According to the Scriptures

Guest (Male): Getting back to the main thing in life, next on According to the Scriptures.

Damian Kyle: Partaking of the Lord’s Supper is one of the ways that God keeps the main thing the main thing in a church. But to keep the main thing the main thing just as necessarily in our own individual lives, and the main thing is Jesus.

You think about what a mess that church at Corinth was, all of the factions, the sin, the selfishness, the carnality. Christianity, even for us, can get very complicated in our minds.

Guest (Male): Have you ever stopped to think for a moment about what life would be like if it weren’t for the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross? Life would be pointless, futile, and empty. In fact, that can pretty much sum up any life today that doesn't include a relationship with Jesus.

Today on According to the Scriptures, Pastor Damian Kyle is going to continue our verse-by-verse study of 1 Corinthians with a look at what communion is all about. It’s a good thing to be reminded exactly what Jesus’ death on the cross accomplished on our behalf. Here’s Pastor Damian.

Damian Kyle: The Lord’s Supper reminds us continually that the Lord is coming back, and we’re to do that until He comes back. He says that we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. When you and I partake of the Lord’s Supper, then before the entire world or people that are unsaved around us or the angelic realm around us, we are proclaiming, we are preaching the fact that that death, burial, and resurrection 2,000 years ago is a historical fact.

We are living recipients of everything that was birthed into human history by that death, burial, and resurrection as Christians. We believe in that for the salvation for us related to sins. So tonight, when you partake of the Lord’s Supper, you say, "Oh boy, I would never want to preach." We preach every time we partake of the Lord’s Supper.

We preach that our faith is in this historical fact, our lives are a product of the historical fact of His death upon the cross for our sins, and we believe in that and we want the whole world to know that. Then He tells us not only the retrospect and the prospect, but then in verse 28, the introspect: "But let a man examine himself and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup."

So, what is this self-examination? We come together and partake of the symbols of Jesus’ body and His blood, and we want to ask ourselves again, as mature, serious Christians—not any kind of a thing where me as a preacher is going to try and rake people over the coals or anything like that—but to just come and as we partake of the elements, the price that was paid for us to be forgiven of our sins and also to free us from the power of sin.

Ask myself: is there anything in my life that I am practicing that is unworthy of this sacrifice that was made? Everything is unworthy, but anything that is unworthy of someone who claims to be a disciple or a follower of Jesus? Of course, that would mean any sin or disobedience to God’s word.

As we walk in the Lord and in Him, and we walk with the Lord in this world, we can allow sometimes old sins to reattach to our lives. So, we just stop tonight and say, "Have I allowed old sins to reattach to my Christian life that have no business reattaching to my life as a Christian? Or have I now allowed new sins into my life that I would have never partaken of even before becoming a Christian?"

Sometimes these sins can attach to us knowingly and sometimes they can attach to us unknowingly. The Lord’s Supper is a time for the body of Christ to regularly sit down and to examine our lives for that. Then to say, "Lord, this has attached itself to me. It has no business being a part of my life as a follower of yours. I recognize that. I don't want anything to do with it. I repent of it and I turn from it, and I want to leave this communion service walking with You with all of my heart."

The Lord’s Supper gives us that time to regularly search our lives for known sin in our lives. Then we partake of the Lord’s Supper with a life that blesses the Lord and a life that is consistent with Jesus’ sacrifice. Now, that would include also anything that is adversely affecting my relationship with the Lord.

There can be things—we've been recently talking about liberties in this section earlier of the book of 1 Corinthians—so there can be all kinds of liberties in our lives that end up crowding Jesus out of our lives. He begins to take a second place to video games or whatever it might be. You can fill that in. Say, "No, Lord, these things have become a greater priority to me, though they're not necessarily sin. I don't want anything to be more important than You in my life."

So, to say, "No, Lord, I'm going to turn back to You with all of my heart." It would also include repenting of any situation or attitude in my life in which I am mistreating other people. Certainly in the body of Christ, but anywhere in our lives where somebody is being hurt by our treatment of them, they're being shamed or humiliated by our treatment of them.

Imagine—when I’m in the fellowship hall after the service and all, I notice when people are sitting alone, and that hurts my heart enough because I don't want people sitting alone that don't want to sit alone and want to meet people and want somebody to recognize that they're alive and they're a human being in a world that’s so lonely these days.

But imagine here in the city of Corinth, in the church there, where people are just actively living their lives without any kind of consciousness of it, without any kind of conviction related to it, and they're just harming and humiliating people right and left. The Lord’s Supper is a time to just stop and give consideration to that.

Begin by thinking about our marriages and how we treat one another in those marriages, and our family relationships, those we serve the Lord with, our friends and our peers in the body of Christ, or wherever it might be. Now in verse 29, it speaks specifically of our mistreatment or wrong attitudes, a sense of superiority and pride regarding other Christians and other parts of the body of Christ.

And that would include tonight: do I readily gossip about the rest of the body of Christ? Do I slander other Christians or even just one particular Christian? Am I unwilling to forgive another Christian? He says, "For those, he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body."

Imagine partaking of the Lord’s Supper and then being unwilling to extend forgiveness to another Christian. To partake—and we're capable of it, at least I am—to partake of the symbol of His body, the symbol of His blood, how lavish He has been with His forgiveness toward me, and then deny forgiveness to another person and to continue to slander and to gossip about them.

Paul says this self-examination is an important one. Now, when he talks about not discerning the Lord’s body, he’s not talking about Jesus Himself, but the body of Christ, other Christians. So he says, "You’re coming together, you’re not discerning the body of Christ. You’re not conscious the way that you need to be with the effect that you are having upon other Christians when you come together."

Paul wrote in chapter 12, verse 27, as we get to it in a couple of weeks, he said, "Now you are the body of Christ and members individually." You remember when Paul was on the road to Damascus and Jesus knocked him off of his high horse, so to speak, and then He declared to Paul and He said, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?"

He said, "Who are You, Lord?" Then the Lord said, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads." Well, Paul was persecuting Christians in terms of the immediate; he wasn't thinking about anything beyond that. And yet Jesus so identifies with the body of Christ, so recognizes you and I to be a part of His body, that when anyone persecutes us, He takes it personally. It’s a persecution against Him.

Here Paul brings it up with the church at Corinth to realize: what you are doing, you aren't just doing to Christians, you aren't just doing to people, you are doing that to the body of Christ, a body of which He is the head. Jesus views any attack upon us as an attack upon Himself. That’s something to consider in partaking of the Lord’s Supper.

Then he warned further in verses 30 to 32 that God was judging some within the church who were tearing it down, being a bad influence within it, and some of them He had struck with weakness and sickness. Think about that. This had become so abhorrent to God that He began to strike them with weakness and with sickness.

Absolutely for sure, not all sickness is a result of this. This would constitute a minuscule amount of sickness probably within the body of Christ, but it does happen. God can put one of His children on a sickbed in order to get their attention and to listen to Him and to take Him seriously when their actions are endangering the health of a church or endangering the health of other Christians.

There’s something about a sickbed, isn't there? You get knocked down, and here we are, we're accomplishing so much every day. We love to accomplish that, we're made to produce and all, and then the Lord puts us on a sickbed—well, we'll say we end up on a sickbed, the Lord doesn't put us on that—and boy, there’s just a lot of time to think in that place, to reassess in that time.

He was giving in one of the most alarming words in the whole thing is that he uses the word "many" doing that with many in the church in Corinth. Then he said, "Many sleep" even in verse 30, and here sleep refers to death. Where when God cannot get the attention of one of His children in this regard and they're going to continue to be an unhealthy and destructive influence within the body of Christ or within a local church, He’ll just take them on home to heaven.

He just says, "I can't trust you down there anymore. You're a danger to My body. So, I'm going to bring you right up here into heaven, and I'm going to put you in the desk right in front of my desk until everybody else comes to join us one day." But you're in the doghouse, buckaroo. And He does that. Again, the word "many" in terms of the church at Corinth is very, very sobering.

That’s why it’s important that we judge ourselves so God doesn't have to take these stronger judgments. He says in verse 32 that when God does judge us, even in this kind of a way, it is in order to turn us around so that we're not condemned with the world. So we hear His voice, He gets through to us, we realize, "Wow, I'm in serious trouble with how I'm just casually living my life as a Christian and the effect that it’s having upon others and how troublesome it is to the heart of the Lord."

He gets that attention so that we're not condemned with the world, and that doesn't speak of the loss of our salvation, but condemned with the world in the sense that we're deserving of God’s judgment as opposed to His grace. So, communion is a time to kind of nip all of these things at the bud in our lives.

Now, instructions concerning the Lord’s Supper, he gives us in verses 23 to 26. Jesus initiated the Lord’s Supper or communion on the night before His crucifixion, and just hours before His arrest, His being tried before the religious judges and secular judges and all of then the pain and shame of the cross.

We notice that introducing both the bread and the cup, Jesus declared that this was to be done again in remembrance of Me. It’s an interesting phrase. One might be tempted and think, "How in the world, why in the world would I need an ordinance from God, Jesus to institute the Lord’s Supper to remember Jesus? How in the world could I ever forget Him?"

But we can. When Jesus wrote to the church in Ephesus, you might remember there in the Revelation, He said, "You've left your first love." So He said, "If you don't repent of that..." The first love is the relationship. They were doing all kinds of work, all kinds of things they were doing in that church, but none of it was coming out of a relationship with Him.

The relationship—their relationship with God had become second to their service to God. So Jesus said, "I don't want to be known for a church like that. I'm not going to give you influence to export that anywhere beyond the walls of your building. I will remove My active presence from you unless you repent."

We certainly think about the church there of the Laodiceans. Jesus is on the outside of the doors of that church knocking, trying to get in. Imagine—imagine having the doors locked to anyone who’s trying to get in, and yet being called a church and Jesus is locked outside.

Here was a church that had put up as an aim for itself the accumulation of wealth, the deceitfulness of riches, power, position—all of these things as more important in the church than Jesus Himself. They didn't have the slightest idea there was anything wrong with a church being one in which Jesus is on the outside knocking to get in.

So it does happen. It doesn't just happen in a church; it can happen in our own hearts. So each of us needs this time set aside just simply to remember Him. Partaking of the Lord’s Supper is one of the ways that God keeps the main thing the main thing in a church. But to keep the main thing the main thing just as necessarily in our own individual lives, and the main thing is Jesus.

You think about what a mess that church at Corinth was, all of the factions, the sin, the selfishness, the carnality. Christianity, even for us, can get very complicated in our minds. We can become very disillusioned even as a Christian by the actions and the decisions of other Christians.

Then we sit down at the Lord’s Supper, we're reminded that this isn't about the elders or the deacons or other Christians. I didn't enter into the family, into the body of Christ in order to gain all of these other relationships, though I’m thankful for that. I came into—became a Christian in order to have a relationship with God.

So, the reminder that this is supremely all about our personal relationship with the Lord. We need that reminder because we can get jaded and we can get disillusioned if we forget that. So in partaking of the Lord’s Supper tonight, we want to just remember Him. Do this in remembrance of Me. Calvary, remember Him as the Lamb of God, slaughtered.

Those Old Testament sacrifices and what a bloody mess a sacrifice was in those Old Testament sacrifices related to sin. And then to see astonishingly, Jesus, when you turn to the Revelation, referred to as the Lamb of God even still, and the sacrifice that He bore for us, the wounds that He bears even today.

Just to think right now, as we're going to partake of the Lord’s Supper, I'm about to do something that Jesus Himself, my very Savior, called on me to do. Now, there are some people who declare that the bread and the cup, when you partake of it, that the bread becomes the actual body of Jesus Christ and that the cup becomes the actual blood of Jesus Christ. Transubstantiation is the idea related to the teaching.

But they don't. You're going to partake of a cracker and you're going to partake of grape juice here tonight, and it won't become anything other than what it is. They're just very, very simple elements and symbols of Jesus’ body and His blood, reminders of Jesus’ body and His blood. Because the value of all of this tonight is not that the cracker or the grape juice becomes more than what they actually are.

The value is that they remind us of Him. To think about Him and to remember Him is a more powerful experience to a spirit-filled Christian than if the elements did turn into His literal body and His literal blood. Every memory of Him is good, every thought of Him is a priceless blessing.

I've never understood the need for transubstantiation. I have postcards up in my office. In almost any time I travel any place in the United States, to California, or around the world, I buy a postcard and I put it in a book and it reminds me of where I've been. I have a bad memory for things and all of that, and like a picture, a postcard reminds me of that event, reminds me of the people associated with it, and so forth.

Those postcards in my office there are worth probably somewhere between five cents to a dollar. But the value in them is not the paper or the picture on the front of them. The value is the memory it provokes. That’s what makes these symbols valuable. To stop and to remember Him.

Look back upon what He’s done for us. Look ahead to the fact that He’s coming back for us. And then a time to say, "Lord, anything that doesn't look like You in my life, I am very interested in becoming aware of tonight and having You show that to me so that I can turn away from it."

So tonight, as we partake of the Lord’s Supper, if you’re here with us tonight and you’re not yet a Christian, the partaking of the Lord’s Supper is limited to Christians. You will want to wait until you are born again and in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and then partake of the communion for the first time in that saved condition before you do that.

So don't partake tonight, but continue enjoying the rest of the service. But if you sit here tonight and you say, "I am not a Christian. I have never asked Jesus for the forgiveness of my sins and put my faith in Jesus and I want to become a Christian," then you can just cry out to the Lord tonight and say, "Lord, I’m a sinner, I need to be saved, and I put my trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of my sins. I turn from my rebellion, I turn from my self-will, I turn from my sin, and I choose to follow You with all my heart tonight." Or however you would put that in your heart. And the Lord will come into your life right where you're seated tonight and then partake of the Lord’s Supper with us this evening.

Guest (Male): That’s Pastor Damian Kyle reminding us the Lord’s Supper is all about Jesus and remembering that He has done it all. It is finished. We’ve got an awful lot to be thankful about, don't we? Well, we’ve made it through the first 11 chapters of 1 Corinthians here on According to the Scriptures.

If you’d like to get the CD that contains today’s message from 1 Corinthians, give us a call: 209-545-5530. That’s 209-545-5530. I should also mention Pastor Damian’s messages are found at accordingtothescriptures.com, as well as oneplace.com, and on most of the major podcast apps.

So if you missed one or two messages on the radio, there are many ways to catch up. It’d be our honor to pray for you, so keep those prayer requests coming. Leave a comment or prayer request at accordingtothescriptures.com or you can email us at atts@ccmodesto.com. Again, that’s atts@ccmodesto.com.

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