The Power of the Lord's Supper [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. If this text means the way we've heard it to be interpretive, it means you better watch out when you take communion, because God is sitting there ready to strike calamity upon you for taking this very holy thing and not examining yourself well enough to get all your sin out before you do so.

If that's what it means, then I would contend there's not one shred of good news in this text. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series that we've called The Top Ten from Pastor Alan, as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina in the first 10 years of Pastor Alan's radio broadcast ministry. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now, a digital copy of The Top Ten from Pastor Alan Wright. This digital download can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries, or if you prefer, we do have a CD album available. Your choice as you listen to today's message go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org, that's PastorAlan.org, or call 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. We'll tell you more about it later in the program, but right now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. 1 Corinthians 11. 1 Corinthians 11 is some correction and instruction that Paul has given to the Corinthian church about the Lord's Supper. 1 Corinthians 11 verse 17.

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place I hear that you come together as a church, that there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. Imagine that, divisions in the church.

What a shock. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God's approval. When you come together it is not the Lord's Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else.

One remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don't you have homes 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 praise you for this?

Certainly not. For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you. The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, 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, after supper, He took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.

Now normally over the last 20 years I stop reading at this point and dare not read on, but today I dare to do so. Verse 27, Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.

That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. Now the way we have normally heard this text interpreted through all the sermons I've heard through most of my life is essentially this. When you get ready to take communion, you better take a detailed, thorough, painful look inside yourself and make sure that you painstakingly confess every sin that you could possibly think of. You do not want to take communion in an unworthy condition. If you have not repented of every sin, even one little sin that you left out, especially if there is any unforgiveness that is left in your heart, then you will violate the holiness of communion and in so doing you will bring judgment upon yourself and God will perhaps make you weak or make you sick or for some it would even kill you. And that's basically, it may not have been put quite that directly, but that is basically what has been interpreted. Which goes far to explain why most evangelical and charismatic churches only celebrate communion four times a year.

Why take a chance? I mean after all the Word doesn't tell us how many times a year we have to celebrate communion. If you've got to go through all that and run the risk of weakness, sickness or death, why not do it less often? It also goes far to explain why most evangelical and charismatic churches will sing and dance and shout and clap and sing shout to the Lord and let God arise and as any of these be scattered and wave banners and then come to communion and sing let all mortal flesh keep silent. Our tone turns very somber when we come to communion which conveys something about what we think about what is taking place. I don't believe that the interpretation that if you take communion an unworthy way means that God will make you weak, sick or kill you could be true because quite honestly if that were actually the case we'd have to hire extra paramedics on Sunday morning all across the county.

The emergency room would be full and those poor liturgical churches that have communion every week they'd have nobody left by this time. If this text means the way we've heard it to be interpretive it means you better watch out when you take communion because God is sitting there ready to strike calamity upon you for taking this very holy thing and not examining yourself well enough to get all your sin out before you do so. If that's what it means then I would contend there's not one shred of good news in this text. But if there's one thing I know about the Word of God and the New Covenant is that every single page and every word is good news.

Let's find out what this means. Lord absolutely capture our thoughts and awaken our spirits to a revelation of your power, your goodness, your grace and your longing to heal and restore. And let there be an anointing that is here in this room, in this place today to heal, transform and quicken life in these our mortal frames. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. Let's just do a little Bible study here together. The way that I would go at a text like this is the first thing is I make sure that I'm not going to take it out of its context. Most people read their Bible more like proof texting. Take a little verse here or there and it's like taking an idea that you have and then you give it a verse of the Bible to back up what your idea is and that's what we call proof texting is you're taking the text and you're trying to prove something that you already believe about the text. And that's not a very good way to read the Bible because in the first place you can make the Bible say anything you want to. You could be like the preacher who was afraid of flying and he's sitting there trembling on the plane and getting ready to take off and one of his parishioners turns to him and says, but pastor says doesn't the Bible say that God is with you always? And he said no that's not exactly what the Bible says. The Bible says lo I am with you always. See that is, that's proof texting.

That's not what it means. And we can take Bible verses. You give me an idea and I've studied this book long enough I could probably pull out a verse and back up your idea no matter what it is. The devil himself used texts from the Bible to tempt Jesus. And so you can pull out a verse out of its context and wind up having churches that are handling snakes and drinking poison. You could do some of the stupidest things imaginable if you read the Bible as a series of proof texts that you can pluck out of its context any time that you like.

That is not the way to read this book. So you have to start and say well who is Paul writing to and why was he writing this? And in this case it's very easy to understand that Paul is writing to the Corinthian church. And if you read throughout the two letters to the church at Corinth you realize that Paul was having to correct basically excess in their worship life. And the excess in their worship life was stemming from the fact that they had interpreted their freedom in the Spirit and their giftedness in the Spirit as a means of personal selfish expression. And what Paul is having to always correct the Corinthians about is the selfishness with which they have embraced the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit doesn't come into your life just to make you be a star prophet. In fact he says you guys are all prophesying at the same time and everybody is prophesying. He said nobody is hearing anything and nobody is being edified. Just let two or three give the encouraging word decently in order.

Let's bring some kind of order this because the blessing that the Holy Spirit wants to release is not being released because of the way that you are so disorderly and you're just in the end you're just being selfish about it. That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. The life changing message of good news has been taught over radio from Alan Wright Ministries for quite some time now.

And God has used every one of those messages. But some broadcasts have really hit home in special ways. In gratitude of more than a decade of radio we have assembled the most powerful best love messages from each year of the first ten and put them together in one special album. When you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries this month we want to give you Alan Wright's top ten CD album or digital download.

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That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. And what Paul is having to always correct the Corinthians about is the selfishness with which they have embraced the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit doesn't come into your life just to make you be a star prophet. In fact he says you guys are all prophesying at the same time and everybody is prophesying.

He said nobody is here in anything and nobody is being edified. Just let two or three give the encouraging word decently in order. Let's bring some kind of order this because the blessing that the Holy Spirit wants to release is not being released because of the way that you are so disorderly and you're just in the end you're just being selfish about it. Love is selfless he says. You've got to have love because what love does is it thinks about the needs and the interests of others not just your own. He's always having to say that. He said I don't care if you speak with the tongues of angels.

If you don't have love you're just a clanging cymbal. That's the kind of thing he has to say to the church in Corinth. They were missing something big about what the work of Jesus does in you. The work of Jesus is meant to unify you and bring you into a corporate sense of faith and well-being where each looks after not only his own interests but the interests of others and cares deeply about the one who's hurting and about the stranger that's in your midst.

And it's just not about just you. They were celebrating the Lord's Supper in the context of an agape feast, a love feast, and they were using it as an opportunity in their characteristic way to just come and be all about me and my desires and it had become a very fleshly thing. And so people were coming and some would use it as an opportunity to get their fill, fill their belly full.

Food and others were coming to get drunk. And nobody is aware that with all of these divisions and the way you're doing this that you're missing the whole anointing power of the Lord's Supper. So that's the context. You see, so it would be very foolish of course for us to take this verse and pluck this out of here, whoever eats the bread, drinks the cup in unworthy manners, guilty of sinning as a body of blood, to pluck that out of the context without understanding that what Paul is trying to convey is a deeper message about the work of grace that is perceived when people dwell together in unity and in love. Now that part of the message applies directly to us. And we experience, don't we, a sweetness and a power where there is unity and there is love.

And that we can relate to. But we would be foolish in our reading of the Scripture if we tried to relate to the other part of the context to which He was addressing because I hate to disappoint you. But if you have come here today hungry to get your belly filled, you are going to be terribly dissatisfied with these little crackers. They are little crackers. And even if you took the entire amount of crackers out of the tray that comes your way, you will still be hungry. You are going to have to get you some lunch at Golden Corral because this is not going to feed you in your belly. And I hate to disappoint you if you have come hoping to get a buzz off of the juice that comes around.

It's just grape juice and you only get one and a half ounces. So it's not our problem that people are running up here trying to come to the buffet and get their belly filled and it's not our problem that somebody is thinking this is my opportunity to get drunk. That doesn't make any sense to us. Understand the context in which the passage has come. And then after I make sure I'm not proof texting the thing and understand its immediate context, take your text into the larger story that is the Bible. If you view your Bible primarily as a series of proof texts or principles that are one after the other and they are disjointed from each other, you will miss the primary significance of the Word of God. Because the Word of God is an amazing compilation of the writings of different authors who are all equally inspired of the Holy Spirit then compiled under obviously sovereign grace somehow of the Lord such that when you get this book it is an amazing story, this one big story. It's a thousand different little stories but it all points to the same end and it all interwoven. To me that would be one of the most fascinating and intriguing things I could ever investigate about Christianity if I were just investigating is how could this book be so well woven together.

But it is. It is one story and it is all pointing in one direction towards one person, Jesus Christ. So the New Testament said of the Old Testament that in the Old there were examples and types and shadows of what was to come. And what came was the reality that is in Jesus Christ. So I'll understand and I carry this basic understanding about the Bible that it's one big story and so I can find on each page what part of the big story is this. This is a little story about something that was going on in Corinth but where does it fit in with the great big story about what God was doing to redeem the world.

And so then I started getting excited and I say I'm going to try to figure that out. Well this one's pretty easy because what happens here is that you know that the Lord's Supper is the New Testament, the New Testament version in a sense of what the Old Testament shadow of the Passover was. And so as soon as you have that basic information that this Lord's Supper was instituted by Jesus on the night of Passover then it makes you go okay let me remember the Passover.

And so you go back to Exodus, turn there with me the second book in your Bible and you remember the Passover. The Passover is the last, accompanies the last of the plagues against Egypt. God had been sending plagues against Egypt in order to convince Pharaoh to let God's people go.

But Pharaoh's heart was hardened, he was stubborn and he did not let the people go. And so now it has come to the last plague which is the plague on the first born. The plague on the first born would be to strike down all the first born in Egypt. But God had made a provision for His own people that would come to be known as the Passover. This is Exodus chapter 11 verse 6, there will be loud wailing throughout Egypt worse than there has ever been and ever will be again. But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any man or animal then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.

In other words there is going to be loud wailing and destruction against evil but amongst my people there is going to be a strange peace. And chapter 12 describes it verse 3, Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. Verse 5, The animals you choose must be year old males without defect you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight.

Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and the tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. Verse 12, On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every first born both men and animals and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt I am the Lord. Now I pause here to say that as you read Passover which again is a shadow that will point towards Christ who is commemorated in the Lord's Supper in the New Covenant that in the shadow of all that is fulfilled in Christ what you can't miss in reading the story of the Passover is that there is no emphasis on the worthiness of the Hebrew people. There is no mention of their righteousness.

There is no mention of them having any merit of their own in order to receive this salvation and this protection. But instead the entire emphasis of the story is on I the Lord. I am the Lord.

I will pass through Egypt. I will bring judgment on the gods. I am the Lord.

I will do this thing. And what you read that is so astounding in the story of the Passover is that the righteousness of the people had nothing to do with it. It was only the sovereign grace of the Lord and one sign. Alan Wright in today's teaching on the power of the Lord's Supper. The life changing message of good news has been taught over radio from Alan Wright Ministries for quite some time now and God has used every one of those messages but some broadcasts have really hit home in special ways in gratitude of more than a decade of radio. We have assembled the most powerful best love messages from each year of the first 10 and put them together in one special album when you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries this month. We want to give you Alan Wright's top 10 CD album or digital download.

Are you ready for some good news? Make your gift today and discover God's grace afresh with Alan Wright's top 10 of the first decade. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries.

Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website pastor Alan.org. Alan at the bookmark here of the power of the Lord's Supper. I'm reminded a couple of messages back we were talking about mercy not sacrifice. Have you found in in your time as a pastor that so many sometimes just see the Lord's Supper is almost like a sacrifice. It's almost like something that they do to earn favor with God. I do Daniel. I recognize that for a lot of our listeners today's message may seem very radical and it might even seem like it's violating something you hold very dear to speak of this way but I what we're really looking at is a deep dig into the scriptures and sometimes I think we just have to go and say wait a minute if the scripture is really saying that you got to watch out how you take communion because if you don't do it just right then you have somehow brought punishment upon yourself then you know my joke is why risk it you know right right right and in fact of the matter what we're showing is that communion the Lord's Supper is the ultimate expression of grace and so I know that if it's changing your if you're really wrestling with it good think through this deeply and I know a lot of people for whom communion may become something altogether more beautiful and powerful. That's 877-544-4860. If you only caught part of today's teaching not only can you listen again online but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free find out more about these and other resources at PastorAlan.org that's PastorAlan.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.