When Frivolity Divides
Rivalry: 1 Corinthians Study • Sermon • Submitted
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Good morning church. If you have a Bible, go on and open it up to chapter 11.
If you have been here for parts or all of our Rivalry series, what I hope you have seen is that God has designed his church to be unified around who Christ is and what he did for us on the cross. However, because of our sin, we often find ourselves quarreling instead of living in unity as a church.
Today we look at the fourth issue that Paul outlines. It is what we are calling when Frivolity Divides. The definition of frivolity is...
Frivolity: lack of seriousness; lightheartedness
Frivolity: lack of seriousness; lightheartedness
I have been a dad for 6 years now, and I have learned that your child’s personality changes greatly when they get tired, amen? My children are very different from one another. For example, they have polar opposite responses to discipline when they are getting tired. Daniel, my youngest, he just loses it crying. He can be pretty rebellious and will get mad during the day, but at night, he is a trainwreck and squawls at the drop of a hat. Elsie Jo, on the other hand gets silly. She can do something deserving of a hard talk right before bed. I grab her by the arm and look her in the eyes to talk sternly to her and she just keeps talking and making funny noises and laughing at herself. Anybody else got a kid like this? GOODNESS!
It is so frustrating! I am trying to be serious and correct a wrong behavior and instead of apologizing or getting upset, she just laughs! THIS MAKES ME SO MAD! Right? How can she laugh like that when I’m trying to be serious?
That’s similar to the issue that’s going on here in our passage for this morning. The text will be a familiar one if you’ve been around church culture. Part of it is repeated by pastors the world over before the Lord’s Supper is taken in a service. Let me read a portion of it, pray, and then come back and start looking at this together.
However, I have learned to read when each of them is getting tired.
TELL STORY OF FRIVOLITY… Maybe kids laughing while I’m trying to get on to them...
The text we will look at this morning will be a familiar one if you’ve been around church culture. Part of it is repeated by pastors the world over before the Lord’s Supper is taken in a service. Let me read a portion of it, pray, and then come back and start looking at this together.
Now in giving this instruction I do not praise you, since you come together not for the better but for the worse.
For to begin with, I hear that when you come together as a church there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it.
Indeed, it is necessary that there be factions among you, so that those who are approved may be recognized among you.
When you come together, then, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper.
For at the meal, each one eats his own supper. So one person is hungry while another gets drunk!
Don’t you have homes in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I praise you? I do not praise you in this matter!
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread,
and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord.
Let a person examine himself; in this way let him eat the bread and drink from the cup.
For whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.
This is why many are sick and ill among you, and many have fallen asleep.
If we were properly judging ourselves, we would not be judged,
but when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned with the world.
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, welcome one another.
If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you gather together you will not come under judgment. I will give instructions about the other matters whenever I come.
PRAY
I have read this passage many times before taking the Lord’s Supper at both my previous churches. But I’ll be honest, I haven’t studied it heavily until this sermon series. This is one of those sets of verses that was too familiar for me to read it with fresh eyes. But now having studied it, I know there are serious implications for us to notice.
A little background first...
1. What is the Lord’s Supper
1. What is the Lord’s Supper
On the night that Jesus’ was arrested that led to his death, he met with his disciples to celebrate the Passover meal. Passover was a yearly Jewish festival in which they remembered how God rescued their ancestors from slavery in Egypt through crazy miraculous ways. It had multiple stages and courses. Each dish and ingredient had a unique meaning that helped them remember the pain of the slavery but also the celebration of deliverance.
Jesus met with his disciples as their rabbi (or teacher) to celebrate this meal. As a Jewish teacher, he would have known the meal well, and no doubt walked through it with great accuracy. And either as part of the end of that meal, or after the meal as a whole, Jesus took a loaf of bread and a glass of wine and instituted what Christian’s began calling “the Lord’s Supper.”
Instead of pointing back to God saving the Israelites, Jesus said the bread and wine pointed forward to a moment in which God would save the world in a sense. The bread represented his body which would be broken and the wine his blood that would be shed. His followers partook of both of those. As they did, Jesus said, “Remember me.” We will talk a little more about all this in just a bit. But it’s important to note that this practice didn’t end with Jesus’ disciples! They past on that practice to their students and their students and their students. Throughout the nearly 2000 years of Christian history, we are still taking the bread and wine (or grape juice) and remembering Christ.
2. What was Paul correcting in Corinth?
2. What was Paul correcting in Corinth?
The Corinthians were doing the Lord’s Supper with somewhat regularity we can assume. That was not Paul’s issue with them. It goes deeper than that.
And Christians are still taking the bread and wine (or grape juice) and remember
Look at the text with me...
When you come together, then, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper.
For at the meal, each one eats his own supper. So one person is hungry while another gets drunk!
Don’t you have homes in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I praise you? I do not praise you in this matter!
There was a divisive issue that was causing rivalry in the church! Sound familiar? Paul’s been talking about that a lot right?
A little context will help you understand what’s going on here...
Just as Jesus celebrated the Lord’s Supper on the tail end of a feast, so the early church did too. The Christians would gather to eat and then take the Lord’s Supper as a church. The issue, again, wasn’t that they weren’t doing it. The issue was HOW they were doing it!
The Roman empire during this time was a highly segmented culture. The “haves” hung with the haves and the “have-nots” hung with the “have-nots.” The Jews hung with the Jews. The Gentiles with the Gentiles. The men with men and the women with women. However, through the teachings of Christ and the Apostles, the early church learned that...
There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus.
There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus.
According to Paul, all of the stigmas and divisions of the outside world have no place in the church! We are all on a level field in the church. That is part of why the Christ movement of the first century attracted many of the lower class.
But what was going on in Corinth?
They were gathering for a meal before the Lord’s Supper and people were simply bringing their own food and eating it in the presence of the rest of the church. As you can imagine, the Corinthian church was no doubt made up of all different types of people. And the upper class members of the church were used to a particular type of food and drink and they were bringing that in and “devouring it” right beside someone who couldn’t afford much to eat at all. That’s why he says “one goes hungry while another gets drunk.” He doesn’t mean that literally. He is using these two opposite things to point out the issue of eating and drinking that was going on.
And after all that unequal eating, then they would pass a loaf of bread around for everyone to tear a similar size piece off of and eat to remember the broken body of Jesus. Then they would pass ONE cup around and everyone would take one good sip out of to remember the blood of Christ that was shed.
Paul’s issue was not with the way they were doing the Lord’s Supper. It was with the inconsistency of their hearts! How can you take the Lord’s Supper in such unity when you aren’t treating one another as equals in Christ? They were frivolous in their treatment of the body!
Do you see the predicament?
The commentator I read this week said...
“The Corinthian problem was not their failure to gather, but their failure truly to be God’s new people when they gathered; here there was to be neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free (cf. 12:13)”
It’s with this context that Paul retells the words of Jesus at the first Lord’s Supper.
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread,
and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
This is the passage that we are more familiar with being read before the Lord’s Supper. Paul seems to just be reminding of them of what they probably already know in this. But it’s what he says next that needs to be revisited…
1 Corinthians 11:
So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord.
So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord.
Let a person examine himself; in this way let him eat the bread and drink from the cup.
For whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.
This is why many are sick and ill among you, and many have fallen asleep.
If we were properly judging ourselves, we would not be judged,
but when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned with the world.
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, welcome one another.
If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you gather together you will not come under judgment. I will give instructions about the other matters whenever I come.
What does that mean? How can we take it in an unworthy manner?
Paul answers that...
Let a person examine himself; in this way let him eat the bread and drink from the cup.
For whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.
1 Corinthians 11:
If we don’t “recognize the body” we are taking this in an unworthy manner. What does Paul mean by that?
Is he referring to Jesus’ body which was broken for us? Is he saying that if we don’t think think think about Jesus’ death as we partake, then we are taking it wrongly?
That’s what I was taught growing up. The Lord’s supper was this very intense, almost scary thing. If there was unconfessed sin, I needed to air that first. Then as I got a piece of bread, I would hold it and think about the pain that Jesus went through: the beating, the ridicule, and the pain of the crucifixion. Then I would carefully place it in my mouth and chew with reference. Then I would take the cup and pray in my mind thanking Jesus for his shed blood on the cross that covers my sins and makes me right with God. Then I would carefully turn that little cup up and drink the juice in reverence.
If I did those things, was I examining myself as Paul talked about here? Was I drinking it in a worthy manner?
This is probably how you grew up thinking about the Lord’s Supper and it is not wrong, necessarily. We should do all those things! But when Paul says that we must “recognize the body.” Other versions will say “the body of Christ.”
But within our context, what has Paul been concerned about? The unity of the church, right? And what is another name for the church? “THe Body of Christ” right? OK!
So, when we take, YES we need to think about Jesus’s body and blood that was broken and shed for us. But Paul is making a case here that we need to be thinking of one another as we eat as well! The Lord’s Supper is a communal act, not a private one!
That’s what I thought it was growing up! I would put my blinders on and take my own little piece of bread and my personal cup of Welch’s and I spent time with God in my head. But that’s not been the case throughout much of Christian history! The Lord’s Supper is a communal meal that should not remind me first that Christ died for me. The main point to be taken is that Christ died for US! Do you see the difference?
It would have been much easier to see it this way when we passed a loaf of bread and drank from one cup. But I get it. Some of y’all backwash and I don’t want to taste that either. But as we take in this modern way, we cannot lose sight of what’s going on in the Lord’s Supper!
We are all ONE IN CHRIST. No one is more important than another.
This is the application of this text to us today!
And I know that in light of modern medicine and our knowledge of diseases and sickness, we have gone to tiny pieces of bread and individual cups
Through the earliest part of Christianity,
What is the Lord’s Supper?
(end of the Passover meal)
Why was Paul rebuking them?
The rich were gorging themselves in the presence of the poor. Then trying to take the Lord’s Supper as if they were equals.
They were acting with frivolity towards the body (v. 29)
How does it apply to us?
The Lord’s Supper isn’t really about you and God. It is to be a reminder AS A BODY of the body and blood given for us.
Do you really believe we are equals in Christ? Or do you
Are you aware of the Body of Christ today? Are you living in community with us here at East? Do you believe that everyone is on level playing field here in Christ? If not, we have a hymn of invitation just for you! We are going to sing the first part of this song and give some of us a chance to repent of the sins we have committed against this body whether in person or in our mind.
Also, this would be a time where you could go make a relationship right with someone. Give an apology and a hug if that is needed.
But for some of you, you may not be a Christian. Maybe you have never acknowledged your sin before a holy God and surrendered your life to the Lordship of Jesus. If you would like to talk about beginning to follow Jesus today, we would love to share that with you too.
I am going to voice a prayer and then we will all stand and spend some time responding with action or in our hearts as God leads. After that time, we will take the Lord’s Supper together as a BODY, AMEN?
INVITATION
Thank you for your honesty during the invitation. Now, we will look to the Lord’s table.
I have explained this to you today in a clear way. And now, I invite any of you who are Christians to join us in this meal together. It isn’t just for members of Lindsay Lane East. If you are a baptized believer in Jesus Christ, you are welcome to partake with us!
We are going to distribute the elements. If you are unsure whether your heart is prepared to take the supper based on the text we studied today, simply pass the plate on down without taking a cup. If you are not a Christian, just pass it on by. There won’t be any judgment in either case today.
If this is your first time taking it here, the cups are stacked like this, with the bread in the bottom and juice cup on top. You will take one stack, separate them, and wait for my instructions, OK?
DISTRIBUTE
Now, I want you to take the bread. As you look at it, be reminded that together, we are the body of Christ. Each of our pieces are virtually identical to one another. No one is more important. We are on an equal field here. Voice a quick prayer to God asking him to help us to be fully united in Christ. After doing so, you take the bread which represents the broken body of Christ and eat it in remembrance of Jesus.
Likewise, now take the cup. It represents the shed blood of Jesus which made a way for us to be brought into God’s presence. As you look at it, be reminded that Jesus didn’t just shed his blood for you. He shed his blood for US. Before you drink this cup, I want to ask you to look around the room and lay eyes on one person here that you can thank Jesus for dying for. You may not know their name. That’s OK. But look around this room at everyone, then find that person, voice a prayer of thankfulness for dying not only for your sins but for theirs, and then drink in remembrance the cup of the New Covenant which was poured out in Jesus’ blood.
Now that we have shared in this meal together, I pray that God continues to draw us closer and closer together as we reach more and more people for Christ in the Harvest area and beyond, AMEN?
When we take the Lord’s Supper, i want you to look around the room before you take of the bread and cup. Think about how Christ died for all of these other people not just you.
Let’s sing one more Chorus together. Then Greg will come and share a couple announcements with you.
PRAY