Well, we're taking a break from our series in Matthew today as we come to the table of the Lord, and I thought it would be good to have a sermon on the Lord's Supper itself as we anticipate coming to the Supper. And we're going to look at 1 Corinthians chapter 11 this morning, 1 Corinthians chapter 11, that's found on page 1139 in those bibles that are in front of you 1139 and i invite you to follow along. We'll be looking at verses 17 through 34. Let's give our attention this morning to the Lord's holy word.
"But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it's not for the better but for the worse. For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and I believe it in part. For there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. When you come together it's not the Lord's supper that you eat. For an eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, 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 what I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and 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 the 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 is hungry, let him 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 ends the reading of God's word this morning.
Well, what a text to come to the table of our Lord this morning. And the goal of this sermon right from the outset is to encourage us. It is to encourage us and to have a deeper appreciation of what the Lord's Supper is all about. I think it's necessary to do this. I felt pastorally it's important to do this: to consider the meaning of the supper, to understand the supper.
I remember years ago growing up in church, sitting next to a woman in church where I grew up, and when the bread and the wine was passed to her, I remember why still can see this so vividly in my in my head to this day as a very young child watching watching the adults partake of the supper. She could barely get the cup up to her mouth. I still see that. What was evident was she seemed scared to death to take it. I don't know why, um my heart kind of looks back and breaks for her. Obviously something had happened over the years in her understanding of the supper, or maybe her own life, that led her to view the supper in a manner of absolute fret concern.
I mean, it's pretty strong language we just read. You can eat and drink judgment today on yourself. That's pretty strong language. It doesn't seem like the kind of sermon that would do well for, you know, making a case that you should come to the eurc and join us right and take the supper.
Then I witnessed others who were leading a wild partying life who I knew were out the night before doing all kinds of things they shouldn't have been doing and would drink the cup and eat the bread like it didn't even matter.
Well, I think it's important to address this. I think at some point we have to kind of stop and think about this. Since we do it more infrequently in our tradition, that we think about a little bit the importance of the supper and not to view it as a scary unknown, but to approach it with the right kind of perspective in the right kind of way. Since it's intended to be a blessing for us, it's intended to to help us and encourage us. uh
I still think back to my time uh in Washington, when in the Netherlands reform Church, only a few people i mean only a couple people in the whole body who had sufficiently proven that they were born again to people could partake and we dealt with young people all the time coming out of that who were scared to death of the Lord's Supper. So I want to tackle this a little bit today. Tackle the text that has caused, I think, so much question and confusion maybe around this issue.
And there obviously can be a total careless partaking of the the supper and that's the intention in this text of addressing that particular problem but I'm afraid that passages like ours have caused misunderstanding among Christians. And that one, if among a true Christian who believes the promises and entrusting Christ, if they haven't quite got this right, that they put themselves in judgment. I want to i want to wrestle through this this morning and think about this passage and why it's so important. it's not the intention of the supper that this would be a condemning ordinance. Okay? That's really important. My goal is to approach this as the Lord desires of this for us.
So let's let's start. His his goal, to say, my goal here in the sermon and the goal of the supper this morning is to say: the purpose of the supper is to strengthen you. The purpose of the supper is to help you. The purpose of the supper is to reassure you of God's promises and his forgiveness of sins. Let's just start with that basic point here and begin with the problem that had happened in corinth to understand this so that we can see what was happening and have a clear understanding of this passage.
The problem here in Corinth, first Corinthians 11, is giving a call from the Lord to examine. Paul was giving this call for the church to examine themselves to discern the body and the blood of Christ. In Corinth, there was a terrible abuse of this practice. What was happening?
Well, if you look at verse 17, you'll notice here he says, "You guys are coming together for worship and to partake." He's talking about corporate worship, but the whole thing is for the worse. There are divisions happening, and then he said something shocking: "You're in verse 20 you're not even coming together to eat the Lord's Supper." Did you catch that? You think you're practicing the Lord's Supper, but really you're not practicing the Lord's Supper. The practice had become so corrupted and misunderstood.
I think Paul says we can't even legitimately call this the Lord's Supper. He says, "When you eat, some people are going ahead of others. One sits there hungry and another gets drunk. Don't you have houses to eat and drink in?"
What happened on sunday was on on Sabbath, when they came together to worship they would have worship services and then they would spend pretty much the whole day together. So it wasn't the sort of compartmentalized view of the Sabbath that we have. It was a whole day celebration. It was a day of rest and gathering and fellowshipping and eating together and and having a wonderful time as the body of Christ. It was a whole day.
But you would have what came to be known in the culture as the culture looked at what was going on with the christians it came to be known as love feasts. Well, I think you can say that maybe the supper was being conflated with the the afternoon meal but i think the big problem was what Paul was seeing in this: is that there was nothing different between what was they were considering to be the Lord's Supper from the pagan trade guild feasts that were happening in the culture. peace were feasts where there were wine there was drunkenness there were class separations there were divisions. Everything about it seemed indistinguishable from the pagan feasts
And the culture and so with the separations. they would separate the rich and the poor and you had class separations you had the best wine would be given to the most respected and by the time they had well drunk the poor didn't even get any so everything contrary to the gospel of what the gospel was about the Lord's Supper was undermining in practice.
Well, you had this terrible situation going on in Corinth, and further, they were promoting all these divisions and separations racial racially class status. Some, you know, as I said, the poor were we're not getting to partake as the rich So so this is what paul's in his mind. He knows is happening in Corinth, and he's addressing And he says in verse 27: "Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. That's the context of this. Let a man examine himself verse 28 and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
Now, Paul got here. He wanted to make a case for the importance of the supper. And I think that's what anytime you have confusion, is that there always has to be a sort of reorienting of our minds and appreciation for what the supper is all about and why we have it. Behind the abuse, there was no reflection and there was no consideration of the meaning of the practice. They treated the sacred feast as common. And that's a crucial theme in in the book of Corinthians.
It's as if Paul says here: if you eat and drink in an unworthy manner now I think he says this directly you are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord and of not discerning His body. What is that?
Well, this has kind of been the heart of what I've wanted to preach as a pastor here to you all these years. I hope I've been clear. that The Lord's great intention for you, and if you've come in here today, I want you to hear this: the Lord's great intention for the people of the Lord, for believers, is to assure you of the forgiveness of sins. He loves His people that much. He cares for His people that much. He cares for you that much. He has taken great efforts your whole life. I think about, think about all the effort He's given to prove that love to you by explaining to you over and over.
And the pastor just has to continue to explain the same truth over and over and over and to be wise and creative in how he does it. But he wants that single, great truth to be communicated to you: of the gift of His Son. Wonderful news announced: that He is for you, that this is the Father telling the great news of His son in the proclaiming of the gospel that I have put Him through the terrible, cursed death of the cross that He covenanted and agreed to, and would lay down His life. And He took all of it on for you. He suffered in His body and in His soul the wrath of God."
That's the heart of the Christian message. That has to be a big point of our message, doesn't it? That the sin is so bad in your life, and the sin is so bad in my life, I have to have it paid for, and God would substitute His Son the eternal Son of God, to do this for us. Truly God coming here to atone and make provision and substitute in our place and forgive, announce forgiveness.
What's been His single great concern in the scriptures that we believe? it That we That we believe this that um we recognize with some amount of brokenness That our sins caused this. That our sins cause this. That our lives deserve strict justice. And He has told us that anyone who does not have justification, anyone who's not justified before the throne of grace, that this atonement is not applied to, this is the message of Scripture, that they will face the unending judgment of God in a place, a literal place called hell. Many people will go there because they've not listened to this message and believed in the one provision to forgive their sins that God has made.
God put His Son through that for you. Now, do you see why this would be alarming in Corinth? Do you see why this would be alarming? in Corinth?
"No discernment of this. I've never seen one of you get drunk at the supper. How could you with one of those little things? But are the applications so far off?"
There's a reason we make a big deal about forgiving one another, don't we, whenever we have the supper? That we show mercy to one another. What did God do for you? There's a reason we say, "If anyone is living, this is in the form, in enmity with their neighbor, go and be reconciled before coming." Why would we say that? What did God do for you? He forgave you while you were an enemy. And you went and did all that stuff against Him.
I said last time, "How would you like to live with someone who did that to you all the time?" And if we say, "If we're indeed living a life of living in sin, we could use drunkenness, whatever you want to pick here, and then come to the table and never discern what's going on and never think about it, that would be the same thing that's going on at Corinth."
And you see why it would matter. So you appreciate why we kind of have to do what we do in what we call fencing the table or shepherding the congregation in this way. I've always felt major pressure on this point because people get all in a worry that we're going to offend a visitor if we give a warning about this.
And think of our question 82: "Are they to be admitted to the supper who, by confession and life, declare themselves unbelieving and ungodly? No. For by this the coven of God would be profaned, now listen His wrath kindled against the whole congregation. Therefore, it's the duty of the Christian church, according to the appointment of Christ and His apostles, to exclude such persons by the keys of the kingdom till they show amendment of life."
That's the duty. And I say a lot of churches are under judgment because this is totally absent. Anyone can come, and they don't even realize the judgment.
Now, these are just careless words. Verse 29 says, "For whoever eats and drink in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment on himself." Verse 30: "For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep, and many have died."
Wow! Wow! Because there was no care and no effort to discipline the congregation on this front, and the leadership was totally neglectful at the table. This thing became a mockery of the Lord's work. This thing everyone looked at it. Nobody took seriously the death of Christ, and nobody took seriously sin. And so temporal chastisements fell on that congregation. Some were weak, some died, because there was no discernment of the body of christ no discernment of the body and blood. That's a serious situation.
This is why I said in Acts, and ananias and Sapphira, we would think that after a judgment of God is exercised like that, you would have a different kind of response. It actually caused fear and reverence, that people looked at the church and took it seriously. It's no game.
In most places, the assumption is: "We cannot tell anyone at all whether they are able to partake."
We've done our best to do that, and the answer is: If you've been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; if you're visiting today, as an infant or an adult, you publicly profess faith in Christ alone for salvation in agreement with the articles of the apostles Creed; that you're a member in good standing of a church that bears the marks of a faithful and true church you're welcome to come. We can talk about that. But if you have no connection to the church and you haven't professed faith and you're living in sin, you see the problem here. Or if we're a member doing those things, you see the problem here for the whole church. If we just partake with no discernment and no serious commitment to a church and no profession of faith, we put the whole congregation at risk. That's what he's saying.
So what's happening in the supper? Have you ever thought about Paul's statement in chapter 10? "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? Wow! The bread we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?"
You are actually participating. in since we are joined to christ in body and soul you are communing and your souls are feeding on Him. That is our doctrine on this matter.
Think of the Belgic: "We err not when we say that what is eaten and what is drunk by us is the proper and natural body and proper blood of Christ."
This is not just you doing some moment of remembering Jesus. You're eating Him! You say, "Wait a minute. We're not Roman Catholics." Yeah, you're right. The manner of our partaking, says the Belgic, is not by the mouth, but through the Holy Spirit, by faith. You're feeding on Him. "I am giving you me," says Jesus, in a great mysterious work of the Spirit, lifting us up to the heavenlies today to commune with the risen Christ, to assure you: "I am giving you me," says Jesus.
So Paul wants them to understand this: "For I received of the Lord that which I delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the night in which He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, take eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me In the same manner, he also took the cup after the supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. This, do as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me
I hope you see and understand how moving a statement that is. This was done on the night in which He was betrayed. You remember the scene? Matthew 26. Evening had come. He sat down with the twelve. As they're eating, he said, "Assuredly, one of you will betray me." All of them began to weep. They got really sad. "Lord, each one of them began to ask, is it I? I'm not the one, literally, am i
You think about it. The disciples were discerning. You know what they were discerning right then and there? "I have no ability to keep myself in this life. I can't uphold myself. I could do it. I could deny you, betray something different." It was a despairing moment. You hear the sort of deep heart-wrenching concern in their hearts about their loyalty to Jesus.
How's your loyalty to Jesus going? "Lord, kurios, I'm not the one, am I?"
Jesus says, "He who dipped his hand with me in the dish will betray me, Judas. The Son of Man indeed goes just as it was written of him. But woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been good for him if he had never been born."
That is like pouring fuel on fire at this moment. "Is that me? Am I the one that should have never been born because I'm so full of hypocrisy?" You ever felt that?
And then Jesus says, "All of you are going to be made to stumble because of me tonight. Peter, you are going to go out and deny me three times."
These aren't little things. Deny means to say, "I have no connection to you."
Jesus, the whole time, had been saying, "Watch and pray, lest you enter temptation." Why do you need to watch? And why do you need to pray? How's your watching, and how's your praying going? "Because the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is what? You are that weak. You are that weak. I am that weak. I have a host of things I have tried to correct in life, trying to be a better dad, or this, and that. And I find little strength at times."
And you know this. Do you know how you're kept? Do you know where you could be right now? How easy to walk away in sin could it be for you? How easy to walk away from the church could it be? Any idea?
"Lord, it's not I, is it? I'm not the one, am I?"
At that moment, right then and there, He institutes the supper. And the message was clear. As they're eating the Passover meal, He takes the bread, and right in front of them, breaks it and gives it to the disciples and says, "Take this, take this. It's my body." That's where Paul is, right here.
Then He took the cup and He gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you, for this is the blood of the new covenant, which is shed for the remission of sins."
"This is my body. This is my blood. Blood that Jesus gives us, and life that Jesus gives us, to preserve us."
Remember what the Heidelberg said? When we partake in faith, do you know what is happening? "He is nourishing and refreshing your souls for everlasting life through His poured out blood. and he holds out the wine, and he holds out the bread, and he says, "This is for you." They're seeing visibly that the death of Christ is for them. And when they partook in faith, they were being given life. They were being given strength. And Jesus was saying, "I'll keep you. I'll keep you. You can't do it. You can't do it."
He's stepping into their place. God forsakenness is about to fall on Him. And the wrath of God was going to fall on Him for your sins. And He's doing that for you. And He wants you to know that.
See, that's the beauty of this. Do you know today that Christ has the ability to keep you through the word and the sacrament? It's His power.
I've noticed that weaker Christians will think, after a sermon like this, "Well, I probably should stay away today because I haven't been worthy enough." I've always been worried about somewhat our the preparatory practice that we think a form does it. Form doesn't do that.
You may have committed a lot of sins last week. Guess what? You did. I doubt you want to talk about it. It's a fundamentally different thing to say, "I don't care," and to not even consider what this is about, and to go on sinning, grace me about." That's fundamentally different than to say, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." you understand that? From the sincere heart, what did Jesus say? "If you're sincere in that, I know what I am. I know what I need. I know I need grace. I know I need gospel."
What did he say? "A bruised reed I will never do What? smoking flax I will never do what? I'll never put it out."
Are you bruised? He wants to strengthen you today and bless you. It's not for the proud. Oh, no. It's not for the undiscerning. It's not for those who do not care, who live no different than the world.
Those who are in the fight, those who are in the battle it's for those who recognize their unworthiness to do it and how great the love and power of God is.
The first thing you must do, if you're going to come today in a way that pleases God, is indeed what we did earlier: from the heart, confess our sins. But the first thing He wants in confessing your sins, in response, is for you to believe He forgives them. You have to do something as one pastor said that's so easy today. Many people find it impossible: believe it. Believe it! You have to do something that is so easy that most people seem who would walk in here would say, "That's impossible. Believe it."
Paul wanted the church to enjoy the body and the blood of Christ as it was meant to be enjoyed, as it was meant to be received. To come with confidence! He gave His son to die for you. He loves you. His blood keeps us. His body keeps us. And one day we get to do this brand new in the kingdom with Him face to face.
By now, the Spirit's work is doing this. May we appreciate this holy covenant meal and consider all that Christ has done for us and come today and partake with believing hearts. That pleases God.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, thank you for this wonderful meal that you give to us to strengthen us by faith through a word and sacrament ministry, that you nourish our souls for everlasting life. Bless us as we come. Encourage us. Grant to us true repentance and faith. And may we, oh Lord, always be thankful for all that you have done, knowing that we have a God who is for us and not against us.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.