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Reading 1 Corinthians 11:31-34 where the Apostle Paul urges the church in Corinth to judge themselves that they would not be judged with the world. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
It is good and right that we examine ourselves to see that we are walking in the faith. And if we test ourselves, then we should come to the Lord's table and partake of the bread and drink of the cup in a worthy manner when we understand the text.
This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing and if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program.
Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Thank you Becky. We'll be back to our study of 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and picking up where we left off yesterday. We're going to finish up this section where Paul instructs the church in Corinth regarding their use of the Lord's table.
I'm going to start reading in verse 23, we'll go through verse 34. This is out of the legacy standard Bible. The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus us in the night in which he was being 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, he took the cup also after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.
But a man must test himself and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason, many among you are weak and sick and a number sleep.
But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world. So then my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.
If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home so that you will not come together for judgment. The remaining matters I will direct when I come. So consider again verses 29 and 30. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.
For this reason, many among you are weak and sick and a number sleep. Meaning they have died. The Corinthians misuse of the Lord's table has even resulted in some of them dying. The judgment of God coming upon them because they did not judge themselves.
They came to the table and they ate of the bread or drank of the cup in an unworthy manner. They were living in sinfulness. They did not repent of their sin. And because of this, the Lord judged them with sickness and even with death.
Now this is not everybody in the church in Corinth, right? It's not like you could have walked into the Corinthian church and looked and seen the sick people over here and the healthy people over here.
So I know that these sick people, well, they are guilty of some kind of a sin that they haven't repented of because they're sick. But these healthy people over here, they're righteous. They're doing everything right.
It's not the way that we should understand this, but rather we test a person according to their own actions. Well, in this case, Paul is saying, examine yourselves. But we have a responsibility within the church to encourage and admonish one another, right?
Colossians 3 .16. So as you see a person who is walking in sin, you would confront that person and tell them to repent, the instructions that we have regarding church discipline in Matthew 18. So keep it between you and that other person first.
And then if they won't repent, then you bring one or two others along so that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses, right? So let's stick with that initial confrontation there.
You have recognized a sin that somebody is in, and you go to confront them about that sin. So the judgment that you make of that person is based on the sin. It's not based on the fact that they're sick or they're healthy.
And if a person gets sick and you see that they've been walking in sin, maybe using discernment, you can connect the dots there and say, might the reason why you're sick be because you're in this sin and God is judging you?
Look, I'm a personal testimony to this. There was a period of time in my early 20s when I had a girlfriend and the two of us were doing things that we're not honoring of the Lord. And I was sick almost that entire relationship, almost the whole thing, like two thirds of the time or something like that, of the months that we were together, I was sickly.
I wasn't eating well, I was constantly depressed, I wasn't sleeping, doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I had some obvious physiological problems and they were all connected to spiritual problems.
Now, I didn't notice this until much later. It wasn't until after I got out of that relationship and I repented that I looked back and I could see, oh, OK, that's why I felt that way was because I was living in sin and God's hand was heavy upon me in that so that I would not be comfortable in my sin.
God judged me in this way so that I would repent. It was it was a loving discipline that he gave to me so that I wouldn't get comfortable in my sin and therefore perish with the world, as Paul talks about here in first Corinthians 11.
We also read about this in Psalm 32. So in Psalm 32, one blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long, for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. It was later when I came into that psalm, I remember reading that and all of those things came back to mind of that period of my life where I was walking in this sin and I wasn't repenting of it.
And for all of the months that I was together with this girl that I should not have been with, God's hand was heavy upon me so that I wouldn't stay with her and I wouldn't stay comfortable in my sin, but I would repent of that and desire the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
Praise God for that. It was a miserable period of my life, but I praise God that he brought me through it and has shown me his kindness and his mercy and even his righteousness. If I had judged myself rightly, I would not be judged as it says in verse 31.
But recognize again, there are people that are getting sick and even some are dying in the church in Corinth because they don't examine themselves and they take of the body and the blood in an unworthy manner.
In a church that I attended several years ago, there was a story in that church, kind of part of the history of that church that involved a deacon and this deacon was caught in adultery and when he was caught, he would not repent of it.
In fact, what he decided to do instead was he left his wife and he went to this other woman. He abandoned his family and and stayed with his mistress instead. If memory serves, I think she had committed adultery too.
So she left her husband and got together with this man. Not long after this happened, after they left their respective spouses and decided to be together, the man got sick and he got so sick he got put in the hospital.
Two of the deacons from our church went to him in the hospital. They knelt down by his bedside and they begged him. They said, we beg of you, brother, leave this woman and go back to your wife and children.
We believe that this sickness that has come upon you is a judgment of God and whether he decides to spare you or whether he decides to take your life, you need to repent of this sin and become right with God or it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God and the man would not do it.
Even sick in his hospital bed, he would not repent and he was determined that he was going to get better and he was going to live a happier life with this other woman. Two weeks later, he was dead. He died in that hospital bed.
And this was talked about in the church that I was in that this was a judgment of God that came upon this man because of his sinfulness. I don't believe that God does this with every single person. Again, it's not like you can walk into a church and see all the sick people and know that they're in sin and you see all the healthy people and you know that they are in righteousness.
But there are occasions in which God will make an example of somebody so that we would all stand in fear and we would worship the one true God. We would walk in righteousness instead of in sinfulness.
For again, as it says in Hebrews, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Who knows when God will take your life? You could be walking in righteousness and your life would be taken from you today.
But even if that were the case, you have nothing to fear of death if you are in the righteousness of Christ. For you know that when you die, you will stand before God and you will hear him say, well done, good and faithful servant, now great is your reward.
But if you are not walking in righteousness, you're continuing to walk in rebellion, you're walking in sin. And we can narrow it down to those sins that Paul has specifically laid out for this church in Corinth.
You're walking in any of these sins. You won't repent of them. They continue to be your lifestyle. Right. Paul says in first Corinthians five eleven, I am writing to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is a sexually immoral person.
You are engaged in some kind of sexually immoral activity outside of marriage, sex in a marriage. That's good. That's what God created sex for sex outside of the covenant relationship that you have with your spouse.
That's sexual immorality. And as Paul will go on to say in first Corinthians six, nine and ten, that the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God. So he says in verse five, do not associate with any so-called brother if he is a sexually immoral person or greedy or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or a swindler, not even to eat with such a one, not even to come to the Lord's table with such a one.
And so there you go. There you have kind of the summary of sins there. Just those sins that Paul lays out there before the Corinthians. If you're walking in any of those sins and you lose your life today, you have loved that sin rather than righteousness.
Are you sure that when you stand before God, he's going to say to you, well done, good and faithful servant? Or will he rather say, depart from me, you worker of lawlessness, I never knew you. The words of warning that Jesus gives in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter seven.
So be sure that you're walking in righteousness. Now, as I say this to you, I hope the fear of God fills your heart. As it says in Proverbs 1 7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge.
It is good to have a healthy fear of God. So I certainly hope that the fear of God is is in your soul. But don't hear me saying these things and now think to yourself, well, I better go out there and do right things because I don't want to die and go to hell.
I don't I don't want to stand before God and have him judge me and cast me into hell. You can do all of those good works until you're blue in the face. It is not going to make you righteous. You need to come to Christ.
You need to love the Lord Jesus Christ and he washes you and he makes you new and he will give you a new heart and a new mind that desires to do the right thing instead of doing the wrong thing that will go after that which pleases the Lord instead of that which pleases your flesh.
Turn to Christ. Don't again, don't try to do good works to save yourself. You turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and he will make you new. As we will read later on in Second Corinthians 521, for our sake, he became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
And if you love the Lord Jesus Christ, then walk in his righteousness. Examine yourself. It is good for us to test ourselves all the time to see that we are walking in the faith. If we judge our bodies rightly, everything that we do, we do in the body.
You do righteousness. You do it in the body. If you sin, you do it in the body. If we judge our bodies rightly, then we will not be judged when we come and stand before the Lord. And remember, Christ is with us.
He is present at the Lord's table. When we gather together here, he who eats and drinks, drinks judgment upon himself. If he does not judge the body rightly for this reason, Paul says to the church in Corinth, there's some among you who are weak and sick and a number even sleep.
But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. Verse 32. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world. Again, that goes back to my experience, what I went through when I was living in sinfulness and God's hand was heavy upon me.
In this particular instance, he was not judging me with the world. And again, I can't even express it enough. I thank God for that. What would have happened to me if I had died when I was walking in sin in that period in my life?
I've had somebody ask me that before. They've said to me, were you not saved when you were in that part of your life? And my response is, I don't know. I actually don't know. What would have happened to me if I died while I was living in that kind of rebellion?
I don't know what would have happened to me, but I know what would happen to me now. If I die now, I go stand before the Lord in glory. God did not let me perish in that moment when I was in that sin.
He disciplined me. He made me feel miserable so I wouldn't be comfortable in my sin so that I would repent and I would turn back to the Lord Jesus Christ. When we are disciplined by the Lord, it's so that we will not be condemned along with the rest of the world.
And we read in Hebrews chapter 12 about how God disciplines those he loves. Well, he says also in Revelation chapter 3 to the church in Laodicea, Jesus says, those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.
But we have these words also, Hebrews 12, which quotes from Proverbs, Hebrews 12, 5. Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons, for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons and daughters of God. So the reason why we would go through discipline in this way, the reason why we struggle and suffer and we labor, but even in the midst of all of this, we put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We go through these things because God loves us, because he is disciplining us, because he is working out of us any desire that we have for the world. Don't desire the things of the world. Don't even desire comfort in this world.
A lot of us do that. We make comfort our God, right? There's so many people that do that. The panic that you see going on in the world right now is a result of COVID. This is a bunch of people who value comfort over God.
They've made comfort their God. So we need to mask up. I need to vaccinate 22 times. How many more booster shots you're going to come out with? Stick them in me because I want to feel comfortable. I want to be able to feel safe.
This religion of safism. God will put us through these trials and discipline us in this way so that we will not love anything more than him. It's so that we would rely upon Christ. 2 Corinthians chapter 1.
These things happen to us so that we would rely not on ourselves, but on him who raises the dead, as the Apostle Paul says there. So we go through these things. We are disciplined that we would not be judged with the rest of the world, but that we would grow.
We would mature in Christ. We would turn away from sinfulness. We would desire righteousness. We're growing in sanctification. We're being made holy. And as the Apostle Paul said to the Philippians in Philippians chapter 1, I am confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it at the day of Christ so that we will not be judged with the world.
We will be received by God. So then my brothers, Paul says verse 33, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. We will show that we have the love of God in our hearts when we love one another.
And Paul is getting closer and closer here to that big rebuke in chapter 13, right? The love chapter where he says to the Corinthians, you've not been acting this way. This is what love is. This is the way that you should be loving one another.
But here he begins on it. Before he gets to the big rebuke, he says here, wait for one another, love each other. There's nobody at the Lord's table who's more important than another. We are all beggars in need of Christ and he gives to us and we are satisfied.
Now let me make one final point here as we finish up. First Corinthians chapter 11. So in verse 34, Paul says, if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home so that you will not come together in judgment. Remember once again, there were these agape feasts, these love feasts that were going on there in the church in Corinth.
And people were filling themselves up with food. They weren't actually practicing the Lord's table. And Paul said that exactly back in verse 20. When you meet together in the same place, it is not to eat the Lord's supper.
They're eating their own food. They're not partaking of the table the way that Jesus had instructed that this was to be enjoyed. So if you're hungry, don't use the Lord's table to satisfy your hunger, not your physical hunger anyway.
This is to satisfy a spiritual hunger. So if you're hungry, eat at home so that you're not desiring things in your flesh and therefore coming into judgment when you come to the Lord's table. And finally, he says the remaining matters I will direct when I come.
So let's consider very briefly here as we wrap this up. Let's consider what Paul has addressed in first Corinthians chapter 11. What was the first thing we had? It was the instructions regarding head coverings, right?
What was the second part? It was instructions regarding the Lord's table. In both of these two instructions, there are very clear things that are said that must be followed. But also in these two instructions, there are some things that are not as clear and are not evident.
So in the in the first instruction regarding the head coverings, I kind of left it with this question. What is a head covering? Paul doesn't explain what a head covering is. What is it that a woman's supposed to be wearing on a hit on her head?
Exactly. You could also interpret this as just her hair. It's just saying women should have long hair. So as to what the covering is supposed to be, we don't know. There's a blank that's left for us there.
In the same respect regarding the Lord's table, Paul refers to bread and he refers to a cup, but he doesn't say exactly what's in that cup. He doesn't say that what's in the cup must be fermented wine.
Therefore, if a person partakes in communion and they're using grape juice, just, you know, nonalcoholic wine, essentially it hasn't aged, it hasn't been fermented. It's just it's the fruit of the vine, but it's not alcoholic.
What would be the problem with that? Is there anything here in this instruction about enjoying the Lord's table that that would say that having a nonalcoholic beverage would be the wrong way to partake of the cup?
I mentioned that because there are some out there that are so purist when it comes to the Lord's table that you have to have unleavened bread and you have to have fermented wine in your cup. But Paul doesn't say anything about those two things.
You could have bread with yeast in it or you can have unleavened bread or you can have juice or you can have wine. There's nothing in here that says that it must exactly be these elements. So we must follow the instructions as we know they are given clearly.
And then some of those other things that we have questions about, we can have grace toward one another and charity toward each other in how those things are handled and practiced. Amen. But let us not have attitudes where we're looking for ways to not be obedient to these things, especially when it comes to the Lord's table.
You're not more pious. You're not more holy because you decided not to partake of the Lord's table that day. Now, if you know that there's a sinful manner in you that would cause you to eat of the bread or drink of the cup in an unworthy manner, then by all means abstain.
But don't come into church thinking, hey, I'm not going to I'm not going to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. And now and now I'm more holy because I didn't come to the Lord's table. No. Paul says to test yourself.
That was verse twenty eight. A man must test himself. And after you've tested yourself, eat of the bread and drink of the cup, come to the table. Rejoice, proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
The death of Jesus Christ on the cross for our sins. His resurrection from the grave so that all who believe in him will not perish, but have everlasting life. Heavenly Father, thank you for this good word.
And I pray that you work in our minds and our hearts a desire to come to the Lord's table in a worthy manner, that we may delight to suck with Jesus, remembering the body that is broken for us and the blood that is spilled for the forgiveness of sins.
And may we proclaim this gospel message until the return of Christ. It's in his precious name that we pray. Amen.
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