One in Holiness

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1 Corinthians chapter 11. We’ve talked about being one in spirit. Last Sunday night we talked about the church at Corinth being divided with personality conflicts and they were fighting amongst themselves and they were fighting with one another about who they were loyal to.

As far as these men, these teachers who I don’t believe really wanted to attract a loyal following. As a matter of fact, some of the people were saying, I’m of Paul and Paul is the one writing to them trying to straighten that out, saying it’s not right. But you’ve got some saying I’m of Paul, some saying I’m of Apollos, some saying I’m of Christ. Why can’t we all just be of Christ?

And so they were divided over personality conflicts, both their own and what they perceived as leaders that they needed to be loyal to. And they thought, well, we can’t like both guys at the same time. So they were divided in spirit because they just couldn’t get along.

As we discussed this morning, they were divided in faith because there were these heresies that had crept in. And false teachings are not something that are new or peculiar to our own age. I believe it was the Apostle John, it may have been Paul, you can check that out for yourself, one of them, maybe both of them, wrote about how even in their own day, there would be men who would creep in unawares to the churches and would be promoting all sorts of false ideas, false teachings, and even false gospels.

And they were told that they needed to be on guard against these things. And once people got away from the gold standard, Once people got away from the gospel that they had already received, it wasn’t just that they would believe in something different. It was a sense where they would fall for anything.

And anything would go. And so as soon as people stepped away from the gold standard of the one true gospel, the one true faith once and for all delivered to the saints, once they stepped away from that, there was no end to the confusion and division and various conflicting teachings that they had. And so when they came to the Lord’s table, they were not only divided in spirit, but they were divided in faith.

Well, the church at Corinth, also probably the most glaring problem that they had. When we read through this passage, the one that jumps out at us primarily is what we’re going to talk about tonight. The need to be one in holiness.

You see, they were divided by the sin and selfishness that permeated the church. It divided them. We see this because Paul is so vocal about practices that were going on not just with their worship, not just with the church as a whole, but with their actual practice of the Lord’s Supper, He calls them out about some things that go to a lack of holiness on their part.

We’re going to read through the whole passage again just for context, and then we’ll look at verses 21 and 22 tonight. But starting in verse 16, it says, But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God. Now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you not that you come together, not for the better, but for the worse.

For first of all, when you come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you, and I partly believe it. For there must also be heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. When you come together, therefore, into one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s Supper.

He’s already told them that because of the heresy, because of the false teaching, the division, the personality conflicts, because of all these things, when you do come together, it’s not really to eat the Lord’s Supper, even if that’s what you think you’re doing. Verse 21, he says, For in eating, everyone taketh before another his own supper, and one is hungry, and another is drunken. He gets to the matter here, and he says there’s a problem with your actual practice of the Lord’s Supper.

When you come together actually to do this, your problems that you have outside of the Lord’s Supper, you can’t just leave at the door undealt with and expect that they’re going to be ignored and they’re not going to impact anything. But instead, these problems that you have, the division, the heresy, you’ve actually brought them in here with you, and as a result of these things, your practice is off. And he says when you come together, Everyone takes before the others his own supper.

And one is hungry and another is drunken. And he says, What? Have you not houses to eat and to drink in, or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not?

What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not.

For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, 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 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. 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. 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.

He again addresses what we’re going to talk about tonight, the fact that they were not doing this in order. He says, 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.

And the practice of the Corinthians at this time seems to be that they came together on a weekly basis to take the Lord’s Supper. That’s what history tells us. Now, that doesn’t mean that we have to take it every week just because it was their practice.

Because the Bible does say, as often as you do this, you show His death. The command we have as far as time is to do it. He doesn’t say that we have to do it every week.

But they were coming together on a regular basis, as their practice was, and they were taking what they thought was the Lord’s Supper. The problem was, when they came together to do this, I’ve already told you about the Corinthians, they had come, a lot of them had come from pagan cultures, where they would have these feasts as part of their worship. And they would feast and they would engorge themselves on rich food and wine, and sometimes other things that went along with those.

They would party in these pagan cultures as part of their worship. And some people, unfortunately, had brought those pagan practices with them into the church. And they may have cleaned it up a little bit, and they’d taken some of the debauchery out of it, but they were still coming together and they were feasting.

And they were pigging out and they were being gluttonous because they brought this old pagan lifestyle with them. And so they came together and they said, well, as Christians, we’re supposed to do this Lord’s Supper. Here’s our chance to be able to have our feasts and it be okay.

The problem was they had come into the church, and when I say they had come into the church, I don’t mean they came into a building like this. I mean they came together as the body, whether it was in somebody’s house, whether it was in a back room of a hall somewhere. Whatever it was, when they had come together in the church, as the church, they were observing what they called the Lord’s Supper, but they were basically taking their pagan feasts, cleaning them up a little bit, and slapping a Christian name on them.

That’s what we see going on here. And everybody brought their own. And so some people are pigging out on as much stuff as they could handle, while others were going without.

They’re saying, oh, it’s okay, because it’s the Lord’s suffer. We’re supposed to do this. And I’ve heard people, everybody seems to have that pet issue, and I may have more than one.

But everybody seems to have at least one pet issue, and I’ve heard of people whose pet issue is they’re against church potlucks. I’ve never heard of anybody having an opinion on a church potluck until a few years ago. They’re against church potlucks because the Bible says, what, don’t you have houses to eat or drink in?

That’s not what it’s talking about. Because when we, I think we’ve been very open about the fact that if you forgot to bring something or couldn’t bring something, you come eat with us. That’s not what they’re talking about.

What he’s talking about is the practice that these people were bringing their feasts with them and using the death of our Lord as an excuse to party and to embarrass and do this in front of those who had to go without. And they were using it as an excuse to party and to shame them, all while claiming they were doing something to serve the Lord. And so he tells them, your problem here, that as a result of your wrong beliefs and the wrong spirits you come together with, he said, as a result of this, in eating, everyone takes before another his own supper.

Notice there that he tells them they’re not taking the Lord’s supper. They’re not taking the Lord’s supper. He says everyone takes his own supper.

You know, I didn’t find as many deep theological insights in the Greek this week as I did last week. But I did notice one word, and it’s that word lords. You know what it means?

It means it belongs to him. I’d always thought it was a descriptive title, saying it’s the Lord’s Supper because it’s what He did. Like if I have a friend that after we moved here, they had come from Oklahoma to a wedding in Springdale, and they were driving up 540, and they saw the Greenland exit, and one of them pointed to another.

They told us about it later. They pointed the Greenland sign and said, that’s Jared and Christian’s town. It means there’s some connection there.

It doesn’t literally mean we own Greenland. Probably sell it and buy someplace else. No, I like where we live.

It doesn’t mean we own Greenland. It just means there’s some connection to that town with us. I’ve always thought when we call it the Lord’s Supper, it’s descriptive.

It shows that that’s what He did. No, when you get into the Greek, it means it’s possessive. It’s His Supper.

And when we come together at His table, it’s His table. He owns the table. He owns the ordinance.

Quite frankly, He owns all of us that are participating in it as well. And so when he tells us, that’s my great truth that I learned from studying the Greek this week, is that when it says it’s the Lord’s, it means it belongs to Him. Who’d have thought?

Thank you. Somebody else finds my ignorance funny. But it’s His supper.

And Paul says, when you come together with all these divisions, when you come together with all these heresies, you’re not taking His supper. What you think you’re doing, don’t blame this on Him. because what everybody’s doing, in essence, is taking their own supper.

And if we come together, not just for the Lord’s Supper, but if we come together as a church and we’re already divided with heresy and we’re divided with personality conflicts, folks, sin and selfishness are not far away from that. As a matter of fact, I don’t know that you can have any of the three without the other two. They’re all rolled into one.

And what we see here is a picture of the sin and selfishness that was going on in the Corinthian church. that they would come together in physical proximity for a practice like this and slap the Lord’s name on it, but really it was just all about them and what they needed. And the lesson we can take from this tonight is that when the church comes together for the Lord’s Supper, really when the church comes together at all, we’re not only to be one in spirit and one in faith, but we’re to be one in holiness.

Now, I’m not telling you that if you’re not perfect, you can’t come to church here. I have to go pack up my office and head out too. I’m not perfect.

Far from it. If my wife were here, I’d get at least one amen on that comment. But what it’s talking about with holiness is that we’ve been set apart.

Holiness in the Bible, as it’s applied to us, really doesn’t have all that much to do with our behavior, with our actions, at least not in whether or not we’re holy. We’re holy because as Christians, as believers, once we’ve been bought by the blood of Christ, we are set apart and we are His. Holiness means we’ve equated it with being good and pure.

And there’s overlap, there’s connection between those terms, but holiness really means apartness. God is holy because He is good. God is apart from us.

He’s separate from us, separated from us, because He’s good. His nature is different than ours. And for us to be holy, it means that as Christians, we’ve been set apart.

We’ve been set apart from sin. We’ve been set apart from the world, and we’ve been set apart unto Jesus Christ as His people. And our holiness comes into play.

Now, don’t misunderstand me and think I’m saying, well, we’re holy regardless of what we do, so we can do whatever we want. No, no. Our holiness means that because we are set apart unto Christ, we need to live like it. And so we as a church, any church really, when they come together for the Lord’s Supper, when they come together as the church, period, or even when we’re the church outside these four walls, we need to be one in holiness.

Meaning that we are set apart unto Christ, and we live like it. Now, we’re not going to be perfect. There are preachers out there who tell you that you can be sinlessly perfect in this life as a result of following Christ, and that you should be, and that you’re not saved if you don’t.

I don’t buy that, because John tells us if you say you have no sin. When he’s writing to believers, says if you say you have no sin, you lie, and the truth of God’s not in you. The Bible contradicts that idea.

We’re not going to be perfect, but our holiness means that we’re set apart unto God, and we’re making the effort to live like it with His power, in His power. And that’s the opposite of what we see here. You see, they had claimed the name of Christ, and yet they came together with the same old pagan inclinations.

We’re going to slap a different name on it, but it’s really no different than the culture outside of us. And they would come together, and they would have these feasts, and people would engorge themselves, and we know that they would do it to excess, because he says one is hungry and another is drunken. They would engorge themselves on food and drink until they’re in a stupor.

Meanwhile, their supposed brother is sitting across the table from them, and has nothing to eat. And it didn’t bother them. We can tell it didn’t bother them because they kept doing it.

And it shouldn’t be so in the church. Talk about what Paul says about having no custom neither the church of God. No such custom.

It shouldn’t be that way. And so as a result, Paul says, you’ve got this old pagan practice coming back. You’re not living like you’re set apart unto God.

You’re not living like you’re set apart unto Christ. You’re bringing these old pagan practices back and you’re getting gluttonous and drunk in front of your brother while he’s sitting across from you starving to death. And he says, what? Have you not houses to eat and drink in?

If you’re that hungry, if you’re that thirsty, don’t you have houses to do that in? Or do you do it because you despise the church of God and shame them that have not? Are you doing it because you’re homeless?

Or are you doing it because, are you bringing those practices into the church because you hate the church and you want to shame your brother? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this?

I praise you not. And what we see here is, first of all, selfishness on the part of the people at the church at Corinth. Folks, selfishness divides the church when our desires supersede others’ needs.

Selfishness will divide the church when our desires supersede others’ needs. When we look around ourselves and we see our brothers who are in need and we don’t care because I’m more important, folks, that selfishness will divide the church. It will divide any church.

I’m not just talking about in financial matters either. Folks, we ought to take care of one another when there’s a need. When there’s a need, the church.

. . I’m sorry, I’m not trying to get political, but I believe that when there’s a need, the church ought to be the first one to step in and not the government.

Now, we can discuss all day our views over whether or not government, whether or not they have a place. That’s not the issue. The issue is that the first place we ought to go is to one another when we have a real need.

And we as the church ought to be the first ones to step in and help. But it’s not just about financial matters. Folks, when there’s an emotional need in the church, when somebody’s family has fallen apart in the church, When we know somebody who’s going through great pain over the loss of a loved one, when we know somebody in the church is heartbroken over a child or a spouse or somebody who’s just walked away and we can’t get up off the couch long enough to go and put an arm around them or call them or give some indication that we care, folks, that’s selfish behavior.

And I say that having been guilty of those things on occasion. It’s selfishness. And it’ll drive a wedge in between us because we’re not doing for one another and to one another what we’re supposed to be doing.

You know, I believe it’s 1 Corinthians. It may be 2 Corinthians. But Paul writes to this same church one of the things that I think is so beautiful about the church.

And he says that if one member of the church is weeping, we all weep together. If one is rejoicing, we all rejoice together. See, it’s our culture’s idea that it’s okay to be self-centered.

That it’s okay to be selfish. It’s okay to put self first. That is completely foreign to everything that the Bible teaches. We’re told to love one another even as ourselves.

We’re told to esteem one another better than ourselves. Not in the sense that we put ourselves down so that we’re lower than them, but in the sense that we lift one another up. And they weren’t doing that.

Because it’s not just the fact that they had no food. He says in verse 22 that they were shaming their brother. And they didn’t care.

They didn’t care. And when we’re able to be selfish like that, it means we’re isolated from one another. I don’t care how you feel.

You don’t care how I feel. We’re just basically unconnected entities that sit near each other on Sunday morning. That’s not what the church is supposed to be.

We can’t live a holy life and be so selfish that we don’t notice the needs of others around us. Financial, physical, emotional, spiritual, it doesn’t matter. We can’t be holy.

We can’t live like holy people set apart unto Christ and live selfish lives. We just can’t do it. And this church was deeply divided because they had all decided to put their own desires ahead of the needs of one another.

Secondly, we see that sin divides the church. Selfishness divides the church when we put our own desires ahead of others’ needs. But sin divides the church when we put our own desires ahead of God’s will.

They had brought in these pagan practices that God had said, you should have left those behind. You were to be a new man, a new woman in Christ. And you were to have left those things behind. And yet they came together and they’re getting drunk in front of one another as supposedly as an act of worship.

Getting drunken, getting drunk as an act of worship was central to so many of these pagan cults and rituals. And they brought it in. Just like some of the other things that were going on in the Corinthian church, sexual immorality as a part of worship was central to so many of these pagan cults.

And they’re bringing those things in too, even though it doesn’t address it in chapter 11. So many of the things that they brought in with them were things that were part of the old pagan religion that God had clearly identified as sin, and yet they said, we’re not quite ready to give those things up yet. Again, I am not saying that we have to be perfect in order to be part of the church.

But there’s some sense in which as soon as we are converted to Christ, He begins to change our heart. He begins to transform our lives. And folks, I believe that that change that He makes in our hearts, I can’t explain this, but I believe from the Bible and from experience that it’s both instant and ongoing.

Now try explaining that, I can’t. But I believe He immediately transforms our hearts. I believe He immediately transforms us.

And then I believe He spends the rest of our lives transforming us into what we’re supposed to be. And what I’m not saying is that they had to be completely perfect. But the fact is that these were things that, you know, it’s not just they’re thinking wrong thoughts.

You know, things that we all have sins that we think. We all have sins that we commit sometimes without meaning. Well, that’s maybe not the best way to say that.

There are some sins that seem easier to avoid than others. There are some sins that just are second nature. You know, we can see something that we have a wrong thought about.

We can see something that just makes us angry with somebody for no reason, and we can think a wrong thought about them. Words can slip out. But what we’re talking about here are actual practices, things that you had to actually plan and carry out to do.

They’re bringing with them the wine to get drunk in the church. They’re doing these things. And these are things that God had said were sinful practices to be avoided.

And we can argue all day over the place of alcohol. We can argue even about the place of alcohol in the Lord’s Supper. But the one thing that’s very clear, I don’t know that we would argue about the place of alcohol in the Lord’s Supper, and I’m not advocating it.

But I know there are some churches that use it. We can argue about those things, but what is very clear from the Scriptures is that God says drunkenness is a sin. That didn’t just start when Paul says, Be ye not drunk with wine wherein is excess.

That goes all the way back to the book of Genesis, when Noah was made to be drunk and involved in other sins that way. It’s throughout the book of Proverbs. It wasn’t anything new.

And God had said, you know, this drunkenness is a sin. And yet the people of Corinth, the church members at Corinth, had said, I don’t care, essentially. I don’t care.

Not only do I have a house to get drunk in, and I don’t think Paul was saying, you know, sin is okay. If you do it at home, just don’t bring it to the church. He’s making a point about their feasting.

But the people at Corinth had essentially said, we don’t care. We know it’s wrong. We know it’s been preached against. But all these sinful practices, we’re not just going to practice them in the secret at home.

We’re going to bring them right out into the open at church and we’re going to flaunt them. And I’m not telling you go home and sin is secret and then it’s okay. As long as you don’t bring it to church.

I’m not telling you that either. But they had brought these sins right out into the open and decided to flaunt them. And it really didn’t matter at that point to them what God’s will was because they had the desire to do these things.

And folks, even if it’s a good practice, When our desires supersede God’s will, it’s sin. And sin will, it’s not sin may, it’s not sin could, not sin might, sin will divide the church. And we have to be on guard.

Well, so we should just stone people at the door, have a sin detector at the door and stone them as they come in if it goes off. No. The description given in the New Testament of the church is to be a place where we come to help us to live holy lives, among other things that the church exists for.

But the reason God put us together, God could have very easily just sent us out each on our own, but instead God put believers together as the local church, and one of the reasons for that is for us to encourage and equip one another. And folks, that includes our sins. I’m not saying that if you mess up, that every sin you have to tell the whole church about.

Now, there will be times when any of us might commit a sin that needs to be dealt with before the church. But the Bible says, confess your faults one to another. It doesn’t say, confess it to the whole church.

Quite honestly, if every one of us had to make a list of every sin that we committed throughout the week and then read it off on Sunday morning, we’d never get anything else done, would we? We probably would not make it through my list, let alone everybody else’s. But within the church, there are people that we know and know us.

I mean, I know we’re supposed to know and love everybody. But there are people within the church that know us better than others do and love us more than others do. And we should be able to confide in one another.

We should be able to pray for one another. That verse that says, confess your faults one to another, says that you may pray for one another so that we can lift one another up. Sin is to be dealt with in the church, but never in a way that we’re looking down our nose at one another, waiting for somebody to step out of line so we can smack them with a ruler and get them.

I’ve seen church discipline done in that way, and it’s not pretty. It’s messy, and it’s not the way the New Testament intended. The intent of dealing with sin in the church in the New Testament is for restoration and reconciliation.

that sin left undealt with will divide and will destroy the church. As a matter of fact, it’s at the root of the other things that we’ve talked about. Where does selfishness come from?

It comes from the sin nature. Where do the divisions and the personality conflicts and all these, where do they come from? They come from the sin nature.

Where does heresy, where do false ideas about God come from? They come from sin. Sin will divide the church.

Sin will destroy the church if it gets the chance. But when we leave sin alone, when we leave sin, and I’m not proposing a witch hunt, I’m proposing each one of us need to get our own lives in check. And I’m not saying you don’t.

Again, just a reminder. The best time to preach about this stuff is when nothing’s going on. Because if I wait until it is going on, it’s too late, and then people think I’m calling them out, and I’m not.

But the responsibility is for each one of ourselves to, as it says later on in the passage, to examine ourselves and to judge ourselves. And we as the church have a responsibility after that to hold one another accountable and to prevent sin like a cancer from taking hold within the body and eventually destroying it as it grows out of control unchecked. You know it does that.

How many times have we heard of a pastor who got just a little too big for his britches and decided not to practice what he preached and he either ran off with the money. That’s why I try not to know too much about the money. Either ran off with the money or ran off with somebody’s wife and the sin just nearly obliterated the church.

People left. People went elsewhere. People dropped out of church altogether because that’s sin.

Folks, it’s not just limited to the pastor. I’ve seen churches nearly destroyed because of the sin of unforgiveness between two members. Folks, sin will destroy the church when we put our own desires ahead of God’s will.

Whether that’s our desire for money, whether that’s our lust, whether it’s our desire to hold on to our grudges, whether it’s our desire to have our own way, whatever it is, when we begin to put our own desires ahead of God’s will, what we know to be God’s will. Sin will divide and destroy the church. That’s why we come together, not letting one be hungry and another drunk, but we come together as one in holiness.

And then finally tonight, regardless of its good deeds, there’s nothing praiseworthy about an unholy church. Think about that for a minute. Regardless of the good that we or any other congregation do, or any other congregation does, regardless of whatever good may be done, if the church is unholy to its core, there’s nothing praiseworthy about it.

There’s nothing praiseworthy about it. A church may raise millions and millions of dollars for missions. A church may run a free clinic and give out health care to all the poor people in town.

They may feed the hungry. They may clothe the naked. They may do all these things.

But if outside of doing these things, they have let sin to creep in and grow unchecked, and the members are coming together and slapping the Lord’s name on something that really they’ve just taken their old pagan culture from before they got saved and brought it into the church with them, And whatever practices we used to have, they just go and it’s fine. And regardless of what good we do, there’s nothing praiseworthy about that church. He talks about the things that they’ve done, the awful way they treated one another, the sin and the selfishness when they came together thinking they were taking the Lord’s Supper.

And the church at Corinth may have done other things well. As a matter of fact, he said in chapter 11 that there were some good things about them. But when they came together for their worship, because this church was so deeply unholy.

Because even though they were set apart to Christ, or claimed to be set apart to Christ, they were making no effort to live like it. He says about their worship, What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this?

I praise you not. Folks, it doesn’t matter what good we do if there’s been no change in here. That’s the gospel, isn’t it?

It doesn’t matter what good we do. On an individual level, one day we will all stand before God. And it doesn’t matter to God the list of good things that we bring to Him and say, well, I

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