Well, good morning. I'm Jonah Chitty. I am the discipleship and family pastor here at LMC. We're glad you're here. Happy Thanksgiving. As an American living abroad, it seems weird to do Thanksgiving right now. I was with some some friends last night and we were having a Thanksgiving meal and we were watching the appropriate thing. There was a football game on, but as soon as it ended, there was the the wrong thing came on the TV. It was hockey. So I was confused. I was like, is this
Thanksgiving? But no, it was a great time. I'm just a little bit confused. So in Thanksgiving, I'll get to do it all over again. Excuse me? In Thanksgiving in November, I'll get to do it again and you guys can join me. We can all have two Thanksgiving. It's it is the best holiday. So that being said, family gatherings are on our mind, right? Thinking about gathering with your family for meals for Thanksgiving?
Every Sunday when I was growing up and even after I got married, we would have a family meal at my parents house. Valerie and I, after we got married, we lived in in Alabama just above the state line where my parents are from, and we would drive down for lunch pretty regularly. Nearly every Sunday we would show up for lunch and so we would go to the early service at our church and then we would make our way South for 45 minutes or so and we would be
expecting a real good meal. One of the things my mom cooks that is my absolute favorite thing to eat is fried cornbread. It's not the cornbread you guys making like cakes and like looks like a birthday cake and then you slice it up. No, this is like, I don't know if you know what hush puppies are, probably not, but it's like, it's like cornmeal that's like pattied out really thin and then you fry it and it is the
best thing ever. I love it, But often I would show up and I would show up late. Have you ever been somewhere late, like to a family gathering and what you're looking for and what you expected was missing? That happens to me, or it did happen to me nearly every time we would go home, my nephews would get to the cornbread first and I would say, where's the cornbread? And they would say, oh, Logan ate like six or seven pieces. I'm like, come on, man. I was here for the cornbread.
What I got when I got there, I was expecting something. I was expecting a meal. What I got instead was something completely different. I got a meal, but it was missing the most important part, and that was the cornbread. So I was thinking about that specifically because we have family gatherings coming up, but also as I was reading our texts in First Corinthians, we're going to be in First Corinthians Chapter 11 this morning. So go ahead and turn there and
you'll see why. I hope you'll see why my my story about the cornbread being missing would make sense. So we're going to be reading 1st Corinthians 11. We're going to start in 17, go all the way to 34. But first I want to pray Father in heaven this morning, Lord, I'm reminded of how good you are, reminded of the blood applied. That song is so fitting there to our heart was the blood applied. And so Lord, we give your name glory. We pray that you would incline
our hearts to you. Lord, Lord, help us to to see you, to to be here, to worship together, not for any prideful gain or false motive, but for your glory alone. So, Lord, we ask, we, we beg that you would incline our hearts to you to fear your name. Lord, I pray also that you would, that you would open our eyes as believers. Lord, we ask that You would open Your word to us in such a way that it becomes real to us that we can apply it correctly to our lives. So are we open?
We ask that You open our eyes to behold the wonderful things in your word. And not only us, Lord, that are believers, but those of us here in this room who, who may, may not have put our faith in You yet. Lord, I pray for those who are here that haven't put their faith in you. I pray that you would open their eyes, that You would open the eyes of their hearts so that they would see you, that they would be able to behold the wonderful things in Your word, the truth of the blood applied.
Lord, I pray that this morning that we would we would have a renewed vision of that Lord, for your name's sake, not for us, but for your name's sake. Lord, please unite our hearts to fear your name. Help us to be unified in our worship as we study the issue of taking the Lord's Supper in the in an improper way. Lord, Lord, we pray that you would help us to see how we can avoid worshipping you in an improper way. Lord, you, you want to be
worshipped in a particular way. And so, Lord, we pray that we would, that we would be a church, a gathered people that comes wanting to do worship, wanting to be the church the way you want us to be. And Lord, I pray that you would help us to be satisfied with you. Help us to be satisfied with your sacrificial substitutionary atonement and your steadfast love. Help us to imitate that love when we come together. And as we look at this passage today, Lord, help us to listen
and live your word. I pray these things in Jesus name, Amen. So let's take a look at Chapter 11, verse 17. We're going to read all the way down to 34. Now in giving you 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 proved 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 that I also passed on to you. On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread and we had given thanks. He broke it and said, This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way He also took the cup, and after supper he 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 whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and the 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, and eats, eats and drinks judgement on himself. This is why many are sick, and I'll 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
and eat, welcome one another. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home so that when you gather together you will not come under judgement. I will give you instructions about the other matters whenever I come. What a way to end. I'll give you some instructions later, thanks. It would be nice if he gave us more, but he didn't. I think we have enough to go through this morning. My sermon title today is Check Yourself before you wreck Yourself.
We're playing on the idea that this, this idea of self examination is the key to coming through our times of worship and in particular, Paul's addressing the Lord's Supper, coming to the Lord's Supper, the ordinance of the Lord's Supper with the right posture of heart. I have three things that I want us to learn together from this passage when it comes to
checking our hearts. All of these three things point to this, this key idea here that our attitude and actions toward each other should mirror the actions and attitude of Christ toward the church. So when you come together, the three things that we need to remember are we need to recognize, we need to remember, and we need to reconcile. So recognize in verse 17 we see a change of tone.
So last week when Pastor Joe preached his message, we saw in verse 2, verse 2 Corinthians, First Corinthians 11/2 said this. It says now I praise you because you Remember Me in everything and hold fast to the traditions just as I delivered them to you. So just 15 verses earlier in the letter, he says, I praise you because you Remember Me in everything. Now he's changed his tone. This is like a I'm not beating around the Bush anymore. He says, now I'm giving this instruction to you.
I do not praise you since you come together for not for the better, but for the worse. In last week's passage, it seems like Paul was at least somewhat satisfied with how they were handling part of an aspect of worship. And the Corinthians remembered Paul's instructions and they were holding fast to it. They say, he says you were holding fast. To this one thing, I commend you. But here he's not.
They're not doing it. It's almost as if all the things that Paul had been rebuking them for previously in the letter, things like favoritism, things like following certain leaders over others, things like sexual immorality or a confused idea of headship in the church and in the home, among other things, all these things, what they're doing is that they're causing the church pain. They're causing suffering. When they come together, When they come together, what they do
causes grief. It causes people to feel alienated, ostracized, when what they should be doing is building each other up. So Paul starts by, he starts by recognizing that there are divisions, right? He says there's factions among you. He said these factions should not have existed in God's church. It seems evident that these these divisions were along the socio economic lines. So not theological differences, like not like differences on the Trinity or ideas about how how we're saved.
You know, these differences were like we're I'm dividing the the congregation up and rich and poor. They're socio and economic. We can see that by the verse when he says one goes hungry and another go it gets drunk. It seems to imply that there were there were people who had much wealth and could afford to have a lavish meal and there were people in the congregation that had nothing and couldn't afford anything. And there are differing views on
how the supper was taken. So like some people think that, that, that it was like in a big house, like a, like a large house, somebody, a member of the church had a bigger house and they invited people over the whole church over to take the supper. And some, And so sometimes the rich people would get the, the better seats, right? They would be, they would get the, the seat that, that gave
the most prominence or whatever. And then the rich people had to sit outside and take their supper outside. No matter how you view it, it's very, it's very like evident in the text that the, the, the supper was a meal. Not like we take it. I think we take them, I think we take the supper and sort of reaction to this, like we take the supper with a little tiny wafer, right, And a little bit of juice so that we can't be accused of like making people go
hungry or anything like that. So we're we're doing ours in a response to that in some ways. But here in the text, it seems evident that in the early church they took it as a full meal. OK. So it's likely though, that that what they were doing was like they were, they were eating a meal like they were instructed to eat, but they had forgotten and lost the spirit of what the Lord's Supper really means. They had sort of divorced the meaning from the act.
And we're guilty of that sometimes too. We, we sometimes put more priority on what we do. And I think that goes back to Pastor Joe's sermon, what we do instead of, instead of the meaning and the, the, the implication behind it, What, what does it mean? Why do we do what we do? So they had forgotten that, he writes in verse 20. He says they had forgotten it so much. It says when you come together, then it's not to eat the Lord's Supper.
If he were talking to us today, he might, he might say something like, you know, I don't know what you're doing, but that ain't it. That is not the supper. But but what we can see in this text, there is some positives to to pull from this. I mean, it's a very negative portion of the text, but I think there's some positives here
because Paul picks up on there. There's a reason for the factions that is may not be clear, but he says there's three things I think that that we can see from these factions, from the divisions. They show us three things. So I told you my sermon had three points. It really has 10. So if you're, if you got lunch plans, I'm sorry, no, I'm kidding. Little sub points here. The divisions are helpful in recognizing who is genuine and who is not.
It's helpful for us, like here, it's helpful for the Corinthians to see who was a true believer. So divisions help us recognize that how John 310, our first John 310 says this. It says this is how God's children and the devil's children become obvious. Whoever does not do what is right is not of God, especially the one who does not love his
brother or sister. So these divisions in the church, they display their displays of favoritism, and they're nothing less than the church following the direction of culture, right? If you look at our culture today, you can see that we we also divide by rich and poor. We also give prominence to rich people and put poor people down here. That's the culture talking. And so that they had invited the church that, excuse me, they invited the culture into the church.
In God's Kingdom, though, we know there are no divisions. There are no divisions along these lines. There are only two types of people. Remember from the very beginning of the chapter, those who are being saved and those who are perishing. Those are the two types of people, not rich, poor, not smart, dumb, no, those who are being saved, those who the Lord is is working in and and and sanctifying in the truth so they can become more and more like Christ.
And then those who are perishing, those who do not believe, those are the only divisions in Christchurch. So they help us recognize who are genuine believers. Divisions also are helpful in recognizing opportunities to serve. So he had no nice words for these rich people. They're filling their own bellies, full Turkey dinner, whatever it is they're filling themselves up with, while there's others in the church that come to celebrate the Lord's Supper.
We'll talk about more what the Lord's Supper means in just a second. But they're coming to do something sacred. They're coming to remember Christ's sacrifice. But there are rich people who are acting like like, like they own the world and they're not sacrificing anything. And in one, excuse me, in 11/22 he says, what? Don't you have homes 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. So instead of acting in the, in the way that they had been treated, those who had much, they, they should recognize the opportunity. So they, they shouldn't be acting the way these people did. They should be thinking, OK, recognizing an opportunity. So we need to recognize that there's an opportunity to serve others. The third thing that divisions help us do is they're helpful in recognizing selfishness in our own hearts.
So if we're at the meal, each one eats his own supper. So no person. So one person is hungry while the other gets drunk. 11/21 These people were eating their own food. They were eating and drinking so much that they had become gluttonous. They become drunkards. Paul's pointing this out and it should cause those who have a sensitive heart, those who are genuine believers, as he's writing this letter, as this letter is being read to them in the church.
What it should be doing is it should be like helping them spot a blind spot in their life right this way. Oh, wait a minute. Something's wrong here. They need to stop and recognizing that what they're doing is a truly selfish act. So as we think about this portion of the passage, I just ask you to to, to think with me for a moment and consider the truths that that differences and divisions in our own congregation. There are differences in divisions in our congregation.
There are those who have much, There are those who have near nothing. There are those in between. We need to recognize that these divisions can be helpful to us, so long as we look at them from the proper perspective. We need to recognize that we are all prone to selfishness. Rich or poor, we are prone to selfishness, and we need to ask the Lord to help us kill that sin. We need to look for ways to be a blessing to others in our
church. And we need to recognize that there are those among us who are not genuine in our midst and we need to live our lives as an example to them of what true sacrifice is. We don't need to recognize that there are that there are non genuine people, that there are non believers in our midst and ostracize them. No, we need to show them love by how we love and serve each
other. We need to live in such a way that that demonstrates to them what Jesus sacrifice really means and what the Lord's Supper should really look like. The Lord's Supper is a reflection of the gospel of what Jesus did to reconcile himself to us. And so my second point today, main point would be that we need to remember. We need to remember.
We need to remember that what what Paul taught the Corinthians about the Supper teaches us three things about the Lord's Supper. He writes in First Corinthians 12 Excuse me, 1123 to 26. I'm just going to read these 3 verses again. For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you. Paul saying I received from the Lord could mean one of two things. It could mean he received it from the Lord himself as he was. He tells us that Jesus discipled himself.
Remember he had that that instance, that miraculous conversion, or it could mean the word literally means that I received it from someone who received it from someone else. So sort of like passing down traditions, like we receive things today, we receive it here. OK, so he says this, he says 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 we had given thanks. He broke it and said this is my body, which is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me. And in the same way he also 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 he reminds them that that Jesus delivered them and what they received from the Lord. This account most closely resembles that of Luke's.
OK, so Luke says, and he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to them and said almost almost verbatim what we just read in First Corinthians. This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. So this similarity in the text makes a lot of sense because we know from the book of Acts, Luke wrote the book of Acts and we know that that's all about the the Acts of the apostles. And primarily, most of that book is about Paul and his missionary
journeys. And so we know for a fact that Luke and Paul spent a lot of time together. So whether or not Paul received it directly from Lord Jesus or he received it as teaching from Luke and the other apostles, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't change the truths. He delivered it clearly, and we see that here as he reminds them of that. The three things that I want us to see that the supper reminds us to do is it tells us to, it's a reminder that we need to look back.
The first thing that we need to do when it comes to the supper is we need to look back. So as we're taking communion and we think about what it means, we need to be looking back. We need to remember what Christ has done for us. We need to remember his cross work, right? The work that he did on the cross for us, we need to remember that Jesus death and resurrection are central to our
faith. They're not the things that we just put off to the side and say, OK, being a Christian's like this, you got to be good to your neighbor. You got to do this, you got to do nice things for everybody else. You're going to you're going to give to the church and do all these things. Oh, and by the way, you got to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and he died for his cross for your sins. No, we believe that it this is central, this is the center
thing for our faith. Jesus death, his resurrection are the central elements of the Christian faith. If you don't get that right, you don't get Christianity. It's central. What he did on the cross in in ushering in the new covenant is he fulfilled the Passover. There's no need now for blood sacrifice. Andrew Nacelli says this. He says Jesus fulfilled the Passover by accomplishing the ultimate exodus, delivering
people from the bondage of sin. So when we take the supper, we must remember what Jesus meant when he said this is my body, which is for you. When we take the bread, we need to reflect on what Jesus did on the cross. He bore the wrath for your sin. He bore the wrath for my sin, for all those who believe He took on our sin. He died as a substitute for me and you.
So when the Father looks down at me or looks down at you, if you're a believer, he sees his Son and the atoning work of the cross, and he sees that you're forgiven. So when we take the bread, we need to remember that Jesus died a sacrificial death for our sins. Our sins separate us from God and Jesus cross work is an act of ultimate love and reconciliation.
So if we truly reflect on that selfless act and consider all that Jesus has done for us, then if that doesn't have an effect on you, if you're sitting there and you're taking the supper and you're thinking, what is this? It's just bread. Whatever I'm eating it, it doesn't have an effect on you, then you really need to consider are you one of his? Are you genuine? Are you a believer?
If you really truly like reflect on what you're doing, you're remembering that that that Jesus body was broken for you. If you if you can do that and not be moved, then I would I would you need to pray and ask the Lord to help you. So it brings, I mean, to my second point. So we need to remember. We need to look back to remember, but we also need to look out. Nacelli again is helpful. He writes this. He says when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we proclaim the
Lord's death. Verse 26. Heralding the gospel in this way not only builds up Christians, but it's also an an act of evangelism. It evangelizes non Christians who are in our midst, including our unregenerate children. So if I had to change this quote, I would say something like, especially our children who are not believers. I don't know about you, but like after taking the supper, sometimes my my kids will ask, why did it pass in front of me? Why could why can't we take it?
Why can't we do it? And that gives me an opportunity to what to to tell them what it means It we it gives me an opportunity to share the gospel, the good news that Jesus died for their sin. It helps me to point to what sin is to help them understand the explanation, to realize that the sacrifice was bigger than anything that they could do. It helps me helps me point to the to the need of a sacrifice.
It, it tells them and tells me as we remind each other, but that that it was all paid for like your sin has been paid for. There's no atonement necessary. You don't have to do anything to make atonement for your sins. There's nothing you can do to, to make it right with God. The only thing that you can do is put your faith and trust in Jesus through repentance and faith. That's what we do when we're saved. And so it gives us an opportunity to evangelize. We're proclaiming the Lord's
death until he comes. So it helps us to look out. It also helps us to look forward, so we take the Lord's death. Remember, we're proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. We proclaim his death. Not in a somber and sad way. Yes, there is reverence in the Supper. There is a time for us to reflect, but we're not reflecting on some sad event.
Why? Because of the resurrection, his death saved us from our sins, but thank, thank God he didn't stay there, right He the power of the resurrection is how we can live and hope that there's a good future. We're proclaiming that through Jesus death, there is victory over sin and death. Which brings me to my main final point today. Reconcile verses 26 to 34. I mentioned at the beginning of our time that my main point was
this. It was that our attitudes and actions toward each other should mirror the actions and attitudes of Christ toward the church. Jesus attitude and actions are so contrary to our natural tendencies.
I don't know about you, but for me, because of indwelling sin, the pressures of the world, the flesh and the devil, I often fall into those same traps that we read about here in First Corinthians. Paul says that they that those who eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
And what does he mean by that? It seems that this is the opposite of verse 26, saying that the supper, taking it in an unworthy manner is to take the supper without truly remembering what God did through Jesus. It's like to eat the bread and not think about it. So to take this, it's like, it's like taking the supper in a hypocritical way. This church in Corinth was taking the supper in a way that marginalized part of their community.
It says no, we're, we're over here, you're over there, you do your thing, I'm going to do my thing. We're going to eat and get drunk while you guys have nothing. They were dividing themselves socially between rich and poor. They were making a proclamation all like their action by their act and eating the supper. They were proclaiming that they were all unified in Christ. But what they were really doing was dividing up based on what I have and what you don't have.
And so Paul calls him out, right. He says this is not the supper. You're not doing the supper. Andy Nacelli adds something again helpful here. He says this. He says this does not imply that Christians can make themselves worthy. So taking it in an unworthy manner does not imply that that Christians can make themselves worthy of the Lord's Supper by
confessing your sins. So there's nothing like, there's this like idea, OK, I'll just get my mind right and I'll, I'll pray and ask the Lord, forgive me. It's the Lord's Supper today. It's four times a year. Today's the day I got to get my mind right. I got to get my heart right. Going to examine myself and make myself worthy to take the supper. No, no one's worthy. No one is worthy, and that's why the Lord's Supper celebrates the gospel.
But Christians must participate in a worthy manner by maintaining unity in the body. So by by truly thinking about what we're doing, what we're proclaiming to the world, and not separating based on certain like just tangible things, but really understanding that in Christ we are together. So the next thing Paul says is that they should examine themselves in 28 to 30. He says let a person examine
himself in this way. Let him eat the bread and drink of the cup forever eats the drink and drinks without recognizing the body eats and drinks judgement on himself. This is why many are sick and I'll among you and many have fallen asleep or your version may say died.
What Paul is saying here is that when you don't take sin seriously in your life, when you don't see sin as God sees sin, and you come together and you participate in the Lord's Supper, or let's, let's make it even more close to home. When we participate in worship at all, when we come together and we worship at all, if we don't take it seriously, we're pronouncing judgement on ourselves instead. What they must do and what we must do is we have to check our
pride at the door. We have to examine ourselves in light of Christ's sacrifice, and that examination is helpful in understanding that the body in this section most likely refers to, yes, Christ's body. When we, we, and also the church has a body. If we eat the supper and neglect the body of Christ, which is the church, we're also neglecting each other because of our union with Christ.
To act in a way that disparages the church is to act in a way that disparages Christ. The result can be catastrophic, right? Detrimental. We see that here, that some people got sick, Paul saying this is this is the reason some of you are sick and this is the reason some of you are died. I can think of at least one instance as like an experiential thing for my life where I had some issues going on that I couldn't figure out why.
I was getting cluster headaches, migraines, I was suffering from severe anxiety, crippling depression, which I had no reason for. I had no reason for it. The the headaches the doctor, I went to the doctor and the doctor says there's no reason for you to have that. There's nothing wrong. Everything's fine. All things check out. Well, one of my friends had the wisdom to say, hey, Jonah, how is your Christian walk? How is your walk with the Lord right now?
And I had to be honest that I had not been as Pastor Joe so so well put it last a couple weeks back. I have not been feeding my soul for the Lord. I had been coming to church. I had been doing everything I was supposed to do. You look at me, you wouldn't think anything's wrong. I was teaching Sunday school, saying all the right things, doing all the right things in public. But when it came to my personal relationship with the Lord, I was neglecting it.
My friend helped me see that. He helped me see that that what I needed to do was confess and to repent, to check my pride at the door. And as soon as I stopped, realized that and I acted in true repentance, the headache stopped. I felt better.
That worked for me. I'm not saying that every ailment that we have is a result of a sinful attitude or sinful acts or a hypocritical life, but we do see here in First Corinthians in Chapter 11 that it certainly can be, and I can attest to experiencing that in my life. So Paul's solution for the problem we have, we've seen the problem, the whole problem around this issue, and it's really his solution for a lot of the other issues that that we
saw throughout the letter. And we will see his solution is that our attitudes and our actions toward each other should mirror the actions and attitudes of Christ toward the church. That is to say, we should all be about the ministry of reconciliation, find ways to foster unity in the body and 1st John, we see that one of the the marks of a true believer is this. I know it's small on the screen. I apologize for that. Says this is how we have come to know love. He laid down his life for us.
We should also lay down our lives for brothers and sisters. If anyone has this world's goods and sees a fellow believer in need but withholds compassion from him, how does God's love reside in Him? Little children, let us not love in Word or speech, but in action and in truth. This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and will reassure our hearts before Him. I think Paul has something like what John says here in mind when he says in verse 33 and 34.
He says, therefore, my brothers and sisters, when you come together, eat to eat, welcome one another. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home. So if you're starving to death and you feel like you're at risk of gorging yourself, eat at home so that when you gather, you don't come under judgement. So I have a few final thoughts today as we close. We need to live our lives sacrificially for one another, especially when we gather as the
church. There shouldn't be any favoritism among us. There shouldn't be any division among us. So when you come together, recognize that we're all prone to like division for all sorts of reasons. We need to see the fact that some of us have more. There are haves and there are have nots in our midst as a way to serve one another. Some of you may be more financially secure than others. Some have may have more spiritual wisdom than others.
We can all serve each other by sharing what God has blessed us with. We also need to remember that the Lord's Supper. As we take the Lord's Supper, we need that it that it points us to look back to remember just how much Jesus sacrificed for us to be made right with him. We need to look around, recognizing that that taking the Supper is an act of evangelism. It's demonstrating to the lost in our midst the importance of Jesus death.
And as we look forward to the day when we'll be able to celebrate and share a meal in the presence of Jesus, when the work is done and he has fulfilled his promise to make all things new, we look forward to that day. And until that day, we'll proclaim Jesus death. So finally, when we come together, we must be about
reconciliation. When there's division among us, we need to be quick about examining our hearts, looking for ways that we've either caused division or been an accomplice in it. We need to take our sins seriously and truly ask ourselves if our attitudes and our actions toward each other truly mirror the actions and attitudes of Christ Jesus. His attitude was one of selfless living, one of total sacrifice in humility.
He took on flesh and He came and He lived among men, being subject to all the same temptations and all the different things about it, like being tempted to sin but never doing it. He lives a perfect, sinless life, and He died on the cross, bearing the wrath of the Father so that our sins could be forgiven. When we come together for the Lord's Supper or even just for a normal service like this, we need to remember this good news that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost.
He sought out those who are on the margins, right? Those who are on the fringe of society, and he offered them hope and freedom from the bondage of sin. And that's good news for them. And it's the same good news for me and for you. Maybe you're here this morning and you've been coming to church your entire life. Maybe you're here this morning and the Lord has been good to open your eyes to see that trying to earn your way, trying to pay for things that are already paid for isn't working.
Or maybe you've thought that that somehow you needed to. Like before you had to get your mind right, you had to get your body clean. You had to do all this cleaning your life up before you can come to salvation, that you just somehow need to pay for it. Brothers and sisters, friends, it's paid for. That's what the Lord's Supper represents. When we take the supper, we're reminding ourselves that that the sacrifice has been made.
There's no, there's no reason for you to like get to the end of your life and say, I hope I did enough to be saved. It's already paid for. And if we can get that through our thick skulls and we can really just truly open our lives to the fact and reality of that, we will live so much more joyful lives. If you sense that call in your life, if the Lord has opened your eyes to that today, talk to one of us. Grab a pastor, grab a Deacon, grab a trusted friend, talk to your mom or dad at your
gathering, whatever. But don't like. Wait around, put your faith in Christ, repent and believe the gospel. He saved. He came to seek and to save the lost. That's what He came for. And as we take the supper, we proclaim that good news and we will do it together until He comes. Would you guys pray with me? Father, thank you so much for for this text. Thank you for what it has done in my own heart this week. Lord, I pray for for those who who haven't put their faith in
you. Lord, I pray that they would not waste another moment, that they would recognize that You paid it all to recognize that the blood shed at the cross is applied. Father, help us to live your word and to love you more. I pray these things in Jesus name, Amen.