Tuesday, October 9, 2007

"Therefore when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper. For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others; and one is hungry and another 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? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you. . . . Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 11:20-22, 27).

IDEA: Idolatry was indulgent.

PURPOSE: To help listeners understand how we are drawn to gods that allow us to indulge ourselves.

In Daniel 5, we read about a banquet that King Belshazzar threw for a thousand of his nobles. They ate and drank wine from the vessels they had taken from the temple in Jerusalem and thus honored their gods.

What kind of banquet was it?

I. Idolatry was attractive because it was self-indulgent.

Idolatry allowed people to pig out. Restraint was unknown. Esther, Amos, and Daniel all describe banquets that were given in honor of a god. You don’t have to have much imagination to know that guests ate and drank to excess.

Many of the things the Bible forbids – drunkenness, debauchery, ritual prostitution – were part of the religious revelry.

The feasts were not open to everyone – only to the wealthy and powerful.

II. Some of those practices were temptations to early Christians when they came to worship.

In 1 Corinthians 11:22f (see above), Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth about the Lord’s Supper. What appeared to be going on?

They were treating the religious meal as though it were “licentious entertainment” (Plummer). They despised the poor and apparently ate and drank to excess. Why do you think they did that?

Notice that Paul puts the solemnity of the first supper instituted by the Lord in contrast with the irreverent revelry of the Corinthians (11:23).

The feasts of the idolaters made it difficult to regard the Lord’s Supper as a symbolic meal.