Well, I invite you to turn tonight in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, 1 Corinthians chapter 11, that's found on page 1139 in the Bibles that are in front of you. And I will be reading, as we're continuing in evenings going through what we believe and what we confess together, tonight we're coming to, in the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's Day 30. That's found in that Forms and Prayers book on page 234. 234, I won't have you recite it. I will simply read it tonight. There's a large Lord's Day there in 80, and we'll be going through 80 through 82. And we're really moving into the section on the discipline of the church. That's kind of a difficult subject in our day, and these are challenging things to know how best to do. And here tonight we have some wonderful principles and helps to us regarding the Supper and thinking through why this Holy Supper should be guarded well. And that's what this section is helping us with and helping us to understand the Supper itself. So I'm going to read these question answers, then we'll go to 1 Corinthians chapter 11. In Lord's Day 30, the first question is, how does the Lord's Supper differ from the Roman Catholic Mass? The Lord's Supper declares to us that all our sins are completely forgiven through the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which he himself accomplished on the cross once for all. It also declares to us that the Holy Spirit grafts us into Christ, who with his true body is now in heaven at the right hand of the Father, where he wants us to worship him. But the Mass teaches that the living and the dead do not have their sins forgiven through the suffering of Christ, unless Christ is still offered for them daily by the priests. It also teaches that Christ is bodily present under the form of bread and wine, where Christ is therefore to be worshiped. Thus, the mass is basically nothing but a denial of the one sacrifice and suffering of Jesus Christ and a condemnable idolatry. Question 81, who should come to the Lord's table? Those who are displeased with themselves because of their sins, but who nevertheless trust that their sins are pardoned and that their remaining weakness is covered by the suffering and death of Christ, and who also desire more and more to strengthen their faith and to lead a better life. Hypocrites and those who are unrepentant, however, eat and drink judgment on themselves. And question 82, should those be admitted to the Lord's Supper who show by what they profess and how they live that they are unbelieving and ungodly? No, that would dishonor God's covenant and bring down God's wrath upon the entire congregation. Therefore, according to the instruction of Christ and his apostles, the Christian church is duty-bound to exclude such people by the official use of the keys of the kingdom until they reform their lives. And now in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, beginning at verse 17, we'll read to the end of the chapter. This is the word of the Lord. another gets drunk. What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in, or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. For I received from the Lord that what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone's hungry, let them eat at home, so that when you come together it will not be for judgment. About the other things I will give directions when I come. There we'll end the reading of God's Word. Tonight we come to a really important section in our study of the Christian faith and working through what we believe and what we confess. In the Heidelberg Catechism tonight, question and answer 81 and 82, which is really important for us. I'm getting back there because I'm going to refer to it a few times tonight. I recognize tonight how important that this particular section is because it's really addressing, as I said, the discipline of the church. Why discipline, which is sort of a bad word in our day anymore, why discipline is important. Why it matters. We all know the consequences that happen if there's no discipline in our homes. We all know the consequences that happen with children. If there's no discipline in correction, correcting error and correcting things that are wrong, that are done, you're setting your home up for disaster that way. And this is an important concept in the life of the church, that the Lord uses discipline to help us and to keep us controlled and self-controlled and to protect us and his good intentions for us so that we would understand what is most important and preserve what is true and what is right. The problem with this subject is so much church cultural peer pressure when it comes to these sort of things. It's difficult to do these kind of things when we talk about fencing the table. Oh, there go those fuddy-duddy reform people again, right? Sort of the attitude that comes out and that we've had to deal with, and it's difficult. Like it or not, I mean, think about the challenges that we face today. We live in a church culture where almost anything goes. So anyone who comes along and has convictions about these things, it's difficult to implement them. It's assumed that these are the most offensive things we could ever do to build the church. That's really behind it. We're afraid of how we will be viewed. We're afraid of how we'll be looked at. We're afraid that people will look at us and say, what a weird bunch. I've got news for you. Christians throughout history have always been a weird bunch. And this is what we have to think through a little bit, that we make this assumption that in the life of the church and in the kingdom of God, we're going to get to a section here on church discipline. Discipline will not work. That's our assumption. It will not work. With children, we think this way. We'll lose them if we say something's wrong. This is how the culture tells us, and then threats come at people. If you tell somebody they're doing something wrong, they might hurt themselves. We have all this happening today. What's actually true is that one of our greatest witnesses in this present age is conviction. Conviction. when we take our faith seriously. It's a great witness in our day, where people walk in and say, wow, these people are pretty serious about their faith. They care about the purity of the church. They care about the purity of the gospel. They care that their members are walking in holiness. I talk with more people that are tired, who are coming in and visits. I'm just so tired of the compromises where everything is happy-go-lucky, and there's no standard, no conviction, no gravity, no depth to the faith whatsoever. We're burned out on it. I hear it all the time. One of the things I think we need to recover after COVID, again, is a sense of reverence and awe in worship. I think that's important. Some of the elders have confessed that and said. COVID had the effect of training us that church with our lawn chairs is like going to the ballpark. There's reverence and awe in worship. That's a great witness. Did you know that? It's a great witness in our day. One of the areas that we also need help with are standards for the Lord's table. That is particularly what we're thinking about tonight and working through so that my goal tonight is to help you to appreciate how we should receive the supper, why that is important, and that this is not just about being careless or about being mean or being cruel to people. I've had people express that to me over the years. It just seems so cruel if somebody comes in that you're fencing the table. There's different views of that, of course. You could close the whole thing down and give it only to us, and we have not felt ever that that's the right way to do it. Then there's the opposite end of the spectrum. Just open it up for anyone who feels in their heart they should take it. And that's very dangerous according to the scripture you read tonight. Very dangerous. So the study in Corinth tonight, looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 11, helps us with this. And we're looking at why the Lord requires what we call fencing of the table. The consequences of neglecting the fencing of the table. And the necessity for implementing the fencing of the table. That's the basic breakdown tonight that we're looking at and really why the Lord's Supper requires fencing, the consequences of neglecting fencing, and the necessity of implementing fencing. Let's begin with why we need to fence the table, why the Lord's Supper requires this. And that begins with the place that Paul begins in 1 Corinthians 11 in helping us again understand the meaning of the supper. You really can't make a case for this until you understand what you're doing. And I would suggest that because we have made the Lord's Supper only our personal renewal time, that we've sort of lost the sense of why it needs to be fenced. What is happening in the Supper? What is Paul's case for what's happening in the Supper? Why is the Supper so important? And you'll notice here in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul is giving a call from the Lord to examine and discern the body and the blood of the Lord so that we would enjoy something together, communally, as the body of Christ in a holy, covenantal feast. It's beautiful in what's being outlined here. And so, in verse 23, you'll notice here that Paul begins by, after, we'll back up, but I'm really sort of focusing on 23 to begin with here. He explains the meaning of the supper. In Corinth, there was a terrible abuse happening in the church when it came to the Lord's Supper. Which kind of shows that if you look at all of the history of, the Christian history of debate, how much time and investment. It doesn't happen so much in our day, but just look at the writings and the books written on the meaning of the Lord's Supper and the disputes that happened around the Supper. This has been ongoing since the first century, which shows that the Supper is the devil's playground. It's always been in the history of the church. Look at all the division that has come around this, what is meant to be something beautiful and helpful to you, which means it's constantly been in the history of the church under attack and isn't interesting in the church in Corinth, it's a major focal point and a problem that the apostle had to deal with to tell you that it is an area where the devil likes to lead people into temptation. So that's where we are tonight in looking at this and thinking about this. And Paul in verse 23 helps us with these familiar words. You remember that we often read so frequently, I think we tend to forget and appreciate what's really being said to us. For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed took bread. And when he had given thanks, this is the moment to really slow down. When he had given thanks, he broke it. Can you imagine your Savior lifting up the bread and breaking it? And said, take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same manner after he took the cup after supper, saying this is, this cup is the new covenant. in my blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. I hope we appreciate what a moving statement that was in the context. I rehearsed this and preached this to you a few weeks ago from Matthew chapter 26. The whole institution, remember, came in the midst of betrayal. Paul could not get over that. In the midst of great betrayal, Jesus instituted the supper. On the very night in which Jesus was betrayed, when the plan of God was being enacted and the scriptures were being fulfilled, that a betrayer would come and deliver him and he would go to the cross and die, was the night in which he decided to sovereignly institute the supper. Remember Matthew 26, When evening had come, he sat down with the twelve. Now as they were eating, he said, Assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray me. All of them were exceedingly sorrowful. Each of them began to say, Lord, is it I? Lord, I'm not the one, am I? What came over the disciples that evening was a recognition that they had no power to keep themselves. Great fear hit their hearts that in this life, they recognize their frailty and their weakness, and this was a despairing moment when Jesus said, one of you will do it, and they all recognized at the moment, I could do it. One of you will. I'm not the one, Lord, am I? He who dipped his hand with me in the dish will betray me. The son of man indeed goes, just as is written of him, but woe to the man by whom the son of man has betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he had not been born. This is weighty stuff, isn't it? In the middle of this, he's instituting the supper. And then Jesus looks and says, all of you will be made to stumble tonight. Peter, you will deny me three times. It's no little offense. It means to deny any connection to Jesus. That's what will happen that night. In that moment, right then and there, in the midst of one of the most distressing moments for the disciples, Jesus holds out bread. Here's what I want you to do. Take, eat. I want you to eat. This is my body. This is for you. Take it. Paul's grabbing that moment. And he took the cup and he gave thanks. And he, I want you guys all to drink this right now. This is the new covenant that's being celebrated in my blood for the complete remission of all your sins. The supper's pretty special, beloved. Pretty special. You know what the Heidelberg says about what's happening in the supper? He is nourishing and refreshing our souls for eternal life in the supper. Not detached from the word. I'm not making this a mystical thing apart from the word. With the word and the sacrament, This is what is happening. He is refreshing and nourishing our souls for eternal life with his crucified body and his shed blood. Lord, it's not, I'm not the one that could deny you, is it? Take, eat, drink. They were seeing visibly an answer. I'll keep you. and I want you to know you're joined to me. By faith, as the vine to the branches, life flows. And I want you to eat. They partook in faith as they were. They were being given life and strength and encouragement and help from the Lord. That's why this is a wonderful feast. Spiritual life was flowing from the vine to the branches. They were able to taste and see that the Lord was doing everything for them to pay for their sins, to free them. The sign and the seal became an assurance and promise to their hearts that they could know eternal life was for them. By faith, they saw the Lamb of God vicariously stepping into their place, becoming the substitute, bearing the guilt, bearing their shame, bearing their punishment that the Father had planned and purposed to give His Son so that the wrath of God would be poured out upon Him. And the Supper celebrated all this. Past, present, and future sin atoned for. This is the blood of the new covenant that everything we have been anticipating and written about in the Scriptures It's being fulfilled with me giving my life for you. You know Christ has the ability and the power to keep you through this present evil age. Supper celebrates that. Now guess what Corinth is doing? Abusing the whole thing. You can see why Paul's not happy in this. You can see why Paul's angry. You can hear it in his tone. Paul explains the consequences of their neglect. What we have in front of us is this call to examine. This is why examination is really important, and we have to understand it in its context. If you look back to verse 17, he says, when you guys are coming together for worship, when you're coming together for the supper, it's for the worse. This is quite a statement. Do you know that could happen? Divisions are happening in your church. And he said something really shocking if you caught it in verse 20. You're not taking the Lord's Supper. Did you know that? It's not the Lord's Supper what you're taking. You think you're partaking in the Lord's Supper. You're not partaking in the Lord's Supper. Practice had been so corrupted and so misunderstood it couldn't even legitimately be called the Lord's Supper anymore, which shows how far it had gone, how much the devil had gotten into the church and wreaked a vision and havoc over the supper. When you eat, some of you are going ahead of others. One sits there hungry, and another is getting drunk. Don't you have houses to eat in? So when the early church gathered, they would gather for really the whole day. You would have a whole day set apart. It was a real big communal day, and they spent most of the day together, and they would have what is characterized as as the culture began to laugh at and characterize as love feasts, remember? Well, I think what happened was in their love feasts, they started conflating these feasts and abusing these feasts and mingling these feasts to look just like the trade guild feasts of the culture. And it looked nothing different. You had class separations. You had separations of the rich and the poor. You had racial separations. And the best wine was given to the most well-respected. Everything contrary to what the gospel declares happened in Corinth with the supper. You had the well-to-do sucking down the wine, the good wine, and then the poor didn't get any. This wasn't the supper. Some are getting drunk. You can understand verse 27. Therefore, whoever eats and drinks, eats this bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner. Don't you understand this? We'll be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. So here's what needs to happen with the supper. Let a man examine himself. And let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. If Jesus gave the supper in the context of his betrayal and offering himself up to answer all your sin and all your guilt and all your sorrow, can you imagine the offense? When the Son of God looks down on a people who don't even consider what he did for them and have turned it into a mockery and have not thought about sin and have not thought about the seriousness of what was offered for them. No care that God the Father sent his son to do this. And people just come with a careless attitude and a careless heart and don't even examine and don't even think about it and they open it up for everyone just to partake in and there's no thought of the holiness of God and what it required for people to be forgiven. None of that, all of it was out. In our day, that's the stuff that everyone says, that's the strict religion I can't stand. Who are we fearing? That's the question. Men or God? In this context, Paul says, if you eat and drink in an unworthy manner, You're guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, not discerning that body. His body is being given in the supper. His blood. By faith, we're receiving that. Now, I guess this is my chance to go after question and answer 80. Not as Rome says. Not that we're eating Jesus over and over and over, his physical body and his physical blood. that's idolatry, question and answer 80 says. Nobody, who believes that? Rome. They don't believe that. But when we, by faith, we are eating Jesus, and his spirit is bridging the gap and feeding us with his life to strengthen us, to help us, to encourage us. When we partake and give no recognition of what this means, and it becomes empty superstition or custom, well, that's kind of a great moment of ingratitude, isn't it? No one's ever given us so rich a gift. That's the point of this. The Lord Jesus is saying in the supper, I'm giving you me. I'm giving you me to assure your hearts. Now, in Corinth, divisions were everywhere. There were separations in the body of Christ. The poor were getting nothing. The gospel had been completely abandoned. This has a lot to do, I think, with why it's important when we read the form and we read things like, this. If anyone is living in enmity with his neighbor, he should repent, and he should go and be reconciled to his neighbor before coming to the Lord's Supper. You see, we do the same thing when we refuse to forgive. We do the same thing when we refuse to come with the kind of heart, discerning heart that the Lord is after, and I'll give you what that is in a moment. The gospel has celebrated a unity and has brought about a unity in the body of Christ. When we maintain these divisions and support them, this is exactly what Corinth did. So now you understand what Paul's I think saying here, beginning to partake in a worthy manner, examining your life. And this is where we have to think through how best to guard the table, to fence the table. How do we do that? How do we do that? In most places, the assumption is we have no right at all to tell anyone that they could not partake. Who am I to judge somebody else. Well, most, I have to say, in most places that I, my experience, and I struggle with this myself, you get up here as the pastor, and you feel like the bad guy. Here's the pastor at this awkward moment in the service, where he's going to now give this great warning. Oh, that's such a downer, isn't it? Because it's hard. We may offend visitors, and they may not come back. The assumption behind that fear is that the Lord's Supper is a free-for-all, open to just anyone. And the question is, is that true? Did you notice what our catechism said tonight? It celebrates the new covenant, a holy covenantal feast that just to open that up to anyone who so wishes would dishonor God's covenant and bring down God's wrath on the whole congregation. I'm not too interested in doing that. So this is why there has to be some kind of fencing of the table. Question answer 82. Should those be admitted to the Lord's Supper who show by what they profess and how they live that they're unbelieving and ungodly? Should we just let anyone without warning come because who are we to judge? It's a holy covenantal feast, and the God is, it's a duty-bound responsibility here of the church to explain this, and to explain what it means, and to explain that it is for the holy covenant people of God. Now, that's a great witness in and of itself, because then somebody might ask, I would really like to partake of that. What are the requirements to partake? Faith. You need to be baptized. You need to be a follower of Jesus. You need to have united himself to the church. These are important things that have to be said and communicated. Why? Because verse 29. Whoever eats and drinks in an unworthy manner, eats and drinks judgment on himself. For this reason, many are weak and sick among you and many sleep. Many have died. That's the kind of verse that we read right over. Here's what happened in Corinth. It wasn't just spiritual failings that they suffered. God did bring down his wrath on the congregation. This is where this language comes from. Because there was no care, there was no effort, there was no discipline in the life of the congregation whatsoever. The leadership was to shepherd the table. And the thing became a whole mockery of Jesus' work. Why should Jesus accept that? And temporal chastisements fell. Temporal chastisements fell on the church because there was no discernment of the body and the blood of Jesus. I ask for your patience then as we figure out how best to do that. It's challenging for a pastor to stand up and do this, but he has to do it. And I ask for your appreciation for this from the leadership that they care to guard and protect you and to shepherd well the congregation. It's not just being fuddy-duddies or strict. We have verses that tell us why this is so important right here. So that leaves me the question tonight, the final question that's important, is what is discerning the body and the blood of Jesus? What does that look like? And I think the challenge with this is that when you preach this, it always seems to have the wrong effect. I've had more people come to me and say in the ministry, you know, I wasn't living very well this week. I did some bad things. So I stayed away from the supper. And I thought, this is who the supper's for. For people who see their sin. For people who are convicted. For people who are sorrowful for it. In fact, it's a serious thing for the believer not to partake. It's important. This is for you for your help. This is for you because of sin. This is for you because of your struggle. This is for you because you're constantly a mess. It's not for the righteous. See, this is the kind of heart the Lord wants. Anyone who's properly discerning the body and the blood of Jesus looks a lot like all these people in the Gospels who are shown to you, who come with broken and contrite hearts, with a woman who poured an alabaster flask on Jesus' head. These are the kind of people the Lord is showing us of who have discerned what the Lord has done for them and come with believing hearts. This is what Jesus said, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners. The Lord's Supper is for sinners who repent and who believe the gospel. That's who it's for, so that you be helped. So what is the church's responsibility? That's the kind of discernment he's after. I think it's important that we do come with prepared hearts to the table. I think it's important for the body of Christ, we as his people, that we discern the importance of this and realize the blessing that's being given to us in this. It is a joyful feast for the broken. It's a joyful feast for those who are struggling with sin, and he wants you to come that way. How do we do it for those who come in on the outside? That's a difficult question to answer. It's a difficult question to answer. At times, we've put stop signs out there and had elders try to do this two minutes in Southern California before all these people flood in. I've never seen that done well in my ministry. I just haven't, 20 years. It's a struggle. It's hard. I do think that people should see the presence of the elders in this. But one thing's for sure, whatever way we do it, there has to be a verbal explanation of what the supper means, who is able to partake, and why a warning is so necessary and explained for people who have not been baptized or people who have not united to a church or people who have not professed their faith, why they should stay away. And that gives us opportunity to talk to them. It gives us opportunity to shepherd them. But this is not how you want to end a message like this. That's the challenge of this, you see. The hard part about a sermon like this is you feel like I just fought off a bunch of air and I had to deal with all the negative problems that happen in the life of the church. I want to end on this note. The reason this is important is because the Lord has a spiritual meal and blessing to give his people. and a great sacrifice was made for you. A great sacrifice. That's how Paul must have felt. The correction was worth it. Why? Because he wanted the church to enjoy the blessing of forgiveness. He wanted the church to enjoy the blessing of what Jesus did for them, and they'd corrupted it. No wonder he's frustrated. It's a help to you, beloved. It's a covenant feast for you celebrating the work of Jesus on your behalf. That God loves you. That God gave his son for you. And it's not for the world. That's important to say in our day. This is not for the world. This is for his people. And may we appreciate then the blessing of being able to come and appreciate why we have to fence the table. and understand in our challenges of our day and all the difficulties that we have to do this, that that effort is right and it's good because this is the way the Lord preserves through the discipline of the church so that air is kept out and that we can commune together in peace and in happiness and in joy. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you for helping us tonight through a difficult subject. It's difficult, it's hard, but we understand important and we ask, Lord, for your help to know how best to do this, that you would give us discernment as elders, give the congregation patience and appreciation for the discipline in the life of the church, that the supper would be properly fenced and cared for, and that we would, Lord, understand and discern the body and blood of Jesus for us. What a gift, what a blessing to strengthen our faith and to help us. So thank you, Lord, for your keys of your kingdom. Thank you, Lord, for giving us a church family. And thank you for the Holy Supper. Confirms all of your promises that are yes and amen in Jesus. In his name we pray, amen.