One in Spirit

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Transcript:

Well, turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 11. 1 Corinthians chapter 11. I told you that tonight we were going to start a mini-series on the Lord’s Supper.

Since we are going to observe the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper two weeks from tonight on Sunday night, we’re going to talk about it, not necessarily what it is. We’ll talk about that some the night of and what it’s for. Most of you probably know what it’s for as well as I do, if not better.

Most of you have taken it more than I have. But we’re going to talk about preparation for the Lord’s Supper over the next few weeks. And I’m calling this series or mini-series, whatever you want to call it, One at His Table.

I’m going to call it One at His Table. Because the things that we’re going to talk about over the next few messages are the areas where we as a church, any local church, needs to be united before coming to the table of our Lord. There are some areas where it really just is not fitting if there are divisions in the local church to come to the table.

Paul dealt with this in the first letter to the Corinthians. The church at Corinth was a deeply divided church. It was a deeply troubled church.

I’m sure I’ve shared some of these details with you before, but if you read through the book of 1 Corinthians, there’s some just unbelievable things going on in that church. There were incestuous relationships. There were pagan practices.

There were all kinds of things that we look at and we think even the most troubled churches that any of us have ever been a part of, those things didn’t go on. And so if we want to see a church that’s in deep trouble, it’s the church at Corinth. And yet they were coming together, whether it was on a weekly basis or otherwise, they were coming together to observe and to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, and yet they were doing it in a completely wrong fashion.

They were coming together, they were assembling together in a physical sense when they were completely divided. They were divided by sin, they were divided by heresy, they were divided by personalities, And they were bringing in the elements of their pagan worship and their former pagan lifestyles into this most sacred observance, and they were polluting the purity of the Lord’s table. And Paul wrote to them and says, we’ve got problems here that need to be dealt with and need to be straightened out.

And in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 is the passage that we’re going to be looking at over the next few weeks, where we see him dealing with the problems. And a lot of it comes down to their lack of unity, and their lack of unity in four specific areas that we’re going to talk about. You may think, why am I coming to you and telling you about this? Why am I talking about this?

As far as I can tell, and I’ve been here about six months now, it doesn’t seem to me that long, it may seem a lot longer to y’all, but it doesn’t seem to me that long that we’ve been here. We’ve been here about six months now, and as far as I can tell, we don’t have a problem with disunity in the church. Now, that doesn’t mean everybody is best friends with everybody else, But I don’t see a lot of fighting and sniping against each other and gossip and things like that.

I don’t see disunity here. Certainly not in the sense that I’ve seen it elsewhere. So why would I need to come and talk to Eastside about when we do this two weeks from tonight, when we come together at the Lord’s table, why would I spend this time talking about the importance of our unity in coming to the Lord’s table?

It’s because when things seem to be going their best is when Satan is most likely to attack. That’s just the way things are. If we are already fighting and we are sniping at each other and we’re mired in sin and we’re teaching heresy and we’re doing all these things, then we’re not accomplishing the things that Christ designed the church for.

We’re not winning people to Christ. We’re not raising up mature believers. We’re not encouraging one another. We’re not doing any of the things that Christ set the church up for.

We’re not a threat to Satan. He’s already got us and he’s going to leave us alone. But a church that is together and moving forward with Christ’s mission is a threat to him, is a threat to Satan.

And that’s where he begins to attack. I don’t know specifically where you find that in the Bible, but I know that from experience. I can tell by some of your reactions that you know it as well.

I can tell you a story. Why am I telling you that? Why are we talking about being one at his table, being united when we don’t have a problem with it?

The church that I grew up at, the church that, as far as I know, I was going there in the womb, and where they taught me in children’s church about sin and about the fact that Christ had died for me, the church that baptized me, the church where I used to sing with my dad, I got started singing in church, and all these things that the church that I grew up at. And I say I grew up at Southgate. I didn’t come there until I was in high school though.

The church where really, when I was a little kid, was a wonderful church. Not perfect, no church is perfect, but it was a wonderful church. It was full of people that I loved dearly, just like I love dearly the people in this church.

And things were going well. The church went through peaks and valleys, but things were going well. Things were progressing.

And there didn’t seem to be a problem with disunity. It didn’t seem to be a problem with turmoil. Then came the month of December when I was in the sixth grade.

And again, being a sixth grader, I didn’t know a lot of what was going on. I was the only kid that demanded to be able to sit in on the business meetings because I was a member. Now I try to get out of them.

But I was a kid and I said, I’m a member. I want to be part, you know, don’t make me go outside and play. I’m a member and I’m going to be.

So I knew a little bit more than your average sixth grader about what was going on in the church, but didn’t know as much as the adults did. But there just didn’t seem to be a problem with a spirit of division in the church. Then came the month of December when the pastor said, we’re going to cancel Sunday school for the month of December.

And the way things were set up there, he had the authority to do that. And it wasn’t that he hated Sunday school. He said, we’re going to set aside that time and have prayer.

And so for the month of December, other than the children’s classes, they would still meet and have classes for the children. But the adult Sunday school classes would dismiss, and they would all come together in the auditorium, and they would pray together, and they would have these church-wide prayer meetings just for the month of December and then go back to the regular schedule. The week that was announced, three families didn’t like the idea.

And three families said, this wasn’t our idea, we don’t like this, and as a matter of fact, we don’t like this preacher. And so they called a meeting, which they didn’t have the authority to do without so much notice. They said, we’re going to have a meeting tonight.

And they got together all the people that had a beef with the preacher. And they said, we’re going to have this meeting. They called everybody in the church and said, we’re going to have this meeting.

Well, you know what? The majority of the church didn’t show up, including my parents, because my parents said, this is wrong what was going on. The majority of the church didn’t show up.

This minority, these three families and their friends got together and said, we don’t like this, and they voted out the preacher. Didn’t know you could do that. They had a business meeting that was called not in accordance with the bylaws and said, we’re going to vote out the preacher because we don’t like what he did.

Well, they expected everybody else to go along with it. And people like my parents, the majority, said, you can’t do that. And said, if that’s the way things are going to be here, we’re going to go someplace where they’re going to be about the Lord’s business.

And within a day’s time, all but about five families left the church. And the church had to shut down within a week. Why am I talking to you about disunity when there doesn’t seem to be a problem with it here?

There doesn’t seem to be a problem with it here. But you never know how quickly one little spark of disunity can tear a place apart. And so as we go through this series, please don’t think I’m telling you these are the things you’re doing wrong, or the things we’re doing wrong, and we need to fix these.

This is a, what’s the word, this is an admonition that we be on guard against these things. that what we’re already doing well that we continue to work at and continue to do better at, that as a church we be one. Not just when we come together at His table, but when we come together on Sunday, when we come together on Wednesday, on the days in between those, when we’re the church outside these walls.

It’s necessary that we strive to be one as the body of Christ because it is so easy and so quick you wouldn’t believe it how much something small can tear this place apart. 1 Corinthians chapter 11. We’re going to start in verse 16.

He says in verse 16, Paul writes to the church at Corinth, But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no custom, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God. And what he says here, he’s just been discussing things like prophesying, he’s been discussing things like praying, he’s been discussing things like a head covering, and he’s been trying to straighten out the problems they had with these things. And he says, after having given his answer, But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom.

He says these are the things that are customary in the church. These things are the things that are customary, but contentiousness is not customary, he says, in the church of God. We have no such custom, neither the churches of God.

Now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse. He says in these things, I have no praise for you. You think I’m supposed to commend you?

You think I’m supposed to compliment you for the things you’re doing? I praise you not. Now, unless he sounds too harsh and too one-sided in this, Paul has already said in verse 2 of this same chapter, Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the ordinances as I delivered them to you.

He’s told the church at Corinth already, there are still some things you’re doing right. So that we don’t get the idea that Paul was just hot-headed and he was just come to mow these people down. He’s already told them what they were doing right, and he’s praised them for it.

But then he comes to this matter of the Lord’s Supper. And he says, you’ve got these divisions. You’ve got contention.

And verse 17, now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you not. That you come together, not for the better, but for the worse. He talks about this contention that doesn’t belong in the church of God.

And he says, when you come together, when you come together as the church, it’s supposed to be for your betterment. It’s supposed to be a good thing. It’s supposed to be an uplifting thing.

It’s supposed to be a spiritually meaningful experience that grows us in the faith. And yet, when we come together, it’s not for the better, it’s for the worse. And he said, I find nothing in that to praise you for.

For first of all, when you come together in the church, I hear there be divisions among you. And I partly believe it. When you come together, he says you’re coming together, and he’s talking about in a physical sense, when you assemble, you come together, but you’re not really together.

You’re sitting in the same building. You’re sitting in the same pew, maybe. They didn’t have pews back then.

You may be sitting on the same seat, but you’re miles and miles apart. as far as your mindset. He continues on, verse 19, For there must also be heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.

When ye come together, therefore, into one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s Supper. He said, you’re coming together and doing something, but it’s not eating the Lord’s Supper. For in eating, everyone taketh before other his own supper, and one is hungry, and another is drunken.

What? Have ye not houses to eat and drink in? Or despise you the church of God, and shame them that have not?

What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? He says again, I praise you not.

Verse 23 says, For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you. The things that I’ve told you about this practice of the Lord’s Supper, he said, I receive from the Lord. That the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he break it and said, Take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you.

This do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, and when he had supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament in my blood. This do ye as often as ye drink it in remembrance of me.

Verse 26, he says, For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death until he come. Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.

For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. And says in verse 30, For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.

But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another, wait for one another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home, that ye come not together unto condemnation.

And the rest will I set in order when I come. He throws all this at them, and sensing that there’s a lot to fix in the church in Corinth, He says, here’s all of this that I’ve got to say to you now, and the rest of it you can’t handle now. I’ll tell you when I see you.

I’ll tell you in person. But he lays this out for them about the Lord’s Supper. And we’re going to look at this over the next few weeks.

What I want us to look at and focus on tonight are the first three verses we looked at, verses 16, 17, and 18. And I want to talk about being one in spirit. One in spirit.

I don’t mean one in the spirit, although if we’re one in the spirit, the Holy Spirit will be one in spirit as well. What I mean by one in spirit is that we’re one in attitude. We’re in one accord, as they said throughout the book of Acts.

The idea is, you know, when somebody says, I’m with you in spirit, when somebody can’t be with you and they say, I’m with you in spirit, we don’t imagine that their spirit leaves their body and they come like one of the cartoons with the angels and devils sitting on somebody’s shoulder and they just float around with us, I’m with you in spirit. No, it means I’m with you. I’m behind what you’re doing.

We’re on the same page here. And so when I say we as a church need to be one in spirit, that’s what I’m talking about, being on the same page in our hearts and our attitudes. We’re going to talk about some things like the teaching, the heresies that he mentions, and the holiness.

We’re going to talk about these things, but tonight I want to start us off where he starts in verse 16 with being one in spirit. The first thing that we can take from this passage, if we actually look at verse 18, is that the unity of the church is destroyed by division. Now that sounds like such an obvious statement.

In philosophy and logic, they call that a tautology. It’s a self-evident statement. If we’re divided, we’re not unified.

And yet it bears repeating that the unity that we have in the church is destroyed by division. That means the entire church can be destroyed by division anywhere in the church. It doesn’t have to be that the church is split right down the middle, and this half says one thing, and this half says the other, in order for there to be a problem in the church.

There can be a problem in the church if the whole church loves one another, the whole church gets along, and yet Brother Phil and I cannot stand each other. By the way, that’s not the case. I use his name as an example because I don’t think he minds.

I figured he’d tell me by now if he minded. I love Brother Phil. But there would be a problem in the unity of the whole church.

If everybody else loved one another, everybody else got along, everybody else worked together, and yet Brother Phil and I could not stand the sight of one another. That would eventually affect and infect the entire church. He says in verse 18, he points out that the problems they’re having are because of these divisions among them.

First of all, when you come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you. He says, and I partly believe it. Now, I don’t think Paul was, this is just my speculation here, but I don’t think Paul was saying, Well, on one hand, I could see where you’d be divided.

On the other hand, I don’t really see it. My guess is Paul, with all the things he knew that were going on in the church in Corinth, Paul was probably getting all kinds of reports back about insane things that were going on, about divisions and things that were going on in the church at Corinth. And my guess is when he says, I partly believe it, what he’s saying is I know some of it is true, that some of these stories I’m hearing are true.

There are divisions within the church. And he doesn’t say this as though it’s a good thing. Yay, there are divisions in the church.

No, this is bad. We can tell from Paul’s tone here. When you come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you.

And I partly believe it. That word divisions there, what does he mean by divisions? Because he talks later on about heresy, and sometimes there need to be divisions when we’re not believing or teaching the same things.

Sometimes there comes a time when a church needs to go its separate ways rather than let bad teaching infect the rest of the church. But what he’s talking about here is not heresy. He gets to that in a later passage.

That word divisions comes from the Greek word schisma. S-C-H-I-S-M-A. We get the word schism from that.

And the word schism has kind of come over to us and it’s now considered an English word. But it means division. It means factions.

We think of it typically when it comes to religious groups and schisms. And it’s applied usually as though we look at it as though it’s a difference in teaching. The most famous use of the word is from the great schism of 1054, I believe it was, when the Pope, the Catholic guy, when the Pope excommunicated the five Eastern Orthodox archbishops, primates, what they call themselves, and they excommunicated him back. And there was a doctrinal, it was called the great schism, there’s this doctrinal issue behind it because the Pope, as so-called Bishop of Rome said, I am the head of the Universal Church.

And the other five bishops said, no, we all together are the head of the Universal Church. And so there was a difference in teaching. And those that sided with the five bishops said, we’re going to go over here and we teach differently that there’s this collective, and we teach this, and so we’re going to go over here.

And the Catholics said, we teach this and we’re going to go over here. And that was the split between the Orthodox and the Catholic churches. And so we’ve gotten the idea somewhere along the way that a schism comes from a difference in teaching.

But at the root of this schism, there was a personality conflict. Because it wasn’t just we believe this about how our religion works, and we believe this about how our religion works. There were also the men behind it saying we are the head of the church, not just you.

And there was another man on the other side saying I am the head of the church. And this man could not get along with these five. This was not a new debate as far as theology.

It had been going on for quite some time, but it came to head with a personality conflict when these men could not work it out. And by the way, they were all wrong. Just let you in on that little secret.

They were all wrong. But there was a personality conflict that got out of hand and it boiled over, and there was certainly a doctrinal component to it. But we’ve gotten the idea that a schism is a religious division between people when they can’t see eye to eye on teaching.

The Greek word schisma that it comes from is accurately applied to that great schism because it just means in general a division where we don’t see eye to eye with each other, where we can’t get along, where we are separating ourselves from one another. And so when he says, I know that there are divisions between you all, there are divisions among you, he’s not just talking about teaching, he’s talking about the fact that there are actual personality conflicts. There are actual fights going on among the people.

We see some of this earlier on in the book of 1 Corinthians where there were actually people fighting in the church at Corinth. over who they liked best as far as religious leaders. Brother David talked about Apollos this morning.

And Paul, if you go back to, I can’t remember offhand if it’s chapter 1 or chapter 2. Chapter 1, verse 12. Now this I say that every one of you say, I am of Paul, and I am of Apollos, and I am Cephas, and I am Christ. They were fighting over which person they like better.

Well, I like Paul. Well, we like Apollos. We can’t stand you because you like Paul better.

Well, I like Peter. I like Cephas better. And then there’s somebody standing there going, shouldn’t we all just be of Christ?

Really, I think, had the right answer. But they’re all fighting over which faction they wanted to be a part of, and the guys that they’re lining up behind aren’t really even in the fight. And there are all these things going on.

This division, this schisma, came down to not just doctrinal differences, but these were actually people who had something personal against one another. People who could not get along together, could not work together, didn’t like each other. You know, it’s unfortunate that we have so many, it’s unfortunate, first of all, that we have so many church splits and things in this country, but what makes it even more unfortunate is that most of it isn’t the result of bad teaching.

Not that I want there to be bad teaching, but there’s a lot of bad teaching that people should be splitting over and are not. What makes it even worse is that the splits oftentimes are among people who are on the same page doctrinally, but just can’t see eye to eye personally. And I believe that’s what he’s talking about here with divisions.

He points out that there are divisions in the church, and folks, that will kill the unity of the church. I know that sounds like an obvious statement. If this half of the room is divided from this half of the room, and I have seen that before.

I’ve walked into churches where people sit on, how they sit in the church depends on which side they’re on in personality conflicts. Christian would like to mess with them by switching sides every service. Y’all don’t believe that, do you?

That doesn’t sound like her wanting to mess with people. It doesn’t mean the church has to be split right down the middle with personality conflicts. It means the whole church can be in sync with one another.

The whole church can love one another, can be on the same page, can want to work together, and if two of us are out of step with one another, it creates a problem for the church. It’s not just my responsibility in maintaining the unity of the church to make sure there are no big disagreements. As we’re going to get to in a minute, it is each of our responsibility to make sure we have a short list of accounts with one another.

to make sure that we don’t offend one another, or to make sure that if we do offend one another, or if we’re offended by one another, we deal with it, we take care of it, instead of letting it fester and giving one another little looks and talking about each other behind their back. Folks, that will kill a church. That will destroy the unity of a church, and we cannot allow it to happen here.

I want to remind you, and I’m not telling you this because we have a problem with it, in case it sounds like I’m saying we need to fix this. I’m telling you, I don’t think we have a problem with it, And we need to work harder to make sure that we continue not to. But the unity of the church is destroyed by divisions anywhere.

Secondly, contentiousness. If we go back to verse 16, contentiousness has no place in the church. Contentiousness has no place in the church.

He says here not only just that contentiousness is not good, he said if any man seemed to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God. He said this is not the custom of the churches of God. This is not the way the churches act.

This is not the way Christians ought to be to one another. Contentiousness. This word contentiousness is another.

. . I had some fun looking at the Greek words today.

Or, not today, this week. This word contentious is another one that tells us more than just what we see in the English meaning. The Greek word here for contentious is philonekos.

Don’t ask me how to spell it. It’s philonekos. And it comes from the word philo, meaning love, and the word nakos, meaning strife.

A lover, strife. we know what a contentious person looks like. We’ve all seen them.

I used to call them pot stirrers because there seemed to be, when I was working with teenagers, there seemed to be people that just were not happy unless the entire world around them was in an uproar. You know people like that? I thought it was just especially prevalent among teenage girls, but I grew up and became an adult and realized it goes on in the real world too.

There are some people that are just not happy unless the world around them is in an uproar. And if things are too quiet, things are too peaceful, everybody’s getting along too well, they have to come along and stir the pot. A lot of times, they’ll just stand back and watch after that.

We’re not to be lovers of strife. We’re not to be lovers of strife. Now, I can’t imagine, as relatively peaceful as our business meetings seem to be, I can’t imagine anybody in here that goes, oh yeah, what kind of trouble can I stir up tonight?

Most of the time, I have people asking me, do you think it would cause trouble if I brought up this motion? I don’t know. You’ve been here longer than I have.

I can’t see that we have people that say, hmm, what can I do to throw so-and-so into an uproar today? How can I look at so-and-so this morning at church just to get them, just to get their dander up? How can I do that?

I’ve known people. We all know people like that. I don’t think any of you in here are like that, but it’s so easy sometimes to fall into the habit of letting people stir up strife, not for good reason.

Now, there is a time that strife needs to be stirred up, because strife needs to be had about real issues. But when people stir up strife and contention just because they love it, we can’t take the bait, and we can’t allow that to continue, because he says contentiousness, to be contentious has no place, there is no such custom, we have no such custom, neither the church of God. That’s not how Christians, that’s not how churches are supposed to behave.

What I found even more interesting about that word philonekos, is that the word nekos is related to the word nike. You see the Nike shoes? That was a victory cry when they.

. . Anyway, I won’t tell the whole story.

Y’all didn’t come here to hear about Greek history. But we’re familiar with that word because of the shoes, and it means victory. Those words are related.

They’re connected to one another. And this word also could mean someone who loves winning, someone who loves the taste of victory. I don’t know of any of us who say, I’m going to stir up strife just because I like it.

I have been guilty on occasion, however, of saying, I’m going to deal with this in this way because it needs to be dealt with, and I want to see it dealt with and dealt with my way. And you know, I like it sometimes when somebody’s wrong and I get to put them in their place. Don’t you?

You can admit it. I like to win. I do not like conflict, but if a conflict has to be had, I want to win.

and I want to be right, and I want everybody to know I’m right or suffer for failing to agree with me. Sometimes. Now, if I’m that way all the time, if I was that way all the time, y’all made a huge mistake in calling me to be here.

I’m not that way all the time. But I’ll admit to you, I have those tendencies within me. I want to be right.

The way some of y’all were laughing and nodding, I have a feeling some of y’all have that feeling well up within you, too. Now, we’re not going to stir up strife and contention just because we love the strife and we like the fighting and the bickering of it, But we may deal with some things in the wrong way, and we may accidentally create some division, not because we like to strife, but because we like to come out on top on the other side. Well, you know what so-and-so said to me, I’ll fix her.

There’s no place for that in the church. That attitude I have sometimes, there’s no place for that in the church. That attitude you have sometimes, there’s no place for that in the church.

Contentiousness. If anyone be contentious, if any man seem to be, even seem to be contentious, Paul puts them on notice, says let them know, let them write it down and be sure. We have no such custom, neither the churches of God.

This may have flown in the pagan world the people of Corinth had come out of, but in the church of God, something different was expected. And I’m not allowed to do things because I like to strife, and I’m not allowed to do things because I like to win. And if I have problems with that, I need to pray to God to help me.

We need to pray to God to help us with it. But contentiousness has no place in

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