Communion in Community

But this morning, we don’t really have too many announcements. The only thing that I want to make mention of real quick is we need a wagon master or maybe a couple of wagon masters. We’re trying to decide this year if we can do our, we’ve done an all church camp out for several years now. And we’re looking for somebody or a couple of people who would step up and say, I could take that on. I could coordinate that.

And I just want to let you know we’re trying to simplify it as well as much as possible so that anybody could hopefully help and take that on. And so I just want to encourage you maybe just to give that some prayer and just say, could I help lead and be the wagon master, be the person who would lead camp out this year? It’s going to be, I think the last weekend of July, that last weekend in July. So let me know, let Pastor Steve know, maybe let one of the overseers know if you’d be interested in being the wagon master or being a couple of people to be the wagon master, and we would love to hear from you. All right.

So this morning, we’re just going to jump right in because this morning is communion Sunday. And we don’t want to rush through things and have to rush communion. And so we’re just going to, we’re going to get started. And then as you’ll see a little bit later in the service, things will be a little bit different after the message this morning. To accommodate for communion.

Now, we just got out of a series called healthy. And we were looking at different ways that we can become healthy, not only as a Christian, but also as a church. And one of these ways that came up that we wanted to take some extra time to focus on is this area of community. And so just last week, we launched a new series that’s actually called community. Community, what we’re made for.

And this morning with it being communion Sunday, we thought that it would be good for us to look at communion and community and see how they go together because they do indeed go together. And I think much more than a lot of us may think. So as we get started here this morning, let’s remind ourselves of what communion is. So I’m going to read for us really quickly from 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verses 23 through 26. And this is something that the Apostle Paul was writing to the church in Corinth.

And here’s what he says to them about communion. See if I can get this. I might have to turn it on. To the church. Okay, we’re going to get there.

All right, here we go. So, for the reason, here’s what he says, for the reason 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 and 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.

And communion, it’s a time for us to remember Jesus’ death and sacrifice on the cross for your sins and mine. It’s not something that we can do entirely alone. And let me share with you why. For starters, if you’ve ever looked at the word communion and community closely, you’ll probably see that both of these words are pretty much completely, I don’t think that’s on there, but they’re pretty much completely identical. And therefore, they’re pretty much have not only the same root meaning, but also the same general meaning.

The root of these words is that of coming together as one and this idea of sharing and participation by all. And the very nature of these two words, communion and community, show us that they’re more alike than many times we give them credit for. And I don’t know about you, but for me growing up in the church, I completely miss this communion and the eternal part of community. And this community aspect that communion should have to it. I always thought of communion as this individual practice, just me and God, I shut my eyes and I’d pray and I’d get right with the Lord.

And I knew that that time was for me and him, for me to ask him to forgive me of my sins and for me to get right with him. Because this is what was modeled for me. Until later in my life, probably in my college years, that I was actually introduced that communion is also supposed to be something that takes place with each other. Not just individually while we’re together, that it’s actually okay to look around during communion at the others in the room or others in our life and not just God. And this is because communion’s so much more than just being made right with God.

It’s also about being made right with one another. It’s this so much more, communion so much more than us being unified with God. It’s also about us being unified with one another. And there’s a couple of verses that speak to this about us being made right with one another. Is that Matthew 6, 14 and 15 says, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not, forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Also Ephesians 4 verses 31 and 32 says, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.” It says, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ Jesus, God forgave you.” And communion should include us interacting with one another, being made right with one another. It should be this participation that’s happening by all so that we can be made right before God.

So this morning we’re gonna look at a couple of passages that talk about us coming before the Lord to be made right and the importance of coming before God with one another in mind. And we’re gonna see what we can learn from these texts. And this passage that we’re gonna open up to is Matthew 5 verses 21 through 24. Let me open it up here for you. Okay.

So this passage takes place in the first book of the New Testament, Matthew 5 21 through 24. And it’s a passage that starts off surprisingly enough talking about murder. And it’s in my Bible, these words are in red because these words are actually spoken of by Jesus himself. And it’s in his most famous Sermon on the Mount message that he’s speaking these words. And it says, it says this.

It says, Therefore, if you are offering a gift, if you’re offering a gift at the altar and there, remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift. Leave your gift at the altar. And what Jesus is saying is you’ve heard it said, if you murder somebody, you’re subject to judgment. Jesus says, no, no, no. If you’re angry with somebody, you’ll be subject to judgment.

So he says, if you’re angry with somebody, if you’re not right with somebody, you’re at the altar offering your gift before the Lord and you realize you’re not right with somebody. Leave your gift. Go be made right with that person and then come back and offer your gift to the Lord. And first, you have to remember, well, because I don’t know, you might at first glance, you might feel like this verse doesn’t apply to communion, but it actually does. And let me share with you why, because you have to remember that these verses take place before communion was ever a thing.

Let that sink in. These verses take place before communion was ever a thing. Back in Old Testament times, the way to make yourself right before God was to go to the temple to present your gift and sacrifice before the Lord. And after though Jesus was crucified and resurrected, only after that takes place does a church begin celebrating communion. Therefore, remembering what Jesus has done for us, remembering that he has made us right and that we can be forgiven from God.

Now, let’s look at this passage a little deeper and see what we can learn from it and apply to our lives. Because basically if we’re angry with someone and we’re trying to get right with God, we’re trying to ask God for forgiveness and take communion, these verses say that God’s not going to forgive us and in some ways that we’re actually bringing judgment on ourselves. And wait, you might be getting a little scared, you might be like, wait, wait, wait, does this mean that I’m not going to heaven? If I’m angry with somebody, is that what the Bible’s saying? Let me remind you that we live in a day and an age where Jesus has indeed covered all of our sins.

We live in a time where if we’ve made the decision to follow him and surrender our life to him, we are covered by his grace. In this passage though, Jesus, he was stepping it up a notch in terms of what was acceptable. And the Old Testament law, if you murdered somebody intentionally and with evil in your heart, you meant to do it, then this was cause for judgment and death. And the people knew that. A quick side note, if on the other hand, you killed somebody unintentionally, you didn’t mean to, maybe you were swinging your axe and trying to cut wood and the axe had fell off and literally hit somebody in the head and killed them or something.

Literally, like what do you do? You just killed somebody, it was completely unintentional. You could actually flee to a city of refuge and be safe. So, side note there. Intentionally, with evil in your heart, judgment and death was the outcome.

But Jesus, he takes it a step further. He says, no, no, no, not just if you murdered somebody, but if you’re angry with somebody. Why does Jesus do that? Have you ever really stopped and thought about that? This is because Jesus wasn’t just interested in fixing the act.

And this act, in this case, would have been murder. He was just interested in fixing the act. He wanted to take it a step further and he wanted to fix the heart. He wanted to fix our heart. And he knew that the heart that was angry was the type of heart that would lead to the act of murder.

And so, this is God’s hope before we step into communion. He doesn’t just want to fix the act. He doesn’t want us to just ask for forgiveness for what we’ve done. He wants to fix and change our heart. And the only way to fix our heart is to work through all that’s going up here in our mind, as well as with others around us.

So, he says, if you’re at the altar offering your gift, you’re trying to get right with God and you realize that there’s something with somebody in your life that’s not right, leave your gift. It doesn’t really matter. It might seem like, well, that’s a big gift to us, but he’s saying there’s something that’s more important. Go. Be made right with that person.

That matters more. And then come and offer your gift, which will then be acceptable before the Lord. And I remember back when I was probably in the college age, I remember for the first time when this verse finally sunk in for me that I’d heard it from a pastor and I eventually realized during some time in communion that I wasn’t right with somebody. And I realized I had a chance, man, that I could make things right. And I don’t know about you, but like, there’s so

many things that start to go through your mind or go through your head when you’re in that moment of, you know, I know God says in his word, like, get right with people and I don’t want to take communion before I’m right with this person, but then you start to get all these feelings, these emotions inside of you of, well, I don’t want to do that ’cause that’s uncomfortable or I don’t want to do that because that’s really scary or what if they don’t accept my

apology or, you know, whatever it might be.

And I just remember just sitting there thinking through all these things. And then it’s a pride thing too ’cause you’re like, well, if I go and if I ask for forgiveness and that’s me saying that I was wrong, and, you know, all these things are going through my mind. And I remember though saying, God, but I want to do what your word says. And I want to live right before you and I want to be right before you. So would you give me boldness?

Would you give me humility to be made right with this person? And so I remember getting up off of my chair probably after a couple of times being like, yes, I’m going to go and then no, I’m not going to go. And then yes, I’m going to go and then no, I’m not going to go. Finally, yes, I go and my heart’s pumping and all that. And I went and I asked for forgiveness from this person.

Don’t even remember what it was. But I just remember the feeling that I felt after it was done. It was like this weight had just been taken off my shoulders and like I was free and I was light and I was just almost just, I don’t know, I was just grinning from ear to ear. It just felt so right. And there’s nothing that can happen like that on our own power.

It’s only God can do that when we do things his way. And I just wonder how many of us are sitting in this room this morning, we’re getting ready to take communion. When deep down inside, we know there’s something that’s not right between us and somebody else. Maybe we have anger in our heart toward this person. Maybe we need to get right with this person before taking communion.

And then just a little bit this morning, we’re going to be given the opportunity to do that. For others of us though, maybe we’re sitting, we’re getting ready to take communion right here right now this morning. When there’s somebody who’s actually sitting in this very room right now with us and we’re not right with that. We have not worked through things. And maybe it’s it maybe it’s been days or maybe it’s been months or maybe it’s actually been years.

And we’ve kind of just swept it under the rug or whatever it might be. And we’re getting ready to take communion. What would God say about this? It could be a spouse, could be a child or a parent, could be a sibling, could be a close friend or an acquaintance or could, like I just said, it could be somebody in this room right now. And you’re saying to yourself, kind of like I said to myself, well yeah, but I tried to make things right with them and they didn’t listen.

Or I tried to make things right and they didn’t care. Or I tried to make things right with them and they didn’t fully hear me and they’re still hurting me. And it could be anything. But would you be willing? Be so brave to try and make things right with this person as far as it depends on you before taking communion this morning.

‘Cause here’s the deal. When we don’t do what this passage talks about and get right with one another, it leads to worse things. Just like we actually see take place in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, 17 through 30. And I don’t have time to read 1 Corinthians 11, 17 through 32 this morning. I’ll have time to read the entire passage.

But here’s a couple of things that it says that can happen if we don’t get right with each other. It talks about how it can lead to division. It talks about how it can lead to losing God’s approval. It talks about how it can lead to judgment. To weakness, to sickness.

And it can even lead to death. It can also lead to gossip, to bitterness, to resentment, to hate, to a calloused heart. It can have a bad outcome on our relationship and it can really have a bad outcome on the church community that we’re a part of. And we don’t think about this very often. Our bad relationship with someone else could really be hurting the church community as a whole.

We usually just think about our sin and our bad relationship and how it just hurts us, right? It just hurts me and that person. And this isn’t true. This is the lie that the enemy wants us to believe. Doesn’t hurt anybody else.

But maybe the Holy Spirit is starting to take the veil away from your eyes this morning and he’s starting to help you realize, whoa, this doesn’t just hurt me and this person, this could literally, this could hurt the body of believers as a whole because we are one body. And I’m sure that none of us would want to hear this of ourselves or of our church. And that we would want to do whatever we could, whatever we could, to make things right so that none of the things in these verses would ever be able to be said of our church. What’s said in 1 Corinthians 11. And there’s things that says like, you know, your meetings, this is some of the things that says your meetings do more harm than good.

Or there are divisions among you. Or some of you don’t have God’s approval. Or you’re drinking judgment on yourselves when you take communion. Or this is why many among you are weak and sick and a number of you have fallen asleep. I know that none of us would want to hear these things.

None of us would want to hear these things. And Grace Point, hear me. I’m not saying that this is the state of our church. I’m not casting judgment at all, okay? But we also don’t want to get there.

Let me say that again. We also don’t want to get there. We don’t want to be there. So this morning, we’re going to practice communion a little bit differently. And we purposely have made room for this because we want to give us time to practice communion together as a community.

Because that’s what communion is also supposed to be. It’s not just us and God. It’s us together in community. And so during these next two songs, before we even take communion, we’re going to have an opportunity to do this. And it could be that the main thing I talked about that maybe as Matthew five said, you need to be reconciled to somebody.

You realize something’s not right between you and somebody else. I just want to give you permission this morning. If you need to get out your phone, that’s okay. But if you need to get out your phone, you need to text somebody during these next two songs. Because you need to get right with somebody.

I want to give you permission to do that. If you need to step out of the room, maybe call somebody. Get right with somebody during these next two songs. I want to give you permission to do that. Be reconciled.

If God’s laying that on your heart to do that. I also just want to maybe give you permission if there’s somebody in this room, maybe you’re not right with. I just want to encourage you, man, as hard as it is, as tough as it is, to actually get up out of your seat to go and to talk to them. Like how much better could it be than to be able to talk to somebody and to be able to be made right with them and to have that relationship restored with them and to be freed from that. And I want to give us permission to do that.

I also want to give us permission because community and communion, it’s more than just being reconciled to each other. It’s also things like encouraging one another. And maybe as you’re praying this morning, God, maybe somebody in this room, or maybe somebody not in this room, God’s going to lay on your heart. They need encouragement. Maybe rather than waiting, maybe in this moment, during these next two songs, you need to get on your phone.

Or maybe you need to get up from your seat and you need to go over and you need to encourage somebody. So here’s the deal. I don’t want you just thinking if somebody gets up this morning, that it’s something negative. Because I think that’s what we always think is all good. Look at them.

They’re going to get right with somebody. Here’s the deal though, even if it is, that you should be excited that that’s happening. But I don’t want your minds to even go there. I want your minds to go to the place of, wow, community is taking place. God is working in this place.

God is unifying us. God is reconciling us. God is allowing us to become one this morning. So I just want to encourage you, if you need to go up and encourage somebody this morning that’s around you, you know of a health issue. You know of something that’s going on in their family that’s not good.

You know of something that they just, they need to hear. And God’s maybe just saying, go, go, go do that. Those can just be as hard to be obedient as the person you know you need to go get reconciled with. God’s saying, obey me. Go encourage this person.

And you’re sitting in your seat because you’re like, how are they going to receive it? But that matters just as much. And that can make just as much of an impact not only on you, but on that person. So I just want to give you encouragement to do that this morning as well to encourage somebody. Maybe it, maybe God will lead you to go pray for somebody this morning.

Maybe there’s somebody around here in this room that God wants you to pray for. He just wants you to go put your hand on them. Maybe, maybe you don’t even need to say a

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 3,945 words.