Communion With God

Communion with God 

Ephesians 2:18-22: Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, 22 in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

·        If any church is a real church, it is a communion with the Lord. It is not just an organized institution.

·        Anyone can set up a church, get a pastor and elect a board… but until it is a communion, it is not a New Testament church.

·        A New Testament church must be a group of people who are drawn together for one reason—to seek the Presence of God—hearing God and experiencing God.

·        That is the burning bush before which we kneel.

·        If we can have a sense of His presence it will change our life for as long as we will live. It will lift us above our flesh and purify our hearts until it’s just His light shining through us for a dying sinful world to see Jesus in us.

·        It’s important that we go deeper into concepts of New Testament Christianity, but we need to go back a little bit, ok?

Luke 15:8-9: “Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I lost!’

·        Jesus tells the parable about the lost coin; it’s a story about something that’s lost.

·        The coins had the image of a man stamped upon them similar to our coins today. Something important was lost, not just money.

·        The Bible says we are made in the image of God, but that image was distorted in the fall through sin. Therefore the average person also has a distorted image of God.

·        And if we have a distorted image of God, then we have a distorted image of ourselves and this will affect our relationship with our God.

·        I also believe that there is an “inward desire” for all men to look into whose image we are made and find truth.

·        There’s a longing or emptiness in the pursuit of that knowledge that weaves through every culture… through the all the ages. There’s a fascination for those who want to find God but cannot.

Matthew 1:23: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”

·        God, Himself, brought proof to the world that would wipe away all of the fables, myths, legends, traditions, and the lies of the enemy.

·        He showed what the Old Testament had pointed to and prepared us for; that God would appear in the form of a man.

·        Jesus would say, “If you have seen Me you have seen the Father.”

·        Men would no longer have to go into the forest groves and build altars to worship what they did not know, they would no longer have to sacrifice animals, there would no longer have to be temples dedicated to their imaginary gods.

·        The mystery would be revealed in Person.

Matthew 18:18-20:  “Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19 “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”

·        This is what Moses saw in the burning bush, the manifest Presence of God. This truth cuts through all of the darkness and the confusion over thousands of years.

·        He is the God who is with us. He is the God who manifests Himself. He is the God who does miracles in our midst!

·        We have the concept that God is everywhere… but we struggle with the “manifestation” part of this truth.

·        The manifestation point is Jesus Christ our Lord. As God, He may manifest Himself everywhere; therefore we may seek His throne of grace anywhere.

·        The early church understood this, and the practice of it was very simple; they met in the Name of Jesus who they understood and believed was the “focal point” of God on this earth. They believed that He was their Holy place.

·        They didn’t need altars, temples, mountain groves or Sabbaths. They simply believed that when two or more gathered together in His name that He would fulfill His promise and manifest Himself amongst them. They would be the bush and He would be the fire.

·        They did not beg Him to come, but believed His word that “they would be His focal point” for the manifestation of His divine presence.

·        And they would minister to the Lord in prayer, praise, and worship.

·        The early Christians no longer feared God in the same way as the pagans did, they did not bring blood because their God had already shed blood for them as a man. Wherever and whenever they met… it was now a Holy place.

·        Although they did not fear Him like the pagans, they had a “holy reverence” and “awesome respect” for Him knowing that He was present.

·        It is wrong for Christians to meet for any other purpose than to minister to the Lord. In simplicity, suddenly they would all be filled with the Holy Spirit, not that they were not filled, but there would be a congregational Presence.

·        Their congregations met in secret in somebody’s house or in a borrowed building. But it was not the building that was holy; it was the presence of God.

·        And they believed that in His Presence they had the right to ask for miracles, and that their God would answer and do great things in their midst! Let’s take it another step deeper:

1 Corinthians 12:12-14:  For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. 13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. 14 For in fact the body is not one member but many.

·        Paul, led by the Holy Spirit, introduced a new concept to the early church; the church is the body of Christ. It was radical, it was new, and it was from the Spirit.

·        It was taking being made in the image of God to a whole new level. This New Testament concept tells us that in Christ we are remade into His image in a very practical way; He is the Head and we are His Body, hands and feet.

·        The concept was so simple; we are no longer separate but are connected by the Spirit to become the body for Christ here on earth. Christ is the Head, and we are His hands and feet. We are unified by the Holy Spirit with Him and each other.

·        Since Paul told us we are each temples of the Holy Spirit, He brings us together to function in unity for His purposes.

·        The indwelling Presence of the Spirit in us… individually will unify us into a cohesive group that would function like a human body, each part playing an essential role in fulfilling the kingdom on earth.

·        Your hands are now His hands. In unity we will function like Him in healing, speaking, and going. Think of the possibilities!

·        This is our spiritual reality, just waiting for our agreement level.

·        It takes a radical commitment to each other and to the part of the body that you’re in. No more offense, no more laziness, no more complaining.

·        Essentially, we would now identify with the body of Christ and our role within the body, rather than our selfish desires in fulfilling worldly pleasures. If it is operating in the Spirit, we would find complete fulfillment in communal purposes rather than individual achievements. Let’s see some other practical applications:

1 Corinthians 11:27-30: 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. 28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. 30 For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep.

·        The word unworthy has led some Christians believe they have sinned they were unworthy to come to the table and remember what Jesus did on the cross for them. However our sin should lead us to Jesus not away from Him.

·        If anyone needs to remember the work of Jesus on the cross, it is the one who has sinned. But if we have refused to repent we are mocking the finished work of Jesus on the cross for us. And we are sinning against the “body” of Christ and the cleansing “blood.”

·        The Corinthian church met together without recognizing the presence of the Lord, nor discerning that they were part of His body.

·        They were not required to believe that the “bread and wine” are actually God as the Catholics do, but they were required to believe that He was literally present in the bread and wine as it was served. Literally means “has the effect of.”

·        Paul stressed that the Lord’s Supper should be a time of celebration for the church in which Christians focus on honoring Jesus, exhibiting unity, and proclaiming the gospel of Christ’s salvation.

·        But they were meeting together for other purposes other than that of finding the manifestation of His Son.

·        They are not “discerning the body of Christ” which means they are acting indifferently toward “communion in the body,” as if it were just another meal.

·        Unfortunately, there is a literal judgment of not discerning the presence in this type of unworthy gathering, it was that many were sick, weak, and died prematurely. That is its own chastening. It’s not that the Lord is making people sick; it was that they could not discern the healing.

·        Let me put it differently; they did not have the “revelation” of the miraculous nature of the body of Christ, therefore, they were unable to receive freely the gifts of the Spirit.

·        It’s no different from someone who doesn’t believe in healing, that person is going to have a difficult time receiving healing. If you cannot believe, you cannot receive.

·        The sense of the presence wasn’t in them and so the purpose and meaning of the communion wasn’t in them and everything was “dumbed” down.

Revelation 2:4-5: Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent.

·       Jesus describes other churches in Revelation 2-3, He said that they lost their first love, He said that their moral lives had fallen, He said their doctrines had wavered so much that a woman was teaching blasphemy and committing spiritual and physical fornication.

·       He said they had a name to live by but they were dead because they didn’t recognize the presence in their gathering together coming to Zion’s hill, which is Jesus Christ.

·       This is why Jesus had appeared to them with eyes as flames of fire, feet of brass to trample, and, and a double edged sword to slay.

·       He had praised and blamed, and he had pleaded with them to get right. I pray that we may be wise enough to avoid those flaming eyes of fire. I pray that our hearts question why we are here. I pray that our motives may be found pure and holy.

·       I pray that we identify as the Body of Christ and the miraculous nature of that!