1 Corinthians 11:17-3 | Episode #995

August 1, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

1 Corinthians

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope.

Applying God's word to your daily life.

As we finish Faithful Finance, we want to produce our winter Bible study done at Lake Community Church on First Corinthians.

It'll be a fairly long Bible study.

We will break it up into different parts.

And so you will get a really good, really fast study through the book of First Corinthians before we move on to the book of Joshua.

Now, in giving these instructions, I do not praise you, since you come together not for the better, but for the worse. He's moving into the Lord's Supper, okay,

Communion.

And he's basically saying, I got nothing good to say to you about this.

This is a very important passage.

For first of all, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And in part, I believe it.

What are the divisions? Rich and poor have and have not.

Okay?

If you go to a church and they have these divisions. Problem.

Flashing red signal. Stop,

stop, stop.

Don't go in.

Get out of it.

Get out of it.

I don't care if you do fit in. Get out of it.

For there must also be factions among you that those who are approved may be recognized among you. Now he's saying. I'm not saying that. That you can't have division among you and that some of.

Some of you being blessed and others aren't.

Okay,

that's not what we're talking about.

Equality, not equity. And that's a very important understanding to have in our modern society. Okay? Equality means that we're all have the same opportunity in whatever we're doing.

If you're talking about government, equality means everybody has the same opportunity in society.

You're given the same freedoms, the same opportunity.

Equity means everybody's the same and we ain't all the same.

There is no such thing as equity.

Are you listening to me? If somebody says to you that that's not equitable, I would say to them, that's right.

We're not all the same.

And we're never going to be all the same. And some people are going to be blessed because they're chasing after God and they're walking with God the way they ought to, and some aren't.

Have you ever seen somebody who ain't walking with God? Are they just really not doing what they ought to do or they're running from God and they're just miserable over there?

You ever seen them?

Sorry.

That happens.

For there must also be factions among you that those who approve may be recognized. Among you.

Therefore, when you come together in one place,

it is not to eat the Lord's supper. For in eating, each one has taken his own supper ahead of others,

and one is hungry and another is drunk.

By the way,

drunkenness in scripture is. Is not approved.

You with me drinking alcohol,

we got freedom, right?

You can have the sherry. If I'd have had a third, I'd have been a little tipsy. Not good.

Not sure I went a little tipsy after the second one.

What he's saying is they came together for the Lord's Supper and then they had a meal afterwards.

By the way,

that is something that is not common nowadays in churches,

but for 1940 years, it was real common.

You'd have dinner on the grounds after church, regularly,

1930s and back,

okay?

All over the world.

You'd get up, you do what you're needed to do to take care of the things that you were over, your animals and things like that. That's why church was at 11, by the way.

Did y' all know why church is at 11 in the morning?

Because you got to slop the hogs, feed the chickens, get the cows in, all that kind of stuff.

Really,

you had to.

So you do that. You go and sponge off, put on your good clothes, go to church. While you were doing that, your wife was getting some food together, and you go and have dinner on the grounds,

right?

Potluck style.

Some of y' all remember having,

going and doing that. They literally call it dinner on the grounds. You'd have dinner afternoon. You'd have a little bit of singing.

You'd have. You'd have some playing some games. You'd have hanging out. People would talk about 3, 3:30.

Preacher would give a little message at the end, kind of a. Kind of a close to what he talked about that morning.

And everybody'd head off back to the house, try to get home before dark,

because you don't want to be traveling after dark down roads. That's how you get. Break legs and things like that. And that's how you can't. You. You end up destroying your family.

Listen to me. That's how they did things.

That's how they did things in Corinth. That's how they did things in Jerusalem. That's how they did things in Opp. Alabama in the 1920s. That's how they did things here at Red Ridge,

Alabama,

before there was a lake and what was happening in this church,

everybody was bringing food, and they ate their own food, and they didn't share.

He's Saying, that's bad.

You know, that meal might have been the most important meal of the week for some people because they didn't have anything.

He says, therefore, when you come together in one place,

is it not to eat the Lord's supper?

For in eating, each one takes his own supper head and others,

the one who is hungry and the other is drunk.

What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? Or what shall I say to you?

Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you.

For I received from the Lord what that which I also delivered to you. That the Lord Jesus, on the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and when he'd given thanks, he broke it and said, take, eat.

This is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same manner, he also took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do as. As often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

He says, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

So he's explaining to them that you ought to partake in the Lord's supper and you ought to do it in a right way.

Now, the first thing is you can't be selfish.

Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.

That seems very disturbing.

But let a man examine himself,

and so let him eat the bread and drink the cup,

meaning you need to sit down and examine your life.

For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself,

not discerning the Lord's body.

So listen to me. What he's saying is if you come in to worship God and especially worship him in this very special time where we're all taking the. The body and the bread of the body and the blood of Christ,

and you do it in an unworthy manner, you drink judgment on yourself.

Now, what does that mean, Pastor? Well, he explains what the judgment is.

He says,

for this reason,

many are weak and sick among you and many dead.

Chapters 12, 13, and 14.

If you don't read them together, you won't understand them.

Okay?

And they are really, really important.

When I say they're really important. I'm saying this to y' all as a church.

We are a.

We are. We are a church that believes in all the gifts of the Spirit,

Okay.

And the church in Corinth did, too, but they were very immature about it.

And for churches who are not. Do not believe in all the things of the Spirit, well, they've limited themselves already.

But for churches who do believe in all the works of the Holy Spirit,

we need to be very knowledgeable and wise about it,

okay.

Because you can easily be blown about and go from functioning healthily in the Spirit to.

Yeah. And just into some crazy stuff and. And some unscriptural stuff. Really.

And so,

though,

12, 13, and 14 are super important,

okay.

Because they give us insight into the spiritual. And Paul's going to speak to the church in the spiritual.

Yeah.

Preaching on spiritual gifts.

And what happens a lot of times is they focus on the gift instead of the character of.

That's exactly right.

And 12 and 14,

chapters 12 and 14 deal with the gifts of the Spirit, and 13 deals with the gift, why the gifts exist.

And really,

even though it's a beautiful passage and we use it for weddings,

okay?

The passage about love in thirteen is trying to point them to understand that the point of spiritual gifts is to give people a understanding of the character of God. And that's why he says at the end, these three remain faith, hope, and love.

But the greatest of these is love. What he's saying is all these gifts exist so that we can fully and completely be God to others, be loved to others,

okay?

So you need to understand it and you need to have an idea of it as a church. We need to have an idea of it because it is really, really a powerful passage if you'll look at it the way it is.

And so many Christians are afraid of the gifts of the Spirit,

okay? And so many Christians misuse the gifts of the Spirit,

okay?

And they use them as a show,

and they use them for.

For their own gain.

They use them for their own personal gain.

And so what's happened is a lot of the churches said, we're just going to.

We're just not even going to do that.

Well, that's like saying,

okay,

that is not smart.

That's not bright. It's not. It's not. It's not. But I do want you to understand the gift of tongues, the gift of prophecy, the gift of healing, all these gifts that scripture gives us, which are good things, which are great things,

okay? And I've been talking about them a little bit in our revelation Bible study,

because there's a difference between a prophecy and a vision.

There's a. There. And by the way, all of us and all of Us have you go, well, which gift? Why does. How does God decide which gifts to give you?

Well, he doesn't decide by the way.

He decides which gifts he wants to manifest in your life at a time.

And you go, what are you talking about? Well, do you have a new spirit in you?

Do you have the Holy Spirit in you?

Where did the spiritual gifts come from?

The Holy Spirit.

So how much of the Holy Spirit do you have in you?

All of the Holy Spirit. So do you have all the gifts in you?

Yeah, they're all there.

Are they going to all manifest?

No, you're going to. You're going to in your personality, in your context, in your. Who you are. They're going to manifest in different ways.

But you need to understand when you're seeing that what's right and what's wrong,

does that make sense?

All right,

back to chapter 11.

This is for Kathleen when she's making it into a podcast.

All right?

Did you look at me like I'm crazy?

All right.

He says, for this reason, many are weak and sick among you and many asleep.

Now listen to this. This is. I'm telling you, this is powerful.

This is really a powerful teaching.

He says, for if we judge ourselves, we would not be judged.

Now hear me on this, because when I say judge to you, you think negative, negative, negative, negative, right?

Okay?

Because Jesus said, judge not, lest you be judged. For in the measure you judge someone, so it'll be meted out to you. All right? Now hear me.

He is not telling you to not make any judgments.

He's telling you to have the right reason for your judgment. If I make a look, if I look at you and I say, you ain't got any. You don't have nice clothes, and you look like you weigh 120 pounds.

And you know you've got all the hallmarks of a heroin addict.

And I say into my mind,

he is a heroin addict.

We need to get him to rehab.

We need to get him away from this stuff. He's. He's about to die. I had a client one time, came to court, she was. Had all these clothes on to hide it.

But when they took her to the hospital that day, she weighed 67 pounds.

And when they gave her her drug test, and that's how we kept her, because she showed up to court high as a kite.

When they gave her a drug test, she tested positive for everything.

Even red velvet cake, all of it. You know, everything. She tested positive for everything,

all right?

And, and, and, and I remember that because one of Our judges was.

Was.

He was. He was so gracious toward her.

He was. He just was so gracious toward her.

And he said, I'm not putting you in jail because I'm mad at you. I'm putting in jail because if I let you go, you might die.

And we got a rehab, and she got her life together. That happens a lot. That happens a lot.

But his judgment he made there was, for what,

her own good,

her best.

So when Jesus says, judge not lest you be judged, what he's saying is,

judgment unto condemnation,

not unless lest you be judged and condemned.

Does that make sense?

All right, so he's saying,

look,

you need to measure yourself. If you're making judgments about people and it's to condemn them,

you need to back up.

But for yourself,

you need to make judgments about you.

He says, you need to sit down and evaluate yourself before you take the Lord's Supper, because understanding that I don't want to dishonor the body and the blood of Christ before I take the Lord's Supper, I need to make a judgment about myself.

And he's saying, if you'll look inside yourself and make these judgments, I'll help you get through them. And I won't have to judge you.

And I won't. There won't have to be any condemnation because he says,

therefore.

He says, therefore,

in Christ Jesus,

there's no condemnation.

Therefore, there's no condemnation in Christ Jesus.

What he's saying is, if you will judge yourself,

if you will sit down and evaluate your life,

and you won't bring. You won't heap yourself any condemnation. You won't be sick. You won't. You. You won't. You're. You won't heap death upon you.

He clearly says, those who take the Lord's Supper without dishonoring the Lord's Supper,

many of you are sick and weak, and some are dead.

Did you know that that was that important?

Did you know that he says this?

But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord.

Meaning we're.

We're. We're. We're disciplined.

That we may not be condemned with the world.

Therefore, my brother brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.

Wait for one another.

Don't. Don't. This is not about you.

Now, I'm gonna tell you. I'm. I love y' all as a church because I've been many churches where I was the last. You know, because I was a pastor, I'm last.

You know, the commanding officer's last. Right?

Huh?

He Eats last, right?

Commanding officer. Each last man. There's always food here.

When I'm at the end of the line, I'm talking about. It's some good stuff, too.

Whenever we eat, I'm going through the line thinking, did anybody even eat? Look how much food there is.

I've been places where, you know, I got two spoonfuls of cabbage, and I don't even eat cabbage.

But if anyone's hungry, let him eat at home.

Lest you come together for judgment.

And the rest I will set in order when I come.

What he's saying is there's some things I'm gonna fix when I get there.

Okay?

Now, he has dealt with the very worldly, fleshly issues that the church has. We're fixing to make a transition.

And he's gonna say, basically, now I'm gonna talk about spiritual stuff,

okay?

Everything that up to this point is all dealt with flesh.

Everything.

Now you want to think about it. He wrote a letter to the church, which was meant to be the preeminent letter to the church.

I want. You hear that? Corinthians is really, in many ways, it is the chief epistle to the church,

how we do things,

right?

It is.

It is. It is all the others. No. No other epistle other than Romans and Hebrews, which are theological epistles.

No other epistle is near as long and deals with as many issues. Not near as many issues. In fact, most of the others deal with one, maybe two issues. And that's it.

This one deals with issue after issue after issue after issue.

And it's rightly.

You rightly deal with it when you. When you come to these passages.

Do I need to deal with women and men and women in worship and all that stuff? Yeah, but then I need to read it, right? Because he says at the end,

but this is for y' all in Yalls culture. It's not for my culture.

Nobody else deals with this,

right?

Then he goes into the Lord's Supper and he says, this happens everywhere.

You better deal with it.

He goes into a whole epistle about how we deal with people who are called to do ministry in our church,

Right?

A whole passage on what do we do with these young people.

These young people are getting married and who are called by God and who are serving God. What do we do with them?

That's really good stuff. But now we're going to get to the spiritual stuff,

man. The spiritual stuff is really good if you do it right. If we rightly do this,

I'm going to tell you that's why it's happening.

We rightly do the spiritual things. We do the Holy Spirit stuff.

Do we perfectly do it? No. But do we rightly do it?

Yeah, we try to rightly do it.

And I say that because.

Because God's shown himself out in this.

And I say it over and over again. And people. People don't. I don't know why they don't take it right, but I'm going to say it again.

Do you know that we went over four years as a church through a pandemic that killed millions of people around the world, and we did not have a single member of our church die?

Not one.

You go, well, some have died. Now,

well, listen to me. You're going to die. I don't know if y' all know it or not, but you're going to die.

You know what I'm saying?

I mean, you know, he ain't leaving you here. You know, my mom at the time used to say to me, well, don't you believe in divine healing? I said, yes, Mama, but I don't mean I don't believe in eternal divine healing, okay?

If we did, then you wouldn't be asking me to pray for you. You could call up Peter Cephas and tell him to come over and pray for you, because he'd still be here.

Okay?

We're all dying.

But when we do things spiritually right, we see the blessings of doing things spiritually right.

You see prosperity in all levels. Prosperity physically prosperity, maturity wise, prosperity financially wise. And I'm not talking about health and wealth. What I'm talking about is you see the hand of God at work in people's lives, and you see life change taking place when we do it right.

And we can't separate ourselves from the spiritual things because that removes a lot of the power we got to do the spiritual things right, too.

And you need to understand what's going on, because I really.

I really see the church. As a pastor, this is how I see the church. My job is to get you headed doing what God has called you to do.

That's my job.

I got to put out my thing that was given to me when I. My. My name plate thing that's made of marble. Green, ugly marble.

All right?

On my desk that was given to me by the teenagers of my first church.

On the back of it says,

your job is to make disciples.

And a disciple is someone who follows Christ into everything he does.

And so I need my job. And our job as a church is to help people walk in their calling and we don't want to limit to part of it. We want to give you all of it.

And some of you don't have some of the spiritual gifts that others have,

but we need them all. And he's going to get into that heavy that we need each other badly. We need each other and if you're not really involved,

you're like a foot just laying there doing nothing.

It's terrible.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.