SPEAKER_00 0:00

Okay, we're gonna do a Grace and Peace 101 that hasn't, we haven't brought it out in a long time. It is uh we're gonna be in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verses 17 through 34. 1 Corinthians chapter 11, uh, verses 17 through 34. If you have a Bible, go ahead and get there. If you don't, we do have a text on the screen. Um, let's pray before we begin. God, I pray that we would listen intently to your word. I pray that we would hear any challenge to us, not as something that we need to figure a way out of, but as you calling us to greater wholeness and greater life. In Jesus' name. Amen. So uh back in the 16th century, the first Catholic missionaries started arriving in India and preaching the gospel. And um the the first people to believe the gospel, the people who really were listening, uh, were the people called the untouchables, the deletes or the outcasts. And and what was happening is that in in India, they had a a, they still have a caste system. And uh and the way it works is you kind of had the priests at the top, and you had the the rulers and and warriors below them, you had like the merchants and artisans below them, and then your ordinary sort of workers, and then outside of the caste, right, people who were not part of the society were the untouchables or the outcasts. That's why they're called outcasts, they're outside of the caste. And their jobs were dealing with like, you know, sewage and dead bodies, that sort of thing. And so these were the people who were responding to Jesus, but none of the other castes were. And so there was one uh there was one missionary named Roberto De Nobili, and he studied the situation and he noticed that the the missionaries were not adopting local customs enough. So, for instance, they wore leather shoes, which was really uh, you know, a problem there, and they weren't doing the ritual washings that that were common among the higher caste people. So they started doing those things. But the big thing that he did is he figured out that these upper caste people would never ever go to a church, be part of a congregation where there's outcasts, because they just didn't associate with them. So he got approval from the Pope to start a different congregation for the higher caste people. Now, there's a lot to talk about there, but we can all see what he did, right? He took the class structure of that society, and he just took the church and he mapped it onto that class structure. This church is for the higher caste, this is for the lower, this is for the outcast. You see that? And this is something that actually, you know, we don't talk about class a ton, but it's something we deal with every day. And the concept of class is even kind of tough to what do we mean by it? Because throughout most of human history, they're not talking about money. Right? You could be a poor noble. It's possible. It's just that some people are born better than others. That's the idea of class. They just are born higher. Now in America, we don't have a formal class system like that, but we do have a class system. And it's partly education access, it's partly money, it's partly connections, right? We all get that the Kennedys are somehow higher class than, say, me. You know, the the Boston Kennedys, not like just random Kennedys. Now, we definitely and this shows up in big ways, right? This is something that actually affects our lives every day. For instance, your access to education. You know, where where you go to school is largely determined. If you go to college, that's largely determined by the class that you come from. There are exceptions, but that's that's the usual. Or everybody who's in a profession knows that there are to get the best jobs, you need to be part of professional networks. Correct? This is what I'm told. And in order to be well tied in to those networks, you have to be what? One of them. Right? Hey, we went to prep school together, that sort of thing. So there's a certain sense in which even your access to getting jobs is determined by class. When we look at our Congress, right, kind of the ruling class of America, you know, 95% of the people in Congress went to a high-end undergrad, like Ivy League or around that. You know, only about 28% of Americans have a four-year degree period, much less from an Ivy. So there is a sense in which we don't talk about it, we don't necessarily are, we're not necessarily saying it out loud, but classes everywhere. There's little ways too. If you go to the Safeway in my neighborhood, affectionately nicknamed Unsafe Way, versus uh, you know, Whole Foods in Cherry Creek, you're observing class differences, right? It's a different experience. There are certain neighborhoods, certain schools that are associated with, hey, this is for, we all know it, without saying it out loud, we get a certain class of person lives here. You experience it when you go someplace that isn't part of your class. You ever been to like a, I'm not trying to throw shade or anything, you ever been to a truck stop in rural Kansas? You feel out of place. All of you. It's different. You're like, oh, there's a difference I'm feeling here. I don't know what it is. Or if you ever, if you're a middle class person like myself and you stumble into the the world of, you know, the the hoity and the toity, like a country club or something like that, you're like, I'll just I'll just go. I'm not supposed to be here, I know that much. Right? You get that feeling, we all get it. But the real problem is when class starts making its way into the church or the church starts mapping onto class. There are some churches where social climbing is the point. You go there to strengthen your networks and increase your status. There are churches where having wealth and status is sort of indicative of divine favor. Like God loves you more if you're higher status or you're enjoying God's favor. How about this one? I um for those of you who are familiar with the Christian conference world, they'll have speakers. And usually the speakers are, you know, Bible experts, subject matter experts, and that's all well and good. But then sometimes, I've seen this quite a few times, there'll be some guy who um, you know, started a company, made a ton of money, and uh, and then he like he he bought the Raiders or something like that, and he's gonna get up and speak. He's not like a Bible expert, not a subject matter expert. He's just very, very successful. We're like, oh yeah, well, listen to him. But you know what I've never seen? A guy who's like a janitor who is uh living faithfully and walks with Jesus and you know he's made it as a poor man in America, which is a very hard thing. You ever you ever heard you ever read that book? You ever heard that speaker? Why? It's because, well, well, high class. We'll listen to that, right? The the the person who sits up in first class on the plane. Oh yeah, there it is, class. Right? This was a huge issue at the church in Corinth. And and we're gonna see that Paul is having none of it because they are mapping the church onto class, and he he did all of 1 Corinthians is a bit of a body slam, but he really gets, he really throws the elbow on this one, the atomic elbow for wrestling fans. Look at verse 17. He says, in the following instructions, I do not commend you.

unknown 8:37

Ouch.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

That's like, I'm so disappointed in you guys. Because when you come together, your church meetings, it is not for the better, but for the worse. What? A church gathering together is actually a detriment to the kingdom of God. What? He says, for in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and I believe it in part. We we've, for those of you who remember our first Corinthians series, there was a lot of different divisions. For there must be factions among you in order for those who are genuine among you may be recognized. Now what's he saying? Is he saying, like, good thing there's factions because one of the factions is real, or is he making fun of them? Like, oh, good thing you're, I don't know which, I'm I'm more prone to think he's being sarcastic. He says, but he comes to the point. When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper that you eat. Why? They're eating the Lord's Supper, they're gathering as a church, he says, he says, next, for in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. Now what's going on here? How are they having the Lord's Supper? Some are going hungry, and some are getting drunk when it's just these little tiny cups of wine. Who's getting drunk on such a thing? Okay, they did it a little different. What you have going on here is the way ancient Greco-Roman meals worked. Okay, so I brought a little diagram because everyone loves a diagram. In a noble's house in ancient Rome, when you had when you had a meal, like a big gathering of a meal, you didn't have everybody eating the same food or sitting in the same place. You have in uh in one of the back rooms, there we go, one of the back rooms, the number seven room there, as you can see, that's called the triplinium. And in the triplinium, if you were of the same class as the host, you would go there. So in Greco-Roman society, you had kind of the top nobles, then you had the equestrian class who were still pretty high status, then you kind of had the artisans and then and the and the merchants, then the commoners, then you have former slaves or current slaves at the bottom. And these people point into the rooms. You say the the uh the part with the pool out there, that's called the atrium, and that's kind of where the lower class people would go. And also, we know that for a typical Roman noble hosted dinner, you wouldn't serve the same food and wine to everybody. In fact, we have ancient writings where you know it's like you know, better homes and gardens, how to host the perfect Roman party. Like, no, this is really like here's what you do. You have to have three different levels of food and drink. And so what's going on is that when they are gathering together to eat the Lord's Supper, which wasn't just a tiny bread and wine for them, they took the time to eat a whole meal, they were mapping the church and the Lord's Supper right onto the class structure of Rome. With some getting the best and some getting nothing. Now, Paul does not mince words. What does he say about a church that is mapped onto the class structures of the world? Well, he says in verse 17 that gathering together does more harm than good. In verse 20, he says um that it's not the Lord's Supper. Doesn't count. And then all the way down in uh in verse 29, he says that he says, anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. Now, I, as my personality, I tend to be a little more kumbaya without every other person who says they're a Christian. I'm like, oh yeah. Paul, he's like, if you're doing this, if you're guilty of this, it ain't the church. Why? Because the church needs to be shaped by the cross, not by not by class. Where does he say this? Look at the remedy. So Paul points out the problem ending in verse 22, and look at his remedy starting in verse 23. He says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you. That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread. He's reminding them the origins of the Lord's Supper. He took bread, and when he 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 also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. Okay, so where does he point them? What's the remedy for the class-shaped church? It's the cross. Shape the church like the cross, not like the class structure of your society. Now, how does the cross remedy this? How is that the other way? Do you see what I'm saying? Because we we will tend to just do what comes naturally, which is map onto class. How do we do the other thing? Well, it's to look to the shape of the cross. And how does it do that? How does it it's first of all, it's recognizing our need. We are a people in need of the cross. The cross makes a new people. And these are people in need of the cross. When Jesus, he's quoting Jesus here, and what does Jesus say? He says, This is my body which is for you. Now we know that communion points to what he was about to do the next day, the cross, right? He's saying, you need the cross. How does our need for the cross shape a community so that we're not focused on class, we're not mapping on to class? Well, I don't know if any of you guys have ever uh been to an AA meeting, have gone as a guest, and it's it's pretty astounding because what you'll see in an AA meeting is people of every description. You'll see people who look like they just walked out of their, you know, um high-end office job, and you'll see people who look like they stepped, and they did, they stepped right off the street where they were holding a sign asking for money. And everybody starts the same way. They'll say their name, and they'll say that they are an alcoholic or a drug addict, and either that they've been sober for a while or that they're currently powerless, but the the fact that everybody has the same need is a great equalizer. Right? There's no feeling of, well, I'm better than this person. Everybody is aware of their need. We have a need, you need. We have the same need that billionaires and kings and slaves and those in poverty have. We have the need of Christ's cross. Money can't buy it. Networks can't get it for you. Power can't solve this name. Only Christ's Cross has. When we see the depth of our need, when we see that you and I are all charity cases, that what we needed is God to die on the cross for us, it changes the shape of the community. Because all of a sudden, you're not so proud, are you? That that guy with the big belt buckle and like the no fear muscle shirt. Remember no fear? Right? That indicates what kind of oh, I might look my down a scan to that like, oh, no fear, you know. In the eyes of God, we have the same name. The people that we drive past who are holding up signs. You and I have the same name. The church needs to be shaped by the cross, not the class. But you know, there's also a purpose here. There's also a purpose to the church with regards to the cross. And the the proclamation of the church is greatly impacted by the deeds of the church. Sometimes you can do things that make all your words sound hollow. I remember I was living in Nashville when Al Gore first started beating the drum about climate change. And count me in as someone who thinks there a lot needs to be done about climate change. I'm no skeptic. However, there was a little investigative reporting done into Al Gore. And it turned out he was regularly taking private jets, the least most kicking out CO2 everywhere, and he lived in a house that was 14,000 square feet. It's like, and it was just him and his wife. No one else lived there. And so, while what he said was true, it looked like his deeds meant he didn't believe his words. It undermined the proclamation. We are to be a people who proclaim the cross. When we look at verse 26, what does Paul say? He says, For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, he's talking about the Lord's Supper. You what? You proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Part of the job of the church is that we proclaim the cross. And if we are mapping the church onto the class structures of society, then we are undermining that. Because what does what does the cross say? The cross says, you know, it's for everybody. And if we are intentionally exclusive, then we are undermining that proclamation. I mean, even look at the way Paul talks about what what the consequences are. In verse 27, he says, Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and some eat of the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. This is what many of you, why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. Now, those are alarming words. I realize, and and a lot of the time I just hear that section, you know, like, hey, don't take the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner, and people say, Well, you need to have just the right doctrine about the Lord's Supper. And so you gotta figure out is this just an aid to memory? Does it really become the body and blood? It's not what he's talking about, is it? In context, Paul hasn't changed the subject. What is it to take the word, to take the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner? It's it's to observe the past structures of your society, it's to treat people as lesser than, because that undermines the proclamation. Now, all that stuff about like eating and drinking judgment, is exactly what is he talking about? He's not super specific. Um, this is this is one of those examples of we found some teeth in this passage, right? What do we do when we find teeth in the Bible? Because we we usually want to take them out. I have a dog named Winnie. She has big sharp teeth. She's the sweetest dog in the world. Some of you guys know her. But you know what? If those teeth end up in your arm, that's probably a you problem. You have to try very, very hard to experience a genuine bite from those teeth. Usually she just wants tummy rubs like there. Okay? With many things. Like, what is what what judgment is Paul talking about? Is this talking about damnation? Is this talking about getting excluded from the covenant? How about don't find out? If you're curious, don't be. Just just don't do this, right? Don't let's let's not find out exactly what is meant here, right? That that's the point. And you know, we don't when we find teeth in the Bible, we we I'm not gonna detooth her. Right? They're supposed to be there. So the church needs to be shaped by the cross, not by class. The way that we match, the way that we live as a community needs to match how we talk. And we're always gonna be between zero and a hundred percent effective at this. We cannot preach grace and forgiveness if we don't forgive. If we're harsh and condemning, correct? We can't preach Jesus laid down his life for us and then act in a very self-interested way where we're just trying to like gather power to ourselves. We can't preach love and practice hatred. The church needs to be shaped by the cross, not class. We're a people who proclaim the cross. And you know, we we actually have a really big responsibility. One of the cool things about the church is that, yes, Jesus founded this institution, but we get to take part in how it's shaped. We get to take part in building it. Question: Is there such a thing as a Christian institutional structure? And I realize that phrase bothers some of you. What do I mean by an institutional structure? And the shape of it. So we've all heard of the of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. You ever heard about why the table is round? Because there's no head. These were supposed to be equal, so there's no prime position. Or you can look in the in the southern United States with the plantation system. One gigantic house surrounded by little shacks, and all the wealth feeds in there. That's an institutional structure. You can see what the institution does by how it's structured. Now, some think that Christian and institutional structure are a contradiction in terms. That sort of, as soon as you say those words together, the Holy Spirit abandons you. And I've even heard people say, even some scholars argue that early church had no structure. That it was just the Holy Spirit moving and things happened, and it was just all no structure at all. Okay. And I also know that some of us just don't like this discussion. So I'm going to spend some time there. The early church was highly structured. Here's the historical evidence. One, it came from the synagogue. The early church, they all, it's not that they went nowhere, they went to synagogues highly structured. The first Christian churches were within synagogues. Alright? When Bill and I were traveling around Turkey, there was a pillar in a in a in a museum that was used to be out front of a synagogue, and the names of the members were carved into stone. Highly structured. Okay? In the book of 1 Corinthians, which is one of the first books written of the New Testament, what do we see? That's structured. We see regulations on worship, when people should get up and speak and when they shouldn't. We see offices, you know, different official roles that people play. We see rituals like the Lord's Supper. We also see authoritative scripture, the entire Old Testament, the beginnings of the New Testament at that point. Also, the idea that you can have any sort of group that doesn't have a structure is a myth. You will always have a structure. Once people gather into a group, structure will be there. It's either going to be an accidental structure or one you build on purpose. Okay? Also, structure prevents tyranny. What happens when there's no structure? The default of human beings is the strong rule, period. If there is no structure preventing the strong from working their will, the strong will rule. That will be your structure. So for instance, in um in Libya, those of us who are old enough remember uh Colonel Gaddafi, right? Did you know that? Colonel Gaddafi, he was like, hey, I'm just a colonel, I'm the brother leader, I'm really no one. And at one point he abolished all laws. He said, we don't need structure. Be free, Libyans. Did that result in their freedom? No. It concentrated all power to him because all structures that that gave anybody else power or spread it out or protected anybody were gone and he could do what he wanted. Okay. Also, if we if we're not intentionally building a cross-shaped structure, right? If we're just saying, well, let's just have a structure, do you know what our cultural, what our default is going to be, is what we what's kind of normal in our culture. Have you ever noticed that a lot of the time, and I'm not trying to diss anybody or anything like that, of just observation, is that when churches just say, hey, well, let's just let's just have us structure, what does it end up looking like? It ends up looking like a corporation where the pastor's a CEO, the elders are really a board of directors, uh, there's middle management who are the staff, and then there's like customers, which is the congregation. That's the default that you see, unless you try to do something different. We're a people building an institution of the cross. We need to shape it after the cross, not after class. What should a cross-shaped structure, institution, look like? Well, that's a good question. I feel like books could be written on that, but it at least means this. It means that the least are the greatest. It means that to be a leader, you know, we talk about servant leader, you know, the word is better translated slave. The leader is a slave. Humility and service are the main qualifications for leadership. You might say, but doesn't there being a leader, someone with an official position, doesn't that mean a hierarchy? Doesn't that mean you're elevating someone to be better? Right? A lot of people understand that once you have a structure, you have a hierarchy, and then you have people who are lower and people who are higher. I don't think that's necessarily true. Have you guys ever been to the DMV? I was there just this last week. Now I want you to imagine with me, the CEO of a corporation goes to the DMV. Right? He's he went to Harvard and he's a Kennedy cousin, something like that. He's high status in our society, right? Now, as soon as he walks up to get his driver's license, who is higher status? Him or that person behind the desk? The answer is he is higher status. Who has authority in that situation? The person behind the desk, you better believe it. So just because they have a formal role with formal authority doesn't mean that they're his superior, correct? So someone being empowered in a role does not make them a superior, and that's the way it's supposed to be in the church. Yes, there are people who are empowered with official roles. But as Jesus says, you don't lord it over people, it doesn't make you better. That's the whole point of being cross-chained. It also means that you make the church accessible. A lot of the time, a church can default into an inner circle structure where to get in a community group or to get into leadership, you kind of have to know how to worm your way in. You know, there's not clear on-ramps for the way in. The church needs to be shaped by the cross, not class. Why? We're a new people made by the cross. We're a people who need the cross, we're a people who proclaim the cross, we're a people who build the institution of the cross. Um there's a there's a um someone I respect greatly as uh a pastor named Chuck Smith. Some of you guys have heard of him. They recently made a great movie called Jesus Revolution, about in which he was involved. It's really good. I usually hate Christian movies, it's so good. You should watch it. But Chuck Smith was uh, in the 1960s, was a nice middle class conservative pastor who was pastoring a nice conservative middle class church in Costa Mesa, California, where I did a lot of my growing up. And um something he didn't expect is that a lot of the like street hippie, dirty, unwashed long hair, no shoes people were believing the gospel. And they started coming to his church, and this caused massive problems. Like, like the other people did not like it, they didn't want those people there. And one of the things that they said for Yes, I mean, we just got new carpet, they trekked dirt, they don't wear shoes, they have dirt on their feet, they're trekking dirt and sand in. And apparently Chuck Smith had enough of that because during one week he went in and he tore out the carpets. And when everybody came into the church, he says, the carpets are safe, guys, they can come in now. That is cross-shaped. We need to shape the church needs to be shaped by the cross, not the class. Please pray with me. God, I pray that you would help us to be intentionally cross-shaped. That we would not thoughtlessly devolve and default into the patterns of the world. But that we would take on board what Christ has done for us, what you want us to do as your people, and that we could be on mission. In Jesus' name.