First Corinthians chapter 11. We'll start reading at verse
17 and read the remainder of the chapter. In the following directives,
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
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. The 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 unto 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 directions. Now everything that our Lord
has done and said, he has done and said for the benefit of his
people, his church, his bride. Now think of that for a minute.
That's a pretty broad statement, but that's the truth of it. Everything,
everything the Lord has done, everything he has said is for
our good. None of it's even neutral. That's why we can say, and we
know that all things work together for good to them who love God,
who are the called according to his purpose. Because that's
the way the Lord does things. Now we readily see that in the
sacrifice of himself without spot to God as our substitute. And that's generally what we
focus on. And that's what we should focus on, that is the
central point of Christian doctrine and Christian worship. Christ
and him crucified. And it's not hard to see that
that's for our good, is it? I mean, that's obvious. He died in our place. He bore
our sins in his body on the tree. The Lord hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all. And it was the pleasure or the
will of the Lord to crush him. And when he shall make his soul
an offering for sin, he shall prolong his days, he shall see
his seed, he shall be satisfied, and the will of Jehovah will
prosper in his hand. Now that's just as good a stuff
as anybody could ever hear if he understands what those things
mean. But we're not as likely to notice the goodness of the
Lord in all else that he has done. We don't think of it so
much in those terms. But for example, he set up a
form of corporate worship. Now when we say corporate worship,
that word is simply derived from a Latin word, corpus, meaning
the body. We get our word corpse from it.
We also get our word core as in the marine core. The core
is a body of people. And the church is a body of people. Now all of us worship him individually. We are to worship the Lord individually
at all times. I know we can't do this consciously
because we can only think about one thing at a time. And there's
matters that we have to attend to in this life. But yet we ought
always be ready in worship and ought always to take what opportunities
we can to have conscious worship of God our creator and redeemer. But the Lord Jesus has set it
up so that all believers within a certain location would gather
as they are able in order to worship the Lord together. Now,
tradition says that the church of the first century, of the
apostolic age, met on the first day of the week. Now there's
nothing in the Bible that says that's what they did, really. The closest thing you get to
it is when Paul gave instruction regarding giving, he says on
the first day of the week, let each person set aside what they
are going to give. But that doesn't necessarily
mean that that's the day that the church met. He might have
merely been saying, you know, the first thing that you do with
what the Lord has given you is set aside something to give towards
his kingdom in this world. But we have no command anywhere
in all the scriptures that says what the day we call Sunday is
a day for worship. So you say, well, then why do
we worship on Sundays? Well, because our culture, you
know, having been built pretty much on, as they say, the Judeo-Christian
ethic, just our culture grew up recognizing
that, and therefore not too many people have to work on Sundays.
Most organizations don't schedule activities on Sundays. It's the
day we've got when we can do it most conveniently. But there's
nothing that says we have to meet like this on Sunday, or
that if we meet on another day, it's any less a worship service
than when we meet on Sunday. But the Lord did set it up that
the Lord's people meet. And he even instructed his apostles
on how to set these churches up and instructed them to teach
us things like, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves
together as the manner of some is, but all the more. That is, be even more zealous
in coming together and being consistent in the assembly. Why?
To build each other up in love and to encourage each other. Now, over the years, church has
grown into kind of a spectator sport. And that's unfortunate. I guess a lot of reasons could
be given for it. When the church first began meeting, they didn't
have their own buildings to meet in. That is, there was not a
church building in Ephesus. They met in homes, primarily. Actually, right after the day
of Pentecost, they met in the temple. The temple was a rather
large compound and they just kind of occupied, they just get
together quite informally. And they were listening to what
the apostles had to teach. But as things became a little
bit more formalized, they were meeting in various homes Depending
on the size of the city, it might be several homes. And that way,
people didn't have to go so far, because they couldn't get in
their car and easily drive. They had to walk or ride a mule,
a horse, or a camel, or something like that. But they were meeting
in homes. And there's one thing I like
about that. And I've enjoyed home meetings
when I've had it. All the formality of church falls
by the wayside. You know, we have a structure,
we have an order of service, and the reason it's the same
every week is that way I don't have to think about it. Well,
what's the order of service gonna be this week? I just fill in
the blanks. But we get this pattern that
we follow, and we think that there's something holy about
the pattern. There isn't. Or that, you know,
when we walk in a building like this, that all at once we've
got to put on a certain attitude. But when we meet in, for lack
of a better way to put it, non-church venues, we just come together
as people who have a common faith, follow a common Lord, worship
a common God. We are joined together in one
body by one spirit, aspiring to one hope. And when it's time,
we start, and when we're done, we quit. But church buildings have been
set up, and so you look at ours here, it would be real easy,
and it's something we gotta be careful of, it'd be real easy
that everybody joins, and then there's people up on the platform,
and they're the ones doing the worshiping, and everybody's out
there watching them. So it becomes a spectator thing.
Well, buildings are set up this way for convenience. Because
if someone's going to preach like I do, you want them to be
in a spot that people, well, say people can see. It's not
necessary that you see us, but at least you'll know where we
are and where to listen. And so it's a little bit elevated. And therefore, it lends itself
to this idea that somehow there's a wall between what goes on up
here and what goes on out here. Brethren, we are right now all
together, one body, worshiping the Lord together. And that's the way it should
be. The church is a body of people that gathers. Bonnie and I were
at the Minnesota State Fair on Friday, and we were in the horse
barn. And for some reason, they wanted
us to leave. They were closing off one section
of it, I guess. This was later in the day. But
I turned around, and there stood a guy, and he had a t-shirt on with
a saying, a religious saying. And normally, I think that those
sayings are rather shallow. But this one was pretty good,
I thought. It had an important point to
make. It says, the church has left the building. Now, you think
about that a minute. The church. has left the building. Or as one person put it another
way, God did not instruct us to go to church, he instructed
us to be the church. We say we're going to church,
but really we're not going to church. The church is going to
a building, gathering in a location so they can assemble together
for mutual encouragement and building up and faith building
But when we're done, the church is going to leave the building. The building will stay here,
but the church isn't staying here. The church is going on
out. Now, with these assemblies, the Lord gave a promise of his
special presence. Now within each of these assemblies,
there are equalities and differences. I read to you from Ephesians
chapter four, you can turn there, I'm just going to look at a couple
of verses. In verse four, he says, there
is one body, one body. Now therein is the
equality of everyone within the Lord's Church. When we meet together like this,
every true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ comes here on equal
footing before God. Every believer in every congregation
is as much a child of God as any other believer. He is as
much loved, accepted, blessed, and cherished by God the Father. Each and all of them have been
redeemed by the same blood, follow the same Lord, look to the same
Savior, They are called to the same hope by the same Spirit,
having experienced the same baptism. And that's not the ceremony of
baptism that Paul is speaking of here. He's talking about the
reality that the ceremony only represents. And that is when
we are immersed, and that's what the word baptism essentially
means, when we are immersed into Christ by the Spirit of God Himself. Now, every believer in every
place, in every denomination that has believers, every one
of them is equal in all those things. There are not any who
are more saved than others. Now, this is not a condition
that we're supposed to aspire to. Paul didn't say there should
be one body, he said there is. There is. We don't always act
like we're members of the same body. You know what it's like
when the members of your own body, various parts of your own
body don't get along? They call that being sick. And
it's no fun, is it? Well, this one body of the Lord
Jesus, while it's on earth, it doesn't always get along. not
the various individual churches, they don't get along with each
other, not the denominations, and not even the individual members
within any given congregation. Why is that? Well, because we're
flesh. The apostle said, well, it's
bound to happen, there's gonna be divisions among you. Shouldn't be, but there are. But this is an objective truth
that there is one body. But even though there is one
body, with all these equalities, God has made differences or distinctions
among individual believers. In Ephesians chapter 4, Verse
7, it says, to each one of us, grace has been given as Christ
apportioned it. Now, grace has lots of manifestations. He's not saying that the grace
of salvation is given in various portions. No, not that grace.
But there's also the graces that God gives that enables people
to be useful within the kingdom of God. And he's not talking
here about more or less grace, just different kinds of grace. And it says that in each of these
things, these graces that are given to us, they are gifts.
They are not things we earned. They are not things which arise
from our natural abilities. They are graces. And they're
given to us because Jesus Christ came and he died and his death
was successful, so he rose again. He ascended on high. He led captivity,
captive, that is, he led the captives to freedoms, what he's
talking about, I believe. But then he says, and he gave
gifts to men. Not men as males, men as human
beings. And what gifts did he give them?
Well, he lists some here. And the ones he lists there in
Ephesians chapter four were, He's speaking particularly of
the various kinds of teaching ministries, you know, apostles,
evangelists, pastors and teachers. But that's not all the gifts
that he's given. You can turn back to Ephesians, excuse me,
1 Corinthians chapter one. And it says, I'm sorry, 1 Corinthians
chapter 12. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. It's
just right after the text we read earlier. And he says in verse four, there
are different kinds of gifts, but the same spirit. There are
different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different
kinds of working. But the same God works all of
them in all men." Once again, talking about all those within
his church. For he goes on to say, now to
each one, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common
good. Now, in some people, it's obvious
to all. what gift has been given to them,
what manifestation of the Spirit was given to them. For example,
with me, the pastor teacher. That's a gift. What I do for you, I can't do
in my own strength. It is not something natural to
me. And I'll show you how I know that's to be so. I stand completely
amazed that what I do accomplishes any good in you. You go out the door, you tell
me, that was a great message. And I'm standing there thinking,
hope they don't fire me. I hear from some, well, the Lord
really blessed me in what you said the other day. Really? Because I stand here and I do
what seems to me to be quite easy. I'm just telling you what
I see in the scriptures. But see, there's been a gift
given. And the gift doesn't so much reside within me. It's rather
God's working through me for your good. I've described it to you. It's
kind of like being a sock puppet. And what is a sock puppet? It's
a sock with a couple of buttons on it, sewed on it to look like
eyes. The guy puts it over his arm, shoves his hand in there
to make a mouth, and goes like this. And when he's done, he takes
the sock off. And what is it? Well, it's the
same thing it always was. It was a sock with a couple of
buttons on it. And nothing that that sock did,
so far as communicating, came from the sock itself. It was
a hand inside, wasn't it? So sometimes it's obvious. At
other times, it's not so obvious. But know this, are you a believer
in the Lord Jesus? Then somehow or another, the
Spirit of God is manifested in you doing something for the good
of God's church to build it up. See, I can't imagine what I'm
doing that's any help to the church at all. You know, really,
that's a good thing. Because if you knew what it was,
you'd probably get proud of it, and you'd probably try to take
it over and say, well, I can do this better. Sometimes it's
good not to know what God is doing through you, because if
you knew what it was, you might try to do it. But we know this, every believer
has been given the Spirit of God. in order that he may be
some kind of help to the church of God. But there's differences in maturity,
understanding, gifts, and ministry. There's even natural differences
among God's people, gender, social status, wealth, health, intelligence,
and all of that, different personalities. But such is our fleshly nature
that even though God has set up his church this way, to where
there are things which we are all exactly the same and yet
in other things we differ, and the Lord set the church up that
way, and he set it up for our good, such is our flesh that
we tend to take note of the differences and then try to glory in whatever
difference we see that we have and think that that kind of elevates
us above others. Generally speaking, I mean, we
won't say these things out loud because we know better than to
do that, but we look at our brother, our sister, and when we judge
them, what are we doing? We're elevating ourselves above
them and saying there's something about me that's better than what
I'm seeing about them. And yet it is the Lord that has
made each of us to be what we are and made them to be what
they are. And yet we're going to stand
here and find fault with it. Oh, what a mess our flesh makes
of things. So for the good of the church,
the Lord established two and only two ordinances. Only two
ceremonies for the church to observe, baptism and the Lord's
table. There are no other rituals commanded. I don't know that we're ever
forbidden from inventing some others if we want to, to do things
in a certain way, but we're only commanded these two. And these
two are very simple ceremonies. Both of them illustrate much
the same thing, and they teach us the essential unity of the
Church of the Lord Jesus. Now that's not all they teach
us, but that's one of the things they teach us. How is that? Well, each is a testimony of
the one Lord and Savior of every member of the Lord's Church,
for both of these ceremonies point to the Lord Jesus Christ. Not a one of them, neither one
of them is about us. Neither one of them is designed
to draw attention to us. Rather, they're showing us the
Lord Jesus Christ. Baptism shows us that each and
every one of God's elect is a member of his church by the same means,
being identified with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. How is a person put in God's
church? Well, we know he's put in God's
church by God's will. We know through the preaching
of the gospel and all that, but really, what is it that united
him to God, united him to all of God's blessings? It's the death, burial, and resurrection
of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, I am the way, the
truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father other
than by me. People like to say, well, I think
all religions are just different ways to the same place. And they
are, for the most part, true. correct when they say that. Because
nearly all religions, all religions but one, are simply different
roads to the same place, and that's condemnation. There's
one road, one road to the Father, and that's Christ. And the opening to that road We might say the construction
of that road was the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in burying
our sins in his body on the tree, a fully satisfying divine wrath
against those sins. And because of that, God raised
him from the dead, called him and said, sit here at my right
hand till I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. There is a scripture in the book
of Hebrews that talks about Christ being the forerunner into the
presence of God for us, and someone has said that that word is where
we get our word pioneer from, and I guess that kind of makes
sense. He was the first one to get to God, the first human to
get to God. Now not the first one in time,
we realize Abraham did and all that, but he is the first one
when you look at things from the prospect or perspective of
eternity. He went into that most holy place
not made with hands and there he offered himself without spot
to God. And in going there, he made a
trail and we just walking in behind him. And as we walk that
path that he walked, we don't experience the things he experienced,
But all that he experienced is credited to us as though we did
experience it. Paul says, I am crucified with
Christ. Paul was never crucified. He
was never literally hung upon a tree, but he's crucified in
Christ. And he says that we who are dead
in trespasses and sins have been made alive together with Christ
and seated with him in Christ. And that's what baptism is teaching. We all got into this place the
same way. There isn't one way for good
people and another way for bad people. If there were, there'd
be nobody getting in the way for good people. Because we can't
do that. There's not one way for men and
another for women. There's not one way for Jews
and another for Gentiles. There's not one way for first
world citizens and another way for primitive third world citizens. There is one way into the presence
of the Father, and that is through Jesus Christ. And that way was
made by his death, burial, and resurrection, which we participate
in by God's grace. And so what does baptism teach us, among other things?
It teaches us we're all the same in how we got in. And then the
Lord's table goes on to teach us that each and every member
of the Lord's church is equally dependent on the Lord, being
forever nourished by the very same work that brought them into
the kingdom. Here in this instruction that
Paul gives in chapter 11 of 1 Corinthians, Paul says, for whenever you eat
this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death
until He comes. Now, our Lord said, my body is
true food, my blood is true drink. Sounds kind of creepy to us,
I understand. But we know the Lord is speaking
metaphorically there. But we live upon the broken body
and shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. All of us do. All of us need it all of the
time. There's not a day in your spiritual
life that you are not feeding upon Christ, that you are not
drinking in the power of His shed blood, spiritually speaking. Because the moment you're disconnected
from that, you're lost. You may not be conscious of it,
but understand that is what sustains you. There are times when you're
really conscious of it. I'm not gonna say when you are,
when I'm most conscious of it. When sin most heavily presses
upon my conscience, I see how dependent I remain. Every day, every moment, how
dependent I remain on the very same thing I looked to when I
first believed. Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I've not moved on to bigger and
better things. There are no bigger and better
things. The same food that is given to infants in Christ
is sufficient and even needful to the oldest and most mature. And all we need to do to prove
that is try to live spiritually on something else and find out
how quickly we begin to shrivel up. That's how some churches operate.
I remember that, you know, we were taught, you know, it's by
grace that you're saved. And they'd pound that and pound
it. Not of works, lest any man should boast, you know. And they'd
get people to make their decision for Jesus. You know, ask Jesus
in their heart or whatever phrase it was they used to describe
it. And that got them in. And then once they're in, the
message began to change. Because suddenly it turned on
what you must do. It went from done to do. It became, OK, you're in the
door, but if you really want a really nice place in the room,
you got to do this. You got to do that. There's no question that there
are some instructions given to us as to how we ought to live.
In fact, we read there about walking worthy of the calling
that we've received. We don't have time to go into
all of that means for sure, but there is nothing given us to
do in order to improve our relationship with God. Why? Because our relationship begins,
continues, and ends with the doing and the dying of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And there's not a thing that
we'll ever have or ever receive that comes from any other work
than that work which the Lord Jesus Christ did. We finish as we started, depending
on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let's just make a few comments
on what Paul says about the Lord's Supper, one thing he teaches us in verse
18, he says, I hear when you come together as a church. You know, when King James put
together a group of people, to make an official English translation
of the Bible. He had some rules for the translators,
and most of them were very good, but one of them was absolutely
horrible, and it said all the old ecclesiastical words must
be maintained. And the three words in particular
that he wanted to make sure didn't get changed were the words church,
bishop, and baptism. And the reason was is if they
had actually translated those words, it would have brought
down the whole hierarchy of the Anglican Church and any of the
other churches that like to establish these hierarchies. You know,
one man's this powerful and then this powerful and this, you know.
In fact, throughout most of what we might
call the Christian age, churches have tended towards eventually
the people who work in the church, the so-called clergy, they are
the church and everyone else just comes to church. And when they read things like
the church is the pillar and ground of truth, It's taken to
mean that those who are the preachers and the leaders and the so-called
bishops and the other archbishops and all that, that's the church
and they are the ones who are the pillar and ground of truth.
If they'd ever simply translated this word, it would have been
like, you know, if you stack up a bunch of cards, you know,
real carefully and then somebody knocks one of them out, the whole
thing comes down. And here's one of them. This word simply
means the assembly. It says, when you gather, as an assembly. He said, I hear that there are
divisions among you, and to some extent I believe
it. Now why would Paul believe that
which was told to him, but he had not seen it with his own
eyes yet? because division is so natural
to human beings. And since we remain human beings,
even when we have been saved by the grace of God, that fallen
human nature causes us to divide. And Paul gets a little sarcastic.
He says, no doubt there have to be differences among you. And here it's a different word.
It's the word that actually becomes the English word heresy. But we always think of heresy
in terms of incorrect doctrine. And that's not what it always
means. In fact, I don't know that it ever means that in the
New Testament scriptures. The word means self-chosen opinion. or a self-choice. And the idea
is that in the church, these divisions occur as people come
up with their own ideas of how things ought to be and who's
really in and who's out or who's somewhere in the middle. And
in another place, at least from the King James, it calls them
damnable heresies. And he wouldn't use the word
damnable as some kind of vulgarity there. That word actually means
destructive, destructive divisions within the church. Now you think
of all the people in the world that ought to be able to get
along, it'd be believers. But such is our nature that it
comes up and we shouldn't be surprised by it, nor overly taken
back. when we see it happen. Why? It
just proves what we've said all along. We are sinners saved by
the grace of God. And sometimes it's the saved
by the grace of God part that is more evident. Sometimes it's
the sinner's part that's more evident. Thank God. While we go back and forth, God
never changes. Boy, do I rely on that. Up and
down, up and down, that's me. One moment confident, the next
time filled with anxiety. One moment marching to Zion,
the next moment cowering under a rock somewhere. But our Lord,
he's just the same. He does not change. Jesus Christ
is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And the church does
not cease to be a church. The people in it do not cease
to be loved by God, blessed by God, cherished by God, simply
because at various times, they act more like their natural selves
than the spiritual selves that God has made them to be. It happened
in Corinth, it happens everywhere else. But here's the sad result. When
you come together, it's not the Lord's Supper ye, for, ahem,
for as you eat each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody
else." Now it would seem that in the apostolic age when they
had the Lord's table they actually came and they would have a meal
together and And the Lord's table was kind of mixed in there with
it, which was kind of like what the Passover meal was. Remember,
it was a Passover meal that our Lord used to institute what we
call the Lord's table. And it was an entire meal, but
it involved the breaking of unleavened bread and the drinking from the
cup. And so what would happen at the
Corinthian church, when they're supposed to be having the Lord's
table, people would bring them their entire dinner. And they
would sit down and nobody'd wait for anybody else. They didn't
eat together. They didn't make a potluck out
of it. And the sad thing was is that there were some who were
wealthy. Corinth was a very wealthy city. And they brought some very
fine foods and plenty of wine. And they'd sit over by themselves
having their feast, their little group, and you'd have others. And then there were some who
were poor and they didn't even have anything to bring in terms
of food. And Paul says, so some of you
go hungry while others get drunk. You said drunkenness at the Lord's
table? That's what gets me when people
say, boy, we need to be like the early church. You want to be
like that? Have the Lord's table and on one hand, you got people
don't get nothing. And on the other hand, you get
people's got so much they're getting drunk. That's why I suppose it's been
a tradition maybe for centuries, I don't know, you know, when
we get together to eat, all the food gets put out on one table,
doesn't it? Everybody brings different stuff. But even if
somebody wasn't able to bring anything at all, they're allowed
to get in line and take what they want, aren't they? And of
course, when we have the Lord's table, we've kind of got that
as something separate altogether. So certainly we all have the
same thing. But that's what was going on. How much flesh can
creep up even in the worship of the church? And so he says
in verse 22, don't you have homes to eat and drink in? If all you're
gonna do is have a meal, do that at home. He says, or do you despise the
church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? And whenever
we accent our differences and forget what binds us together
into one, we are despising the church of God. So I'd never despise
God's church. I know you wouldn't do it on
purpose. I wouldn't. But whenever we divide, that's
what we're doing. And so Paul speaks of how the
Lord set up the Lord's table. And it was the Lord and his disciples. Judas, as I recall, had already
been sent out. So there's just 11 of them left. But while they're eating, he
took that bread And he broke it. And from the same piece of
bread, and it was like a flatbread thing that they had back then,
he broke it off. Everybody, all 11, were eating off that same
piece of bread. What'd that show? They're all
feeding off the same Christ. And we don't do this for sanitary
reasons, but then they passed around the cup. And everybody
took a drink out of it and passed it on to the next guy. We each
get our own individual cup, but it all came out of one bottle. Why? Because we all drink from
the same fountain. And when we do so, oh, it is
an act of worship. This isn't a duty to perform,
an obligation to fulfill. It's a form of worship where
it says, for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup,
you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. See, I can't preach. You're going
to hear in a couple of minutes. You're going to preach by eating
of the bread and drinking from the cup, because you're showing
forth the very same thing that I and all other God-called preachers
declare week after week after week, Christ and Him crucified. And then it says that those that
drink unworthily in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning
against the body and blood of the Lord. So man ought to examine
himself before he eats the bread and drinks the cup. For anyone
who eats and drinks without recognizing, and it says here, the body of
the Lord, eats and drinks judgment on himself. Does that mean that
anyone who eats and drinks and doesn't recognize that that bread
is a picture of the body of the Lord, that he drinks condemnation
or judgment on himself? No. I don't believe that's the
body of the Lord he's talking about, or he'd have mentioned
the body and the blood, because remember, there's the bread and
the wine. He said, if you eat this, and
here's the unworthy way in which you would eat of the Lord's table,
not recognizing this one single body of the Lord called the church. If you eat it with judgment in
your heart towards your brethren, if you eat it separating yourself
from others, I know that the tradition, I
guess, in this area was that before the Lord's Table observance,
people would try to spend a week in preparation, or at least the
night before, trying to be special goods so that they felt like
they were worthy to come to the Lord's Table. That's not what
worthy means. Brethren, in that case, none
of us are worthy. Here's how you eat and drink at the table
of the Lord in a worthy fashion. You do so in a spirit of unity,
knowing that we are all members of the same body, washed by the
same blood, striving to the same hope, called
by the same Spirit, and preserved by Him. And not one of us is
more cherished by God than another. Not one of us is to be esteemed
above the other. In other words, when we become
judgmental of others, especially at this Lord's table, when we
become judgmental of others, all we do is bring judgment on
ourselves. For it to do so, to do so is to deny the very
truth that we're supposed to be showing forth. The broken body and the shed
blood that gathered together a group of worthless sinners
like you and me and called it the Church of the Living God. Oh, what a blessed truth our
Lord teaches us. By blood, we are all washed clean. By resurrection, we're all made
alive. By ascension to the right hand
of God, every last one of us is seated with him in the place
of favor and acceptance in the presence of God. And while the
world can go on with their divisions and talking about who's better
than the other and dividing along racial lines and along gender
lines and along political lines and all this kind of like, let
them do it. We don't have to. We don't have to. We can live
in peace. We can live in love. We can live
in joy. Why? because of exactly what
the broken body and the shed blood of Christ is to us. Heavenly Father, we pray that
this message will be helpful. Oh, we thank you, Lord Jesus,
that you gave yourself for us. Now, as we observe this ceremony,
may it humble us May it show us what we are in
nature, and at the same time show us what we are by grace. May it remind us that we're unworthy
sinners, and yet unworthy as we are, we are still the children
of the living God. In the name of Christ we pray,
amen.