Table_Manners
TABLE MANNERS I Corinthians 11:17-29
Now, you and I have a way of moving through life as long as everything is slick and smooth and clean, and we almost enjoy the status quo. We have an expression that goes like this: "Don't make waves." And we'll move through life being basically dependent upon ourselves and indepen- dent of the Lord until trouble comes. Trouble. The Music Man would sing, "We've Got Trouble." We've got trouble right here in Houston, in River City, in America, in the world, we've got trouble. The old spiritual cries out, "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen." Nobody knows but Jesus. Trouble comes. And most of us run from trouble. Nobody here would say, "I enjoy trouble." But let me tell you something. When the Holy Spirit brings trouble into your life and trouble into my life, the trouble comes to teach us something about where we are and about whether we are truly dependent upon Him. Or, as far as function is concerned, we're independent of Him. When trouble comes to a life, trouble is like a knife, like a surgeon's I t 4USt scalpel, tha i opens you up aild opens me up and -it makes us 'look at ourselves whether we want to or not. That's the message that trouble brings. Trouble exposes weakness. It exposes the weakness of our circumstances. Let economic trouble come, let us lose our job, let us have unexpected expenses that we never could count on until suddenly that hundred dollars or five hundred dollars or a thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars or whatever it is we put aside for a rainy day, let that rainy day come and let all of our resources be depleted and we're down to zilch, zero, nothing. Whereas before we said, "O, Lord, I am leaning upon You, I am totally dependent upon You." But you knock the prop out from under us; you take the crutch away, our economic stability, our status, our stance; and we see we're not really totally dependent upon Him but actually we were propped up over here and there was sort of a rea'l dependency upon the a'lmigihty dolillar and upon our economic life- style. Trouble does that. Trouble reveals circumstances like nothing else. Trouble also reveals the weakness in character. Why, if you would study all the lives of the Apostles, you would say, "Which one of the twelve had the most stuff? Who was Mr. Macho?" We'd all make a hundred, it was Simon Peter. Strong, big, courageous. He didn't know the meaning of fear, He would back down before no man. Ah, but trouble came. Wel 1 , when i t f i rst came there in the garden of Gethsemane, he pulled out a sword; he said, "Who wants to be first? Just come right on, help yourself. I'll take care of my Lord." He had the sword, you'd say, "That's my man Peter!" But then Jesus was arrested. The trail was going on. All the other Apostles, they'd taken off, they were in hiding. Peter was alone and warming his hands by that fire on warm, middle ground; all of a sudden we see big, courageous, strong, fearless Peter, we see him without the Lord, we see him now as a coward. I would never have guessed Peter would end up as a coward. Nobody would believe it except when trouble came. Trouble exposes the weakness in your character and exposes the weakness in our character like nothing else you could imagine. Let trouble come and you'll see what you, you'll see what I, you'll see what we are really made of. You'll see what we're really depending upon. Character is revealed, weakness of character is uncovered. That's what trouble does, it is that knife that opens us up. Now, how do we respond to trouble? Now, some of us respond and we get bitter. I talk to people all the time and you bring up a subject and they'll bring up something that happened a while back or the other day or last year or twenty years ago and you see the bitterness that's coming out. They've never recovered. From a slight, from an abuse, from a lost opportunity, from a friend who let them down, from a part- nership that didn't work out, from some position or status or some event in life; whether it was a marriage or a child or a family or whatever it was, they have grown bitter about it all. Soren Kierkegaard, a theolog of another generation, tells about the man who gave every indication of being a genuine Christian until his son died. At the funeral service, he stood up and he shook his fist toward heaven and said, "You did this to me after all I've done for You?" Only - 5 - trouble revealed, revealed that flaw in his character. He had the idea of being a Christian was doing something for God and God in turn doing something for you. And he never understood that to be a Christian is to be a son of God and not to be an employee or not to be a slave. Only trouble does that. How do you respond to trouble is a real test of what your relationship with the Lord really is. Does it make you bitter? Or does it make you better? Do you grow, does it build you up, does it slow you down, slow me down, long enough to see, really, what's life all about? Trouble reveals weakness in circumstance, weakness in character, and trouble will either make you bitter or it'll make you better. The Apostle Paul in 11 Corinthians, chapter number 11, he lists all the things that happened to him. You ought to read them. You think you got trouble? Read about Paul. Shipwrecked a couple of times, bitten by a snake, whipped many times, put in prison several times, disenfranchised by h4,& own pl-opi e-. The churches d4,dn't wa,-.t to s-,e him come beca,--se he would bring the truth of God before them. The Jews wanted to have nothing to do with him, he was a turncoat from the Sanhedrin as one of their leaders, the Romans were fearful of him, that he would bring revolution. He said nobody knows the trouble I've seen and he lists all of his troubles, you should read the list, it goes on and on through the end of chapter 11 and he has to use a part of chapter 12 to get it all down. But do you know what the Apostle Paul said? He said, "All the troubles - 6 - that have come to me, I look upon these troubles as the hand of God." And he talked about that thorn of the flesh, incidentally, in that context. What does that mean? That means that when trouble came to the life of the Apostle Paul, he said, "God's trying to show me something. God's getting my attention." Does God have your attention today? Does He have your full attention this morning? Trouble comes, we can get bitter or we can get better. Now, in the middle of trouble, do you know what our response usually is? We cry out for deliverance. We say, "Oh, Lord, take me out of this mess. Lord, deliver me from this mess." But when the Holy Spirit brings trouble into a life, so many times He brings it into your life or into my life in so many different forms; not for us to be delivered, oh no, for us to be developed. The Holy Spirit said, "This did not happen to you, this circumstance you're in today is not so you could cry out, 'O, Lord, save me, take me out of this. Boy, just heal me, restore me, life me up, let me know my old station, my old ways, oh, I want to be delivered."' God can deliver but so many times when trouble comes, He does not bring that trouble in your or allow that trouble to come for you or for me to be delivered but he allows that trouble to come for us to be developed in and through that trouble and that's how deliverance comes. It makes us grow, it makes us see that our life has to be totally dependent upon Him and not upon anything or anybody else, any measure of health or - 7 - happiness or prosperity or stuff you can see and feel and weight and taste of this world. We can see when trouble comes, it lays us open. Now, some of us when trouble comes, we are cut open, trouble cuts. You know what we do? We just hold together the place where we've been cut and we run away from trouble, we run away from it and we get bitter over here and we say, "O, Lord, deliver me from it." We don't understand that the Lord says, "Face that trouble head on, I'm teaching you some- thing, I want to develop you, I want you to be totally dependent upon Me, upon the Lord Jesus Christ." Trouble. Trouble. Bobby was in the third grade. He was a smart little guy, he studied, he was consciencious; well, you could even say he was the teacher's pet. You couldn't help but like him. He ... he had just that little glow about him. He was mischievous enough and sincere enough and repentant enough. You liked Bobby. To know Bobby was to like him. He was just a cute kid. He made good grades, daily work. Always did his homework. But when the teacher would give a test, he would try so hard. He would get so worked, so excited, so on edge, so tense, that he just couldn't perform on a test. He would miss things that he knew ten times over. This particular day the test was handed out, it was in Math. The teacher was seated at her desk and trying to grade some papers, she thought of Bobby, she looked up and sure enough, there he was in the middle of the room, his chin was quivering and tears were not far away. We've all taken some tests like that, haven't we? And so the teacher got up and she walked around the room and she looked over at some of the children's papers, and she said, you know, do this, - 8 - and she helped them and she came to Bobby. And she glanced at his paper and saw he'd made some silly mistakes because the pressure he put himsetf under and she said, "Bobby, did you forget to add that one?!' He erased and made the correction. She said, "Bobby, now, look at that one. You ... you've forgotten to subtract." He made the correction and she said, "Now, look at the last one, Bobby. When you get there, don't forget to divide." And she went to her desk and was seated and started to grade some papers and then she said I felt the presence of the Lord. And as if God was saying to me, "Your life is like Bobby's test paper. There's some things you need to add to your life that are not there. There's some things in your life you need to subtract that are unpleas- ant to the Lord, that are unpleasant to other people; sin, problems, an attitude, a spirit. And then she said the Lord said there are some things in your life you need to divide with God; your time, your talent, you-r mean5. She said, "BefGre 1 knew it, my chin was quivering and tears were not far away." Trouble comes. It exposes the weakness of circumstances, it exposes the weakness of character, trouble either makes us bitter or it makes us better. We see in trouble that we are to be delivered but so many times we are delivered through the trouble and not from the trouble; and, therefore, we are developed in the middle of the trouble when we recog- nize that God has got our full attention and there are some things in the middle of the trouble that we need to add to our lives that simply are not there. Daily Bible study,, personal quite time, listening to the Lord. There's some things in our lives we need to subtract that are unpleasing to God and do not honor Him. Habits, attitudes, sins, - 9 - omission, comission. There's some things in our lives we need to divide with God. We've just horded so much, we haven't seen that our lives are to be a vehicle for his blessings, an overflow we're to divide with Him. Trouble comes. Our chins quiver and tears are not far away. But trouble comes as the great teacher from God so many, many times. To force us to grow, to force us to recognize that if life is to have any sense in the middle of all the nonsense, which is trouble, we have to be totally dependent upon Him. As we go to the table of the Lord, as we cleanse our lives, as we confess our sins, as we make sure, make deadly sure we have our attitude toward any other brother or sister one hundred percent in line as we go to the Lord, perhaps He'll say to many here, "Add this, subtract this, divide this for in the middle of trouble, I want to honor You and teach you total, total dependency upon Me." If that is the message to the Lord, to many lives, let us be spiritually sensitive to hear it and to respond to it. To search out and to reach out and grow and be totally dependent as never before upon Him, our Lord and our Savior. And Jesus received a cup and when He had given thanks, he said, "Take this and divide it among yourselves for I say unto you I shall not drink from henceforth of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God shall come." And He took bread and when He had given thanks, He brake it and gave to them saying, "This is My body, which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me." And the cup in like manner after supper saying, - 10 - "This cup is the new covenant in My blood: even that which is poured out for you." And there in the upper room after supper, our Lord celebrated the Passover meal and very deliberately, He took bread and He divided it and He gave it to all those Apostles and He said, "This is My Body which is broken for you." Our heavenly Father, we look to the cross now. Knowing that on that cross you not only took all of our sin but also you provided for us even in this day the power that will see us through all the trouble that would come. We recognize that the Body of Thy Son Jesus was broken so that our bodies might be whole. He died so that we might live. And He loved so that we might forgive others as we have received forgiveness from Him. Speak to us as we go to this table, Lord, in terms of addi- tion, subtraction, division, and, 0 Lord, in the middle of whatever trouble that would invade any life here. May we see in the middle of that trouble Your hand teaching, instructing, revealing and showing so many times not a way out but a way through that'll truly give honor and victory not only to the one that now is experiencing trouble, but will give victory to the Kingdom through Jesus Christ. In His name we pray. Amen. This is the bread which came down out of heaven, not as our fathers ate and died for he that eateth this bread shall live forever. And then our Lord took the cup and said, "This is My blood which was shed for you."