Celebrating The Feast
1 Corinthians 5:8
September 28, 2014
Over the last few weeks we have been studying
The purpose for why we gather together.
There are very definite reasons why we come here on Sundays together.
There are very distinct purposes we are seeking to fulfill.
• EXALTATION – We come to praise God.
• EXHORTATION – We come to encourage each other.
• EXPOSITION – We come to hear God speak.
This is why we gather.
Well this morning I want to touch on one more thing
That is sort of heavy on my heart in this regard.
I’m not giving another reason why we gather,
But rather an important reality for us to remember when we gather.
This morning I want you to think about the SINCERITY
With which we do all these things we’ve been talking about.
It is possible to meet as a church and go through all the right motions.
• We can come and all sing…
• We can come and encourage…
• I can come and preach…
• You can come and hear what God has to say…
But obviously it is more than just checking those things off the list.
All of these things must be done in a sincere heart.
If they are not, we are really nothing more
Than the Pharisees who so often drew the disdain of Jesus.
Matthew 15:7-9 “You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: ‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. ‘BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.'”
Or
Matthew 23:23-24 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. “You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!”
Obviously none of us would want to have Jesus say that
About our gathering this morning.
It wasn’t that the Pharisees were engaged in wrong behaviors,
It was that they completely missed the point.
“They just didn’t get it!”
And I guess you could say, that I just want to make sure
That even though we all know what is expected when we come,
That we do all these things in a sincere heart.
In order to deal with this issue I chose one verse.
1 Corinthians 5:8 “Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
What you and I must understand here is that
The Corinthians had a sincerity problem.
They were doing all the right things when they gathered,
They just had a sincerity problem.
1 Corinthians 14:26 “What is the outcome then, brethren? When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.”
• Lack of singing…
• Lack of exhortation…
• Lack of preaching…
Those were not the problems of the Corinthian church.
They had plenty of people willing to step into those roles.
The problem was that in their active participation
They were still missing the point.
And Paul wanted to encourage them to make sure that they worshiped in “sincerity and truth.”
When you study this 5th chapter of the book of 1 Corinthians
You can easily trace back their lack of sincerity
TO A FUNDAMENTAL FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND WHO THEY WERE.
And let me tell you who they were
(something they didn’t understand)
1 Corinthians 5:7 “Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.”
Now that verse tells the Corinthians explicitly who they are.
“you are in fact unleavened.”
WHAT IN THE WORLD DOES THAT MEAN?
Before God we “are in fact unleavened.”
Leaven in Scripture was most commonly used as a symbol of sin.
And the point being now is that we “are in fact unleavened.”
If you want to talk about who we are, the answer is “we are pure”.
• Do we still sin? Yes
• Do we still blow it? Yes
But before God we are considered absolutely clean and pure.
WHY?
“For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.”
Notice Paul says that Christ is “our Passover”
What does that mean?
Hopefully you are familiar with the final plague that God sent on Egypt in order to force Pharaoh to release His people.
• It was the death of the firstborn.
• Every Israelite was to take the blood from the Passover lamb and paint it on
the doorpost of their house.
• And when the death angel came to that house, if the blood was there, he would
“pass over” that house and not kill the first born.
Paul says “Christ [is] our Passover”
It is not a sheep, it is not the blood of a sheep.
It is Christ who causes the wrath to pass us over.
On the cross Jesus Christ appeased the wrath of God.
1 John 2:1-2 “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”
1 John 4:10 “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
Christ is our appeasement before God.
And Christ “has been sacrificed”
That is the payment for sin.
Now, why did Christ do that?
He did that to purchase our pardon, but ALSO TO PURIFY US.
This is the often overlooked aspect of the death of Jesus.
When most people think of Jesus death,
They think only of redemption.
But in order to redeem us He had to make us Holy
(For holiness is all that God accepts)
HE DIED FOR OUR PURITY
Ephesians 5:25-27 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.”
Titus 2:11-14 “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.”
Hebrews 1:3 “And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,”
When Jesus died, He didn’t just die to save you, but to purify you.
Now that is what Paul is saying here.
Because Jesus has died, and made pure in God’s eyes.
Why don’t you live pure?
“Clean out the old leaven…just as you are in fact unleavened.”
In other words.
• Become what you are.
• Be who Christ made you to be.
Christ died to make a pure bride, to make a clean church.
So let’s honor His sacrifice and see that purity through.
That was what God expected of the Corinthians,
That is what He expects of us.
AND THAT WAS THE PROBLEM WITH THE CORINTHIANS.
They were gathering together surely enough, but they were missing the whole point of what Christ intended them to be.
If you are familiar with 1 Corinthians 5
You know it is a chapter ABOUT A SINNING BROTHER.
1 Corinthians 5:1 “It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife.”
Now that is bad enough, but that wasn’t even the real problem.
The real problem was how the church at Corinth was responding to it.
1 Corinthians 5:2 “You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.”
Paul emphatically called the Corinthians “arrogant”
Because they had tolerated sin that should have never been tolerated.
WHY IS THIS ARROGANT?
Because they were pardoning someone God was condemning.
And let me tell you that is arrogance.
Who are you to pardon someone God condemns?
Who are you to say something is permissible when God says it isn’t?
And so Paul told them what they had to do.
1 Corinthians 5:3-5 “For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
Admittedly those are harsh verses.
I think we can even go so far as to say that modern day Christianity probably thinks those verses are “UnChristian”
TOLERANCE IS THE VIRTUE OF THE DAY
And the motive behind it is something like this.
“If we’ll just tolerate other people’s sin, then they will feel more loved, and it will strengthen the bond of fellowship in our church.”
That’s a popular notion.
Be the church that accepts everybody and everything, because we don’t want to be labeled a judgmental or unfriendly church.
Those are common views aren’t they?
That was no doubt the view in Corinth.
AND PAUL SAYS THAT IS ABSOLUTELY MISSING THE WHOLE POINT
OF WHO THE CHURCH IS SUPPOSED TO BE!
By tolerating that man and his sin you are gathering and going through the motions sure enough, but you obviously don’t get it at all.
In fact look at what Paul says next:
1 Corinthians 5:6 “Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?”
And certainly you understand Paul’s analogy there.
Sin is like leaven and the chief characteristic of leaven is that it spreads.
So does sin.
If you think you can let a sinner live in sin in your church
And it won’t affect others, you are naïve and greatly mistaken.
Someone could walk in this sanctuary with the flu and you’d all avoid them like the plague, but someone can walk in living in blatant immorality and most people will simply overlook it.
But trust me the sin is just as contagious and far more deadly
Than the flu ever thought about being.
It will spread
• Others will see that it is accepted
• Your children will learn of it
• And over time it will completely change the face of your whole church
And the reality is that by tolerating sin the Corinthians
Were actually undoing what Christ did on the cross.
He died to make men more holy, and the Corinthians
Were allowing them to go the other direction.
Paul says – CUT IT OUT!
1 Corinthians 5:9-13 “I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world. But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler — not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES.”
It is important to note that Paul was not talking about avoiding sinners.
Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors
Paul is talking about avoiding the “so-called brother”
• This person who calls himself a Christian
• Paul said not to even eat with that person
“Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.”
Now the goal is simply to remove sin from the congregation.
Unfortunately some people hold so tightly to their sin
That the only way to remove the sin is to remove the brother.
It’s like cancer.
You want the cancer gone and unfortunately sometimes parts of the body have to go fully eradicate the cancer.
Paul said that this man has to go.
He is to be “handed over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh”
• He is to be removed from the protective bubble over the church
• He is to be cast into the wilderness
• He is to be handed over to reproach and judgment
• Until he learns to hate his sin
We are waiting for this brother to have a “pig-pen” moment.
Remember the prodigal?
Luke 15:14-19 “Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished. “So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. “And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him. “But when he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger! ‘I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.”‘
That boy finally hit rock bottom
That is why we remove the sinning brother.
• To definitely protect the church
• To hopefully save the “so-called brother”
So Paul said:
(7) “Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.”
SO DO YOU SEE THE CORINTHIANS PROBLEM?
• They were meeting in church sure enough…
• They were singing sure enough…
• They were teaching and preaching and encouraging sure enough…
BUT SOMETHING WAS STILL WAY WRONG!
That had failed to understand the whole point of being the church.
• The church is simply those who have been redeemed.
• The church is simply those who have been set free from sin.
• The church is simply those who have been made holy.
• The church is simply those whom Christ has washed and made clean.
But the Corinthians had failed to see this very important reality.
They thought as long as they did all the things a church was supposed to do, that it didn’t matter if sin was present or not.
But this endangered the church and disregarded the reason Christ died.
• What good are your songs…
• What good is your encouragement…
• What good is your preaching…
…if you miss the whole point of being
Who the church is supposed to be while you do it?
And from there we come to the verse I wanted to focus on this morning.
It is the heart of this chapter.
1 Corinthians 5:8 “Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Now let’s look at that verse
And I want to give you two points this morning.
#1 CELEBRATE THE FEAST
1 Corinthians 5:8a
That’s simple enough isn’t it?
“Therefore let us celebrate the feast”
• What exactly does that mean?
• Is Paul saying that we should all be participating in the Passover?
No, that is not what Paul is saying.
Paul just said in verse 7 that “Christ [is] our Passover”
We don’t travel once a year to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover
And remember Israel’s deliverance from Egypt.
We celebrate our Passover every single day of our lives.
WE CELEBRATE THE PASSOVER EVERY TIME WE GATHE HERE.
Now I don’t believe Paul is saying that you have to take the Lord’s Supper every time you come (although I certainly have no problem with that)
What I do believe Paul is saying is that
When you gather you should celebrate your Passover.
• We gather to sing the praises of Christ!
• We gather to remember His cross
• We gather to spur one another on to be who He called us to be
• We gather to be equipped for His service
But we are to gather to “celebrate the feast”
Jesus Himself took the Passover and completely changed it:
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 “For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which 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 He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
He was speaking to some traditional Jews who had been taking the Passover their whole life and always focusing on the bondage of Egypt and their deliverance.
But Jesus said, whenever you do this,
Don’t think about Egypt any more, think about Me!
From now on, eating this bread and drinking this cup isn’t about the Passover angel and the Exodus…from now on eating this bread and drinking this cup is about Me.
When you come for this, celebrate Me!
And that is what we now do in everything.
• We celebrate His birth
• We celebrate His holiness
• We celebrate His teaching
• We celebrate His death
• We celebrate His resurrection
• We celebrate His ascension
• We celebrate His intercession
• We celebrate His promised return
• He is our Deliverer
• He is our Redeemer
• He is our Substitute
• He is our Savior
Isaiah 53:4-6 “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.”
And because of that He deserves celebration.
Our gathering here, our very lives,
Is a celebration of “Christ our Passover”
Who has caused God’s wrath to pass us over.
Romans 5:6-11 “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.”
• Don’t fail to “celebrate the feast”
• Don’t fail to celebrate “Christ our Passover”
Really that is what we’ve been talking about over the last few weeks.
Praise and Encouragement and Listening to the words of God
Are extensions of us celebrating Christ.
So we get that.
It’s this second point that I want to leave you with.
Celebrate the Feast
#2 CONSECRATE THE FEAST
1 Corinthians 5:8b
“not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Now based on this chapter we know exactly what Paul is talking about.
We know exactly what that “old leaven” is.
That “old leaven” is the sin of that immoral brother.
It is all the sinful deeds of our life before we were saved.
It is all the immoral behaviors of our unredeemed nature.
And Paul is very clear that when we come together to celebrate Christ
That we should not do it “with old leaven”
He goes on to say, “nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness”
• “malice” would be the attitude
• “wickedness” would be the actions that result from that attitude
Don’t come to church and go through all the right motions,
But do it with sin in your heart and sin in your life.
And as a church, don’t come with the attitude that
Tolerating such attitude and action is ok.
Christ came to make us holy
Christ came to save us from sin
When you come to celebrate Him, then celebrate without sin.
If you’re gathering and celebrating because He made you unleavened, don’t you find it somewhat hypocritical to celebrate while tolerating leaven in your life or church?
Make this gathering celebration something special!
Make this congregation something real!
Celebrate “with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
I love this word here
“sincerity” translates EILIKRINEIA (I-lay-kreen-I-a)
It means “unalloyed or pure”
AN IMPORTANT DISCTINCTION
It doesn’t mean diluted, it means unmixed
If you were to use that word in a reference to wine,
It speak of wine that has not been mixed with another substance,
Not necessarily wine that is diluted with water.
APPLYING THAT TO A CHRISTIAN,
We are not talking about a diluted Christian, you know the Christian that should be more than he is.
We are talking about a Christian who is contaminated with sin.
We are not talking about a diluted Christian,
We are talking about a defiled one.
If you’ve read the letter to the Corinthians you could easily say that all of the Corinthians were diluted and not what they should be.
But one of them was flat out defiled and had to be removed.
And that is the point here.
• We’re not saying if you aren’t perfect then you don’t belong.
• We’re not saying if you aren’t perfect then don’t come.
What we are saying is that if you aren’t sincere
Then you are not celebrating the feast the way it should be celebrated.
• We are talking about the importance of holiness.
• We are talking about the importance of sanctification.
• We are talking about the importance of truly honoring Christ’s atoning work.
And that is what I want to leave you with this morning,
As we approach the table of the Lord.
We know why we gather
We know our purpose
I just want us to make sure that when we perform the actions
That we do it with a sincere heart.
That we do it with an unmixed heart
That we are not contaminated in our worship
And the best way I know to do that is to come to the table of the Lord.
• Look into the sacrifice of Christ
• Look at what He suffered to make you holy
• Look at what He endured to purchase your pardon
AND THEN CELEBRATE THE FEAST
• He deserves the truest praise
• He deserves that we encourage one another to be holy as He intended
• He deserves that we will hear His word and be equipped to serve Him
And we do those things with a sincere heart
• Not a heart that harbors sin
• Not a heart that tolerates sin
• Not a heart that goes through the motions
We are here to “celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
This morning we take the Lord’s Supper.
1 Corinthians 11:27-32 “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.”
So let’s have a time of preparation
And then we’ll partake of the Lord’s Supper.
