Take a look at your shoes. A little worn, are they? If they aren’t, they will be. And your favorite sweater—how long before the elbows come out? Shoes, clothes—all this stuff—wears out if we use it. In ancient times, people didn’t have a closet full of shoes and clothes. They were lucky if they had one change of apparel.

And so it seemed significant, one day in the wilderness north of Mount Sinai, that a Hebrew sat down to rest and looked at his shoes and noticed that they were no more worn than they had been six months ago. Then he examined his clothes. They weren’t new, but they had not worn out when they should have. It seems like such a small thing, but something was going on here. Toward the end of the wilderness wanderings of Israel, Moses explained to them what had happened.

And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them, You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto Pharaoh, and unto all his servants, and unto all his land; The great trials which your eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles: Yet the Lord has not given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day. And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes have not worn out upon you, and your shoes have not worn out upon your foot. You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink: that you might know that I am the Lord your God.

One very small, daily miracle. Your clothes didn’t show wear, nor did your shoes, for 40 years. It was a miracle they hardly noticed. It was a miracle that was taken for granted just like manna. And the lesson is that in your long trials, though they not be taken away, you are never left without encouragement—without evidence that God is with you. But you may have to stop and look for it. Chances are, you have been taking it for granted. For example, let’s look at this little play on words in Paul’s introduction to 2 Corinthians.

Of all the ceremonies that are connected in our mind to the Christian faith, there is probably nothing more fundamental than that ceremony we call the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion, or the Eucharist, or the Christian Passover, even. You would think that if something was so central to the Christian faith…that, at least, would be something we would not have any argument about. Well, you’d be wrong, because Christians do differ on many thing—on what they call it, when they do it, how they do it.

This is nothing new about this, though. In the first century, the apostle Paul had to write a letter to the Christians in Corinth to explain to them what they were supposed to do about this most important ceremony. I guess we should be thankful for the Corinthian church. If they hadn’t been so obstreperous—if they hadn’t been such a problem to Paul—none of these questions would have arisen, 1 Corinthians would not be written, and we wouldn’t have this very valuable information. In 1 Corinthians 11, verse 17, Paul says this:

Now in this that I declare unto you I praise you not, that you come together not for the better, but for the worse. For first of all, when you come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you.

Paul seems to say that we need to have this kind of thing so we can tell the difference—so that God can look down here and see who is going to serve him and who is just going through the motions. Then Paul addresses what was going on when the Corinthians gathered together to observe that fundamental ceremony. From what Paul has heard, they were not celebrating the Lord’s supper—that re-creation of his last Passover with his disciples—but were doing it their own way…and he is not amused. But first, let’s digress and get a little background on the example they were expected to follow, in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22.

The Bible is a very down-to-earth book. It is written for men and women who actually have to live every day in this world—who have to deal with human needs and human nature. High and lofty ideals are in the Bible, make no mistake about that. But most of us live most of our lives a long way short of the ideal. Does the Bible have anything to say to those of us who are struggling down here in the mud?

Does God care that we are often alone and depressed? Does he understand that when we have been deserted and left alone that we need someone? Did God make us with a sex drive and then tell us we can’t indulge it? Does God care that a woman has been left with two kids by a louse of a husband who ran off with a new cutie? Does he care that she cries herself to sleep a lot of nights, alone in an empty bed? What does God have to say about the real, down and dirty, problems we have to live with?

The biggest problem we have is not with God or the Bible. It is with the interpreters of the Bible who sit in ivory towers and hand down solutions that real people can’t live with. A good example of how God addresses real human problems is found in one of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. When you read it, you realize that there is nothing new under the sun. Human nature hasn’t changed. Marriages came apart in those days, too, and people had to figure out how to live their lives from that day forward. So let’s take a look at 1 Corinthians, chapter 7.