The Lord’s Supper (Part 3)

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Sunday service 5/30/21. Passage: 1 Cor 11:23-32

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psalm 29 ascribe to the Lord Oh heavenly beings Ascribe to the
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Lord the glory do his name worship
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The voice of the Lord is over the waters the God of glory
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The voice of the Lord is powerful the voice
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The Lord sets enthroned as king forever Let's go to our great
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Prayer of adoration Dear Heavenly Father Stop in this moment
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Set aside All the things that be pleased and all the things that be hurt
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By for our time Lord we we just want to set our affection and our attention solely on You For you are holy, for you are good
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For you set enthroned forever God we desire to worship you this morning
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God we desire to stand in your presence In spirit and truth And see you in your majesty for who you are
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Pray that you would allow us just that That small grace
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God as we sing Proves about you As we lift up our needs to you in prayer
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As we open up your word That you would reveal yourself In A sweet and wonderful Gracious And awe inspiring
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Lord we are so grateful That you have allowed us to come together
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This morning You have brought us together We pray for those that are not able to make it
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And be with us We miss our brothers and sisters When they are not able to be here We pray that you would work even in their hearts
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If they are at home in sickness And as they travel That you would overwhelm them
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With a sense of your majesty Just as you do us We pray that you would be honored
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In our worship Amen Let's sing together Lift up your voices
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And lift up your praise Join with the His faithfulness
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Sing of the victory The hope of the world The savior has risen
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The spirit of love Forever Lifted from darkness
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And into the light The sons and the daughters Are loved at a price
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Our God is forever This is the song of the redeemed
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This is the song of the redeemed The redeemed The ransomed
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And the free Given life At such a price
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This is love This is love When we see
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Him on the Hear the voices sing
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As one This is love This is love
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We are The people of God With the freedom
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We can sing of the love
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Of the father We stand in the love of the father Only because of our
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Being in Christ Amen The fact that we are in Christ And this next old hymn
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Is one that some of you might be familiar with It doesn't get sung a lot today in church But I think that's unfortunate
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It's a great reminder That our relationship With our
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Christ With our savior The one that has made us Righteous to be able to stand
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In the love of the father That this relationship with Christ is a personal one So as we sing this old hymn
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Out together I encourage you to Think of what we're singing about Evaluate these words
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And make them a personal declaration to God And to those around you Blessed Assured Jesus is
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Mine Your taste
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Of glory Of salvation
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Purchase of God Of his spirit
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Washed In his blood Perfect submission
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Perfect Delight Visions of Rapture Now burst
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On my Side Angels descending
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Bring from A ghost of Mercy Whispers of Love This is my story
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This is my Song Praising my
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Savior This is my story
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This is my Song Praising my
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Savior All the perfect Submission All is
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At rest I and My Savior Am Happy and Blessed Watching And waiting
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Looking up Filled with his
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Goodness Let's sing that out
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This is my story This is my story This is my
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Song Praising my Savior This is my story
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Praising my Savior All the day
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Before the throne Of a strong And perfect King A great high priest
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Whose name is Love Whoever lives
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And pleads for Me His hands
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My name is written On his Heart I know in heaven
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He stands No tongue can bid me Thence depart
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No tongue can Bid me thence Depart When Satan tempts
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Me to despair And tells Me of the
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Guilt within Upward I look And see
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Him there Who made an end Of all my sin
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Because The sinless Savior died
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My sinful Soul is Counted free
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For God the Just is Satisfied To look on his
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Inland My perfect spotless Righteousness The great
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Unchangeable The King of Glory One with Himself I Cannot die
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My soul is Purchased by His blood is
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Hid with Christ My Savior and My God One with himself
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I cannot Die Satisfied with His grace
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Once on high Was my King My God Christ My Savior And my
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God Let's go to the
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Lord in prayers We pray for our time of offering this morning Lord thank you
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Thank you For who you are Thank you for being our
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Not only our creator But our God And our Savior Lord we are
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Overwhelmed And so this morning as we go Into this time of giving
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Back to you what you have So lovingly So kindly
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Graciously given to us That which we don't deserve I pray that it could be a moment of Worship it could be a moment
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Of a Declaration in our own lives that we We hang on very loosely
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To the things of this world And we cling tightly We cling tightly to your kingdom
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So I pray that you Would be honored in our giving this morning In Christ's name, Amen Well let's go ahead and open up your copy
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Of God's word to 1 Corinthians chapter 11 We're going to be in verse 23 on there
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Chapter 11 of 1 Corinthians and as you're Turning there I just want to remind you that today
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Is our last in our Three week little mini series On the Lord's Supper And if you've been here with us
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This whole time you know that three weeks ago As we jumped in it we were able to see The Passover, this meal
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That was prescribed back In Exodus 12 that Jesus and his Disciples are partaking in As he
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Establishes this new ordinance And then last week we were able to look at Some more of the imagery between The Passover and What this new ordinance is representing
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And what this is all about And what this means as far as Us as a church and what we're doing
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When we come to the table in unity When we come to the table This is a group effort
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And so I hope this has been beneficial To you this series I hope that it has been
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Educational but more than Educational I hope that it has Been a moment to cause you
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To worship our Savior In an even Greater fashion during that time of the
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Lord's Supper and so let's go ahead And read our passage this morning as we As we get ready to finish up This series today starting
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In verse 23 of 1 Corinthians chapter 11 says for I received from the
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Lord what I also Delivered to you that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed
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Took bread and when he Had given thanks he broke it and said This is my body which
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Is for you do this in remembrance Of me in the same way Also he took the cup after supper
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Saying this cup is the new Covenant in my blood do This as often as you drink it in remembrance
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Of me for as often As you eat this bread and drink the cup you Proclaim the Lord's death until he comes
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Whoever therefore Eats the bread or drinks the cup Of the Lord in an unworthy manner will
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Be guilty concerning the body And blood of the Lord Let a person examine
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Himself then and so Eat of the bread and drink of the Cup for anyone who eats and drinks
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Without discerning the body eats and drinks Judgment on himself And that is why many of you are weak and Ill and some have died
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But if we judged ourselves truly We would not be judged But when we are judged by The Lord we are disciplined
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So that we may not be Condemned along with The world
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Let's go to the Lord in prayer God we
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Acknowledge once again our Frailty and weakness We acknowledge
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Our sin That taints everything Around us
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And God I pray that right now As we open up Your word as we
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Speak of these Great truths That not only would you guard
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Me from error but you would guard the ears Of the saints from hearing Untruths about you
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So God I pray That you would use This time to illuminate our hearts
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And our minds To this great truth And use it in us God For we know that you've started
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This good work and you're going to see it to completion In us and this sanctification Process is
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Heavily reliant upon Your truth and your words So I pray that we would speak of it
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Clearly in Jesus name Amen. Well our primary Focus today is going to be on the last
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Half of what we just read verses 27 Through 32 but Just as we do
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With any other text we In order to understand it Need context and so We're going to be looking around At the verses preceding this
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And building up to what Paul is saying Here in these few verses So bear with me today this is probably going to Be the longest of the series but I want to get
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Through this there's a lot of ground to cover So it's going to depend on y 'all listening well So Bear with me it may take a little bit of time
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But we really want to Get through this and get a good foundation Of what this is about. The first Half of the verses that we just read there 23
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And 26 is something that we've commonly read Here quite often We've read this and Paul is
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Just basically he's recapping This commencement of the Lord's Supper and it's
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Important to note there at the beginning That when Paul says for I Receive from the
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Lord This is very important that we acknowledge This that we know this we have To realize that this encounter
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This Situation that's up in the upper room That's happening with the disciples that we've been
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Talking about the past two weeks of the Lord's Supper that this had Not yet been recorded in any of the
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Gospels at the moment that Paul writes This letter to the church at Corinth Think about that for a second
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None of the other four gospels had been Written yet and so there was no Actual written account of What had happened at least as far as Anything that God had inspired
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And so Paul is saying here In the letter to these Corinth Church at Corinth is that He was not necessarily
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Told by the apostles what happened Remember Paul wasn't present there He wasn't at that upper room
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Paul was an apostle that was Brought on later but these other Disciples that experienced this and Paul could have said to the church at Corinth Hey the apostles told me what happened
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And so this is how we Enact this because that's how the apostles were teaching Everybody hey Jesus called us to do this
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And let's do this but that is not What assured the apostle Paul of This ordinance What Paul is saying is that He had received it from the
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Lord I don't know how that happened I don't know if Jesus came and actually Spoke to him about it
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I believe He did I think that Paul has Spent more time with Jesus than we probably
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Know about at the beginning Stages and Jesus has obviously Told him exactly
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What this ordinance is and So to me This is just one
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More sign that this Ordinance of the Lord's Supper is of the Upmost importance If the
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Lord found it important Enough to give directly to The apostle Paul the Gentile The apostle to the
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Gentiles then this is Of utmost importance and as Paul goes from city to city As he's making disciples
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As he's baptizing New believers and establishing Churches this is
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Right alongside with baptism The other ordinance that he is putting In place he's calling these churches
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To practice this Church Wide this unified
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Lord's Supper And it makes me think About What we've talked about lately is the
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Church today it makes me think about The fact that if you ever Noticed look on church
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Social media on their websites and Look at baptisms Baptism Is held in High regard by almost every
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Church at least Evangelical church right and it should Be and we praise
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God when there's Baptisms because that means somebody's identifying With Christ you know like a few weeks ago Some of us went up and saw
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Gigi get baptized This is a beautiful time and it's a great Time and so these churches should make
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A big deal about it but what Makes me think is when was the last time You saw one of those churches make a big
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Deal about the Lord's Supper They make a big deal
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About this baptism which Is important and should but they don't Make a big deal about the
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Lord's Supper and as I've said over the past Couple weeks this is due to a lack of Understanding I believe
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And I would say that most Christians today fall into One of three categories
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When it comes to the Lord's Supper one of three Categories are way of thinking And so I want to share those with you the first One is one that we've talked about extensively
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The two weeks so we're not going to spend a lot of time on And this is the most common Is the indifferent Christian The indifferent
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Christian This is how they approach the Lord's Supper And it's again a lack of teaching But it also comes from The fact that it becomes
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Commonplace It becomes common I don't care if you did it once A year at your church if you did it once a month
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If you do it weekly like we do There's always this threat of it becoming Tradition isn't there
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There's always this looming Thing in our humanity And in our sin that we just take it for granted
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No matter how often we do it We just take it for granted it becomes Tradition and we become very indifferent
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About it and like I said We've spent quite a bit of time talking about that Category of the indifferent
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Christian but today I want us to look at the next two These next two categories in our passage And these two categories the second one
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Is the carelessly whimsical Christian The carelessly whimsical Christian This antinomian
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This person that comes in And says well it's all about grace I can live however I want
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The blood of Jesus covers me So I don't need to pursue holiness I can come to the
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Lord's table Eh it's all good I lived a godless life out there
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But I identify with Christ And that's where all my righteousness comes from And that's where all my holiness comes from And I have no need to be obedient To what he's called me to because the law is over It's only grace
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And you may look at me And say well I don't know any Christians like that But I'll tell you right now that is a
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Very very Prominent way of thinking And it's very threatening to the church The church has fought this
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This heresy for many years And I see it creeping it's ugly head back up Even good solid believers
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Friends of mine fall into this category They just become very careless with it There's no pursuit of personal holiness
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And it shows when they come to the Lord's table But the third one And the one that I would say
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Some of us may identify with the most I know I do And this is the tender conscience
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Over analyzing Christian The tender conscience Over analyzing
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Christian The Christian that is always in fear That can never truly
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Rest in Christ That can never truly Look outside of themselves
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And they're never enough They're never enough They're always over analyzing every little move
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That they make and they're beating themselves Up on it It reminds me of Martin Luther before his salvation
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He would go into his room And he would take a whip and he would take his shirt off And slap himself on the back with the whip
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And he would beat himself Because he felt like he couldn't Achieve enough repentance
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And so he just wanted to make himself suffer over it And I think some of us as Christians we do that We obviously don't
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Hopefully none of us go into our room with a whip But the point is We want to inflict harm on ourselves
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Because we're so inner focused We're so on ourselves This tender conscience Over analyzing
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Christian And again this third category of people They have a very difficult time
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With these next verses Verses 27 You can see why it's difficult for them
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Look at verse 27 Whoever therefore eats the bread Or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner
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Will be guilty Guilty of what? Concerning the body and blood of the Lord I mean some of us read that passage
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When we're in these modes And we're paralyzed by this aren't we? We stop for a moment and we're like What?
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I'm never really worthy The only option for me Is just to abstain all the time
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And like I shared last week If you were here I told you I went through extended periods of my life
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Where I abstained for that very reason Because I felt like I can't go to the table Because I'm never worthy enough
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And that passage just paralyzes us And I know how debilitating that is
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So in order to understand What Paul is saying here We must understand
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The context That builds up to these verses So jump back with me We're going to start in verse 17
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And we're going to work through And see what Paul is addressing In the church at Corinth so we can better understand
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That verse Look at verse 17 with me It says but in the following instructions
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I do not commend you So Paul has just gotten through Commending the church at Corinth For their adherence
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To the letter of the law And what I mean by that Is Paul has given them
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Some directives He's come in and he's said hey You've got to do the Lord's supper There's got to be baptism
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You've got to meet regularly You've got to do these things And the church at Corinth did those things
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And so he commends them for those things And those are good things But here all of a sudden In the following instructions
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What I'm about to tell you I don't commend you He's actually about to reprimand them He says because when you come together
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It is not for the better But for the worse When he says come together
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What's he talking about? What's he referring to? It's this He's referring to gathering here
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In fellowship and in worship What the church has done since the ascension of Christ We've come together and we've worshipped our great
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God And we come together regularly And this is what this church is doing He's saying you're coming together You're adhering to that at least
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And you're coming together But it's not for the better I don't know about you but when we gather
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This feels like for the better Doesn't it? When I leave after a Sunday When we go over there and start eating lunch
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And everybody leaves I am refreshed God has used this in my life But for the church at Corinth It's not for the better Paul says it's actually for the worse
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Somehow it's for the worse What does he mean by that? Why is it worse? Look at verse 18
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For in the first place When you come together as a church Not just any gathering
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Not just a Wednesday night potluck But the actual gathering together of the saints
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For worship I hear that there are Divisions among you
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And I believe it in part So what's happened here Is Paul is not there at Corinth As he writes this letter of course
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He's off away and he's now hearing Of what's going on at that church Which you know how that is sometimes
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At the end he says I believe it in part Because he's giving them a little bit of benefit of the doubt Have you ever heard things about a local church
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Or about a person You know I've learned that if I hear something About a church that's bad I only need to believe about 25 % of it
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If that Because by the time that news gets there But Paul is saying I've heard what's going on And in part
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I believe That this is true And this is why I find it important To address it in this letter
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He says there's divisions among you This is not
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Paul Merely referring to Small groups of friends Some of us have been
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A part of bigger churches right Some of us in here have been a part of bigger churches You know what that looks like You're going to have groups of friends
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You're going to have different people that are drawn To each other and spend a majority Of their time together
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And sometimes people will come into a church And they'll say see division That's not necessarily division
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Now there might be division in that I'm not saying every church that does that is in the right There might be division but it's not always division
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And it's not the division that Paul's talking about And how do I know that Because Jesus himself
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Had small groups of friends Jesus had many followers But he had the twelve
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That he spent the most of his time with And really if you study it You realize that there were three out of that twelve
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That he actually pulled aside And spent the majority of his time with That was Jesus And that's the one we're imitating right
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So Paul can't be talking about just groups of friends And divisions in that way No what Paul's talking about Is something far more
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I would say sinister Because the Greek word that Paul uses Here is a word
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Schismata Do you hear it? Do you hear our Where we get our English word schism
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This means To cut To intentionally cut
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Or even better To tear To tear something To rip something apart
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And so this division That he's talking about here This literally means to actively
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Tear something apart There at the church at Corinth They were destroying fellowship
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And distorting The image of oneness That is represented in the body of Christ When we come together
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And we go to the table Remember we talked about this last week There is an element of oneness
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That's what we take from the same bread That's what we drink from the same Vine, the same juice
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The same wine. That's why we do that Because it's showing A lost and dying world
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And it's affirming to us the unity And the oneness that we have And this church at Corinth was obviously not doing this
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There was division There was this schismata between them But then before he really addresses
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Exactly what this division is He throws in a verse here A verse
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That I think he puts there Because he wants to be crystal clear As to what he's talking about What Paul's not talking about Is Paul is not saying
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That unity at all cost So hear me out for a second
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I think it's important that we address this Because this is Very prevalent in churches
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Today It sounds good, doesn't it? Unity sounds good Let's have unity
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Unity at all cost. I know I've mentioned this many times before But I think it's important we address it Because it's so dangerous
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Because we can't have unity at all cost There cannot be unity Within the church at all cost
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And we're about to see that the apostle Paul Has actually affirmed This fact.
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Look at verse 19 He says, For there must be factions Among you
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What? What? He just got through saying that There's divisions among you
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This is what I have against you. I'm not going to commend you for this There's divisions. And now he's saying, but there must be factions Among you.
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Why? In order that Those who are genuine Among you may be
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Recognized. There must be factions There must be division
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Within the church. There has to be Jesus himself tells us back in Matthew 13 that there's going to be
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Tears amongst the wheat. They're going to be in here. There's going to be The disingenuous
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Amongst the genuous. There's going to be The lost amongst the saved And they're going to identify with us in some way
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And they're going to be around us And just like in this parable Back in Matthew 13
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That Jesus tells of these tears And the wheat, he is explicit That we are not to actively
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Remove them And don't hear me wrong. I need to be clear here We do actively
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Remove someone who is in unrepentant sin What he's saying is We don't go on a witch hunt We don't go on this doctrinal
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Witch hunt. We've seen that before Haven't we? And what happens Is when we go on these little witch hunts
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And we try and identify and we try and look Within the soul of somebody and be like I don't see the
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Fruit there. I don't think this is right And then what we do when we Try and uproot that wheat, that tear
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We try and pull it out. What happens? We accidentally uproot some of the Wheat, some of the good fruit
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We decimate a church in the process Of that. So Jesus tells us not to do that But Paul does tell us
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That there has to be divisions among us Because Quite often what happens
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Is they remove themselves They will remove themselves.
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Not all of them Because Jesus said in that parable, hey there's coming A day when I'm going to remove them And I'm going to throw the weeds into the fire
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And burn them He's going to deal with that But a lot of times they remove themselves
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And why is that? Because they go out from us Because they're not of us Because light has no fellowship with darkness
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Light has no fellowship With darkness. That's why we're not called to go On this witch hunt. We're not to Try and look for these people
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But it's not difficult to identify The genuine within a church, is there? I can go to almost any church
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At least a Bible believing church And pretty quickly tell you who The real genuine people are
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The ones that are actually engaged and involved in ministry There will be divisions there You're going to see it
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It's there And unfortunately, nowadays I would say that the genuists are in a minority
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In most churches, aren't they? That's a minority I think I've mentioned this before I think
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Jonathan Edwards at the pinnacle of A great awakening said that he believed Only ten percent of his congregation
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Were truly regenerate believers That's a scary thought Jonathan Edwards isn't
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God He can't look into the soul But the point of the matter is There's going to be divisions
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And light has no fellowship with darkness Hence, when the darkness comes in And they think they're part of the light
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They start getting exposed to the light And either Either God's going to really save them
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Or they're not going to be able to handle it And there's going to be a distinction There's going to be a division
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God's going to work that out God's going to look for that God's going to deal with that And this is what
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Paul's saying And now he points out what the division is in verse 20 Look there with me
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When you come together, again, the church It is not The Lord's supper that you eat
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So the church at Corinth They're obeying What Paul has laid out
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To the letter of it But not to the spirit of it This is what's happening Look at verse 21
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For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal One goes hungry
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Another gets drunk One goes hungry, another gets drunk He says this is not the
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Lord's supper This is not what you're doing And so in order to understand what's going on I think we need some historical context
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That's probably a bit confusing As to what's happening here The early church
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Which is what the people at Corinth are doing In this moment They started to This process, this thing that they called a love feast
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And what it was It was a part of the service They would gather They would come together just as we're here
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Worshipping today And much like what we do after service We go over there and we eat and we fellowship
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This is what the church would do But that was actually part of the worship Is the gathering to eat They would
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This would still be a part of the Worship service This love feast is what they called it
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And at the end of the love feast To close out the service They would partake of the
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Lord's supper So they would go ahead They would feast together They would enjoy fellowship before the presence of God And worship
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And then they would take the Lord's supper And they were very intentional about this And this was a practice that was never condemned
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By the apostles, mind you The apostles took part in this And this is what they're doing in this
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Time here at Corinth When Paul is addressing them At the end of the meal they would partake of this
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And this church at Corinth thought they were doing it Yet Much like Much of what the church at Corinth Did And why
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Paul had to reprimand them so often Is that their worldliness Had corrupted the practice
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This love feast Had been corrupted And Paul had to come to them
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And correct them for it He had to correct them And how does he correct them? Look at verse 22
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He goes, what? Are you kidding me? You coming together
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One of you goes hungry One of you gets drunk What?
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This isn't what I prescribed This isn't what God told us to do This isn't what I taught you to do
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He goes on, he says Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Now here
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Paul's not saying You shouldn't do the love feast He's never reprimanded
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Any other church for doing that But he's reprimanding them In this way, but what Paul is saying
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Is that he's pointing out their gluttonous Debauchery He's pointing out their sin
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In the act of this love feast And how they're not being a church That this is just a feast
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This is just a gathering together Of people like any other gathering now And gorging yourselves
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And not only are you gorging yourselves You're leaving others out He goes on there in that passage Or do you despise the church of God?
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Is he talking about the church universal? No, he's talking about people He's asking them
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He's like, what? Do you despise your brothers and sisters? Do you hate them?
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Do you hate them so much That you desire to humiliate Those that have nothing? Is that what you want?
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Is that what you're after? Do you hate them so greatly? You've got to understand
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That this church in Corinth Had a massive, massive Wealth gap In this church in Corinth it was very similar
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To much of the societies Today in the world As you had the Extremely wealthy
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And you had the impoverished And there was very little in between And so the church represented
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The community So there was the wealthy And there was the impoverished right there in the church
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They were extremely well off And so when they came together For this love feast that Paul Was reprimanding them for What was happening was
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It's just like a potluck today A lot of you have brought food for today And we're all sharing
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And everybody's partaking in this And what was happening is the wealthy people Were bringing in all of their excess
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They were bringing in their wine And maybe some of their strong drink And they were sitting at a table
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And feasting together No true worship in mind
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Which tells us Because they're getting drunk They're not interested in worshiping
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God They're just having fun It's just any feast And they're enjoying their feast
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While the impoverished sit in the corners And look on And just wait for the time when we can do the
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Lord's Supper To close out the service Eating nothing Maybe eating scraps
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And so this division Is what Paul's talking about Is these wealthy people within the church
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They're actually despising The poor people Because they're not involving them in oneness
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And unity They're not bringing them in There's this schismata There's a tearing between them
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There's a tearing between the two groups of this church And there's no Christian love
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There's no unity There's no brotherly affection That's coming forward out of this church
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It's just lifeless And really godless As Paul is reprimanding them
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And at the end of this division At the end of them doing this They would then pretend
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To take the Lord's Supper We know they're not because back in verse 19
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Paul says That's not the Lord's Supper You're going through the actions
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But you're not going to the Lord's Supper Why is that? Because of what we said last week That there is an element of the
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Lord's Supper That is unifying There's a oneness involved Was there a oneness in this? No There was division
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There was distorted God's imagery had now been distorted By the church at Corinth They had distorted it
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And then the last part of verse 22 He says what shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this?
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Shall I commend you in this Disunity? No I will not I will not commend you in this
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And then he goes in And he lays out there Verses 23 through 26 that we just read
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And he reminds them Of what he's already told them about the Lord's Supper He reminds them of this
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And you can see Now As we've kind of done a recap of What's built up to this point
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Why the church in Corinth Falls into that second category of Christians The carelessly whimsical
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And that's what they did That's what they did They came to the table We're under grace
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We don't have to pursue holiness We don't have to pursue unity We don't have to pursue
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Brotherly affection and brotherly love We can do whatever we want We can get drunk for that matter
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And God's still happy with us Because he only sees his son And so this is the category
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That they fall in And little did they know as they do this They are heaping judgment upon them They're bringing judgment upon themselves
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And in order to guard them Even in their sin You see the love that Paul has You want to talk about unity?
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You want to talk about brotherly affection? This is Paul. Even in their sin He doesn't just come in and reprimand them
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And kick them and say get straight No, he wants to guard them from it Paul is reminding them of the seriousness
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Of this table What is it you're doing When you go to the Lord's table What is it you're doing when you're coming together
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And you're partaking of these elements There's something far greater And far more spiritual and far more important Than what you're seeing it as It's not just in remembrance
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It's not just so that you can remember something And fall under that grace And land under that It's so that you can be unified
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Just as he is unified With us, with the
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Father With the Holy Spirit It's perfect unity And that imagery has to hold
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God is very intentional about His imagery And they have distorted it They have destroyed it
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And they're going to bring judgment on themselves And so this leads us into the verses for today That was the intro
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Verse 27, let's look at verse 27 there It says, whoever therefore Eats the bread or drinks the cup of the
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Lord In an unworthy manner will be guilty Concerning the body and blood of the Lord Here you can see why
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And how That this category of the Carelessly whimsical Christian This, I'm in Christ Paul's not talking to me
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He's not talking to me Because I come to the Table in a worthy manner You can see how this is a gross misunderstanding
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Of the context in which Paul is writing this I know
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Believers that actually come to this verse And they say, they look at Just that isolated verse and they say
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In an unworthy manner Well it must be Somebody's not a
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Christian That must be what Paul's Talking about Context doesn't allow for that, does it?
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Because Paul, here, who's he Talking to? He's talking to Christians He's talking to the people at the church at Corinth And he's specifically
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Telling them, hey, anybody Comes to this table in an unworthy manner Is going to be guilty
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And so He's warning them of what will happen This is believers he's talking to So we can't just throw that out and say
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Well, I can be the Carelessly whimsical Christian Because that verse doesn't apply to me
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It applies to you So let's look at what it is What is this warning? Look at verse 28
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Let a person Examine himself Then, and so eat of the bread
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And drink of the cup For anyone who Eats and drinks without Discerning the body
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Eats and drinks judgment on himself This is where that tender
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Conscience over analyzing Christian Gets all knotted up, isn't it? This is where When I come into that verse
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Just, I can feel Just that tightening, oh my goodness Examine myself
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Discerning the body When I do that I know where that leads, it always leads to Darkness and despair, every time
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I do it It just leads me to hopelessness And then I can't come to the table at all So obviously that's not
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Intended by Paul So what does Paul mean by this? What does
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Paul mean by Examining yourself And then coming to the table What does he mean by discerning the body?
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What is Paul talking about? I think it really Gets summed up a little bit here
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In the fact that Are you partaking in the Lord's Supper The way God has prescribed?
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Simple answer, right? You're sitting there like, well that doesn't answer my question But this is what it boils down to Are you
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Partaking in it the way God has prescribed? Are you emulating Unity?
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Are you emulating selflessness? And this one's the key
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A repentant heart Because a true
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Christian Is marked by what? Repentance A true
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Christian is always marked by Repentance If you were in Christ, you may have seasons where you don't
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Want to repent But the practice of your life Is going to be one of repentance
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And I say that Because when we fall into that That overanalyzing
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Christian category And we become overwhelmed And we evaluate ourselves Then we go down a rabbit hole
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And we say, well I am repentant But it never ends Constantly, constantly
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Repenting I'm constantly having to go to God And say, I did it again
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I've fallen again, I've fallen again And I feel like every seven seconds I need to stop, get on my knees
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And say, I did it again But what we don't realize is Even in that prayer, it's tainted in sin
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And then that gets your head going I can promise you right now, this sermon Has been tainted in sin
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There's sin involved in me preaching this sermon There's sin everywhere We're always, we're corrupted by sin
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And so this mind gets to work And we just become overwhelmed By the fact that it never
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Ends, I can never find A moment to where I hit rock bottom And say, okay,
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I've finally Gotten to the last sin, I've repented Of it, I'm free, everything In my life is perfect I have finally achieved sinlessness
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At least in this moment while I can partake of the Lord's Supper Before I sin again, so let's hurry up and take the Lord's Supper And we have that in our minds
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As if that's somehow what Paul's Talking about, by evaluating Ourselves, and it's not at all what
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Paul's Talking about, I think the real Question is, if you're following If you're taking the
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Lord's Supper the way God Has prescribed Are you aware Of that Unworthiness?
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Are you aware of your own Desperate need For an alien
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Righteousness? Are you aware of it? When you're discerning the body, what
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Paul's Speaking about is acknowledging Our unworthiness When we discern the body, when
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I look At Nathan, if I Spend time standing In the mirror, let me tell you what
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I see A broken Deceitful Pathetic Sinner That's me discerning the body
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But, when I Gaze upon my Savior You know what
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I see? I see beauty, I see glory I see majesty, I see perfection
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I see holiness, and then When I go and I'm presented With the mirror, in light of Seeing my
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Savior, now I see Myself for the worth that I do You have, my Savior has died for me
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And now he has imparted his Worthiness onto me Even though I am unworthy, so now instead of Seeing garbage, instead of seeing brokenness
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Instead of seeing a deceitful Lying, broken Sinful person, now
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I see my Savior, I'm discerning the body I'm discerning what God Has done for me through His Son, and when
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I come to the table That's what he means by discerning The body, that's what he means by evaluating Yourself, if you only look to Yourself, you're going to be left broken,
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I promise You that, and you'll never go to This table, because you'll be afraid of judgment But when you acknowledge who you are
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And you know your unworthiness, that's the Beauty of the Christian life, it's so counter Cultural, I mean think about it
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The first shall be last, the last shall Be first, if you want To live, what do you have to do?
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Die, everything Is counter cultural, in order To be worthy You must
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Be unworthy That's what Paul's talking about And see these people at Corinth When they were coming to the table and eating
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The food, they were whimsically Sitting there, enjoying their life As if there was nothing wrong, and they were going to Go to the
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Lord's table Without discerning the body They felt as though they had some worth
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They felt as though That they had something in and of Themselves, this is what Paul is
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Addressing here, so you can't Have worth in and of yourself, but you Also can't look to yourself
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For any kind of hope in discerning The body, you must look to Christ And when you see yourself for who you are
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You will truly love your brother Won't you? When you see That brother without something
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When you see yourself in your hopeless Estate, when you figure out And you say I'm destitute without Christ But Christ has blessed me
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And now when I see my Broken brother, my brother over there In the corner, my sister over there in the corner
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Who doesn't have anything Now my heart just wells up and I desire To give to them
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I want to help them, I want unity I want my brother, and that was the sin Of the church at Corinth, is they didn't
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Have brotherly affection and love They were the schismata The division, the tearing of This body
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And distorting God's imagery Here So I think we need to address
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Here next, what does Paul mean by drinking judgment on themselves Well He clarifies it in verse 32
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Look down there But when we Who are the we? True Christians I know that because Paul is throwing himself in this
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Category, but when we Are judged By the
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Lord Which we are We are disciplined God chastens those
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That he loves, doesn't he? Like a good father chastens His child when they are in the wrong
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God chastens us We are disciplined So that we may not be condemned
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Along with the world There is no final judgment We never, if we are in Christ We will never see the judgment
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That the lost world will see And we can rest in that But there is a judgment
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There is a chastening There is a discipline That happens in a Christian's life And so what does
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Paul say this chastening looks like? Look back to verse 30 That is why many of you are weak and ill
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And some have died That's pretty serious
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Apparently There were people within the church at Corinth That had been weak and ill And some that had died because of this
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Now We have to be careful We can't look around and say when somebody is sick Well again we have like three families out because of sickness
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When we look around and we see sickness We cannot assume That this is sin that has caused that At least some unrepentant sin
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In their heart and their life We have to be careful Only God can evaluate that And we are not to evaluate that Someone dies, someone gets sick
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That's not what it's about But this is a truly serious matter And this is how serious
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God takes His imagery of this ordinance This is very serious
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Some have been sick, some have been ill Some have died God will not allow you to go on In unrepentant sin
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If you are truly a believer If you are truly in Christ God will take you out of this world
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Before He lets you just continue in unrepentant sin Praise God for that Mercy Because every time we
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Continue in unrepentant sin What are we saying to a lost and dying world That this isn't real What are we saying to our brothers and sisters
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I can live a godless unholy life But God He chastens those that He loves
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And is there an element that we should be afraid of that Yes We should have great fear
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For our creator Even though we are Standing in righteousness before Him We should fear, we should have a healthy fear
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A good fear We don't fear like the world fears But some of you probably
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Had very strong fathers I can say For my own father
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This is just a small little glimpse In an earthly picture I was scared to death of that man
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I loved him dearly I respected him There's no man in this world
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I'm not afraid of people I'm just not a fearful man But I was afraid of that man
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Because I knew What he could bring I had seen his power I had seen how strong he was
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I had seen how Solid he was going to be in his discipline of me But I also saw
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His love I also saw His compassion, his care And this was just a small
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Little picture, a small glimpse Of how we're to perceive God Our father
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If we're in Christ That hand of chastening Is going to be a loving one
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But it is a hand of chastening So we should have a healthy fear of God We should have a healthy fear
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Of our father And so when we come to this table, it is a fearful time It is a moment to where We do evaluate ourselves
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But don't evaluate yourself Outside of Christ Don't get so introspective
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That you think you have to gain worthiness I would go to the table at times When I had my quiet time all week
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And I hadn't fallen into some of these other sins That had hold of me at times And I had maybe conquered some things in my life
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And I felt good And Sunday would come and we'd have the Lord's Supper And I'd go to the table like yes
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I can take of the Lord's Supper in a worthy manner I've got it all covered Those times
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Were probably the times that I was Under this kind of judgment Far more than the times
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When I was struggling with an unrepentant sin And why is that?
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Because I wasn't discerning the body I was coming Worthy on my own merits
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You don't have those Don't try and come to them It's so counter cultural isn't it?
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It's almost as if the script Just got flipped The ones that think The times that you think you're worthy
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Are the times that you're actually in danger Of this kind of judgment Because you're never worthy
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So you look to Christ And look at verse 31 It says
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But if we judged ourselves truly We would not be judged That's what
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I mean Who are we? We look to Christ We judge ourselves truly
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And when we see ourselves and when we see Christ We want to repent We gladly repent
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We gladly come before the Lord Are there going to be sins in your life that you aren't aware of That you can't openly repent of in this moment
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Before you go to the table? I can promise you there are Because there are in me But that shouldn't stop you from coming to the table
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Now I have to be clear If you Have hatred
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Or a rift between you and a Brother or sister in Christ Or if you have a particular sin
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That you just refuse to repent of That falls in this category But don't try and Evaluate yourself in a way
01:00:04
Man I know there's something there I'm not thinking of So I'm not going to go to the table I'm freaking out I'm not repenting of it
01:00:10
Because we never want to distort God's imagery Do we? Never want to distort it Especially with disunity
01:00:17
I'm going to come to this table unified And then Paul closes it out And this is how
01:00:22
I know this is what he's talking about In context in verse 33 on He says So then my brothers when you come together to eat
01:00:29
Wait for one another Unity He's not just saying wait on them
01:00:35
He's saying wait for them Wait with them Be with them
01:00:41
If anyone is hungry Let him eat at home Let him go and gorge yourself at home
01:00:46
Go and drink your drinks at home Go enjoy that he's not saying that you can't He's just telling the church at Corinth because of your sinfulness
01:00:53
This love feast ain't working It ain't working Because you have disunity
01:00:58
So that when you come together It will not be for judgment He doesn't want judgment
01:01:05
To be upon These brothers and sisters We are to be thoughtful We are to be proactive
01:01:12
In preparing for this table I think that's what Paul is saying there Is eat at home
01:01:19
Fill your bellies at home So that you won't be tempted to come And sin tomorrow at church
01:01:26
Or tonight Or whenever we're going to the Lord's table There's a preparation
01:01:32
That's one reason why I like to do it every single week All of you know it's here You know it's there
01:01:38
Start preparing that week Start preparing, start evaluating Start looking to Christ Start looking and saying
01:01:47
I am not worthy But you are worthy And because of me seeing your worthiness
01:01:52
And seeing my unworthiness I gladly lay it before you
01:01:59
I'm glad to be able to go In humility to my brother or sister And get this right
01:02:05
I'm happy to go And resolve this issue I hope this has been
01:02:13
Encouraging to you Because I think All of us fall into one of those three categories
01:02:19
And some of us fall into those three categories At different times in our lives But all three
01:02:25
Fall so short There's a balance It's Christ Look to Christ So now
01:02:35
We are going to go to the table This is what we do every week So I want to pray
01:02:41
A prayer of confession and assurance Right now And just like every week
01:02:47
Pastor Jeremiah is going to be over here I'll be over here You can come to the table, take the elements
01:02:52
Go back to your seat, pray individually Pray together, pray and partake of those elements As you see fit
01:02:59
But prepare your hearts Prepare your minds Prepare your hearts Look to Christ Because that's our only worthiness
01:03:07
And then Pastor Jeremiah will come around With the basket to gather all the cups And we'll close with singing
01:03:13
And then a benediction Lord, we come to you once again And we pray
01:03:19
That you Would search our hearts We are so tainted in sin
01:03:27
Left from the residue of this world God And we pray that you would
01:03:33
Allow us to quit focusing on ourselves That we
01:03:40
Would set our gaze and affection Upon you Lord, we have so much sin
01:03:45
In our lives, God We want to be a repentant people Help us to be a repentant people,
01:03:51
God That are willing And ready and anxious To lay our imperfection
01:03:58
And brokenness down Before you and repent of it Not To gain favor with you
01:04:05
But just to commune with you God, help us
01:04:11
In our brokenness That we may mortify sin That we may hate sin And we may destroy it at every turn in our lives
01:04:19
And in our hearts and in our minds But God, as we get ready To go to your table
01:04:24
We acknowledge the forgiveness that we have Oh God What sweet forgiveness
01:04:33
What a merciful Merciful gift Help us to Look to that Help us to look to your son
01:04:44
Set our affection And our thoughts and our minds on him As we go to this table And we take of the bread
01:04:51
And we take of the wine And we can remember what it is that you have accomplished God, that gives us
01:04:57
This great forgiveness of sin Lord, if any of us
01:05:04
Have any unconfessed sin That we know of, that we're aware of And just refuse to repent of I pray that you do your convicting work
01:05:12
In our hearts But ultimately we rest in you