Communion Message
Taking God on
May 1, 2005
Pastor Donald Sheley

For I have received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me." In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as oft as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes. Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

Each Lord's Day as we read this passage from the letter to the Corinthians, we are aware of that Corinth was deep in the heart of paganism and those who were becoming Christians were greatly affected by their past life in paganism, and what Paul had to wrestle with in the church at Corinth was to pull those folks away from their pagan thinking and bring them into the Christian way of thinking. And of course the church is filled with many problems, but one of them Paul deals with and he...in the passages just before the passage we read at communion time Paul recognizes a real error by the Corinthian Christians.

You see, in Corinth they had their pagan temples and their pagan altars, and as a pagan if you wanted to bring an offering to your God you would bring it to the priest and he would lay it on the altar and than that sacrifice was divided into three ways. A portion of it was burned, a portion of it was given to the priest who then sold that in the meat markets around the circumference of the temple, and then a portion of it was given to the offerer to take it home and have a feast and invite your neighbors and your friends. And those pagans believed with all of their heart that once that sacrifice laid on that altar of their gods, that a portion of that god became involved in that sacrifice itself, and thus, when they would take their portion home and eat it with their friends they really believed that they were eating a portion of their God. And that was a problem.

What happened then of course, the Christians would go to these feasts with their neighbors, and here's what Paul writes: Rather the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?

Paul is saying it's not so. You cannot come to a communion table and there share in that glorious event that binds us not only to one another, but binds us to cross of Christ, and then go out and eat in a feast with your neighbors, in a feast that's offered to demons. You can't do that. Paul said that's got to stop.

Now we don't have that particular situation because we don't live in Corinth, but I believe that there's a present-day application of that truth. What Paul is saying is you can't partake of something so sacred and then leave that setting and go and participate in something so demonic. You can't do it. It's so worldly, so ungodly. And I believe that same warning and instruction comes to us.

This is a very sacred moment. Our hearts are drawn, focused on the Christ who went to the cross and there paid the penalty for our sins and our transgressions. It's a very sacred moment. It should be a time when we have opportunity to deal with our own sins, ask God to forgive us, have a moment of private worship, and then share in the communion. And then it should be a moment where our lives are transformed or changed to some dimension.

If there's something out in that world that we're participating in, may God turn the spotlight of His truth upon our hearts and may we see that there are some things in our lives that we need to stop, there are some things that we need not to participate in. So I believe the application of the truth is really applicable to us.

You know I stand here as your pastor Sunday after Sunday and there are sometimes I fear that some may participate in communion without any intention to ever change their lifestyle, their worldly lifestyle. They will participate in something sacred, leave the doors of the sanctuary, and go on, keep living, in their pathways of sin. That is absolutely...

Paul said you do that and you really are taking God on, because you'll lose; ultimately you pay a tremendous judgment for taking something so sacred and misusing it.

Thus, when we come to the communion service I want you to know that to us this is a very, as Christians, it's a very sacred moment. It's our moment at the cross. It should be a time where when we leave the sanctuary there should be a determination and a desire to serve the Lord in a greater dimension than when we came in. And if there is anything in our hearts, asking Him to help us to get rid of that out of our lives so that our lives will be lived in holiness and godliness and righteousness. Amen?

Let's kneel before His presence, shall we?

Lord Jesus, we recognize the preciousness, the wonder, and the sacredness of this moment that we have in worship at the communion table. It represents the very core and the very heart of our Christian faith, because it was there at the cross, Lord Jesus, You dealt with the issue of sin, and because sin had its penalty which was death, You died that death for all mankind, paying sin's penalty and thus providing for us the gift of forgiveness and life eternal.

This is a very, very precious moment in our worship. And I pray, Lord Jesus, that we will never take this moment lightly, that it becomes a time on our knees when by Your precious Holy Spirit You deal with that within our hearts that needs to be changed. There are things we do that we justify, others we just rationalize, and yet God surely You must see it from a different point of view; that it's something that's wrong and something we need to deal with. So I ask You in this sacred moment by Your Holy Spirit to reveal to us that which needs to be changed within us.

Please forgive us. Please cleanse us. Please wash us whiter than snow. And as then we leave the sanctuary when worship is finished, may there be a greater desire in our hearts to live a life that brings honor and praise and glory to You, O wonderful Christ we pray. The bread that we hold bespeaks Your precious body, that substitute given in sacrifice to die the death to pay the penalty for us, and the cup bespeaks of Your precious blood which cleanses us from all sin. We partake today with joy. Let's take the bread, and then the cup.

With all of our hearts, Lord Jesus, we thank you for being our Savior and our God, and everybody said, amen. Let's stand and greet one another, shall we?