Church Services That Weaken Believers part 1: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:00 Now, today we’re going to look at a subject he’s going to bring up, eating the Lord’s table unworthily. See, and uh throughout the Bible, as we showed you when Paul brought up the wilderness wonderings, God corrected God’s people that sinned using plagues, wars, and acts of God, famines, wild animals, family issues called division and rebellion in families. Uh evil spirits, harmful spirits where we lose our temper and do hateful things and aggressive things and captivity. God did that all through the Old Testament and uh he’s going to bring it back up again. Paul’s going to bring this aspect of the gospel back up again.

▶ 0:56 [clears. Throat] So, church services that weaken believers. 1 Corinthians, we’ll be studying out of it. You can open your Bible to there. We’ll be hanging right in there. Starting with 1 Corinthians 11:17. And as his method, Paul starts out with an off-the-wall statement had nothing to do with the topic he’s going to get into, but gets your attention. He immediately gets your attention when he says stuff like this. Now this now in this that I declare these statements I’m going to be making these statements that I’m going to be commanding unto you.

▶ 1:49 I praise you not. I don’t give you Corinthians any honor. You believers get no honor at all. I can’t praise you. I can’t honor you in this subject because you come together not for the better. Your church services are not for the better. They are for the worst. They’re not there. They’re when you come together, you’re not making the believers more useful, more stronger, more excellent, but you’re making the believers weaker, less useful, and inferior. Now, he got my attention really quick. How about you? So it is possible that church services cannot be to edifying and building up the people but weakening them. And if we have those kind of services, what kind of an attention are we going to get from the world around us?

▶ 2:46 They’re already weak. They’re already useless in the spiritual things of God. Are you with me? So if we can have services that are not excellent, not strengthening, but actually weakening the believer and making them less useful in the kingdom, then we need to find out what they are and avoid them. Could that be an amen? Yeah. Just because we come together doesn’t mean we’re doing something excellent. I mean it’s good that we come together but Paul is saying I don’t honor you in this kind of gathering. Now what is happening in these services that he says is making the people of God weaker and useless. Okay. First [clears throat] and the word first means there’s something going to follow that’s in the same category.

▶ 3:44 Okay. This is first. So something’s going to be what? Following. Yeah. Something’s going to be second, right? Yeah. Duh. Okay. First of all, he says, in these things that I don’t honor you in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you, and I partly believe it. Here we are. He spent four chapters dealing with division. 1 Corinthians 1 through4. And here he’s bringing it up again. He says there’s divisions in your He just got through dealing with divisions over, you know, who’s the best minister. You know, is it Paul? Is it Apollos? Is it Peter? Yeah. And he got through dealing with, you know, that division of carnality.

▶ 4:37 You’re not being spiritual people. You’re being carnal. You’re thinking with your human mind instead of your spiritual mind. You say it causes division. You’re jealous. You’re quarreling. [clears And throat] here he brings it up again. Division. My goodness. And he says, “I partly believe it.” And then he makes this tremendous statement. For there must be heresies. Say the word heresy. Heresies among you, that they which are approved may may be made plain among you. Now, the word heresy just simply means opinion. Say the word opinion. Do you know how many of God’s people just have opinions and no scripture to back them up?

▶ 5:34 Or they take one little scripture, take it out and stretch it five miles, overemphasize it without balancing it out. Ain’t that right? And they make it their opinion. And when we have an opinion, heresies, it’s opinions that causes clicks. You know, when I get my opinion and these guys don’t have it, then I have to move over to these people that accept my opinion. And then we got now a what? Click. It’s also called a sect. A separation from the mainstream. That’s what heresy is. It’s your opinion. And believe me, I’ve heard them since the day I got saved. Well, I don’t see nothing wrong with Well, it isn’t what you don’t see.

▶ 6:29 It’s what God sees. Well, I don’t believe there’s Well, it doesn’t matter what you believe. It’s what God tells us to believe. It’s Amen. An opinion and it separates from the mainstream and you wind up in a click with patting each other on the back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The these people, they’re just they’re just holy rollers. They’re just extreme Christians. You know, we we got enlightenment over here. We’re more mature. Yeah, you’re more mature. You’re separating from the mainstream. Are you there? And I’m looking at a lot of opinionated people. I get to hear you. And I know quickly when it’s your opinion. You know how I know that?

▶ 7:22 Because when I talk to God in prayer and stuff, I know quickly when it’s my opinion. He ain’t agreeing with it at all. I’m I’m trying to tell I’m trying to wise him up and he ain’t listening to a bit just [clears throat] my opinion that which are approved you see approved accepted [clears can be made plain among throat] you. So we have our conflicts over opinions. He says that is a service that weakens and makes the church youthless. And that is true folks. There are so many saints assembling today and the service is just useless. Could that be true? They never participate.

▶ 8:14 They don’t even get a chance to participate like you did today. You passed up a great opportunity to just say, “I love Jesus. I I I I thank Jesus for dying on the cross.” Man, any little thing you could have said would have revolutionized your life. Now, here’s some opinions that are listed in the New Testament. Okay? Resurrection has passed already. Baptism for the dead. Circumcised to be saved. Gain is godliness. You know, I got a good job. I’m making money. That shows that I’m really serving Jesus.

▶ 9:08 It has nothing to do with it. Bill Gates is the wealthiest man in the world or close to it and he’s an atheist. Has nothing to do with serving God. Oppositions of science falsely so-called. See, they had their arguments back there about science. What’s another word for science? Knowledge. It’s just simply not not a magical word at all. You know, we learn a little bit about nature and we want to contradict the Bible or we learn a little knowledge in the Bible and we want to contradict the mainstream. Say arguments of science knowledge falsely so-called false humility by neglecting the body well if I don’t cut my hair and I wear long sleeve shirts and you know long pants and uh I don’t wear jewelry and uh you know don’t eat meat or anyway just anything neglecting the body false humility if I if If I do something to punish myself, like when I was in Salvador, the Catholics would come to the church service actually on their hands and knees on the dirt a way off to get some kind of humility that was supposed to make them acceptable when they went into the church and Jesus would hear them.

▶ 10:35 That’s, you know, punishing the body and a false humility. That humility is doing what God said to do. Who is the most humble man on earth? Moses. Why was he humble? Because he stood for God when the whole congregation went the other way. Is he? He stood for God. It’s not bowing your head in sackcloth and ashes and putting on some kind of pale face. And are you there? Now, all these things are in there, and I’m sure you’ve read them, but they’re opinions, you see, and Paul has to deal with opinions in his epistles. False faith that shipwrecks other people’s faith and welfare without work. See, false faith is when you have faith in your faith.

▶ 11:28 And this is a big thing in America. Faith in one’s faith or faith in faith. My faith is in faith. Your faith’s not supposed to be in faith. It’s supposed to be in Jesus. Ain’t that right? And especially when you say faith in my faith. Well, you know, you may be persuaded in something that is wrong. And so, we got to have faith in what? Abraham’s faith that was counted in him for righteousness. That God had what? Power to perform what he promised. So like Paul said in Corinthians as we went through it, our faith should be in the power of God, not the wisdom, the knowledge and understanding of men.

▶ 12:23 Amen. Folks, I don’t know about you, but I need power. I don’t need a lot of verbalized nonsense. I need something active in my life. Could that be true? And that’s what God promised us. And so, you know, there’s people that want to come to church and get things without working or they want people to give them things without working. And I can go on and on. He had to deal with these issues. It’s people’s opinion. There are circles in America where if you believe God, he’s going to rain hamburgers from heaven. You know, somebody’s going to give you food and clothing. I mean, you don’t have to worry about a thing, man. He He’ll give you job. He’ll be make you vice president of the United States if you believe. That is faith in faith.

▶ 13:16 That is not faith in Jesus and his work. [clears throat] Now heresies, opinions, clicks, conflicts. Now they which are approved, see those which are made accepted by the scriptures, see the scriptures decide what is the real truth. [clears throat] Uh common sense tells you what is real truth. You know, like Satan take Jesus to a high part of the temple and told Jesus to jump off, you know, and if you’re, you know, you’re really a son of God, you’re really a believer, nothing will happen. Well, common sense tells you, you jump off this barn, what happened?

▶ 14:11 You’re going to get hurt. We don’t have to have a scripture for that. You just know you’re going to get hurt. Ain’t that right? You can believe all you want to. One of my friends, I’ve told you before, he got a Superman suit and he got to think he was Superman, literally. And he got on his house, which thank God wasn’t too tall, and jumped off and splat, broke his arm, broke his legs. And that’s the way a lot of Christians are. You know, we put on our little opinion suit and we think we’re invincible. And common sense tells you you can’t do that. See, common sense tells America that if you keep giving everything, everybody, everything free, there’s going to be no one to supply the stuff that is free anymore.

▶ 15:11 That’s just what common sense. Hallelujah. Paul emphasizes that heresies, opinions, and sex will be among God’s people so the truth can be approved. As I said, by scripture, by common sense, and through those with the fruits, you know, when faith isn’t working for people, why are you following them? I can tell you about Kenneth Copelan, Hagen, and some of these other people. They snuck off to South Africa to get operated on because they were so extreme in faith that we wouldn’t dare get operated in here and let their listeners know that their faith didn’t work, that their faith didn’t heal them because that’s what they preach. Boy, you you believe in God? No sickness. See, I’ve been in ministers conferences where I heard these men break down and admit their kids were rebellious and into drugs and everything, but yet they get on TV and act like nothing is happening to them.

▶ 16:13 And I’m calling them by name because they got the message. Fred Price and all these guys in this faith movement, let me tell you, they got problems just like you do. But they won’t admit it because if they did, they would be exposing their extreme faith that doesn’t work. But it gets people to give them money. I’m sorry. That’s a fact. You can say you shouldn’t be talking about the brethren. Listen, I’m talking about truth. And if the brethren aren’t speaking truth, we’ve got to let people know the truth. Church services that weaken believers. Now [clears throat] the second part of church services that weaken believers and not strengthening them.

▶ 17:04 The second part division was the first part. Heresies, opinions, division from opinions. Now he says, “For this reason, when you come together in one place, it’s not to eat the Lord’s supper.” Now he’s going to get into the communion table. He said, ‘You’re coming and you’re gathering together to eat the Lord’s supper and you’re not eating the Lord’s supper.’ He said, ‘I don’t praise you in this. I don’t honor you in this. This weakens God’s people. This makes God’s people useless and inferior. How many know we need some preaching like this in America? Instead of flattering God’s people every Sunday, we we need to let them know there’s some things that weaken them. And here he goes. [clears throat] Verse 21.

▶ 18:01 1 Corinthians 11. Verse one. One takes his own supper ahead of others. They were coming to church with a full course meal. And the Lord’s supper is not about a full course meal. It’s about two things. It’s not about meat, mashed potatoes, and gravy and bread and and dessert and all the rest. It’s about it’s it’s a spiritual thing. And Paul’s saying, “I I don’t praise you in this. You’re you’re wrong. You’re weakening the people. You’re just wrong.” He said, “This is the first thing you do. You you bring your whole supper and you don’t even wait for anybody else. You just start eating. You don’t even wait for the church. Call everybody to get there. You just break it out and start munching, man.

▶ 18:57 Are you there? Have you read this part of the scripture before? Did you understand it? No, you didn’t. That’s why Paul’s got to come along and explain. You’re starting to understand now, huh? Yeah. All right. Secondly, one comes hungry. Man, you come to eat whatever. Well, they’re having a potluck down there. It’s the Lord’s supper, man. I I’m going hungry. I’m gonna I’m gonna make good of this. I’m gonna get a free meal at church. Free food, man. Yeah, THAT’S WHAT THE CHURCH IS ALL ABOUT. FREEBIES. And he says, I don’t praise you in this. You shouldn’t come to take the Lord’s supper hungry. And another is what? Drunk, intoxicated. Man, Lord’s supper.

▶ 19:48 Yeah. Get the wine, man. Get Jack Daniels. Let’s go. Let’s celebrate the Lord’s supper. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Glory to God. Hallelujah. And there’s they’re drunk in the house of God. And there’s churches today that use alcoholic beverages for communion. And it’s not about alcohol. They really don’t know their Bible. The fruit of the vine is not alcohol. The What’s the fruit of an apple tree? Apple juice. You squeeze it, what do you get? Apple juice. You have to put yeast in it or something to get it to start fermenting. It’s not the fruit of the vine anymore. It’s not the fruit of the apple tree anymore. It’s not the fruit of the pear tree anymore. It’s a fruit of you making it into something that you want it to be.

▶ 20:47 And you cannot get intoxicated [clears uh cup throat] out of Christ communion. It’s the fruit of the what? What’s the fruit of the vine? Grape juice. You squeeze a grape, you get grape juice, not wine. It takes time to make wine. It takes special treatment to make wine. Humans have to make wine. Hallelujah. But no, these people got their own opinion and just like Americans today and they’re getting intoxicated. And the Bible says when you get intoxicated, it what? Distort your judgment. You make bad decisions. Verse 22, chapter 11.

▶ 21:46 You have houses to eat and drink in. What are you doing bringing a supper here? The Lord’s supper is a spiritual experience. You despise, you look down, you detest God’s church and shame those who what? Have nothing. Number four, there’s people in the church that didn’t even have a supper. They didn’t come hungry. They lived hungry. They didn’t have nothing to contribute to the potluck. Are you there? And see that supper isn’t about food as we’re going to see.

▶ 22:43 Okay, you ready for the supper? [clears The power of the Lord’s throat] supper. Okay, he goes back to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John when Jesus took the last supper and he explains it to us. He’s using scripture now. He’s using not not using people’s opinion. And he’s using scripture. He said, “In the same night that the Lord was betrayed, he took bread and he says, “Take, eat. This is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Now, the truth is his body was not broken on the cross. Do you understand that? Psalm says, “Not one bone was broken.” So, what’s he talking about? He’s talking about He came in to the disciples with one loaf of bread.

▶ 23:50 Just pretend this is a total loaf of bread. Okay? Let your spiritual imagination. Okay? And he took that loaf and he broke it. And then he passed it to that one. And then he broke it. Passed it to that one. Then he broke it and passed it to that one till it went all around. You got it. On the cross, not one bone was broken. Okay. See, we need to know this stuff. Do this in remembrance of me. Okay. What does he want us to remember? We understand he took the loaf and he broke it and says, “This is my body.” And those of you who have a problem with the Catholic Church and transubstantiation, they have a perfectly scriptural right to say, “This is the body of Christ.” Because that’s exactly what the Bible says.

▶ 24:52 Catholics may bug you, but they’re not wrong in every area. Us Protestants might be protesting Catholicism, but they’re not wrong in every area. Okay. Now, you ready to learn what the body of Christ is? Yeah. All right. [clears Mark throat] 15:37. Jesus gave up the ghost. That means he died. His spirit left the body. And the veil of the temple, the veil of the temple like 60 90 foot high was rent in two from top to bottom. Why was it rent from top to bottom? So no human could take credit for tearing that curtain. That had to be a supernatural act. Nobody could reach that thing.

▶ 25:43 Besides, no one could tear that thing. And so it was rent from top to bottom. When his body died on that cross. You got that part? The veil of the temple, the veil was the part that separated the congregation from the presence of God that was on the ark of the covenant. You got it? See, nobody could go in there but one time a year, the high priest. Now, the veil is written to what? Showing us that we now what? Have access to God himself. That every believer can touch God for themsel and that’s very important and it tells us yeah okay I got a little thing that came up technology.

▶ 26:49 I got to get rid of this thing that you can’t see there. That should do it. Wow. Hallelujah. Anyway, something went a muck here. There’s a demon. I guess they’re after me. It says in Hebrews 10:20. By a new and living way which he has consecrated for us. He has separated for us. He’s made a way for us. A what? New and living way through the veil. That is to say, his flesh, through the veil, his flesh, him dying is what tore the veil in two.

▶ 27:49 So when we take communion, we’re taking the body of Christ. We are to remember that his death on the cross, those stripes, those crown of thorns, those nails in his hands, all that pain, all that suffering he did made a way for us now to come into the presence of God. Through the sacrifice of his body, we can touch God. Ah, man, that’s good stuff. That ought to excite you. So, you don’t need a pope and you don’t need a pastor and you don’t need a evangelist anymore. You can go right into God yourself. Powerful. I don’t know what’s going on up here. We’ll keep going here. [clears throat] Now, in the next verse, he says, “The cup is the new covenant in my blood.” See, and you’re to drink this in remembrance of me.

▶ 28:51 What are we to remember? So the cup is what? The new covenant. Say new covenant. How many know if there’s a new covenant? The old one’s passed away. I mean, there used to be an old one. Okay. This cup is not just a cup. It is the new covenant, the new agreement between me and my people in my blood. We’re not under the Old Testament covenant anymore. We’re not under David’s covenant, Moses’s covenant, Abraham’s covenant. We’re not under any of those covenants. We’re under a new covenant. By a new and living way, we can come into the presence of God himself. Church, that’s exciting. At least look excited. You know, too many of God’s people are afraid of God.

▶ 29:46 Don’t be afraid of someone that’s got his arms wide open to bring you to himself. Kick the pastors out of the way. They’re good messengers if they’re good messengers. But we need Jesus. I’m not looking for a good pastor or a good church. I’m looking for Jesus. And if he’s not leading me to him, then I I got to find him. Are you there? Hebrews 8:10. This is the new covenant. Okay. Explains it to us out of Old Testament. This is found in Jeremiah and and Isaiah and Ezekiel. I will put my laws in their mind and their heart. I will. Nothing can stop me. I’m going to put my word in you. How many really can say your hand, man, I don’t understand that Bible when I read it? Rest of you are lying.

▶ 30:43 But let me tell you, in the new covenant, he promised to open your understanding to understand these scriptures and put them there. Why are why does he put them in your mind? So you can use them. See, if you don’t understand it, you can’t use it. See, it’s the lack of knowledge that destroys my people. The Bible says, and he says in the new covenant, I’m going to give you the knowledge of my truth so you can use it. I will be to them a God and they will be my people. I will be to them a God. A supernatural divine power in your life. Now I can handle that. I need divine power. How about you? I don’t need religion. I don’t need lighting candles and all this nonsense that we do as a symbol.

▶ 31:34 I need the real power. And he’s promising me the real power. Isn’t this good? Every Christian should know the new covenant. Memorize it. I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. You’re going to make mistakes. Relax. God isn’t giving you a second chance. He’s correcting you. I like that utterance earlier, but I just wanted to say second chance isn’t it. His first chance is his commitment and he will correct you. But you have to walk away from him. He never disowned you. You have to walk away. He will correct you. But it isn’t like he’s accepting you back into the family again. He says he spanked you.

▶ 32:27 You admitted it. You woke up and you keep going. That was a really a good utterance. But correction like this one used was a better choice of words. Hallelujah. When my kids make mistakes, I don’t kick them out of the house. I correct them. We feel like we deserve to be kicked out, don’t we? And that’s what Satan likes to do. Satan likes for us to go to the extreme and just, you know, well, I’m just no good. God doesn’t love me anymore and all the rest. Yes, he does. He corrects you because he loves you. [clears And throat] your sins and your iniquities I will remember no more. Stop living in the past. Well, you know, I did this back. Let it go. God doesn’t remember it.

▶ 33:18 You don’t remember it. Can I hear an amen? It doesn’t matter what you were, it’s what you are now. And all shall know me from the least to the greatest. Wow. Know me. Have a relationship with me. An intimate, personal, real relationship with me. Everyone can have it. Now, that’s the new covenant. And it’s powerful, church. It’s powerful. Ezekiel 36:26, he tells us how he’s going to do this. A new heart will I give you and a new spirit I will put within you and cause you. The word cause mean there is effects involved to make you respond a certain way.

▶ 34:08 There are there’s an effect involved. I will cause you this new spirit and this new heart will affect you and you will walk in my statutes and my judgment not out of mechanical means but out of an inner power affecting you to make good choices. Now church, you can’t get better preaching than that right there. Paul has hit the nail on the head. Hallelujah. This is good stuff. And this is what I experienced as a young Christian. I didn’t experience religion. I experienced a real God. I experienced real salvation. I experienced real forgiveness of sin. I never answered another salvation altar call. Never.

▶ 35:00 Now, I answered a lot of altar calls for correction because boy, I needed correction. But I wasn’t going to hell. I wasn’t worried about going to hell. And salvation calls never convicted me after that. I was saved one time, born again one time. We don’t go in the womb and get keep getting birthed. We get born again and then our father starts causing us to grow and instructing us and disciplining us and correcting us and feeding us. Amen. Now, the heart is the mind and the emotion and the will of men. So, God says, “I’m going to give you a new mind to think like I think. I’m going to give you new emotions to feel how I feel, not let your emotions make your decisions.” Gosh, American Christians are too emotional in their doctrines.

▶ 36:00 Well, I feel You ever heard that? Well, I feel the Lord’s saying I feel that this is I who cares how you feel. You think Paul when he was in prison beaten and in stocks felt good. There was nothing to feel good about. But what did he do? He began to praise and sing praises TO GOD. AND GOD CAME. HIS presence came and SET HIM FREE. HE DIDN’T GO BY his feelings. He went by the facts of God’s truth. And it released him. Are you with me? Watch your emotions. They can really rob you of truth. And I’ll put a new spirit within you. We have a spirit within us.

▶ 36:53 And God is going to refresh that spirit. [clears throat] Okay. Verse 26. Don’t ask me what happened there. I don’t know. For for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till he comes. See, every time we take communion, we’re proclaiming to the world the Lord’s death. See? So, we need to know what we’re proclaiming. All right. First [clears throat] John 1:7, the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from most sins. No. Oh my gosh, you’re right. All sins. Oh, but Pastor Caner, I’ve done this and God can’t forgive me for that.

▶ 37:47 Oh, shut up. I got sick of hearing this. You’re the one that’s done the unpardonable sin. Does it say all sins are not? Yeah. To even think THAT THE BLOOD OF CHRIST HAS ANY LACK OF power. Is just nonsense. That’s why Paul preached the power of the cross, the power of the gospel, and the power of Jesus. Because there’s nothing that these three identities cannot do in our lives.