Sermon Tone Analysis

When we first began observing the Lord’s Table together as a church, I preached a sermon on the meaning and significance of the Lord’s Table.

Every week since then we’ve been observing the Lord’s Table, and every week I seek to remind us of a few things before we partake together, but I haven’t done a full sermon on the topic since that first Sunday.

I think it is good remind ourselves in a deeper and fuller way from time to time, and since we are in between series and coming up on the holidays when we stop to reflect upon the significance of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, when God became a man, this seems to be a good time to pause for a moment and reflect upon what it is we do when we partake of the Lord’s Table together.

The passage we are going to examine today is not a typical go to text for Lord’s Table sermons, and the reason for that is that the main point in the text is not the Lord’s table.

What Paul is doing in this text is using truth about the Lord’s table to illustrate his point about idolatry.

What we are going to do today is identify what Paul says about the Lord’s Table to enrich our understanding of it, and then see how Paul takes that information and applies to life.

There are so many misconceptions out there about what actually is taking place at the Lord’s table.

Some believe we are being spiritually teleported to heaven to dine with Christ, other think we are literally eating the physical body and blood of Christ as it is literally transformed into his body and blood.

Others believe this is nothing more than a memorial, like a monument in a park.

If we are to think rightly about the Lord’s table we need to examine the texts to we understand what is happening.

Let’s open our Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 10.

1 Corinthians chapter ten.

How many of you have heard a quote from something in isolation with no context and you go what in the world.

What is that?

but then you hear the context and it all makes sense?

To small degree, that is true about this passage.

We need to understand the broader context to help us understand what Paul is getting at in the text we’re about to study.

The book of 1 Corinthians was written to a rather immature church.

They had various issues within the church, including incredible division and sin.

Paul wrote to confront the sin, but also to answer questions that the church had on a variety of issues.

One of the questions that the church had was what to do about meat sacrificed to idols.

Is it okay to eat it or not?

In other days, there were pagan temples where all kinds of immorality too place in the same of worship of false gods, and often the meat that was sacrificed to the false gods would be collect and sold in the marketplace.

Some felt it was not right to eat such meat, since it was offer to false gods, while others believed it was perfectly fine to eat it because the false god isn’t a real god, and therefore in reality its just meat.

Paul wrote in chapter eight that it was perfectly fine to eat the meat, since we know that there is only one God.

The meat is just meat.

So we can eat it freely.

However, he also notes that some people don’t have this knowledge, so if their conscience is bothered by knowing that the meat was sacrificed to idols, it would be better not to it eat for the sake of their brethren’s conscience.

In chapter nine Paul then uses himself as an example of how this looks.

He was personally criticized for how he conducted himself in regard to making his living from Gospel ministry.

He defends his “right” to receive wages from the ministry, but then goes on to say that he was more than willing to surrender that right for the sake of the ministry.

There is Christian liberty, but that liberty isn’t for me.

So often we defend our Christian liberty in a very American way “I have my rights” but Paul says that our liberty is for the sake of others.

Yes, you are free to eat that meat.

Yes, Paul himself was free to make his living from the ministry.

But for the sake of others, your liberty means you don’t have to insist upon your liberty.

You are free to abstain!

However, as we come into chapter ten, the topic shifts.

He begins to speak about the people of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness.

Though God was giving them food to eat and water to drink and doing great miracles for them and they had the pillar of fire and pillar of cloud to lead the way…God was not pleased with most of them.

Why?

He goes on to explain.

Look at verse 6:

Then he goes on to say how they were negative examples for us:

The people of Israel engaged in idolatry.

They engaged in sexual immorality.

They complained and grumbled against the Lord and His provision and God judged them for it.

And so we have the somber warner of verse 12

You hear what those Israelites were doing and you say “pfft.

what losers.

They had the glory of God and they still couldn’t do what God had commanded.

How dense were they, huh?

I’m glad I’m not like them.”

Not.

so.

fast.

You think there is something special about your DNA that makes you a super human immune to temptation?

Think again.

But lest we get too discouraged, Paul gives us the encouraging words of verse 13:

What great news this is!

For those in Christ Jesus, there is never a time when you have no choice but to sin.

There is always a way of escape.

Sometimes we think that we are the only person in the world to struggle with this or that in this particular way.

But Paul says no, there is nothing unique about your struggle.

These are common struggles.

But God is faithful and provides you a way of escape.

It’s on the basis of these truths that Paul makes the the statement in the next paragraph.

Paul has given us truth, and now he is going to apply it and illustrate it.

verse 14:

God is faithful and always provides you a way of escape, therefore take it!

Discover that way of escape and pursue it!

I remember one time when I was a child out playing in a field at my grandparents house and we saw a dog running toward me.

Not knowing that it was a friendly dog belonging to the the neighbors, I was scared.

I turned and I sprinted as absolutely as fast as I could as though I were literally running for my life.

Of course the dog thought it was a game and chased after me, which only made me more afraid and so I tried to run even faster.

Even though that dog ended up being a very friendly dog, its the concept of fleeing that is communicated by this word.

Run for your life.

This word is used to speak of Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt with Jesus to avoid Herod’s wrath.

It’s used in Stephen’s sermon in acts when Stephen is preaching about how Moses fled Egypt to go to Midian because he killed an Egyptian.

This word is used in other contexts to how the believer should be thinking about temptation and sin: RUN AWAY!

Don’t linger.

Get outta dodge!

Whatever the temptation is, do whatever it is you need to do, no matter how foolish you may look in the process.

Paul then goes on to give his reasoning, and it is in this reasoning that we find our principles about the Lord’s table.

Here we see the principle

The Lord’s Table is Participation in Christ.

Verse 16 starts with those word “the cup of blessing that we bless” Some translations say “the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks”

Paul is asking rhetorical questions here, questions where the answer is assumed to be “yes”.

Paul says that when we bless the cup and give thanks for it and observe this together, we are participants in Christ.

And likewise the bread.

participants in the body of Christ.

The word for participation is the Greek word Koinania.

You may be familiar with that word.

It is most often translated as “fellowship” or” sharing”

It speaks of a close involvement with each other.

This is not a lose connection, but rather an intimate bond.

Whenever I would go to a Cubs baseball game growing up, Wrigley field would always be packed.

When something good would happen everyone would stand and cheer and high fives would go around.

There was a comradery that seemed genuine in the moment as we were all united undo a singular purpose.

But really, its artificial.