Get Out of the Temples and Come to Christ

You'll remain standing and turn in your Bibles, if you have them, to Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 15, we'll be reading verses 1 through 21 on the passage on the Jerusalem council.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

As I read, I would ask you to give careful attention because what I'm about

to read is God's holy word.

But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers,

unless you're circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.

After Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them,

Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem,

to the apostles and to the elders about this question.

So being sent on their way by the church, they passed through Phoenicia and

Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles and brought great joy to all the brothers.

When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles

and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them.

But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said,

it is necessary to circumcise them in order to keep the law of Moses.

The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter.

And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them,

Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you,

that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.

And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us.

And he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their heart by faith.

Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the

neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?

But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, just as they will.

And all the assembly fell silent and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they

related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

After they finished speaking, James replied, brothers, listen to me.

Simon has related how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for his name.

And with this, the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written,

after this, I will return and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen.

I will rebuild its ruins and I will restore it that the remnant of mankind may

seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who are called by my name,

says the Lord who makes these things known from old.

Therefore, my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who

turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by

idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood.

For from ancient generations, Moses has had in every city those who proclaim

him, for he has read every Sabbath in the synagogue.

This is the word of the Lord. You can be seated.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we ask for your Holy Spirit,

that you would be with us, guide us, give us light where there is darkness,

give us insight, give us Christ.

We pray in his name. Amen.

The passage this morning is an interesting passage. It gave me more trouble,

by the way, than any other passage that we've been through so far.

I already know kind of where I'm going for next week, but this week.

I thought I knew where I was going, and then I thought I change direction,

then change direction again.

It was one of those weeks where you're like, what is going to be the conclusion,

of the sermon? Because it stems from these two decrees that come from the council.

We've already looked at Jewish-Gentile relationships, circumcision.

We've already looked at the fact that David's kingdom is being restored,

and with the coming of the restoration of David's kingdom is the restoration

of the tabernacle among the people, and that means blessings to the Gentiles.

And all of that was argued and made known. But then at the end of this council,

when they were dealing with the question of circumcision and the relationship

between Jews and Gentiles, they gave these four things.

In verse 20 and 28, they repeated them. In verse 20, it says,

just write to them and say, quote, to abstain from the things polluted by idols,

from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood.

That's it. Then they repeat it again. And by the way, it's not in the same order.

So we can conclude by the order and change. And it's repeated once again in

a different section of scripture.

It doesn't look like the order is one of priority because they switch order.

It just seems like four things put together here.

The second time it says, verse 28, it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to

us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements that you abstain

from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what has been

strangled and from sexual immorality.

If you keep these things, you will do well.

So the church, again, this is a church in council, comes to a decision.

And you'll notice, by the way, just as a side note, the church is never speaking

its own words. It doesn't come up with its own authority here.

It gathers its authority from the arguments from the word of God,

what David's kingdom is like, what Amos said, what the Psalms said,

all the different arguments that we've been hearing.

So the church's decision is made on the authority of the word of God.

That's why they say it seemed good to us and the Holy Spirit.

So they make this proclamation and this decree. And it's a strange decree.

I mean, again, all week long, I'm looking at it.

And when you're reading the commentaries and different people,

I'll just let you know in advance, there are multiple different approaches to

this particular decree.

Where did it come from? Why is it here? Doesn't it seem strange to you that

of all the things you could tell Gentiles, of everything you could say to Jews

and Gentiles and to the Gentiles who are coming together, all the things you

could say, you tell them no strangled food.

No blood and no food polluted by idols and no sexual immorality.

Now, the one about sexual morality is the one, I mean, all of them so far were

dealing with food, right?

No blood, no strangled animals, no food dedicated to idols. And then they throw

in sexual morality and you're like, wait a minute.

If you're giving a moral list of what to do, if you could just come up and say,

okay, guys, how are we going to get along? This is how you should live.

No sexual immorality. Okay.

Hey, if the list were merely moral, there's good things and bad things to do,

then why strangled animals?

What's up with that? Why strangled animals? Maybe you could see blood,

like blood is not good. It's not been good since the days of Noah,

but sexual immorality, strangled animals.

What do they have in common, if anything?

Every commentary, and I'll also say this, good conservative Bible-believing

evangelical Reformed scholars, a lot of them disagree.

Even I had to hang my head this week and say, I even disagreed with R.C. Sproul.

And it was like, R.C. Sproul is like the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords of Reformed Teachers.

And his approach, I just wasn't satisfactory. So that tells you,

as I'm going through this week, like, gee, I don't wanna disagree with R.C. Sproul.

I mean, more people have come to my church over the years and to Reformed Theology

from R.C. Sproul than any other single author I know.

So my point is good people, Orthodox people can disagree on what this is.

It's a bit complicated in some ways. I think by the end of it,

you'll say, ah, pastor made it simple. I agree with Pastor Jackson.

So what is it from? Where does it belong? A lot of scholars say, well, I know what it is.

It's the collection of laws that Noah was given after the flood and the direction

of how life should be after the flood. And certainly in Genesis 9,

it says, you shall not eat flesh with its life in it, that is blood.

So that is, by the way, of the two listed here, there are still continuing moral

validity for us today. We're not supposed to eat blood.

We're not supposed to drink blood. And there are many tribes over the world

that eat and drink blood.

Now, again, it doesn't mean that we have to be so concerned about the use of

blood that we deny blood transfusions and we can't use blood in certain ways

to give life and to sustain life.

But the eating and drinking of blood directly is forbidden, and especially forbidden

in terms of any sort of ceremony.

I had a professor once at Cedarville who, when we had a cookout,

he always had things squeezed.

Like the steak or the burger would be, if he squeezed it and any blood came

out, he's like, nope, keep cooking. Because I don't eat blood.

So I don't propose that you can't have a rare steak or enjoy some measure of

drips that come out from that burger today.

Deacons are going to be out there squeezing really hard, but there's no blood.

I don't think it's that. But I do think that particularly tribes,

the Comanche Indians used to do this, that there were tribes in Africa that

we knew they would take a little prick and prick it into the horse or the cow

or whatever it was and mix it into

a gourd, fill it half with the blood and the other half, of course,

you got to put in there some sheep's milk or goat's milk.

Then you got to wait a few days till it curdles and then it's really good.

They would do that as a connection, a part of their life and their religious

life as well. The cows and the horses were the source of life and blood was a common thing.

So blood is there. Is it from Noah? Well, what about the other laws?

You don't find them in Noah.

The rabbis made commentaries about Noah's commandments, but they made those

commentaries after the Council of Jerusalem in AD 50. So it wouldn't work to

say that they're all coming from Noah.

On the other hand, the most popular conservative approach is they're all coming from Leviticus.

Leviticus chapter 17 through 18 does provide a list of items that says,

Leviticus 17 · chapter mention

this is how Gentiles or sojourners who live among you are supposed to act.

For instance, Genesis 17, 7 says, there'll be no more sacrifices to goat demons.

And then it goes on to talk about that. Now, some of them say that's it.

That's where you have food dedicated to idols. You're not allowed to do that

because it says no sacrifices to the goat demons.

Although I think you got to squeeze a little bit to get it. But Leviticus 17.10

does say, strangers or sojourners who are among you, they shall not eat blood.

Again, that's a common understood thing already. Noah has said it.

Everybody who understands that blood is the source of life and blood is central

to our sacrifice, sacrifices, it says, without the shedding of,

blood, there is no remission of sins.

You have that in Leviticus, although the idol thing is a little bit, you have to stretch it.

It says again in Leviticus 17, 13 through 15, you shall not eat the blood of

any creature, for the life of the creature is its blood, neither shall your sojourner, etc., etc.

And then Leviticus 18, the whole of Leviticus 18 is about sexual immorality

in general, but it's also most primarily full of incestuous laws.

How close can your relationship be before those relations are not okay?

And it is possible that Leviticus is the generalized source where which they

get it. And by the way, we don't get any notes on the council.

Then nobody left transcribed notes on, hey, I was arguing this.

And then so-and-so stood up and said that.

We do have that for many church councils, Westminster Assembly.

There are at least, I think, seven or eight volumes of the notes of the arguments

from the Westminster Assembly. It's pretty fascinating.

Dr. Chad Van Dixhorn did it. We don't have any such notes, and there's nothing in the text.

Earlier on, we do have, like Peter stood up and said this, James stood up and

said this. We have quotes from the Bible.

But when it comes to these four things, we don't have any source notes.

We don't know exactly where they got them or why they took them this way.

And so how do you put them all together?

Especially things like strangled meat. Somebody said that Leviticus 17,

13 says, Well, strangers who dwell on the land, who hunts and catches any animal

or bird that may be eaten, he shall pour out his blood and cover it in the dust. So no blood.

But they say, well, that was because sometimes pagans would strangle,

choke and strangle their victims. But Deuteronomy 14 says if Gentiles find a

dead animal, Jews are not allowed to eat it, but Gentiles are free to eat it.

So it doesn't seem to be about butchering techniques. Some people say,

and it is true, Jewish butchering techniques are like the halal techniques of

the Muslims. You have to cut an animal a certain way.

You have to slice it a certain way. You can't do this or that.

I was with the kids when they were slaughtering chickens recently,

and I was watching Tom. I wasn't watching to see if you were slaughtering,

like, according to the Levitical laws.

But Gentiles were allowed to do this. Jews were not.

It doesn't still say anything about strangling. So it's kind of funny.

Some people say, well, the whole point of these decrees were about table fellowship.

That's how they tie them together.

If you can't use Noah, if you can't use Leviticus exactly, well,

what brought them together was the issue of table fellowship.

We're about to have a fellowship meal afterwards.

You can imagine if there were Jews and Gentiles and the Gentiles brought some pig, some pork.

You know, let's have bacon and some sausage along with the other things.

Table fellowship, however, doesn't seem to be the issue also because of sexual

immorality. You don't typically associate that with fellowship meals.

It just doesn't seem to just flow naturally. So what is it?

What are these things? Where do they all fit together?

The only thing that I could conclude, and I drew from a scholar named Ben Weatherington,

a conservative evangelical scholar who writes extensively on Acts.

He says, the apostolic decree identifies four elements that.

All could have been found in idolatrous worship among pagan temples.

And that's true. The only thing I can see that binds them all together is pagan

temple worship. And pagan temple worship often included all four things.

Maybe you say, well, what sexual immorality have to do that? We'll see.

First of all, at any sort of Roman or Greek, when this is true in Corinth and

Antioch and in Ephesus especially.

The city of Ephesus was dedicated to Artemis, the goddess of fertility.

So there was definitely at her banquet always some manner of sexual immorality,

including numerous temple prostitutes, both male and female.

And every time the pagans would go to their altars, they would offer food.

They would offer sacrifices to their gods, sometimes literally setting them

down before the shrine so that the god could receive the food.

Once that was dedicated, it

was considered dedicated to the gods and therefore polluted by those gods.

Blood, obviously blood and strangulation were part of those same religious ceremonies.

Now, blood in religious ceremonies is as ancient as any pagan ceremony you can imagine.

The Norse, in the Norse paganism, the Norse would cut their animals and take

the blood of the animals, fill them up, fill bowls full of blood,

and take certain twigs and sprinkle the people, sprinkle the altar,

and then they would cover the walls of their temple.

It was called the reddening of the sacred stone, blood everywhere.

Blood is so common. Most of you are familiar with the Mayanans, the Aztecs.

If you read Cortes or Prescott's conquest of Mexico, the Spanish were completely

frightened by these Aztecs because there were skulls and blood everywhere.

And they had blood sacrifices every single year, multiple times where they would

use blood, which was considered the only life source that would satisfy the

gods and bring peace to the area. So blood is common.

There was even a cult that had a deus sanguinis, a day of blood where they would

bring blood and use blood and devote it to the temples and to the priest and

the priest would even whip themselves

and collect their own blood from that. So blood is a common one.

Strangled animals were also common. I just recently came across this in Herodotus.

In his histories, he was describing the Scythians.

He said, this is a bit strange thing. He said they would take their victims,

the animals, and the priest would invoke whatever god they were sacrificing.

Then they would throw a noose around the beast's neck, put a stick in the noose

and begin twisting until the animal was strangled to get to death.

It wasn't even uncommon among some Greek worshipers where when there was a sacrifice

to the god Eros, you can imagine,

that you come before the statue and take your bird or your animal and literally

with your own two hands, you would have to stand before the statue close to the statue's face

and squeeze the life out of the animal until it's suffocated so that God would

breathe in the life of the animal.

It's a common, the drinking of blood, the strangling of animals,

common way of thinking by the pagans that they would breathe in the soul force or the soul power.

Cannibalism was common among some of them as well because when you ate your

enemy, you ate their power and you kept them from connecting properly with the ancestors.

Sexual immorality, it seems like it's far-fetched. That was the one that kept

not fitting. But if you look at pagan temple worship, it included such things.

Most pagan worship services were festivals where you would start with the blood

or the strangled animals or the food to the idols and then you would move your

way to a banquet and subsequent to the banquet would be all manner of sexual immorality.

These in other words are it looks to me like a venue for temple worship and what you've seen.

The apostle is saying is you've got to get out of the temples that's where the

name of the sermon was get out of the temples and come to Jesus leave the temples

flee the temples all of which were associated by all four of these actions,

all of these actions. But it is interesting though, because you have this,

I remember once when we were in Africa, I had the situation.

I've never had it in America, and I don't think any of you do,

but we were trying to minister to Indians.

And so my friend asked me to come to Diwali. I don't know if you've even heard

of Diwali. It's the Indian New Year, the Festival of Lights.

And that Diwali, it takes place on the temple grounds.

And they have fireworks. And if you You think last night was,

you know, a lot of fireworks. The Indians will scare you.

Little seven-year-old kids are shooting off fire, you know, bottle rockets,

and everyone's throwing and things blowing up all right over your head. It's really fun.

And afterwards, after the Festival of the Lights, they all come together for a meal.

And as we were in line, I'd been before, and my buddy behind me from South Africa

says, you're going to eat this food?

I said, yes, the best Indian food in town. He said, it's been dedicated to the idols. I said, I know.

They literally cooked it on the temple grounds and in some cases cooked it before

the shrines so that the aroma of the food would go up there.

And he said, you're going to eat? I said, yeah. Paul says, if you eat with a

good conscience, be thankful. I said, I'm thankful. I love Indian food.

I'm eating. I said, what about you? He said, I'm not sure yet.

But that discussion itself tells you something, doesn't it? How can the decree

say abstain from food polluted idols?

And then Paul can turn around and say, don't worry about it.

No big deal. If you want to eat and be thankful, eat. If you don't,

don't. Is Paul's exhortation a contradiction or a development?

Now, again, I'll get to R.C. Sproul. R.C. Sproul says simply,

well, the Council of Jerusalem was just pious advice.

It wasn't a requirement, even though the word requirement is used there.

And even though it says it seemed good to us and the Holy Spirit.

So Sproul's answer was, well, it was just good advice until Jews and Gentiles

could get more mixed. And then now Paul comes along and says,

don't worry about any of that food. abstain to idols because it doesn't really matter.

Well, does it matter or doesn't it? I think the answer is, it's not that it's

a contradiction. I think the answer is that Paul is saying that you can eat

food that other people have dedicated to idols, which by the way, you couldn't escape.

There was no place you could go unless you made the food, butchered the food

yourselves. You couldn't buy things in the marketplace. You couldn't buy a basket.

You couldn't buy food. You couldn't buy vegetables. You couldn't buy fruits

of anyone from anywhere in the markets because the markets were surrounded by

the temples and everyone had dedicated everything they had to the temples and to temple worship.

So what the Jerusalem council is saying, it's not, it's you that should not be in the temples.

Don't you go there and dedicate your food, or don't you strangle,

or don't you drink blood, or don't you be involved in sexual immorality. Get out of the temples.

But the temples were everywhere in everybody else's lives. There was no way to escape it.

All Paul was doing was clarifying for them.

You don't need to be the one. You cannot be the one that sacrifices and dedicates

these to idols, but you can eat the food.

In fact, Paul is saying, how on earth could you minister to these Gentile pagans

if you didn't eat food with them that was dedicated to idols?

Now, Paul says you can do it or not do it, but he does clarify.

He says in 1 Corinthians 8, an idol has no real existence.

In other words, the Christians who don't do this anymore, but then they go over

to their neighbor's house who does this, Paul says, don't worry about it.

If the council of Jerusalem were saying, don't even eat it, then Paul would

be contradicting. But if the council of Jerusalem is saying, don't do this.

Then Paul's saying, yes, don't do this, but people who do this and bring you

into their home, eat and be thankful.

It's what some theologians call adiaphora. It doesn't matter.

That's exactly what Paul will say.

Verse eight, food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not

eat or if we do. It doesn't matter. Let your conscience be your guide.

So eat if you'd like. So that night at the festival, I had the best Indian food in town. I ate.

I was trying to actually have a relationship with my Indian friends.

And by the way, it wasn't, just a religious festival that I was participating in.

Muslims were there, Hindus were there, Christians were there,

people from all over, more of a national festival.

But Paul says basically food doesn't matter. And yet the council says it does matter.

But I think it's saying it matters if you're the one doing it,

if you're the one involved in it.

Most of us, again, don't have that situation. We don't have food dedicated to

idols. We don't have food dedicated to idols.

But Paul tells us it doesn't really matter. 1 Corinthians 8,

he says, if anyone thinks he knows something, he knows nothing, yet as he ought to know.

But food does not come into Saga, for if we eat, we're no better off than if we do not eat.

We're no worse. It doesn't really matter.

Also, he noticed, he says that binding the conscience in such matters,

you can't bind other people's conscience. You can't judge me for eating Indian

food at Diwali. That's what Paul says.

So he says, 1 Corinthians 10, 29, for why should my liberty be determined by

someone else's conscience?

If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which

I give thanks? Paul says, leave people alone.

And this is a people who everywhere, every piece of bread or every fruit or

every bit of food that you got would have already been dedicated to idols.

Paul's saying, we are no longer dominated by idols. We've left the temples.

We live for Jesus Christ who makes all things clean. we don't have to worry

about that, so long as we're not involving ourselves in the worship.

And he also says in 1 Corinthians 4, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written.

When we judge and when we consider what to do, you're only allowed to use the Word of God to do so.

So all four prohibitions, all things are connected to pagan cultic customs, pagan cultic worship.

And again, the word porneia, they're very common among the cultic worship.

They were to have, as it were, an exodus from the temples.

They were to leave the temples. And by the way, this meant leaving your people,

leaving your culture, leaving your place, leaving your identity,

because everything in those cultures was identified with those pagan gods.

This is my God. These are my people.

That's why Ruth would describe when she left, your people, my people, your God, my God.

It was an amazingly radical thing for the Jerusalem council to say,

you guys are finished in the temple.

You don't eat in there. You don't sacrifice in there. You don't do anything else in there.

You exodus the temple and you come to Jesus Christ, which would have been an

amazing call. And I think it's one of our calls. We don't have temples today.

We don't have these temples on every corner as they did in those days.

But we do have to scrutinize what we do,

when we're out there, especially if what we do gets brought into the presence

of the Lord at the Lord's table.

Particularly, you'll notice, by the way, that three of the items were about

eating, strangled food, polluted food, and blood.

And blood in particular is something important. It looks to me like the very

thing that Paul had struggled with in Corinth was this very Jerusalem council's decree.

I was thinking about this. Well, do we see this anywhere else in Scripture? And we actually do.

When Paul was dealing with the Lord's Supper and the chaos that was going on

in the Corinthians church, he was noting basically, you guys haven't listened

to the council's decrees.

You're trying to go participate in the temples and the sexual immorality,

and particularly the cup of demons, and you're trying to bring that back into

the church, and you're trying to pretend that everything's going to be okay, that you can mix.

They call it syncretism, where you try to do both things together at once.

You can't participate in that and participate in the body and blood of the Lord

Jesus Christ. You're to cut all those cultural ties.

It's very problematic in pagan cultures. It was common where we were for a lady

to be, come forward, get saved, baptize her baby.

And then when the child got sick and there was no medical answer,

the first thing she would do is go to the witch doctor and kill a chicken for its blood.

So the chicken's blood could help to heal the child, mixing together the cup

of the Lord with the cup of demons.

And Paul says this, he said, Beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak to you as a sensible person.

Later in chapter 11, the very issue of eating, which I think is central,

and we're going to move to a conclusion on this. The whole thing kept leading

me to the Lord's table. Like what brings us together as a people?

It's not our customs. It's not our practices. It's not even though,

don't mean to sound un-American on the 250th, but it's not even being American.

What brings us together is not our culture or our tribe or our language or the

way we dress or anything else. What brings us together is the body and blood

of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we have to be sure that we put away every single thing possible that we

can come together, every demon, every temple practice, every source of contamination

and pollution to the people of God. When we come to this table, we reject it.

We say, no, I belong body and soul to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And this supper calls us to that and calls us away from the temples of our world. whatever they are.

We do have rituals, you know. We do have liturgies.

I even read a book once where a guy was saying, do you know malls?

Malls are out of fashion now, but even malls had a liturgy to them.

A place where the fountain was, a place where the music was playing,

a place where certain stores were put, so that American consumers could have

a nice ritual and a nice liturgy as consumers.

Maybe where consumeristic temples are all out there. Maybe where who knows,

whatever it is, the tolerance temple, where we're tolerating immorality and

perversion of all kinds, and then

coming to the table of the Lord as if everything's okay, not possible.

Not possible. In 1 Corinthians 11, the Corinthian church had this very problem.

They came together having gone to the temples, participated in those things,

and then they brought the temple practices back to the Lord's Supper and to worship.

He says this, I do not commend you because when you come together,

is it not for the better, for the worse?

For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear there are divisions among you.

And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that

those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

When you come together, it is not for the Lord's supper that you eat.

For in eating, each one of you goes ahead and has his own meal.

One goes hungry, another gets drunk. Again, a common practice at the pagan festivals.

Come together, bring your stuff. The rich eat the rich foods, the poor get nothing.

And then you eat into a state of drunkenness. And from later,

what we see in Corinthians, the drunkenness went to sexual immorality common in the church.

And that's why Paul was constantly rebuking this particular church for bringing

in the temple practices into the presence of the Lord?

Or do you despise the church, he said, and humiliate those who have nothing?

For what shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.

For I received from the Lord that which I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus

on the night in which he was betrayed took bread.

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 also, he took the cup, saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me For as often as you drink,

eat the bread and drink the cup You proclaim the Lord's death And whoever eats

and drinks the Lord in an unworthy manner This has been a troublesome passage for many of us,

In fact, some churches, every time the Lord's Supper is served,

they quote from this saying, discern the body.

I rarely do it, but I'm going to today.

I rarely do. But by discern the body, I don't think he's speaking at all about

see how much theological knowledge you have about Trinitarian theology or Christ

and the resurrection or the natures of Christ and the deity of Christ.

I think he's talking about discerning the body in terms of us bringing in all

the pagan temple practices and pretending that we can mix them with Jesus Christ.

And mix them with each other.

When we come together in the Lord's body, we have to discern any divisions and

any strife that we're bringing to this table.

I don't perceive any. Paul did in Corinth. That's why he gives the warning.

By the way, that's why I don't give it weekly. I don't come to you every week saying, you guys.

When I heard this, by the way, when I was a young boy, we only had communion like quarterly.

And every time we had it, the preacher would say, this is why many of you are

weak. and ill, and some have died.

And I was like, I'm dead.

I am dead because I knew what I'd been doing the week before.

I'm a teenager and I wasn't living right. And then this guy said,

you want to die? I was like, no.

The Lord's Supper became something of a very strange, fearful experience for

me because I knew I couldn't come there without sin. I knew I couldn't come

to the table without some problem. And I didn't want to eat and drink in an

unworthy manner and die.

What Paul's saying is not that. If you come to the Lord's table and are willing

to repent of your sins, that's why you should come.

Come here for forgiveness. Come here for encouragement. Come here for confirmation and strength.

Encouragement in being Christ and living for Christ.

If you're going to be judged, however, if you want to come to this table and

you want to bring your pagan ideas and your factionalism and your foolish ideas

to this table, you better be warned because you'll be bringing division in the

church with Christ hates.

This is a symbol of unity in the church for all the brothers.

It's a great symbol of when we eat this bread and drink this cup that we share

the life of Christ together.

We don't know that much about it in our culture, but in the ancient world,

sharing a meal together wasn't just getting food in your stomach. It was sharing life.

We went, once when I was in Juba, South Sudan, eating in Africa was always one

of those challenges for me because the more I ate, the more allergies I think I have.

Went to Juba there and after the meal, Africans who don't have anything will always feed you.

After the meal, the ladies were all lined up. They were so proud of their food

and time to eat. And we're all the white guys, you know, the Mizungus.

We were kawaja there. Kawajas go up and eat. And as I came, I saw this big dish of green stuff.

I'm like, oh gosh, I hope I can dip it myself. But no, the fish I liked,

they always loved their food. It's their food. See, that's the thing.

So this is tilapia from the Nile. It's the best in the world,

best in Africa. Okay, get my tilapia. I get to the green stuff.

And it's slippery and goopy. And it's like a mustard green or a colored green. And I'm like, oh Lord.

So she gives me a big, huge, this is our favorite. Yes, so get it.

And I took it back. It also had these little tiny weird seeds in it.

All of it was bitter. I mean, if I have to eat colored greens,

I put honey and maple syrup or something, and I can't.

So I was eating, and I took a bite. I was like, oh, my Lord,

I can't. And she says, how is it? I was like, it's unique. Oh,

it's unique. He likes it.

I said, it's unique. So I made it through there. And the funny thing about all

that is I'm eating all this and whatever.

At the end of it, they said, now, they said, now you've shared our life. It's like, what?

I ate the green goop, I guess, I don't know. But no, they said,

now you have shared life because for them, sharing a meal was sharing life. You know us, we know you.

We've literally shared our table with you.

And that's exactly what happens at the Lord's Supper.

The Lord shares his life with us, feeds us, gives us himself in this supper,

and we are fed and nourished like nothing we could possibly have.

So when you come to the table as we're about to come, scrutinize the temples.

I know we don't have temples, but the false gods of this world,

the factualism, your identity, leave it all behind and come together in the

Lord's Supper and eat together in unity in Jesus Christ and be blessed.

Amen. Let's pray together.

Lord, how we thank you that at the end of every service, you share your life with us.

We are reminded, O Lord That you have not only given your life But continue

to give to us The strength and

the nourishment The forgiveness of our sins That we need so desperately,

Feed us this morning as a church Make us unified in Christ,

As we eat together at our fellowship meal later Help us to rejoice with one

another As those who are a forgiven community,

Who have been brought together by this The Lord's Supper, this meal The sacrifice

of Christ on the cross us in his resurrection and his ascension.

Bind us together, strengthen us.

For those who are weary, oh Lord, we pray that you would strengthen them.

For those who are sick, we pray for their healing and grace.

But we pray ultimately, Lord, that we would all come to Jesus Christ this morning

and know his love better than we have known it before.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.