SPEAKER_01: This podcast is brought to you by Grant Parkway Factor.
SPEAKER_01: Helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God.
SPEAKER_01: For more information about Grand Parkway, visit GrandProquay.org.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we've come to do just that, to praise you for what you've done, to slow down and allow our ourselves to just kind of come around what you've done, to remember you, and to remind us.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're here today.
SPEAKER_00: Our sins are forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: So we're not here to wallow in self-pity and beg you for something that's already ours.
SPEAKER_00: Our sins are forgiven and our future is heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So in the meantime, we get to live this gloriously free, liberated, juicy life.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't just die for our sins, he died for us to live a certain life, the life of eternity.
SPEAKER_00: So we are also here to be reminded of that.
SPEAKER_00: We're not just sleepwalking through life till we get to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: No, this life is full of purpose and potential and possibility and a bunch of other things that start with a P.
SPEAKER_00: But more than anything, Lord, it is the life that is ruled by eternity here on this earth.
SPEAKER_00: So people can look and taste and see that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_00: Religion does not taste good, it does not look good.
SPEAKER_00: But a person in relationship with you is vibrant, it's otherworldly, and it reminds people that there's more.
SPEAKER_00: And all of that started because of what you did on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And so we rest in and we savor the fact that my sins are forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: They no longer have power over me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not just forgiven for sin, but I am free from sin.
SPEAKER_00: So I can begin to think about myself apart from sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's the life of eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you for today.
SPEAKER_00: We want to just uh calibrate our souls to remember and remind now.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Holy Spirit, lead us into this text.
SPEAKER_00: We pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: And everyone said, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You could have a seat.
SPEAKER_00: If you've got a Bible, you could open it up to 1 Corinthians chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: And if not, it'll come up on the screen right here.
SPEAKER_00: If you're our guest today, let me let me say welcome.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Neil.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the lead pastor at Grand Park Way.
SPEAKER_00: And today's kind of a different day.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, about four times a year, we pause and we celebrate, observe communion, uh, which is our entire service.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just say from the get-go, we practice open communion, which means if you're a believer, you have a relationship with Christ, you're welcome to come and receive communion with us today, okay?
SPEAKER_00: What will happen is I'll just read a passage where the Bible kind of tells us, hey, this is how you do this.
SPEAKER_00: And then we'll spend some time kind of uh preparing our head and our heart.
SPEAKER_00: And then people will come to the different stations to serve.
SPEAKER_00: There's three here, there's four along the back.
SPEAKER_00: And what we'll do is we'll just continue to worship.
SPEAKER_00: And people, as you, when you're ready, you and your family or you and some friends, if you're single people, we'll just get up and come to one of the stations and we'll serve you communion, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And after that, if you're like, hey, uh we got something going on with us to be prayed for.
SPEAKER_00: Just tell the people, hey, can you pray for and they'll pray for you?
SPEAKER_00: And when you're done, you can go back to your seat and just continue to worship and just enjoy God.
SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: Say amen.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible tells us how to do this now.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you the context.
SPEAKER_00: This is the church at Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: The church at Corinth was just a jacked-up church full of beautifully broken people who got healed by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They came to a relationship with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We're in chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter 6, Paul says that do you not know that the drunkards, the immoral, the homosexual, the effeminate, uh, the fornicator, list all these sins and said, These people not inherit the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: And then he goes on to say this, and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, translation, these people, the church at Corinth was full of real sinners, just like our church.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're here today and you struggle with any sin manifests itself in your life in any of those ways, we want you to know you're welcome here.
SPEAKER_00: No one's mad at you, no one's gonna put a label on you and call you names.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna say we believe that the power of God and the gospel has the capacity to change you.
SPEAKER_00: You can be washed and justified just like they were.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem: these people came to church and they didn't know the rules.
SPEAKER_00: And so they just acted like fools.
SPEAKER_00: They were crazy.
SPEAKER_00: They would come, this chapter we're gonna read, a part of it, won't make sense unless you understand this.
SPEAKER_00: It's called context.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they they would come to church and and women would just ask questions and they couldn't get any teaching done.
SPEAKER_00: They were like, hey, women, would you just be quiet and let us teach?
SPEAKER_00: And some people take that and go, women should never talk in the church.
SPEAKER_00: It's not what the Bible's saying at all.
SPEAKER_00: It's saying these people right here, this is this is culturally conditioned.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, knock it off.
SPEAKER_00: Well, at the Lord's Supper, what would happen was there were people in the church that were wealthy.
SPEAKER_00: They felt entitled.
SPEAKER_00: They would come and they would have, they would eat first, and then they would receive the Lord's Supper, and then they would just keep pouring themselves different pours of wine.
SPEAKER_00: They had one pour, two pour, three pour, and by the time everybody else got there, they were drunk.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are like, that sounds like my family reunion right there.
SPEAKER_00: And so it was chaos.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why he says right here, hey, you guys don't wait for each other.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Some people had a sense of entitlement.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, hey, we're here, let's get it going.
SPEAKER_00: And they wanted to get the Lord's Supper was perfunctory.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to eat and then do communion and get it out of the way so they could get a drink on.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Because left to ourselves, we will consume everything upon our lust.
SPEAKER_00: We everything will become about us.
SPEAKER_00: But look at me, Christianity is not about the individual, it's about the body.
SPEAKER_00: It's about everybody you sit around, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And so now we've kind of laid the context.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 23.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.
SPEAKER_00: That the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.
SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
SPEAKER_00: Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
SPEAKER_00: For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
SPEAKER_00: That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
SPEAKER_00: But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.
SPEAKER_00: But if we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.
SPEAKER_00: God is not a God of condemnation, He's a God of preparation.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, when you come to communion, the Eucharist, the Lord's table, whatever how you refer to it, he says, there's some things I want you to have in mind, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Don't consume this upon yourself and your agenda.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's four or five words I want to point to.
SPEAKER_00: And the first one is just betrayal.
SPEAKER_00: Betrayal.
SPEAKER_00: It starts off in verse 23.
SPEAKER_00: On the night that Jesus was betrayed.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you in this room have been betrayed, and some of you in this room have been the betrayor.
SPEAKER_00: You betrayed other people.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes life betrays you.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes jobs betray you.
SPEAKER_00: You work there for 27 years and you got like four more years and you've topped off your retirement and you feel good.
SPEAKER_00: And you go in on a Monday and they say, Hey, John, could I see you in the office?
SPEAKER_00: It's betrayal.
SPEAKER_00: So we are going, we live in a world that is fallen, is contaminated by sin.
SPEAKER_00: And in this world, we are going to experience betrayal.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes our children betray us.
SPEAKER_00: Some of our children, it feels like betrayal.
SPEAKER_00: They that we raise them and teach them all the right things and they go off and take a wrong turn.
SPEAKER_00: It's betrayal.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what I want you to see that on the night Jesus was betrayed, he still had the capacity to do the right thing.
SPEAKER_00: Just because you've been betrayed doesn't mean you can spend the rest of your life paying everybody else back.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel makes you capable of so much more than that.
SPEAKER_00: So there's betrayal.
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, there's gratitude.
SPEAKER_00: It says when I was betrayed, he took bread, and when he had given thanks, just stop right there.
SPEAKER_00: When he had given thanks, Jesus knows full well what is coming.
SPEAKER_00: He's told his disciples, hey, I the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things as the hand of men and then be crucified.
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, No, that's never gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Absolutely it is.
SPEAKER_00: And yet he could give thanks for it.
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself this question What am I not grateful enough right now as I sit in this room?
SPEAKER_00: What or let me add an addendum to it?
SPEAKER_00: What or who am I not grateful enough for?
SPEAKER_00: I don't have enough gratitude in my heart for this person or for this thing.
SPEAKER_00: Because the cross is very unpleasant.
SPEAKER_00: So much so Jesus pleads with his father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done.
SPEAKER_00: Can you be grateful when you don't get your way and somebody else does?
SPEAKER_00: Can you be grateful when you pray to God for something and God says, You know what?
SPEAKER_00: That's not my will.
SPEAKER_00: This is my will.
SPEAKER_00: He gave thanks.
SPEAKER_00: Gratitude.
SPEAKER_00: Third word I want us to hear is proclamation.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: After he gave thanks, he broke the bread.
SPEAKER_00: He said, This is my body which is for you.
SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way also, he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is a new covenant in my blood.
SPEAKER_00: Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
SPEAKER_00: Proclamation.
SPEAKER_00: Communion is about proclamation.
SPEAKER_00: If you leave your seat this morning and come to any of these stations, what you will be saying is that you understand that you by nature are so sinful you can never write yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You couldn't do enough good to outweigh your bad.
SPEAKER_00: And so Christ has to die for you.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you're saying if you leave your seat.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I I'm in a counseling relationship with an individual who's agnostic and and is just like, I don't believe in God.
SPEAKER_00: I think that works for you.
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to offend you.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you can't.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem of not believing.
SPEAKER_00: You have to find forgiveness for your sins in and of yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And so you got to think a lot of yourself if you think you have the power to forgive yourself, and that makes you right with God.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, well, and I said, and besides, here's the other problem.
SPEAKER_00: Not just don't think about life when it's just going bad.
SPEAKER_00: Think about when it's going good, when it's really going good.
SPEAKER_00: You're knocking the top out of it.
SPEAKER_00: Who do you think?
SPEAKER_00: There's nobody bigger in your life.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta look in the mirror and go, You are awesome.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, it just feels creepy saying that.
SPEAKER_00: And he looked at me and went, that's kind of creepy.
SPEAKER_00: I said, That's your life.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, let's keep going.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: It's a proclamation, not just uh that I need it, but that it happened.
SPEAKER_00: We proclaim the Lord's death.
SPEAKER_00: Here's another word: examination.
SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 27, whoever therefore eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Because of that, let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
SPEAKER_00: Examination is not a time of self-hatred.
SPEAKER_00: It's just you you remind and you reorient yourself around this reality that this is about proclaiming the Lord's death.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't about telling God I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00: That that that can be part of it, an acknowledgement.
SPEAKER_00: But but this is about, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: Christ died.
SPEAKER_00: I'm proclaiming the Lord's death, which means that Christ died for my sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's payment for my sin, not just to forgive me, but to set me free from sin.
SPEAKER_00: So why we examine ourselves to remind ourselves of what is true, not about what is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_00: We examine ourselves to remind ourselves of what is true, not about what is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Last word I would give you is just the word body.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 29, for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.
SPEAKER_00: Early he talks about the body and the blood of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Here he's not talking about the body and the blood of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We never talk about the body of Jesus without spelling it out.
SPEAKER_00: So, what's he talking about?
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the body of Christ, the church, the body of uh of believers.
SPEAKER_00: And so Christianity is not an individualistic quest where you don't, you're not a part of anybody or anything.
SPEAKER_00: Like I've got my own spirituality, I like Jesus, but I hate the church.
SPEAKER_00: That's not biblical Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: It's the body.
SPEAKER_00: So when he says, I say the body, here's what I want us to understand today that my sin and your sin affects this faith community you're sitting in right now.
SPEAKER_00: It just does.
SPEAKER_00: My sin, let me say it again, and your sin affects the faith community.
SPEAKER_00: So unless you learn, look at me, unless you learn to think about yourself and set a context bigger than yourself, you'll struggle with sin the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00: You just will.
SPEAKER_00: It'll be secret determination.
SPEAKER_00: But when you, he said, you got to discern the body, like, hey, I'm a part of something, and this that this matters.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the greatest thing.
SPEAKER_00: I say this as the pastor.
SPEAKER_00: When we understand that we begin to think corporately instead of individual, individualistically, we stop coming to church thinking it all depends on the preacher.
SPEAKER_00: Because we do not want it to all depend on the preacher, do we?
SPEAKER_00: Don't say it so enthusiastically.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna say who, but one guy over here he kind of made a faith.
SPEAKER_00: He went, No, I feel the same way.
SPEAKER_00: Of course you don't.
SPEAKER_00: We all contribute to the spiritual health and well-being of our faith community, our church.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we discern the body.
SPEAKER_00: So here's what we're gonna do a voice of prayer, and then Clyde will just kind of play for a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: And then and this is a time of examination, it's really preparation, it's not punishment.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, man, you sink, you need to go.
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
SPEAKER_00: It's just, hey, I want to discern the body and the blood of Jesus, and I want to come to the table with a sense of sobriety about man, I am a paid-for, forgiven person.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so he may sing a little bit and he may invite us to sing, and then people I'll come and give directions, and people move to the stations.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, again, we practice open communion.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're a Christian, you're welcome to receive with us today.
SPEAKER_00: Let me voice a prayer.
SPEAKER_00: God, thanks for the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for what was accomplished there, what was initiated.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that he who began a good work in you will continue it to the day of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that work didn't start when we came to faith, it started on the cross because it makes faith possible.
SPEAKER_00: So we want to just uh remind ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We want to remember you.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't just die for our sins, you died because of our sins, but you died for us.
SPEAKER_00: Our sins are not what make us interesting to you, our sins are not what make you necessary to us.
SPEAKER_00: What makes you necessary to us is that we are your creation, your workmanship created in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We bear the Amago Dei, the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: And that is both privilege and responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: And we want to steward both of those well during this time.
SPEAKER_00: So, Holy Spirit, just brood over us as we prepare to remember.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Just stay standing for just a second.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it takes a long time to love on you people.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so if you're visiting today, yeah, our service went a little long, it's just about an hour.
SPEAKER_00: I preach about 22 minutes every Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Short.
SPEAKER_00: I'll fight every one of you in the parking lot.
SPEAKER_00: You're summoning my inner redneck.
SPEAKER_00: Uh no, uh, it's not an apology as much as an acknowledgement.
SPEAKER_00: It's good to practice, it's good to be inconvenienced every once in a while.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh don't don't I'll give you two words.
SPEAKER_00: Don't make it your goal in life to be efficient.
SPEAKER_00: Make it your goal to be available.
SPEAKER_00: A lot more good happens when we're available to each other, to God, all that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: So just take a moment and just ask yourself, what do I walk away from the day with?
SPEAKER_00: What's my takeaway?
SPEAKER_00: Hold your hands out.
SPEAKER_00: On the cross, your God is made payment for your sins and provision for your life.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, you do not have to try to be God to your kids and grandkids.
SPEAKER_00: He's enough for them too.
SPEAKER_00: What you have to do is rest.
SPEAKER_00: Sit down on the inside and wait for those knuckleheads to come to the end of themselves.
SPEAKER_00: You keep enjoying God.
SPEAKER_00: Don't try to be God.
SPEAKER_00: Because God's enough God for you and them as well.
SPEAKER_00: And everybody else you come into contact with.
SPEAKER_00: Depart now and live in this reality in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Bless you.