You may be seated. And we're going to be tonight, I'm gonna begin actually a two-part message. It's gonna be about the Lord's Table. Specifically, we're gonna begin thinking about how to come to the Lord's Table. We'll be in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, because Paul actually has a lot to say there. We typically read a portion of that. But we're just going to look at the first two points tonight. I'll mention the third and fourth point, and we'll look at those maybe next time, maybe in January, maybe as we begin the new year. We can couple the final two with the first two. We want to think about the first two. here this evening, and to do that, I wanna begin reading here in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 17, and we're gonna read down through the end of the chapter. Typically, I read verses 23 through 26 when we are actually partaking of the Lord's Table, but tonight we wanna read a little bit before and a little bit after and gain something of the larger context, and the context is even larger than this, but at least this will aid us in our looking at this passage tonight, and simply looking at the very simple idea how to come to the Lord's table. How do we come to the Lord's Supper? So follow with me as I begin reading in verse 17. Now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you not, that you come together not for the better, but for the worse. For first of all, when you come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you, and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. When you come together, therefore, into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper. For in eating everyone taketh before other his own supper, and one is hungry and another is drunken. " What? Have you not houses to eat and to drink in, or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, 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. This do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup when he had supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament in my blood. This do ye as oft as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death till he come. " Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we shall not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home, that ye come not together unto condemnation, and the rest I will set in order when I come. " It's an interesting thought when you think about the Lord's table. Because it's something that you and I, if you've been saved for any length of time, or if you simply grew up in church, you're very familiar with how we do the Lord's Table. And every church may have its own peculiarities that may be associated with how we do it, but it's a very simple process because there's bread and there's juice. And there are certain words that we say at certain points and we partake of the two. And so when you think about it, it's like, okay, this is just something we do in church. It's something that's part of what churches are supposed to do, I suppose. And we can kind of take it for granted. And that's always a danger. I'll say more about that in just a few moments. But because of its familiarity, because it's something that we do in our modern context, we may not really consider what it would have been like 2,000 years ago when the early church first began to obey the Lord's command, and it is a command. It is an ordinance. It is the expectation of God that you and I will partake of the Lord's table of what we call the communion service. But think with me for just a moment what it would have been like back in those days. The early church had no buildings. We come to a nice building, we have a nice table, we have all of these things that, accoutrements that are a part of what we do, we store them downstairs. We have more stored down there than what we use at any given time. But what would it have been like in the early church? When would they have partaken of the Lord's table? Because from our perspective, well, we have Sunday. We have the weekend. Well, to be a little more specific, is Sunday the weekend or the week beginning? Now, Saturday is the last day of the week, Sunday is the first day of the week, but we lump it together and say, well, the weekend, Saturday and Sunday. I remember as a young man before I became a Christian wondering why the weekend included on the calendar the last day and the first day. I didn't know why. I had no idea other than the fact that why is Sunday first? Shouldn't it be last? Think about that in the context of the early church. Sunday was not a day off. Sunday was just another day of employment. You worked on Sunday. So they wouldn't have had the freedom that you and I have to gather together on a Sunday and partake of the Lord's table as we will be doing here in just a short while. In fact, it was their custom to gather on Sunday evenings in the homes of the wealthier members to celebrate the Lord's Supper, because it would be in people's homes where they would meet. And you would have to have a home that would be large enough that a group of Christians would be able to gather in some room in that house or a couple of rooms that were close enough that you could sit in either one and still hear a message and still partake of the Lord's table. And Sunday evening would have been a much more practicable time to do that, because if you were a slave, and a good portion of the early church were slaves, what would Sunday morning look like for you? It's not like you could say, I'm going to church today, Master, I'll take care of your biscuits when I get back. You didn't have that option. You had to bake the bread, you had to get whatever portion of the meal you're responsible for ready at the normal time. You were at the beck and call of the Master. And so a Sunday evening would perhaps be a time that would be better from the standpoint of the majority of the church gathering. There are records that say they would also gather early on Sunday morning before they would start their chores for that very reason. You can imagine how many would be willing to gather way before the break of day to worship in the dark. I'm just simply trying to suggest that we have it so easy and we take for granted the opportunity we have to partake of the Lord's table. Their worship time, and it's interesting here, and I'll just read a verse for you from the book of Jude, verse 12. Now Jude of course is here He is rebuking the allowance of certain individuals to be a part of what the church is doing, and he makes this statement. These are spots in your feasts of charity when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear, clouds they are without water, et cetera, et cetera. It's interesting that Jude makes this statement, your feasts of charity. The fact is, One of the things that the early church would do as a regular part of their worship service, whenever that might be on Sunday, would include a potluck supper. What we do in our modern day really isn't all that much different in terms of our bringing food and having a potluck supper as part of our worship. It makes sense, doesn't it? because they would not have had the opportunity, as you and I do, to come to a worship service, to stay for a Sunday school service. I'm sure they had something that might have functioned like Sunday school, but that is something that was the latter part of the 18th century that Sunday schools per se began. They wouldn't have had evening services and morning services The cadence of the lives of those early Christians would have been far different from the one that you and I live and our footsteps today as part of the church. It's just an interesting thought exercise, isn't it? To consider what those early believers would have faced. So they came together and they would have love feasts. That's what they were called, love feasts. Now that is suggestive of something, isn't it? That when the church gathered for a potluck, it wasn't about the potluck. It was about what is expressed as God's people sit down breaking bread together. That there is a love for each other. I'll say more about that in a moment. So when we come to the Church of Corinth, we have here Paul making some statements about the Lord's table. The problem in Corinth, when we think about these potluck suppers, these love feasts, the problem in Corinth was that the wealthy members of the church would arrive first. They would get there early. And they would bring their sumptuous dinners with them. and they would gorge themselves. If you can kind of, and this may not be a sumptuous dinner from your perspective, but it would be something like I go to Kentucky Fried Chicken and get a 12-piece basket with all the fixings when we come together for our potluck, and my family and I gather at our table just used exclusively for us and we are there with the chicken grease all over our faces and we're loving this meal because everybody knows Baptist preachers love fried chicken, right? Especially if they're Southern. The point is, that is our food. It's not your food, you bring your own food. So we're going to have something, and again, fried chicken may be a silly way to illustrate it, but just getting the point that those who could afford it would bring some very nice meals and they would eat themselves sick and they wouldn't share. And those who were more poor, like the slaves or perhaps the freed men who maybe weren't slaves but surely had no ability to gain any kind of wealth, they would arrive later. They could not afford to bring food. What slave could bring food? Because it's not his food to take, right? And so they come to the love feast and all the food is gone. All the good food has been eaten up. And there they are at the love feast at the church potluck and they simply have to go hungry. They simply have to look at the evidence of the delicious food that others had eaten. That's what Paul is describing when you read through the verses that we've read through tonight. And even worse than that is there were some who in the course of the love feast were getting drunk. They were imbibing to the level of just being, ah. And this is the church love feast. And as a result, they completely miss the significance and the purpose of the Lord's Supper. That's his rebuke of the church in Corinth. You guys don't get it, is what he's saying. I mean, this is a command from God that we do this and this is how you behave? this is how you approach it, you are demonstrating that you have totally missed, you have absolutely missed the significance and the purpose for why the Lord instituted what we call communion or the Lord's Table. In fact, he goes on, and you saw this in verses following, verses 28 and following, the reality that some of their number were suffering severe discipline from the Lord because of their irreverence. And that's what he calls this. It is their reverence for the spirit that they exercise when they are partaking of the Lord's table. And God has brought chastisement upon them, and that included some being sick, and it included some sleeping. And of course, we understand the euphemism. Because of their abuse of the Lord's table, God had taken some of these believers out of this world. Boy, that kind of raises the standard just a little bit, doesn't it? About how we should approach the Lord's table, how careful we should be when we come to the Lord's table. That's the background of our text. And so Paul writes to correct these problems. He wants to show how we should approach the Lord's table. What should be our spirit? What should be our attitude? When we come to the Lord's table, there are four things in this passage that we see. We're gonna talk about the first two tonight, and then likely the next time we partake of the Lord's table, we'll look at the other two. We are to come to the Lord's table often We'll talk about that in a moment. And we're to come to the Lord's table with love for others. We're gonna talk about that tonight. And then we come to the Lord's table with remembrance. That's typically where we are when we talk about this. And we're to come to the Lord's table and exercise self-examination. We should examine our hearts as we partake. As I said, the Lord's Table is one of the commands, ordinances. There are two given to the church. Baptism is believer's baptism. It is, in every instance, a believer's baptism. It is an act of a believer. It is a one-time act. You only need to be baptized once as a believer, subsequent to your faith in the work of Christ, not before. and the other is the Lord's table. As baptism is a one-time deal, the Lord's table is often. When we talk about the Lord's Table and as we see it in Scripture in Acts chapter 2 verse 42 and Acts chapter 20, we see the statement, the breaking of bread. You know, they would go from house to house in the breaking of bread. We believe that in all likelihood that phrase, breaking of bread or the breaking of bread, is a reference to what we today call the Lord's Table. In 1 Corinthians 10, verse 16, we find that Paul says, the cup of blessing which we bless is, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ, the bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? That's where we get the word communion. That's why we call this a communion service, because Paul references, as we partake of this cup, as we partake of this bread, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? So we call this a communion service. So if you've ever wondered, why do we call this communion? That's where it comes from. But that word communion is an interesting word. It's the Greek word koinonia, and it means fellowship or communion. So when we say we are partaking of the communion service, we're talking about an act of fellowship. where those who are believers come together and we fellowship together. We are doing something in common. We are communing together in partaking of the bread and of the cup. It is also referred to as the table of the Lord in chapter 10, verse 21, and a word that we don't use, But it is a word that is a real genuine word is the word Eucharist. It's because of the abuse, but the word Eucharist is simply a Greek word for thanksgiving. And so in Mark chapter 14, verse 23. We don't use it because we don't wanna confuse people. And that would be a confusion. But it is communion. It is the table of the Lord. The original Lord's Supper that we find in the Gospels is associated with something else. Do you remember what it would be associated with? The Passover. The Passover meal. Jesus adapted and applied the meaning of the Jewish feast of Passover to himself. The idea is that just as Israel was delivered from the death of their firstborn and from slavery to Pharaoh through the blood of the Passover Lamb, so you and I are spared from God's judgment and slavery to sin by the death of the Lamb of God. So here in our text, Paul gives us these four ways that I've suggested about how we should approach the Lord's table. So let's think about the first two here this evening. The first one is we come often, and you'll see this in verses 25 and 26, when he says, for as oft as you drink it, you do this in remembrance of me, in verse 26, for as often as you eat this bread. So we see this word often. So as often as you do this. So how often should we partake? Is there a biblical text that says that we should do this a certain amount of times every week, every month, every year? Well, think with me for just one moment. How often did the early church partake of the Lord's Table? They did so daily, Acts 2.46. The Lord's table in the early church was something they did daily. Acts 20.7, so we see that over the course of time, it was a weekly occurrence, and it was on the first day of the week. Now, sometimes they would partake on Saturday night. for the Lord's table. Why would they consider the Saturday night would be an appropriate time if we want to do this on the first day of the week? Not a trick question. Some of you who were in my time teaching, John, I can't speak for Brother Randall, When in the Jewish mindset does the day begin? Begins at sunset. So from the Jewish reckoning, it's Monday now, if we go by the Old Testament way of Jewish reckoning. Because it's Sunday and it's dark, which means it's really Monday. When do we think Monday starts? Midnight, well where is it written or where in science does it say that 12 o'clock at night is really when the new day begins? It's just a convenience, isn't it? So it's however, as long as we all agree that the new day begins at a certain time every day, that's fine. From their reckoning, if they're following the reckoning of time for the Jews in this period, they would have said, hey, Saturday night, let's gather, that's the first day of the week. Or it would have been on Sunday at some point. Not saying that's hard and fast for the whole church. That would have been Jewish reckoning as the church became more Greek. They probably would not have thought too much about that way of reckoning. But it's just an understanding that when we talk about when do we partake and how often do we partake, we see that even in the early church, it was a daily thing, then it was a weekly thing. And how is it observed today? Well, there are churches today that do observe the Lord's table every Sunday. there's a service every Sunday where they partake of the Lord's table. Is that inappropriate? No. It's however a church wants to do it. Some do it once a month. That's what we do. Some churches do it even less frequently than that. Now I think once a month is probably Often. I don't know if once a quarter would be just as often, but I can't criticize and say they're wrong. It just doesn't feel right. But somebody else could say once a month doesn't feel right, because we should do it every week. There is no command as to how frequently we are to observe, but it should be often. So as long as a body agrees this is the frequency that we're going to use, that's fine. So how often we come to the Lord's Supper is not the issue. The issue is really a problem that develops as we partake of the Lord's table often over time. And we've talked about this before. We have to wrestle with the all too common tendency that we all share for this to become a ritual? I mean, it's just something we do, it's a ritual. You know, anything you do often can become ritualistic. I mean, think about it. If you read your Bible every day, that's a good thing. Can your reading of the Bible every day become a ritual? I mean, your heart's not really in it. It's just, this is what I do every day. I read my Bible. So you're not really connecting with the passage and thus connecting with the author of the passage. You're just simply reading the words to check the box. How about singing in church? Can that become a ritual? Unfortunately, it can, because we sing songs that we have sung often, and we don't even really think about the words anymore. Do you ever find yourself doing that? You know the words so well that you're just singing the words, but you're not really, in your mind, connecting emotionally with what you're saying. Even Amazing Grace. Think about what that was like. for those who first heard that song and would have connected with it personally, amazing grace that God would save a wretch like me. We sing it and it's amazing grace, I was lost, now I'm found. We may wanna get the tune correct, technically, if you have that skill. Some of us are just making a joyful noise. Hopefully it's joyful to ourselves and our own hearts. but it can become a ritual. And we could go on and on because the point is simply mindlessness. That's what something that is a ritual becomes. Our minds aren't really in it. And so, that's why we've, over time, we have done the Lord's Table different ways. There was, for a long time, if you recall, we would do the Lord's Table at the very beginning of the service. The first thing we would do would be the Lord's Table. And why was that? To get it out of the way. I hope not. Why did we do it first? Because we were trying to emphasize this is not something we tack onto the end and say, oh, I hope this doesn't take too long. I mean, you know, he's already done preaching and I'm ready to go home. So let's do it first. What point of the service we have the Lord's table, again, there's no scripture that says we do it at this point in a service. The point is we have to be careful that we do not allow it to become a ritual. And that brings me to the second point. So we do this often, and when we partake of the Lord's Supper, we do so in a spirit of love for others. Before and after Paul gives instructions about how to come to the Lord's table, verses 23 through 32, He confronts the problem of division and strife in the church. Now, he's already dealt with this problem extensively through the book of 1 Corinthians, right? I mean, if you read the book of 1 Corinthians, it becomes very evident that the church in Corinth, which was a very rich church, it was a very diverse church, it was a church that had a wonderful amount of spiritual giftedness. And yet for all of that, it was a church that was divided into many different camps. In fact, he writes in chapter 10, verse 17, for we being many are one bread and one body, for we all are partakers of that one bread. Apparently, in the early church, we don't do this today. Something we could discuss maybe. They would have a loaf of bread and they would pass it around. We have our little wafer and we pull it out of the plate and we hold it until the proper time and then we, but can you imagine if we passed a loaf of bread around and we all partook of the same loaf? I'm not saying we all would have to, Maybe we would just pinch off of it, but the point is everybody's hands, if you're at the end of the line, everybody's hands have passed over that bread. They've been breathing on that bread. They were communing in a way that we don't. And by the way, they would often pass one cup and everybody would drink out of that cup. And we have these nice plastic ones, right? Or we do have glass ones if somebody wants to go down and wash them every time. But the reality is it was something that they did and the one loaf pictured the fact that they were one body. Do you kind of get the picture? There's one loaf and one body. So it was picturing the fact that we are one in the body of Christ. But the divisions among the Christians contradicted the reality of what they were trying to say. So he writes then in chapter 11, verses 18 and 19. For first of all, when you come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you. I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. Now, verse 19 is difficult to understand. When he says, there must be heresies so that they which are approved may be made manifest. Wait, what? Paul, what are you saying? Well, most commentators understand Paul here to be saying that God works even out of a bad situation. that he permits factions in a church to reveal who the truly spiritual mature ones are. Because the idea of heresies is division. So he allows division so that we can exercise some discernment about who are those who are truly seeking to walk with the Lord and who are just simply troublemakers. Now, some, fewer in number, but some see here that Paul is just being sarcastic. possible, that he's saying, well, of course, there must be divisions among you so that those of you who are right will be recognized. Because after all, wouldn't everybody think they were the ones who were right? Someone else paraphrased it, of course, you must have your faction so that your favorite leaders can be in the spotlight. Okay, maybe he's being sarcastic. But Paul says that it would be better not to come together as a church at all, verse 17, than to come together with this sort of rivalry. Then in verses 20 through 22, Paul confronts the selfishness and gluttony of those who were stuffing themselves, etc. We talked about that. They were not considerate of the slaves, of other poor who were part of the church. When he says in verse 20, when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper, he means that their selfish approach nullified the very meaning of the remembrance of the self-sacrifice of our Savior. The way you're practicing this is making what you're supposed to be doing null and void. You aren't practicing this table in a way that brings honor and glory to the one who saved us and gave himself for us because he was selfless. And you're doing this in a selfish way. You're coming together exercising selfishness. So their gluttony and their drunkenness despise the church of God and shame the poor. So Paul says he's shocked. at their selfish behavior. How could they in any way consider that they're honoring the Lord if this is the manner in which they approach the Lord's table? Now, Paul is here saying this in a negative way. But stated positively, the point is simply this. When we come to the Lord's Supper We are to do so with a genuine love one for another, not with division, but with love for each other. The Lord's Supper, and I want you to think about this thought because I think this is significant. Of all the ways in which we can serve the Lord, all the ways that we might speak about spiritual activity, this is the only one that we absolutely cannot do alone. I mean, think about it. You say, well, I'll just, you know, for myself, I'll do this. But never in the Scripture do you see this as a singular occupation for a singular person. The whole point is, it is something the church does collectively. that as a community of believers, we come together and we are communing, we are fellowshipping together as we partake of the bread and the juice. So it's not something we do alone. It is something that we always celebrate arm in arm with other believers. So to come to it rightly, we have to deal with damaged relationships as best we can. Our common participation in the symbols of the body and blood of Christ should demonstrate the self-sacrificing love of the one who gave himself for us on our behalf. Now I realize some relational conflicts take time to resolve. Paul says in Romans 12, 18, as much as lieth within you, live peaceably with all men. So to the best of our ability, we should seek to be right with others before we come to the Lord's table. And in an Old Testament, in a Jewish context, we hear the Lord all the way in Matthew chapter 5 making this statement. He says in verse 23, Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and their remembrance that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way. First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." Now, we don't have a temple, and we don't have the same pattern of offerings that we would see in this Jewish context, but the principle is still the same, isn't it? That when we come to the Lord's table, there should be a recognition that that To be ready, we should, as much as we can, seek reconciliation. It's part of what honors God. Part of what I was saying this morning about everything I do, whether I eat or drink or whatsoever I do, I do to the glory of God. This is part of how we glorify God. by understanding how important relationships are. God wants us to be reconciled with one another before we worship Him. Otherwise, we're religious hypocrites. Now, I'm gonna really meddle for a moment, okay? That means if husbands and wives have angrily fought during the week, What should happen before they come to church? Both for the worship service, but in particular for the Lord's table. What should they do? Should they ask forgiveness of one another and affirm their love for one another? And then come and worship God and partake of the Lord's table? Oh, that's meddling. I just wanna be able to nurse my grudge. Well, for some of us, that's how we approach life, isn't it? But if we really want to please God and we really understand how we should view the Lord's table and worship in general, then yes, we need to do that. I'll take it a step further here as we are, as I'm meddling. Parents who have angered their children need to say, I was wrong when I yelled at you yesterday. I've asked God to forgive me, will you forgive me too? Do parents, I mean, specifically in Ephesians chapter six, isn't the father told that he needs to be careful that he doesn't anger his children? Yeah, not saying you don't discipline your kids, that's not the point. But the point is, we all have sinful natures and in the sinfulness of our old man, can we and do we sometimes sin against our children? Yes, so do we not need to model for them the right kind of spirit where we've asked God to forgive us for our wrong response to our child and now we need to tell our child, I was wrong when I did that. You see, if we don't do that, our child comes to church and sees us smile and sees us say everything that's right and see us partake of the Lord's table and then they go away saying, what a phony. because they've seen us in our homes. " I said, oh man, you're really meddling tonight. I'm simply trying to stay consistent with what I believe is the spirit of the passage. that we need to be mindful that it's not just on the day we have the Lord's table that I say, okay, as we partake of this, this is a good time to examine your heart and confess your sin to God, and we all take that moment. And then as soon as we're done, it's like, oh, all right, I've had the Lord's table for this month, now I can. There are some who in their rendition of religion think that way, but that's not the way one who loves God will choose to think or behave. And so, the point I'm simply making is, Coming to the Lord's table means dealing with relational issues. Now, hopefully we keep a short slate. Our ledgers in relationships are kept short anyway, but that's the challenge. And it's directly part of the text because that's exactly what Paul is rebuking. You have relationships with these other believers and you are not showing them love. You're eating your fried chicken and mashed potatoes and green beans and you see them in the corner starving because they are slaves and they don't have the ability to eat what you eat. And you don't care enough for them to say, hey, come here, you pick first out of the bucket of chicken. You get first choice. Because I can stop on my way home, but this may be the only good meal you have for a while. Does that make sense? That love, that selflessness. We are remembering the selflessness of Christ for us, on our behalf. And in the Lord's Table, as we fellowship in our remembrance of that, we demonstrate that spirit of love to others. And it starts with our families. It starts with our spouse. It extends to our kids and our grandkids, but to believers in general. Through the years, and I'll close with this because, again, it's just sticking with the spirit of what the passage is saying, through the years, I've been a part of church services, and 40 years, I have to admit, this sometimes has happened. I've been a part of church services where there are folks in the congregation who will not greet each other, who will not shake hands with each other, who if they walked in the building and they saw the other person, they would turn and walk another way so they would not have to walk by and greet the other person. And I'm talking about people who are professing Christians. That is not to the glory of God. And that does despite to who Christ is. They are partaking of the body, or the cup of the Lord, the bread and the cup unworthily, and they're guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Folks, I would never want that to be said about me. How about you? Now, we're talking about believers, you understand. This is a passage talking about believers. When we're talking about unbelievers, we say, well, of course, they shouldn't be doing it anyway. He's talking about believers. So might we practice it as we should in terms of how often, but might we come to the Lord's table with a spirit of love? Love for God first and foremost, Matthew 22, and then loving our brother or sister in Christ as we love ourselves. We're gonna partake of the Lord's table here tonight. This is a challenge. There are two more major points. We'll pick up on these later. But I trust that we'll honor the Lord in the time that we spend in the Lord's table tonight. Let's bow our heads. Father, I thank you for your word. And Father, truly, when we think of the Lord's table, we'd rather not think about the Church of Corinth. We'd rather not think about the divisions that that were exercised within that body and how they dishonored you and how they partook of the Lord's table unworthily. Father, we do not want to be guilty as they were. And I pray that as a church we would understand this is not simply an issue of what we do only when we partake of the Lord's table or have our love feast. But Father, this is speaking to the spirit of our hearts and how we seek to relate to one another in our families first and foremost, but then with those that you bring across our path. Dear God, I pray that by your grace, we would exemplify the love that is displayed for us in how Christ came and gave himself. that He might redeem us. So bless our time in Your Word tonight, and bless our time as we partake of the Lord's table. May what we do here tonight resound to Your glory. We pray in Christ's name, amen.