Selfishness (Part 2)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendrop. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures verse by verse with No Compromise.

The Shame of Selfishness at the Lord’s Supper

We also have another symbolism and that is we take the bread and we hold it and we wait one for another. Sure, you don't say, okay, now, okay, everybody who's rich, you go first. You make 200 ,000 or more, you get to go, okay, go.

Poor people, those who don't have a job, you can pick up later. So Paul said, you're not loving one another and it fleshes itself out in a lack of unity. Show me someone who's got divisional problems with this, either theologically or socially, economically, they're not going to be thinking what's best about for the other person.

They're going to be thinking, this is what I want. They're in a rich house, most likely, a house with a rich person because you've got to have a bigger place to meet. There are rich people there, there are poor people there, and it's turned into a drunkard supper, the selfish supper.

It's not Christ's supper, it's not the Lord's supper. Take a look at the passage again, his own meal. They prepare the meal ahead of time, they pack it up and bring it, and they don't bring anything else.

Don't you think the Christ-like thing to do if you were rich would be to say, oh yeah, I know old Felix is coming, and Felix doesn't have any food because he works all day, he's a slave, and I've got a lot because I'm rich and I'm going to bring some money, some food rather for Felix.

Shouldn't it play out that way, remembering Christ's preeminent selfless act on Calvary? But what their bodies were communicating with the bullhorn was, we don't care about anybody else. They'll know we're Christians by our drunkenness.

Back in those days, culturally, it wasn't so much you'd go to a rich person's house and sit there and eat, and the slaves and the waiters and the help out here, but the way you would go into the living room, sometimes holding up to 30 people, there was a pecking order even there.

And whoever was the family leader, the father, he could assign tables. You ever gone to a place and there's assigned tables and you've got your name there, you got a little name tag and you're supposed to sit there, it's back by the door where the kitchen is, and you're thinking, I'm raiding, I really have got this down.

So they would line people up according to influence, money, friendship. And see for us, we think, okay, at home maybe we do that, but when we go to church, we don't. But their church was home because they met in homes.

This is more like eating a meal in the name of Dionysus, the God associated with drunkenness. It's a travesty. It's your own supper you're eating, not the Lord's supper. Verse 22, you can just hear Paul, how would you like to have Paul say this to you?

What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God? This isn't your church, it's not your meal. And humiliate those who have nothing. That is humiliating. One's eating lobster and the other one's eating not much of anything.

What shall I say to you? Look at all these rhetorical questions, trying to get them to think. He's getting the paddle out. What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. This is not to be tolerated.

This is shameful. Here's what's happened. We've got the haves over here and we've got the have nots over here. And Paul is saying, because of Christ Jesus, aren't we all haves? We have forgiveness. We have justification.

We have redemption. We have Christ Jesus. Vain said, guests of different rank were served different dishes and wine of different qualities according to their respective dignities. So you get the really good wine, you're up here up front.

You get, you know, Moga David Boone's farm down here, whatever. I don't know. I haven't drank wine for so long. Annie Green Springs, you get down here. It's crazy. Paul was dumbfounded by their insensitivity to what was going on.

The Selfless Savior as the Cure for Selfishness

So it's one thing to say to selfish people, stop. I think that's appropriate. Quit it. Repent. But if you're thinking rightly and you'd like to teach people, you don't just say, stop it. You turn their eyes to the positive thing.

You could say, don't lie, tell the truth. Don't steal, work. Don't be selfish, be selfless. But Paul, one upset here, he says, don't be selfish. Let me show you the selfless one. Just get a good look at Christ Jesus.

And if you're struggling not with selfishness in the local church, but selfishness at home, or at work, or at school, wherever you are, this is a good remedy for our souls. The diagnosis was found in verses 17 through 22.

And now let's see the solution found in the rest of the chapter. Let's see how far we get. My guess is about 26. The solution for selfishness is to gaze upon the sacrificial Savior. A good look at Christ Jesus to remember what he did in Calvary in your place should motivate you and inspire you to die to self.

I'll say it again because I think it's super important. Paul is not trying to tell us how to do the Lord's Supper here, although we can learn from that. He's trying to contrast Christ's Last Supper with selfishness.

Paul’s Received Tradition and the Meaning of the Bread

Verse 23, for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you. This is language just like in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, technical language. Paul in Galatians chapter 1 verse 12 says, I receive things right from Jesus.

He didn't go to apostle school, Jesus taught Paul. And Jesus gave Paul the marching orders in the form of a theological baton, and he said, don't drop it and be faithful to pass it on to the next generation.

What I taught you directly, Jesus says for all intents and purposes, pass that theological baton on to the next. And what I receive from Jesus, I what? Delivered to you. This is technical language just like 1 Corinthians chapter 15, 1 to 4.

I received it from the Lord what I delivered to you. By the way, that's the sign of a good Sunday school teacher, a good Bible teacher, a good pastor, not new, not novel, not fancy, but faithful. What does God require in you if you teach the Bible?

Not success, not numbers. God requires what? Faithfulness. I received this and I delivered it. You ever been to a restaurant where they give you a little number, you order, and they give you a number 14, and you go sit down.

I think Dairy Queen down the street does it. 14, you think, okay, I ordered a vanilla dipped cone and chocolate. And so the guy goes over, he gets the cone. He's like, he doesn't want vanilla dipped cone.

He wants peanuts on the top. He wants some caramel syrup. He doesn't want that much ice cream and puts it off and then delivers it to me. I don't want that. I didn't order that. His job is, the table waiter is, to take it from, I don't think Dairy Queen has chefs, but take it from the chef's window and deliver it to me without messing it up, without altering it, without subtracting, without adding.

Paul says, I received this from Jesus, I deliver it to you. That the Lord Jesus, emphasizing Christ kingship, his ownership, the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, he took bread. Verse 24, 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 also took the cup after supper, saying this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood. Do this in remembrance, excuse me, do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Now, let me read something with a little more emphasis so you can see what I'm trying to draw out here from Paul's intention. Verse 24, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you.

I'm doing this for you, for your good, for your benefit. I'm selflessly doing this and sacrificially doing it for you. So Paul uses the last Passover and the first Lord's Supper, which is the same event, to drive this home.

This isn't new, Paul had already delivered this to them. Remember, he was there for 18 months, Paul faithfully delivered it to them, and he's trying to reinforce the point. Received it, I passed it on, you know about it, don't be so selfish.

This is the Lord, on the night he was betrayed, why would it say that? If you go too fast, you're gonna miss it, on the night he was betrayed. On the night when Judas was acting so selfishly, this is what happened.

Judas wanted the money, Judas wanted the betrayal for himself. Not for the good of Jesus, not for the good of the other people, it was for himself. On the night when the most selfish thing ever happened in all of the universe, Jesus is going to do something selfless.

On the night Jesus was handed over, the text says, given over. The Old Testament translates that word, handed over, are betrayed, are given over. In Isaiah 53 .6, the Lord gave him up for our sins. Could it be that Paul is trying to get people to think of that exact same language?

Yes, even though it was Judas giving him up, there was someone else giving God up in a selfless way and a sacrificial way, and it was God the Father delivering over Christ Jesus for us, on our behalf, in our place.

When he'd given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Jesus is the head of the family. The Father during Passover would lead the Passover, would have blessed God to start, given thanks to him for all his provision, recognized God's goodness.

All things showing that you're selfless. Show me a thankful person, a grateful person, and I'll show you someone who's understood what it means to be not selfish. Someone else has provided all these things.

And look what Jesus says in verse 24. This is my body. This is representing my body. In the Passover, they'd have things in Seder to remind them. This is a representation of something. For instance, unleavened bread.

Why would we have that? This is to remind them that they had to bake cakes of unleavened dough, Exodus 12, that they had brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not wait.

During the Passover, you'd bring bitter herbs in to remember something. What would you remember? Because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our fathers in Egypt. So now, Jesus says, this bread, this is to remind you of something.

There's a representation. Do this in remembrance of me so that you'll act in my worship services in a way that reflects what I've done. If I've been selfless, then shouldn't you act selflessly too? Jesus came to be served, no, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

Everyone's forgiven who's a Christian at the Lord's Supper. Now, for those of you who are scholars or care or want to be scholars or think about what Luther might say, turning into Jesus's body, if you take a look at verse 24, there's a very simple way to solve the problem here.

This is my body. This is neuter. And the bread is masculine. So in grammar, even if you don't know anything about neuters and masculines and feminines, they need to match. If Jesus says this, it's neuter.

It doesn't, it's not masculine or female or feminine. And then he says something about bread that's masculine. This doesn't refer to the bread because this would have to be masculine and the bread would have to be masculine.

This, when Jesus says it in verse 24, this is my body, which is for you. Probably referring to the whole action of what he's doing. This is for you in your place. On your behalf. Leon Moore said this is neuter, not masculine as it should be.

If it were referred to the masculine word for bread, it may refer to the whole action as the second this does. If you look down to the next verse, my blood, it doesn't say the cup is my blood. It says the cup is the new covenant in my blood.

He's not saying this bread is now turned into my body. He's not cutting off part of his body. I find this fascinating. What do we do today if you want to remember someone? A monument maybe? Let's erect some kind of monument.

Have you ever been to Mount Rushmore? You stand there and look in the black hills and you think that's kind of a good way to remember people. Maybe, I know what we'll do. Let's make a pilgrimage to Jesus's tomb once a year.

That'll make us remember him. But tying into the Passover, Jesus says do this in remembrance of me. By the way, if you're not paying attention right now, you should because this is the most wild thing any human being could say if they were merely a man.

You know the Passover, that small little Passover thing where God passes over, the death angels pass over because blood has already been shed. You know that Passover thing Jesus says, do that Passover feast in remembrance of me.

Can you imagine if I got down here and the communion said, we're all going to have communion together and as you take this bread, I want you to remember me. How about Jesus? Can you imagine what a Jew must have thought of that today?

Jesus says this whole, all of Passover, when you do Passover, you remember me. Now the only person who could ever say that was somebody who was God in the flesh because otherwise he would be a raving lunatic liar.

People say all the time, Jesus was such a good teacher. Meaning he was only a good teacher, he wasn't God. You mean to tell me the good teacher says, Passover, me. You think of me now when it comes to Passover.

It's fascinating. Only Jesus. He's already been called by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, Christ the Passover lamb. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, verse 25, he took the cup also after supper.

Uh-oh, after supper. You know what they would do? They'd have the bread first, they'd eat, and then after supper, they would have the cup. You know why they would do that? This is not a prescription.

We don't have to do it, but we're gonna do it next time. When Jeremy's here and we have communion in just a couple weeks on Sunday night, this is exactly how we're gonna do it. We're gonna have the cup, excuse me, the bread to start.

And then we're gonna have our meal together full of all kinds of luscious, wonderful, rich foods that all the rich people are going to bring us. And then we're going to have the cup sandwiching in between the worship of God, remembering he died in my place, his body was given for me.

He lived a perfect life and gave his body for me, broken for me, and sandwiched on the other side with the cup signifying the viciousness of the substitutionary death of Christ Jesus. In my place, condemned he stood.

So everything in between is gonna have that flavor. We're not gonna forget about the selfless Lord in our meal because we'll start off with the bread and we'll end with the cup. It's exactly what they did then.

It's not, we don't have to do that, not required to do that. But in this day of love feasts, when there's a love feast, the bread starts and the cup ends. So you remember everything in between is thinking about the selfless Christ and how it should motivate us to be more like him.

After supper, that gives it some significance. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. This unilateral covenant that God makes with himself for people like us, for sinners.

You read the book of Genesis. Whenever I say, God bless you, I'm trying to say it very thoughtfully. People just say, if you sneeze, Gesundheit, God bless you. But when I say, God bless you, I'm trying to think about the Bible.

When you read Genesis and what Adam did and Eve did and all these other people did, you think, who could bless such a people? Cursing, I get it. But God in his goodness and his generosity and his kindness says, I will bless you.

And when God needs to take the sword out to kill all sinners and instead, he puts the scepter out and says, you can come to my presence and you can eat with me for all eternity because of Christ Jesus.

That should motivate us. For us, grace is free. For Christ Jesus, the Father and the Spirit, grace costs everything. Grace might be free for us, but it costs God his own son. Now, when you see the word cup there, what goes through your mind?

Oh, it's a cup. It just holds it. When you read the word cup back then, you would say, undergoing violent death. Isaiah 51, rouse yourself, rouse yourself, arise, O Jerusalem. You have drunk from the Lord's hand the cup of his anger, the chalice reeling you, you have drained from the dregs.

Psalm 75, surely all the wicked of the earth must drain and drink down the cup's dregs. And hear Christ Jesus. Remember in the garden? Father, if it was there any other way to save the elect, then make it so.

But if not, I'll submit to you and I'll drink the cup. Well, time's fleeting. So let me say this. Do this in remembrance of me. What does that word remember mean? Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot about that.

We had an anniversary and now I remember. Do this in remembrance of me. It doesn't just mean to remember, to recall, to bring up to your mind. It doesn't mean that at all. When God remembers, he does something.

Remember the flood, Noah? But God remembered Noah. And so what'd he do? Here comes the wind to dry everything out. Remember Hannah? She made a vow and said, O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of thy maidservant and remember me and do not forget thy maidservant, but will give thy maidservant a son, then I will give him to the Lord.

Remember me. Do something, God. So now when God tells us to remember him, it doesn't just mean, okay, we're having communion today. I remember Jesus. Is it good to remember Jesus? Yes. When the thief on the cross said to Jesus, the repentant thief, remember me, Jesus.

Oh yeah. I just want you to think about me just for a second. Stop thinking about that other thief. Think about me. Remember me in paradise. Do something. In response to thinking about the person, do something.

And so when you take the bread and you take the cup and you do this in remembrance of me, as you drink it, you think, yes, the selfless one, the one who died on my behalf, who took my sins and bore them on his body, on the tree, was raised from the dead.

But I'm going to remember you. You want a rededication service? It's right here. This is the only rededication service in all the Bible. I remember what God has done and I'm going to do something about it.

I'm going to show thanks. I'm going to pray that God would let me live up to my position. I'm going to know that, remember that God is a savior of all and I'm going to respond with a dependency, not on myself, but on him.

I'm going to remember that I have present fellowship with God. I have past forgiveness and that there's a future as well. Here's your homework for this week, congregation. I want you to just pick a book, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, and I want you to see Christ Jesus day in and day out.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, pick one of those and you'll see something about Jesus. Besides his greatness, besides he's a king and a savior, he's a great teacher, you'll see that he's sacrificial, that he gives, that he is the one who models for us what it's like to live on this earth.

The Sons of Zebedee and Drinking Christ’s Cup

And the mothers of the sons of Zebedee came to him with their sons and kneeling before him. She asked him for something and he said to her, what do you want? She said to him, say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one on your right and one on your left in your kingdom.

You do not know what you were asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink? We are able. He said to them, you will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my father.

And when the 10 heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers, but Jesus called them to him and said, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and their great ones exercise authority over them.

It shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great and among you must be your servant. And whoever would be first among you must be your slave. Even as the son of man, how do you take care of people who are selfish?

You show them the selfless Christ and Jesus even did it here. Even as the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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