You Cannot Participate In Both Worlds

From the Pastor: Dr. M. J. Seymour, Sr.

“Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?” (I Cor. 10:21-22)

This is one of the great misunderstandings man has concerning God’s relationship with mankind. Man has this tendency to believe that God thinks like man does. God said: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Is. 55:9) God’s ways and thoughts are far higher, that is, more spiritually centered than man’s ways and thoughts. Man cannot act or think on the same high, holy, and eternal level that God does; and God cannot lower Himself to wretchedly unholy distorted assumptions of the tiny minds of men.

Unlearned men in spiritual matters assume they can forcibly associate themselves with the holy substances of God and the putrefying quagmires of Satan’s deceptions whenever they so choose. Our text rejects such abominations. God is sovereign in all of His ways, and He will not be forced into fellowships or actions at the fancies and sacraments devised by evil conceptions.

The text of “ye cannot” is not describing the physical inability to touch symbolic elements. For example, one may be immersed in water and call it scriptural baptism, but if that individual has not been born out of the Spirit through the blood of Christ by godly faith, he merely just got wet by the water. On the other hand, one who truly believes in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is plunged figuratively and spiritually into the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. The believing one fellowships spiritually in the whole of what Christ did, is doing, and will do. He becomes a partaker in the things of his Lord and Saviour. Now, did the unbeliever touch the very elements of water? Why of course, but he partook of nothing of Christ for he was still in unbelief. God will not permit it.

One may physically touch the elements of the Lord’s table, but if he is still unregenerate, God will not permit him spiritually to partake or to fellowship in the sacrificial body and blood of Christ. “Ye cannot” means God will not permit anyone to partake jointly in the spiritual and the ungodly. God demands holy separation!