your substitute. I'm your
advocate. I'm your lawyer. I'm your reconciler. I'm your savior. You remember
that, he said. As often as you do it, you remember
me. Remember what I did. What I did. Not what you did. What did you
do? You furnished the sin. What did
I do? I furnished the sin. It was my
sins that was laid on Him. He suffered for my sins in my
place, in my room, and in my stead, and made me accepted in
Him. So He said, You remember that.
You remember that you're not saved by your good works. You
had no good works. All you had was sin. You remember
that. You remember that so you can
honor Me. and glorify Me, not yourself." This dude remembers men in the
same manner also. He took the cup, broke the bread
down. Two things in the Lord's Supper.
There's the wine, not grape juice. It's wine. It's not store bread. It's unleavened
bread. There's no foreign substance
in leavened bread. There's no yeast in leavened
bread to make it rise. Leavened bread is just flour
and water. That's what leavened bread is.
That's what they ate. And that's what pictures the
Lord Jesus Christ. There's no leaven in the Bible
as sin. is the picture of leaven. And
there's no leaven in the Lord Jesus. Leaven is sin. No sin in Him. So it's bread. As often as you eat this bread,
this leaven bread, which is the picture of me, and drink this
cup, ye do show for the Lord's death till he come. And so it's
not grape juice. They didn't have no grape juice
back then. I know there's not a church, I bet there's not a
church in this county that when they take the Lord's Supper,
they don't take it with grape juice. What do you bet? Maybe
the Catholic Church. They may use wine. But the majority
of them takes grape juice. They wouldn't take wine. They'd
be afraid to take a drink of wine. The religious people of
this generation, they wouldn't take a drink of wine. They might
do it in secret. They wouldn't want anybody to
know about it. Ah, that fellow drinks a glass of wine. Oh, he
must be a great sinner. That's all they drank in the
Bible was wine. They didn't drink no grape juice,
Pepsi, Coke. Wine would make you drunk if you drank
enough of it. You show forth the Lord's death.
Whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord
unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the
Lord. But let a man examine himself,
and so let him eat of that bread, and drinketh of that cup. For
he that eateth and drinketh unworthily. Remember I read over here in
the book of Philippians this verse. It says, Let us therefore
as many as be perfect. It says, He that eateth and drinketh
unworthily. If he's not perfect, he's unworthy. He that eateth and drinketh unworthily
eateth and drinketh what? Damnation to himself at not discerning
the Lord's body. Well, let me kind of explain
this to you. Some of the Corinthian church
members, they seemingly had either mistaken
or forgotten what the design of the Lord's Supper was. And they made the Lord's Supper
a common feast. They made the Lord's Supper into
an ordinary meal. And the result of this was that
the Lord sent sickness and disease and death among them. In verse
30 of 2 Corinthians 11, it says, it talks about, eateth and drinketh
damnation to himself because he doesn't discern the Lord's
body. And for this cause, many are
weak and sickly among you and many sleep, many die. Why? Because they did not discern
the Lord's supper, or the Lord's body, or what the Lord did, or
who the Lord was, or the design of this supper was to remember
Him. And they just decided that this
would be a good opportunity for them to get drunk and have a
big time. So they brought their wine, their
bottles and they came to church maybe before the whole group
gathered and there was one in this corner and three or four
in this corner and four or five in the back and they began to
eat and to drink and to make merry and they had mistakenly
or forgotten the design and the purpose of the Lord's supper. Now that's the reason that they
were sickly and some of them died because of it. So they didn't
come to the table as poor, self-condemned sinners, hungering and thirsting
after the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ or to honor
or to glorify Christ. or to remember Christ, who he
was, and what Christ did. They just disregarded all of
that and made an ordinary meal out of it. But you and I here
this morning, we know the design and the reason for the supper. We have examined ourselves and
we have desired to eat worthily. We've desired to eat worthily
because we discerned the design of the supper. We know what the
supper means. The supper is not an ordinary
meal. The supper has been given to
a specific people, to us, given to the Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ as they gather to have this supper as they so agree
to a particular time. It can be every Sunday, it can
be every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, every Wednesday
night, or it can be once a week, it can be once a year, or once
a month. Whatever the church decides to
do about it, it's in their jurisdiction. But they are to keep this supper. And as often as they keep the
supper, they remember the doing and the dying of the blessed
Lamb of God. And it's not an ordinary meal.
That's not what it is, an ordinary meal. And some of these Corinthians,
that's what they believed in. Now listen to this, the eleventh
chapter of that book of I Corinthians. Paul says in verse seventeen,
now in this, well, Now in this I declare unto you, I praise
you not, that ye come together, not for the better, but for the
worse. For first of all, when you come together in the church,
he said, I hear that there be divisions among you, and I partly
do believe it. That is, they said to Paul, they
said, why, we're of Apollos. There's such a division among
us. He said, we're Peter. We're Peter's followers. Some
said, well, we're Barnabas's followers. We're this man's followers. We're Paul's followers. Paul
said, I hear that there be divisions among you, and I partly believe
it. For there must be also heresies
among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest
among you. So when you come together, therefore,
in one place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper. For in eating, every one taketh
before another his own supper. One is hungry, and the other
is drunken." They abused the supper of the Lord. They came
and made an ordinary meal. They took their wine. Some of
them drank too much wine. Some of them got drunk. You say
church members got drunk? The church members in the book
of Corinthians did. They got drunk. And God sent
sickness and caused some of them to sleep on the account of it.
And then he goes over in that 22nd verse and he says what?
After he says this what? After he says, For eating, every
one taketh before another his own supper. They brought their
own food. One's hungry. He wants to eat.
and another's drunken. What? Have ye not houses to eat
and to drink in? Do you live out there on Third
Street in a garage apartment? Why don't you eat and drink in
your house? Don't you have a house to eat
and drink in? That's what Paul's saying. Have
ye not houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the Church
of God? You must despise the church of
God because you come over here and you brought your own groceries
with you and you had a picnic in the corner there and you got
to drinking and you got drunk. Certainly they was unworthy.
All right? Have you not houses to drink
in? Or do you despise the church
of God? And shame them that have not.
What shall I say unto you? Shall I praise you in this? I
praise you not. Well, I say we understand, I
believe, here this morning. We understand that our worthiness is not in
ourselves. Our worthiness is in Him who
loved us and gave Himself for us. Say again now, seeing you know
who He is and why He came. Who is He? God manifest in the
flesh. Why did He come? He came to enable
God to be just and justifier. That is, He enabled God not to
compromise. See, justice, justice, the law
must be served, the law must be fulfilled. God cannot dispense
mercy at the expense of his justice. Justice must be satisfied. The
soul that sinneth must surely die. Somebody's got to die. So we know the Lord Jesus Christ
died in our stead and place and room for our suffering, for our
punishment, enabling God not to compromise his justice. The Bible says, God can be just
and justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. Well, to make this
short now, all that's needed to fit a man for Christ's company
and Christ's supper is a sense of his need and want of him. That's what makes him fit to
come. a sense of his personal need of the Lord Jesus Christ. He needs his sins forgiven. He needs a righteousness that
meets the demands of God's requirements. He needs to be adopted into God's
family. He needs to be born of the Spirit
of He needs to have the love of God shared abroad and near.
So all of this is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. So if he's
fit to come to Christ as a sinner, he's fit and welcome to come
to the table and eat of his supper. That's what I'm saying. If a man has Christ and His work and a belief, if Christ and His
work does not cover his nakedness, does not heal his wounds, does
not wash away his sins, and does not cover him with his righteousness,
then that man is lost forever. But if you believe this, if you
believe that you've got to have the righteousness of God to cover
your nakedness, then you're fit to come, if you believe that,
if you believe it. That's the hardest thing in the
world to do. is to believe that I've got to
have someone else's righteousness to cover my nakedness. Why? Because I've got a sense of pride
in me that I say I want to stand on my two high legs. I will stand
on my own reputation and my own character I need no help from
anybody else. That's self-righteousness and
pride. When the Holy Spirit convicts
a man, he makes him to know his unworthiness. He makes him to
know he's guilty as charged. He makes him readily confess,
Lord, I'm guilty. I have no righteousness of my
own. I have nothing to give. I'm naked. I'm on hold. Close me with your
righteousness." Well, it's an unscriptural notion of hoping to attain perfection
or something near it before we publicly confess the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's heresy. Heresy. We'll never be without sin. And when a man knows he's a sinner,
it's when he confesses to God, You're right, I am I am a sinner. I was born a sinner. I've been
a sinner all my life, and I'll never quit sinning until I put
this flesh into the grave. That's when I quit. I want to quit. I desire to quit,
but my nature won't let me. The least, the slightest, Mistakes are the evidence of
sin. We're all sinners. Sinners by
nature and sinners by choice. Well, I'm taking too much time. I'll have to quit and talk about
it some more some other time. So let me go back here to the
book of Philippians, chapter 3, and I'll just make a few remarks
and I'll quit. We'll go home and come back again
tonight. Let us, therefore, as many as
be perfect. Perfect. That means sinless. Paul said that he was perfect. Now, he did not come right out
and flat contradict himself, because he said in verse 12,
look up there in verse 12, I read verse 15, Let us therefore
as many as be perfect. He includes himself in as many
as be perfect. He said he is perfect. Now listen
to what he says up here. I'm saying now, it must mean
something else because he didn't flatly contradict himself. Verse
12, listen to what he says. Not as though I had already attained. Either were already perfect. Now he says in this 12th verse,
he said he wasn't perfect. I haven't already attained. either were already perfect.
Now, how do you bring this together with the 15th verse where he
says he is perfect? Now, he's perfect in the sense
that Paul says he's perfect. He means he is perfect in the
knowledge of God's salvation. That's what he's talking about.
Not in the flesh. But he's perfect in knowing who
Jesus Christ is. He's perfect in knowing what
God requires. He's perfect in knowing that
the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled all that God required on his
behalf. Paul said, I have that knowledge. I want more knowledge. I want
more knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ so I might enjoy the Lord
Jesus Christ and be comforted by the truth of who He is and
what He's done. But as perfection in the flesh? No! You can't be perfect in the
flesh. God said Noah was perfect. God
said Abraham was perfect. God said Zechariah was perfect. God said a lot of people were
perfect, but they were perfect in knowledge, not perfect in
the flesh. Well, I know what they say nowadays in these various religious groups
trying to trying in the flesh to satisfy their self-righteousness. They say that you've got to be
perfect. But nowhere in the Bible does
it say you can be perfect. Well, they said that's the aim
and the goal of a Christian. A man who's a believer, his aim
is to Peter exhorted, I said, Be holy
as God is holy. Well, a preacher says you can't
be holy in yourself, and most people agree with him, and they
say, Yes, but is not this our aim, to be holy? Absolutely not. That's an impossibility. Aim at an impossibility? You mean that you are aiming
to be like God? You can't be that way. You can't
be like God. To say that I'm aiming to be
like God, holy as God is holy is the same as saying, I aim
to be a creator. You cannot be perfect in yourself,
but you must be perfect before God. But you can be perfect You can't be as holy as God.
I don't care how you try or how much you try or how long you
live and how many rules and regulations that you keep. You cannot. It's an impossibility. Get it
out of your mind. You ain't going to be as holy
as God. There ain't nobody going to be
as holy as God. Your holiness is in Him, the
Lord Jesus Christ. He's holy, and you're holy in
Him. And that's how you're holy before
God. And that's how you're perfect
before God, in Him, not in yourself. That's the way it is. That's
the way it is. I apologize. I don't apologize
for anything that I said relative to that. I believe that's the
truth as in him. Very few know it. Very few even
hear it. Very few even preach it. Very
few know, don't know what I'm talking about. They say that
man's crazy. They ought to put him in jail,
shut him up. The other way he's talking. I'm
telling you what the Bible says. Man eats and drinks unworthily. That is not perfect in knowledge
of who Christ is and what Christ accomplished. He eats and drinks unworthily.
But if you know who Christ is, if you know who He is and you
know what He does, you know a complete salvation, and you received Him,
having no confidence in your flesh, but your confidence is
in Him, then you're fit. You're fit to come to the Lord
Jesus Christ, and you're fit to come to His table.