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SUBJECT: Doctrine

Most believers today are very tolerant about doctrine. They don’t fuss much over the issues of truth and error. If the church has a good program for kids, they go to it—no matter what the pastor teaches. Now, tolerance is a good thing. But what most people feel is not tolerance at all, but something else: Indifference. The reason they’re "tolerant" about doctrine is because they don’t care about it.

And, that, or course, is wrong. The Bible says doctrine does matter. "Buy the truth and sell it not" said the Holy Spirit. What you believe matters.

We know that. Except for the few born in them, most people go to Reformed Churches because they care about doctrine. And that, too, is good.

But a concern for doctrine—like other good things—often runs amok. We become so focused on a detail that we miss the Big Picture. The Pharisees were this way, "tithing mint, anise, and cumin", while forgetting the "weightier matters of the Law—justice, mercy, and faith".

This applies to the Lord’s Supper. If you study the History of the Reformation, one of the sad things you see is how often this doctrine—sometimes alone—divided the People of God. Luther and Zwingli, for example, were brothers in Christ and might have been allies against the Pope. But they couldn’t work together—because they differed on the Lord’s Supper.

They’re not alone. In the 17^th Century, the Baptists of England split over the issue. It’s hard for us to believe, but 300 years ago, most Baptists wanted no part of John Bunyan. Partly because he differed with them on Communion. Two hundred years later, Baptists in America suffered the same division.

The points that divide us ought to be carefully studied and honestly debated, of course. But they cannot make us forget what the Lord’s Supper is Really About!

What’s that? It’s about the Love of Jesus Christ. I wish I could describe that for you in words worthy of the subject, but I can’t. No one can. So, let me read to you an excerpt from a man who knew the Love of Christ like few others have. And put his great genius to work in describing it. Charles Haddon Spurgeon is the name. One night in 1866, he preached a sermon called, The Lord’s Supper, Simple but Sublime. In the first point of the sermon, he said…(MTP, Volume 55, pp. 314-315).