The Union in Communion

Okay, sure, we have a sure.

Okay, I'm excited to talk to you.

We're going to be talking about communion today, so let's just pray and then we'll get started.

Father, please teach us from your words, show us exactly how you feel and think about communion.

Lord, we love you and we worship you, and we just want to know what this whole business with communion is about.

Amen, all right.

The sermon today is titled we Put the Union in Communion.

I love it.

Okay, so communion is something that has been around for a couple thousand years, right, you know, back in Egypt they had Passover, and during Passover they would have bread and unleavened bread, they'd have wine and they would celebrate these things, and it was to remember a few specific things.

But when Jesus came, he told his disciples hey, I want you to take communion, and it was on the night of Passover.

So what Jesus was basically doing is he was hijacking Passover and changing it completely so that we would have something new to celebrate.

And he kind of did the same thing to the entire Old Covenant, the entire Old Testament.

He hijacked the whole thing, transformed it, and so we don't celebrate Passover anymore.

We're not, under any rule, any law to celebrate Passover, but Jesus has given us communion.

Now the church did some really amazing hijacking of its own when it came to communion.

So around 300 AD 310 to be specific do you guys know what happened?

And to be specific, do you guys know what happened?

Constantine you ever heard of Constantine?

Okay, well, constantine was the emperor of Rome.

Okay, rome was a pagan nation.

They worshipped all kinds of demons and all kinds of other gods, and Constantine at one point.

So Jesus came.

You know about zero.

About 33 AD, he died, and so he's, you know all of his followers.

The church is growing, but Rome hated the church, and so Rome is persecuting the church and killing everybody.

And the more they killed people in the church guess what?

The more the church grew, the more dangerous it was to be a Christian, the more people were like maybe that's the right way to be.

And so people started.

More and more people in Rome and in the Roman Empire became Christians, and by the time 300 AD came, the majority of people in Rome, the whole, all of Europe, were believers.

And so what happened is Constantine became a believer as well.

Well, I don't know technically if he became a believer, but he basically said well, it looks like we're a Christian nation now, so I better get along with everybody in the nation, because we're tired of killing everybody and we can't just keep killing everybody.

So he kind of merged Christianity with the states, you know, with the government, and it became like the Holy Roman Empire from 310 on.

Why am I talking about all this?

Because once that happened, the church became, they got very rich overnight and so they built.

They just took all the pagan temples and made them churches and then they called them all Catholic, which just meant universal.

It was the one church and so all the you know priests would have a building and they had money and so they wanted to control what was being said all the time.

So they invented a liturgy, they invented a way that they would do church every single week and part of that was communion.

And so we got off track for many like 1,500 years basically, where communion became something that people said if you take communion, you're saved.

If the church gives you communion, it means you're born again, you're saved.

They wouldn't say the word born again during that time, but you're saved and you can send as much as you want during the week, as long as you come and take communion, so have fun.

That, basically, was the mindset, and they believed in something called transubstantiation.

There's your $2 word for the day and, as you guys know, that means they believed that as soon as you bite the bread, it becomes Jesus' body in your mouth.

And as soon as you bite the bread, it becomes Jesus' body in your mouth.

And as soon as you drink the grape juice well, they used wine it would become the blood of Jesus in your mouth.

And the reason they wanted to have it this way is so that they would make people afraid, if you didn't come to church and take communion, that you were denying Jesus and you didn't have Jesus inside you anymore for that week.

Okay, so all of this in 1500, there was the Great Reformation, where Martin Luther came and some things changed and some beliefs changed, and we started looking to the Bible more, because the Bible doesn't say any of that.

And so in the Bible, you know, they tried to get back on to what the Bible said, which was it's symbolic of his body and his blood.

And so that's what communion really is.

It's something that Jesus asked us to celebrate, to celebrate what he did.

So, with that being our context and our introduction, we're going to dive into what was going on in this church.

Okay, so you remember, in Corinth they were a Gentile church and before they all met Jesus, they were partying hardcore at their temples.

This is how they worshipped their other deities, their other demons and all the false pagan gods.

They would have parties with alcohol and whatever other vices they could get into.

That's how they worshipped.

So the culture was very much about partying.

And you know what?

Today is the first day of what Anybody know NFL football.

That's right, and I think we know what this is like, what their culture was like.

Have you just watched?

Has anyone been to an NFL game?

Yeah, it's like it's a wild party.

People yell and scream their heads off.

People love going.

It's almost like they're at a giant worship service.

Right, it's almost like we intrinsically know how to celebrate something that really matters to us.

And the church in Corinth was actually pretty cool because they took that attitude like well, we know how to party and they brought it into the church and they were like let's celebrate God, like we were celebrating at these pagan temples, and let's go crazy, let's get drunk celebrating Jesus.

That's what was going on.

And Paul, he writes them a letter.

He's writing them this letter and he's going to bring some correction into their life, but notice, he doesn't tell them you need to calm down.

He doesn't correct everything that they're doing.

He corrects what they were doing that wasn't loving, and how they were creating class differences and some other things that we're going to see today.

But the point is, the celebrating was good, they knew how to celebrate, but they were doing it wrong, and so that's our context of what's going on in Corinth at this time.

So let's begin studying, let's begin reading.

We put the communion in, we put the union in communion, verse 17 of chapter 11.

Now, in giving these instructions, I do not praise you, since you come together not for the better, but for the worse.

Uh-oh, uh-oh.

They made a mess of communion right, just like many churches today.

To be honest, they made it all about themselves.

That's the problem here.

That's the mistake.

They made it all about themselves.

That's the problem here.

That's the mistake.

They made it all about themselves.

Again, the pagan style was crazy gluttony and sinful actions at their feasts.

And so, from their pre-Christian days, they knew how to celebrate, they knew how to part, they kept it 100, as the kids say, but they completely missed the life of Jesus that Jesus had given them.

They weren't celebrating Him directly.

You know, this is really important.

In Matthew, chapter 9, verse 14, it says then the disciples of John came to Him saying why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?

Matthew 9:14

And Jesus said to them can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, but the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them and then they will fast.

No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch pulls away from the garment and the tear is made worse.

Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins are ruined.

But they put new wine into new wineskins and both.

So the new wine that Jesus is talking about is the Holy Spirit in us.

It cannot exist in an old wineskin.

What does that mean?

The law-based religious life that we used to live, the law-based religious life that we used to live, the Holy Spirit and the new covenant of grace does not fit in that life.

We need new hearts to be a proper vessel for the Holy Spirit that God wants to live through us.

So God starts by giving us new hearts.

That's how we all start out with God.

God gives us new hearts and he makes us a pure, new vessel.

And that's the first part of grace.

We're forgiven and we're made pure, and so the Spirit can live through us.

That's the second part of grace.

First part of grace you get saved, you're made pure, you're forgiven.

That's called justification.

And then all the rest of our life, we're growing.

But what are we doing?

We're letting the Holy Spirit live through us.

And the church in Corinth was not remembering that part.

They were not remembering that they were pure and holy vessels of the Holy Spirit.

So they were living and celebrating how they used to, how they used to, with total self-focus.

They were getting drunk and independently gorging themselves on the food that was intended to feed the whole church and bless the whole church.

And classes they had rich classes and poor classes were the only thing that really separated people back then not cars or technology or even races so much because there wasn't even very many different races in that culture.

So they really leaned into their class.

What class are you?

Are you from a rich family or from a poor family?

And it's kind of the only division that they had in that day.

And so let's continue on our text here.

For first of all, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it.

This tells us what happened.

Okay, this was supposed to celebrate how good Jesus has been to all of us, and they turned it into a thing that divided people and made people feel embarrassed and not good enough.

Isn't that sad?

He says for there must also be factions among you that those who are approved may be recognized among you.

Well, that's a weird verse and I had to really study this verse to figure out what he was saying.

So he's not saying that everyone has to be best friends.

That's not what unity looks like.

If he's not saying that everyone has to be best friends, that's not what unity looks like.

If you look around this room, not everyone is your best friend, and God doesn't say they have to be your best friend.

He totally understands that you're gonna be closer with some people than other people, especially as the church grows.

We're gonna find our own special group of friends that we can have a close relationship with and really share life with, and these little groups give.

Actually the Bible says give us a chance to learn leadership skills and connect more easily with the other groups.

So when there's these different little groups in the church, it can actually serve to help the church and to purify the church and make the church stronger.

But or sorry, because people who are genuinely living out their faith, they're keeping their focus on Jesus and the new covenant and the way they're treating people with love is teaching their own little groups and their friend groups how the life of Jesus is supposed to be lived out.

So that's better than just showing up at church on Sunday and then ghosting everybody throughout the week and not having any real fellowship.

So it's better to have a small group in the church that you can connect with, and so I encourage you that that's a good thing.

But he says when you come together in one place, is it not to eat the Lord's Supper?

So what their tradition was, what they were doing, was they would all eat a meal together when they got together and they would celebrate what Jesus gave us at his last supper.

Do you guys remember the last supper?

And that's what we're celebrating here?

And that's when he gave us the new covenant of grace.

And so he said I'm doing away with the old way of religion and rules and laws and I'm totally replacing it.

I'm hijacking it, I'm replacing it with grace.

So what is this grace?

Well, I'm going to give you three things you can just remember and think about.

First, it's forgiveness of sins.

So that's the first part Jesus gives us.

That's the easy part, everyone knows you.

Ask a hundred Christians out there what did Jesus do for you when he died for you on the cross?

They'll say he forgave my sins.

That's the easy part.

Okay, but the sad thing is most people think it ends there.

Well, what am I supposed to do next?

I guess I'm just supposed to try as hard as I can to be a good person and to pay him back, maybe and that is not what the new covenant declares, that is not what he paid his blood to give you.

He gives you forgiveness.

And the second thing he gives you an internal new life called the Holy Spirit.

And it says he writes his laws on our minds and in our hearts.

So he says I'm doing away with the entire Ten Commandments and all the laws of the Old Testament and I'm replacing it with one thing the Holy Spirit's going to live inside you and you're going to be absolutely miserable if you do anything that offends him, because he lives inside you and he's not leaving you.

He's never going to leave you.

He loves you, he cares about you and it's that spirit that teaches us what God's will is and gives us the power to do that.

The third thing you can know about grace today is that it provides a really close relationship with God.

He says I will be their God, they shall be my people.

That's a promise of grace.

What Jesus gave us is a new covenant where he wants a personal relationship with us.

How much closer can you be than inside Jesus?

He says we're in Christ and Jesus is inside us.

So this is a united closeness.

It's as close as you could possibly be.

It always is a pet peeve of mine when I go around and I'm not feeling necessarily close to Jesus and so I say I need to go draw near to God.

I need to go get closer to God, but that's not really theologically accurate.

Get closer to God, but that's not really theologically accurate because I can't get any closer to God than I am when I'm a believer in Christ.

The moment you became a believer, Jesus said I'm in you and you're in me, and that's done, sealed, done forever.

You're good.

What am I saying then?

When I'm saying I need to draw near to God?

Well, I need to delight in His presence.

That is a good thing.

To spend time connecting and enjoying that connection.

That's what we mean, and so you know it's okay.

But it's not religion.

That's what all this grace is.

Grace is not a religion.

It's not the self-life either.

It's Jesus living our lives for us.

So look what he says.

He says, for, in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others, and one is hungry and then another's drunk.

He says what Do you not have houses to eat and drink in, or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing?

What shall I say to you?

Shall I praise you in this?

I do not praise you.

Yeah, it sounds like Jesus.

It doesn't sound like Jesus is really living through them, or they're not allowing Jesus to live through them when they come to church.

Well, what is this supposed to be all about?

Paul's going to tell us what are we celebrating?

Paul's going to tell us Look, for I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you that the Lord, on the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread and when he gave thanks, he broke it and said In the same manner he also took the cup after supper, saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes.

So what is communion?

We've already said some churches make it a religious thing and they call it a sacrament, and I understand what they're trying to say.

It's a sacred thing that we do and it is sacred, okay, but it's not a religious thing.

They make it a thing that you have to do to earn points with God or obtain his favor or his forgiveness.

And let me just tell you, this is a very theological term for that.

It is trash.

Okay, that is trash theology.

It's terrible theology because it's selfish and self-centered theology, and that's not what communion it's supposed to be all about.

Jesus, not you, he says when you eat this bread and drink this cup, think of yourselves.

No, he says, remember me.

That's what he said.

And this, like I said, this was all based on the Passover meal back from the book of Exodus, where they made unleavened bread and they baked it and they were in a hurry so they didn't put leaven in it, and so when they baked it, it made stripes on it from the coals that they had baked it on and the stripes.

When they would see it, they would remember the stripes of Jesus when he was beaten for us, and they would even stab it and there would be holes in it to remind us how Jesus was tortured for us.

And as we break the bread, we've already pre-broken it.

Today we remember how his body was broken.

For us, it's a picture of his body.

This is his sacrifice, what he did for us.

Do we celebrate our works?

No, right, I love when you guys respond, so yell at me more.

We don't celebrate our works, what we do, right, we only celebrate Jesus.

It's a complete, 100% focus on Jesus.

And now we share his body.

Okay, so we're going to take the bread, we're going to eat it, which means we share in his body.

What that means is that what happened to him happened to us.

So his body was killed for a price for sin.

Our sin deserved death, right?

So his body was pierced and killed for us and we share in his body and as you eat it, you can picture it's becoming part of you.

So his death becomes part of you, but not just his death and his body, also his resurrection, because his body didn't stay in the grave.

His body was raised to new life and that new life is now my new life.

I share with his death and his life and I celebrate that when I eat the bread.

His body is my body, I am his body.

It's the same.

We share a life, we are one, and we're celebrating that with the bread.

And they ate the bread and it gave them strength to go all the way in through the desert.

And so eating his body by faith, taking him into you, will give you strength also for the life God has called you, for the journey that God has called you to.

It's all about our union with him.

Okay, so when I say we put the union in communion, what I want you to think is the word communion is all based around union, our union with Christ.

Does that mean you're God?

No, but it means he lives inside you and you're still you.

You have your personality, your mind, but you allow him to live through you in your heart, and it's the union we have with Jesus.

And then the cup.

So we have this cup and it's going to represent the blood that he paid, the price that he paid to give us all this new covenant right, which was forgiveness of all sin, and I want to say that again.

How much sin.

Good job, guys, you're doing great.

All sin that means past sin, present sin and future sin have already been paid for.

Well, how can he pay for something I haven't even done yet?

Well, he kind of knows the future and he signed up for that when he said he would save you.

When he offered you his spirit, it wasn't that you might someday do a sin and kick him out and he wouldn't be accepted in your life.

No, it's all done, you're good, you're saved, all sin.

But it's not just forgiveness, like we said, it's a new heart, also a new spirit.

You've been adopted in your life with God.

You have an adopted heart, a new heart.

The new covenant is all that Jesus has given us, and it points us to his life and his death.

Why did Jesus come?

Just forgiveness, no, but a new covenant, a new life.

He said behold, I make all things new, and that's my favorite quote.

Jesus makes all things new for us.

He says for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death till he comes.

So when we accept what Jesus did, when you just believe it, you can celebrate it.

And Jesus says it's good to celebrate because it helps you to remember, because our minds, our minds didn't change.

Nothing changed about your brain when you got saved.

Your brain was still the same old dumb brain that we had before, and it needs to be reformed and renewed.

And remembering truth is a great way to train your brain how to think.

And so he's saying here this is a remembering thing.

And what does he say?

We proclaim his death.

That's in the past, till he comes again.

That's in the future.

We're living this life here in the present with Jesus.

We're in union with him.

And what are we remembering?

What are we keeping our minds focused on All the crazy stress we have right now in this life?

No, he wants us to take a break back up.

Look at the big picture, which is Jesus died for you and you're forgiven and you live in a new covenant.

Jesus is coming back and it's all going to be about him, then as well, your life here back up, let go and keep your eyes focused on proclaiming his death till he comes again.

Does that make sense?

Your life matters.

Your life totally matters here on this earth.

You make a kingdom impact in your life when your heart is set on Jesus, when your eyes are focused on what he did and what he's gonna do.

That's how we can make an impact in this world.

We're in the middle of those two events, you know.

So what do we do while we're in the middle?

We celebrate him.

We celebrate him.

So that's what we're going to do.

Okay, so let's keep reading.

Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.

But let a man examine himself, okay, so this verse gets a little squirrely sometimes, because people think, oh my gosh, am I going to go to hell if I have sin and eat this, and am I just going to?

Is the floor going to open up and send me to hell?

Okay, so people are like I'm not going to take communion because I know I'm really struggling with some stuff right now and I don't.

Okay, that is literally the opposite of what is being said here.

Many people think this means you need to examine yourself for sin, like, ooh, have I sinned?

But that's actually not true, because where is our sin?

Where's my sin?

My sin was hung on the cross.

Where's your sin?

Your sin was hung on the cross.

Then what happened to it?

It was murdered.

Then what happened to it?

It was buried.

And then what happened to it?

It was buried, and then what happened to it?

God said he cast it as far as the east is from the west, an infinite distance, and it's remembered no more.

So there's my sin.

Okay, so what is he talking about?

We are to celebrate the fact that our sin has been paid, and then it's a call for the people of God, for us and for them, to consider their actions and partake in a manner that honors the body and the blood of Jesus, not to focus on confessing their sins and feeling unworthy.

So there's a difference between what am I doing and I'm feeling unworthy and living in the life of guilt.

The examination that he's telling us to do here is recognizing the significance of the new covenant, of what did Jesus give us in this dinner, in this supper, in this bread and wine.

He gave us a new covenant, so participating in that new covenant changes the way I love people.

It reflects the unity of Jesus that we are all equal.

It reflects the unity of Jesus that we are all equal At the foot of the cross.

Every single one of us has been guilty of sin, but we've been completely forgiven, so we're all children of God together.

No one's better than anyone else.

It's not about trying to become more purified or get right with God.

Let me tell you, nothing here is magical.

It's not.

This is not going to bring you forgiveness.

This is not going to bring you forgiveness.

This is not going to change your life.

There's nothing magical about forgiveness.

It's all truly about faith.

It's not about becoming forgiven or getting right with God.

We're already forgiven because of what Jesus did for us on the cross.

Communion is about celebrating that truth and we're to encourage every believer to take it and remember Jesus's sacrifice for them.

Okay, so it's about celebrating Jesus, but they were not doing this.

It says here for he who drinks or eats in an unworthy manner, eats and drinks judgment on himself, not discerning the Lord's body.

Okay, when he says the Lord's body there, he's talking about all the people in this room are the Lord's body.

We are the body of Jesus here on this planet, his church and the actions that they were doing were disrespecting and dishonoring Jesus because they weren't loving the people.

So they were having a race to get communion and some people were drinking it all and getting drunk and it was all a big party and they were really excited about it, but they were not being loving to each other.

So he's correcting them here and it says check out this verse.

For this reason, many are weak and sick among you and many sleep.

That means are dead.

Well, this is crazy.

So it says their actions, what they were doing at their parties, were so intense and they were so bad that they were having serious consequences.

Intense and they were so bad that they were having serious consequences.

Some were getting so drunk they were dying, or maybe they were having, I don't know, getting, you know, drunk driving on their donkey.

By the way, do you guys know how farmers party?

They turn up the beats, all right.

So what's the lesson here?

Well, look what he says, for if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged, but when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord that we may not be condemned with the world.

Therefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, the lesson here is your life matters, okay, and if we choose to live self-centered lives, it harms the body of Jesus, okay.

This is just why you come to church and then why you, when you're at church, celebrate Jesus, not yourself.

It's about everyone else.

He loves his body so much and he will protect it.

There will be natural and sometimes even supernatural consequences for self-centered living.

He says Communion is never about getting forgiven or making things right with God.

It's about remembering that we are right with God.

There's nothing you can do to get more right with God, more forgiven.

You're either 100% forgiven or you're 0% forgiven.

There's no 99% forgiven or 50% forgiven.

You're forgiven and you have the permission to celebrate it, to hoot and holler about it if you want.

We are forgiven and free and we will not be condemned and we should.

That should be very, very exciting for us, just like when we're cheering at a football game.

So we freely offer Jesus our lives as a response to His love for us.