TODAY we continue in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians continuing to apply the communion of the body of Christ as ceremony, community and witness.
Paul has just compared Moses leading the Hebrews through the sea to baptism in Christ and communion in Christ.
First Letter of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians 10:
2 They were all baptized into Moses.. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food 4and drank the same spiritual drink..
Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.
a Contemporary Look at Communion
And NOW, continuing in Paul's BIBLICAL TEXT, although not as the Apostle sequenced it to his first century Corinthian audience, PLACE yourself in a comfortable contemporary 21st century church for the Apostle's Sunday sermon.
Picture Paul Podcasting to your Common Era church gathering..
WORSHIP will begin soon.
PLEASE silence your mobile devices.
Today's BIBLICAL references and paraphrases taken mostly from the Berean Standard Bible or New International Readers Version. PLEASE open the BIBLE on your silenced mobile device to 1 Corinthians 10.
Good morning, beloved saints.
I’m Paul and have been chosen to be an apostle of Christ Jesus just as God planned. And our brother Sosthenes joins you in person at your local gathering today.
Today I will begin by addressing you, along with all of the saints sharing in the Lord’s Supper and communion in your community.
Following my broadcast message for you and your church, Sosthenes will lead you in the breaking of the bread of Holy Communion, along with your beloved local pastor and your fellow saints sharing in the sacrifice of Christ our only Savior.
I speak to you as reasonable people.
So judge for yourselves what I say.
God was not pleased with most of the church of Moses (if you will), because most of them desired the sins of worshipping idols once their GOD-appointed PREACHER Moses went up the hill to receive the LORD’s Holy LAW.
It is God’s LAW, the LORD’s Commandments meant to sanctify and separate a Holy people from an evil world overflowing in sin from every city and nation.
YOU have been chosen to separate IN CHRIST JESUS as a Holy People to be in communion with a HOLY LORD GOD – our merciful Father.
My dear friends, run away from statues of gods. Don’t worship them.
I know through your own pastors, shepherds of your faith, that most of you do not.
You don’t have little Buddhas in your home OR place some Pope or Prophet on a pedestal.
Yet every unholy message on your numerous devices reaches to lure you saints of the Lord into the inclusion of innumerable IDOLS.
IDOLS of:
- of self and sport,
- inner-self and gods of nature,
- sexual indulgence and sensual entertainment,
- ageless health and never-to-be mentioned DEATH and then the Judgement.
Our Lord Jesus, who sent me to YOU with the Gospel urges YOU:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.
Good NEWS in the palm of your hand.
GO ahead and LOOK at it on your device, (the Apostle would urge you IF he could).
There’s much MORE
and not one jot or tittle of the Good News JESUS proclaims is idolatry;
but rather, Christ speaks truth.
23 You say, “I have the right to do anything.”
(After all, you're a FREE CHURCH because of JESUS and the CROSS.)
But not everything is helpful.
Again you say, “I have the right to do anything.”
But not everything builds us up.
So what’s a Common Era christian to do?
In fact, my fellow saint of Christ and in Christ, regardless of all of our songs praising SELF – MY god and MY lord and MY royal blessings as part of JESUS’ resurrection —
I can tell you (AND I SAW THE LORD JESUS AS ONE CALLED – an Apostle to YOU) – The Lord did not CALL you to celebrate His Kingdom as your own (as the pagans do when WE wander off to celebrate with their gods at their feasts and festive occasions).
Christian Evangelism by Example
24 No one should look out for their own interests. Instead, they should look out for the interests of others.
Do YOU do that for those the Lord seeks?
In fact, as Jesus commanded,
Do YOU put your fellow saints FIRST in loving one another, even as Christ JESUS has loved US?
Therefore,
25 Eat anything sold in the meat market. Don’t ask if it’s right or wrong.
26 Scripture says,
“The earth belongs to the Lord. And so does everything in it.” (Psalm 24:1)
YES, the earth and all creation belong to the Lord’s!
And JESUS IS Lord!
IF you are a humble saint of His body the Church.
NOT Mother Nature (who has no realm of wind or fire, NO majesty over seed and sinew from dust).
NOT some fanciful angelic cherub of erotic love.
NOT some Bacchus of Mardi Gras beads for debauchery.
NOT even some dead saint of our own or any Super-PASTOR of the big screen broadcasting christian charity or podcasting christian politics into every cultural corner of the world.
NO, we worship the One Lord Jesus, God from God, begotten not made and One with the Spirit.
NO idol has power over us.
SO WHY WOULD WE honor that which is not?
Let us not test Christ as some of ‘Moses’ church’ did. (And do not grumble as some of them did.)
And here's your Common Era application little different than with the Corinthians.
Paul would ask a 21st century christian:
Are Hindu gods false?
How about Buddha and a worldly yoga of SELF?
Would the Mormons Moroni and Smith of the Utahpian christian sect?
And Mohammed, false prophet veiled in hatred opposing YHWH, Jacob and Christ, with adherents bowing only to their god of Allah?
Is Mary, mother of our Lord Jesus and James and Jude our mediator before the Holy Spirit?
Should we plea though dead Saints of the Church already with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?
Must you consult and hold high a Pope to interpret God’s Holy Scripture?
Is God’s Earth your IDOL or the Heavens HE created IN THE BEGINNING?
Does some philosophy or practice of the past fill your head and weekly routines of this mortal life? Has that become YOUR idol?
Just as baptism is a PUBIC witness of YOUR permanent CHANGE to our faith, why do YOU imagine that participation in the PUBLIC ceremonies of their idolatrous false faith is not witness against our Lord Jesus Christ into whose Name YOU have been baptized?
And so too of
Holy Communion.
Are not those who eat the sacrifices fellow partakers in the altar?
And allow me to ask you this:
- Do we saints of Christ LITERALLY drink HIS mystery of cleansing by that shed for us on the CROSS?
- Must communicates of CHRIST LITERALLY eat a mysterious leaven broken unceremoniously for us on a bloody cross of Calvary?
- AND is this the purpose of an Apostle to point out a prescribed practice to ‘Do this in remembrance of Jesus as often as we share in the feasts and cup of blessing?
Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one loaf.
Christ’s Body the Church
And that BODY is the Church
of which Christ is the Head — Jew, Greek, Asian, African, American;
YET ONLY those called to the communion of the saints of Christ Jesus our Lord, whose blood was shed and body broken for us.
You can’t drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too. You can’t have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.
Are we trying to make the Lord jealous? Are we stronger than he?
If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat anything set before you without raising questions of conscience.
But if someone tells you, “This food was offered to idols,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who told you and for the sake of conscience—the other one’s conscience, I mean, not your own.
For why should my freedom be determined by someone else’s conscience?
If I partake in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks?
1 Corinthians 10:27-30 BSB
In whatever you do…
do it all to the glory of God.
Do not become a stumbling block.. to [worshipers of other religions] or to the church of God—
Follow my apostolic evangelical example:
as I also try to please everyone in all I do.
For I am not seeking my own good, but the good of many,
that they may be saved.
- excerpt paraphrase from 1 Corinthians 10:31-33 BSB
Follow my example, just as I follow the example of Christ.
1 Corinthians 11:1 NIRV
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