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1 Corinthians 11
This evening, if you would turn our text, this evening should be somewhat familiar. A year, maybe a year and a half ago, we walked through this on a Sunday night. And tonight, I will walk through it again in a similar manner.
I don't usually do that, especially with the majority of the same people. I don't know who all was here that night. But with us partaking of the Lord's Supper at a different location next Sunday night, Pastor Quatro and myself thought it would be a good time to refresh our minds on the Lord's Supper.
And this text in 1 Corinthians seems to be the most practical to me. We could go other places and look here and there, but this really covers a lot of what Pastor Quatro and I want to articulate about the Lord's Supper, about what we believe here at Providence about the Lord's Supper.
It's something that we as a local body, something that we take serious. It's something that I will read here in just a moment, kind of a little bit from our confession, which we believe articulates what the Bible says about the Lord's Supper.
We'll look at our bylaws. But the first thing, as we look at this scripture, as we look at, we're gonna read verses 17 through 34. Paul begins by rebuking them for partaking of the Lord's Supper in a wrong manner.
There were things that were happening in the Corinthian church in regards to the Lord's Supper that shouldn't have been happening. There were factions that were being formed because of their misuse of this ordinance.
Some were using this as a time to feast and to be drunk. And some were left out altogether. And so this evening, I want to read, if you would please stand as we reverence the reading of God's Holy Word.
I wanna read 1 Corinthians 11, 17 through 34. Beginning of verse 17, 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 is not the Lord's Supper that you eat. For in 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, he also 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 this 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 is hungry, let him eat at home so that when you come together, it will not be for judgment. About other things, I will give you directions when I come.
Let us pray.
Father, we are thankful for this ordinance. Lord, as we look at this text in Corinthians, as Paul both instructs and corrects the Corinthian church of the proper use and the proper administration of the Lord's Supper, pray, Father, that what it would do for us is to increase our view biblically of this, that we would understand it biblically and rightly.
There are many views out there today of the Lord's Supper that we believe to not be biblical and we will look at some of those tonight. But I pray that, Father, that as we look through this, that we would have a deeper appreciation for your Son, for that is what the Lord's Supper is about, that is what this was instituted for, is to remind us of the broken body and the shed blood of Christ.
And so if nothing else, I pray that, Father, we would do that tonight, that we would remember Christ, that our love for Christ would grow stronger, that our faith in Christ would grow deeper. We ask all this in Christ's name, amen.
So a little bit of context. In verse one of this chapter, Paul, he commends the Corinthians. If you look at, go all the way back to verse two, I'm sorry. Verse two, he's commending them. He says, now I commend you because you remember me and everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.
They had many problems, which Paul lets them know about. If you read the book of 1 Corinthians, you see that Paul doesn't have a problem correcting them where they need correction. But he also fairly gives credit where credit is due in the sense that everything they were doing wasn't totally wrong.
They weren't completely wrong. Paul was pleased that they had remembered him and the traditions that he had taught. And I think there's a great deal we can learn from that. You know, a lot of times I think we are very quick to see where a brother or sister is lacking and point that out.
And maybe we should point it out in love when necessary. But it is true, but if it is true, then when we see a brother or sister doing something that we believe needs correcting and in love we do so, I believe it is true that when we see something a brother or sister is doing well, we see them serving, my hope is that we would also see the need to commend them and encourage them in this as Paul did.
He starts out by encouraging them. This is something I believe we should practice as a church. This is something that I believe we should practice in the home. Something, you know, husband to wife and father to child, wife to husband, wife to child, to take time to encourage one another.
This morning, we talked a little bit about that, about being an encouragement to one another. And I think we see this here with Paul, that he does, it's not just all negative. It's not just pointing out the areas that need correcting.
He does that, but he also commends them in areas that they are rightly, areas that they are serving rightly. I believe we could take a lesson from Paul in this. So Paul, he commends them and then he offers both reminders and correction.
And one such correction pertains to our topic of the Lord's Supper here tonight. And there's a lot more than just the Lord's Supper in these verses that we could cover, especially verses 17 through 22.
There are important issues for us to look at and maybe we will in the future. But tonight, I'll mainly will only address verses 23 through 34 and the things in these pertaining to the Lord's Supper. And briefly, this is gonna be a little bit different than a normal sermon.
Briefly, I do wanna look at our confession. You don't have to pull it up and I wanna look really quickly at our bylaws. So in the 1689, we have in chapter 30, we have the, it is titled of the Lord's Supper.
And we have eight paragraphs that just describe what we believe that the scripture teaches about the Lord's Supper. In many of these paragraphs, if you go and you look at the scripture references, you go, you look at chapter one, scripture references, 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Corinthians 10, we're gonna look at that briefly as well.
Paragraph two, you have others, but also 1 Corinthians 11. Paragraph three, 1 Corinthians 11. Paragraph four, you have Matthew and Exodus. Paragraph five, 1 Corinthians 11. You have so many, paragraph six, 1 Corinthians 11.
Paragraph seven, 1 Corinthians 10 and 1 Corinthians 11. And paragraph eight, 2 Corinthians 6, 1 Corinthians 11. And the reason I bring that out is because a lot of what we articulate in the confession about the Lord's Supper comes from this chapter, comes from what Paul is writing here to the Corinthians in chapter 11.
And then also some of what we'll talk about in chapter 10 of 1 Corinthians. I wanna really quickly read our bylaws here at Providence Baptist Church on the Lord's Supper. It reads, the Lord's Supper, is an act of obedience whereby Christians, through partaking of the symbols of the bread and the cup, commemorates the saving death of Jesus Christ and anticipates his second coming.
See chapter 30 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession. The Lord's Supper will be held monthly or more often as the pastor may deem necessarily appropriate. The pastors will administer the Lord's Supper with the aid of the deacons, all members not under church discipline of the church and not in secret sin are expected to partake of the Lord's Supper.
Members in good standing of churches of like faith and practice are welcome to partake of the supper. And so I read that because I want you to understand the way we do things here. There are ways that we could probably do even the Lord's Supper better.
We are not a perfect church. There are many areas that we need to grow in. But the reason and the way that we do the Lord's Supper, the way that we have set up our bylaws, the way the confession reads that we hold to in the 1689 all point us back to the Bible and point us back a lot of it points to this text here in 1 Corinthians 11 that Paul when he's writing, when he's correcting, when he's instructing the Corinthian church upon the Lord's Supper.
And so I wanna look at this text. And I wanna look at this text. I wanna answer a few questions about the Lord's Supper from this text. And the first one that I wanna answer is where does the Lord's Supper come from?
Some of these may seem obvious. You probably already know this. This is probably a review. Where does the Lord's Supper come from? Well, when you look at verse 23, we see, 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.
Where does the Lord's Supper come from? Who instituted the Lord's Supper?
It was Christ.
Christ instituted the Lord's Supper. This is recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke. What we do when we partake of the Lord's Supper is not a man-made ritual, but rather a Christ-ordained ordinance. We come and we partake.
And we know from Corinthians, we see this from this text, that this was practiced by the early church. This was something that was practiced. This is something that we'll talk about in a minute that we should continue to practice.
It was practiced by the early church as first laid out by our Lord and Savior. And therefore, we also practice this as he has instructed. Where does it come from? It comes from the Lord Jesus. When and where is it taken?
We have no specifics of exactly how often.
It is to be taken.
I do believe Paul is arguing or rather highlighting that it be taken very regularly. In verses 17, 18, 20, 33 and 34, each of these verses Paul says, when you come together. It could be argued that he is saying every week when you come together.
We at least I think know for sure from the text that he is expecting them to do this very regularly. And I think we have to be careful. We have to show grace because I think when we start to determine and we start to tell other churches when and how often they should partake, we can quickly wade into the waters of legalism being too dogmatic there.
But I do think from our text that we can rightly gather that this was something that was happening regularly. That they were partaking of the Lord's Supper. When is it to be taken? When do we take it?
He says when you come together. Until when? When do we stop? Is there a time in the future of the church that we stop partaking? When do we, how long do we take it? Well, in verse 26, for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
How long?
Until when? Until he comes. So as long as Christ tarries in his coming, churches should partake of the Lord's Supper. Where is it to be taken? That's a question that can be a hot topic of conversation that this is something that is abused in many ways.
Where is it to be taken? Well, it's to be taken where they are coming together. Where they are meeting to worship. For us, it is to be taken in the place that we are worshiping. This has been overlooked by many believers in our day.
I was one of those. For many years, I did not have the correct biblical view of the Lord's Supper as I should. If you wanna take it at a wedding, fine. You wanna take it at home by yourself, fine. But I was, and many are missing, number one, the point of the ordinance, and number two, the example Paul gives here.
He distinguishes between their meals at home and the Lord's Supper when they gather, and he's speaking to a local church. And this is, I believe the Bible speaks that this is a local church ordinance to be administered and practiced by the local church.
Not at home by yourself, apart from the church, not at a wedding, but where the local church meets. Next Sunday night, we will be going to Bob and Tony's house, Bob and Tony Conley. And we will be gathering with them in their home, and we will be partaking of the Lord's Supper with them as a body.
You may ask, well, how is that okay? How is that okay that we go and we go to their home and we partake of the Lord's Supper? Well, how is it okay is because this is where we will be gathering as a church.
We will be gathering as a church there in their home. We do not believe as Providence Baptist Church that we have biblical warrant to take this at home apart from the gathering of the church. And so Bob and Tony, they have not gotten to partake of the Lord's Supper in a long time.
And as their pastors, this is something that's burdened Pastor Quatro and myself. And we feel like this is a way that we can remain faithful to scripture and also help the body. Bob and Tony, as well as the rest of us, and I pray that our time next Sunday night as we go to their home and we partake of the Lord's Supper, I pray that it is an encouragement for all of us.
I pray that it's an encouragement for Bob and Tony as we go and we gather and they are able to partake for the first time in a long time. But I also pray that it's an encouragement for us all as we go and we gather and we partake of the Lord's table.
And so I pray and I hope that many of you will join us next Sunday night. We also, this was something as I was reading through this, you may ask, well, what day of the week? What day of the week should we partake of the Lord's Supper?
And we don't have direct instruction here. Could you do this on a Wednesday night when we gather? I think you could. Why don't we do it on Sunday? Well, historically, it has been done on the Lord's Day, the day that we remember and celebrate the resurrection of Christ.
So we partake of the Lord's Supper on the Lord's Day. That's how we do it here at Providence Baptist Church. We are remembering Christ's death on the day set aside to remember his resurrection, to celebrate and remember his glorious gospel.
Where does it come from? When and where is it taken? Who takes part? Look at verse 18. For in the first place, when you come together as a church, what does he mean by church? Well, he says, when you come together as a church, what do we mean when we say church?
Well, we mean the body of Christ. And he is specifically talking here about a local body of believers in a local church. And when we come and we partake of the Lord's Supper as a local body, there are some distinctions that we don't have and there are some distinctions that we do.
We make no distinctions when taking part of the Lord's Supper regarding social class. That was happening here to a degree and Paul strongly rebukes them. We make no distinctions upon race. We make no distinctions based upon young or old, male or female.
But we do need to understand that in this partaking of the Lord's Supper, there are distinctions on who takes part. Not the distinctions that I've just mentioned. But this table is not for everyone. There are standards that are set.
That standard is only for the church. What he is referencing here are those who have been born again. It is reserved for Christians only. We don't make unbelievers leave. We don't tell our kids to leave.
We welcome unbelievers to be present and watch, but the taking part is for the body. This is an ordinance of the Lord and a serious one. And we guard it the best that we can. That's why we have bylaws.
Those who we believe to be believers who have been baptized as all believers have been instructed to be, who are part of a local church as is consistent with the New Testament teachings are allowed to partake.
There are many churches who we believe are in error in their view of baptism and of biblical church membership. So to better guard this ordinance and those taking part, we limit it to members of our church or another church of like faith and practice who are not under church discipline.
And the reason we do this is not our desire to put manmade restrictions. It is not our desire to have a secret club that leaves people out because there are really two ditches that we want to avoid with the Lord's Supper.
Ditch number one,.
We want to avoid denying baptized believers to partake in the Lord's Supper. But the other ditch is we also want to avoid not protecting the importance of this ordinance and the people that are partaking.
It is our desire to guard this ordinance and those who partake. It is done with the souls of Christians who partake in mind as well as unbelievers who should not partake, considering their souls as well.
As I said, we do not mind for unbelievers or lost people to be here. It's great for them to be here and to see it, but they do not participate. And neither do those believers who we do not believe to be in accordance with the word of God, by both being baptized and desiring to be a part of a local church.
And this is our best effort to ensure that believers or Christians living in disobedience to God don't drink judgment upon themselves. And the reason for all of this, the reason for the who, the when, the why, is when you really need to understand what's taking place when we come and we gather and we partake of the Lord's Supper, when we partake of the cup, when we partake of the bread, what takes place?
Well, first of all, it is an act of worship. This is an act of worship. And this act of worship is a physical action. Look at verse 23 through verse 25. 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, He also 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. This is a physical action.
This act of worship is a physical action. We are physically partaking of the bread and of the cup. And we shouldn't get caught up in the debate of whether the bread is just exactly right or whether it's supposed to be juice or wine.
There are many that tend to go beyond Scripture with their demands on these. But we do view it to be serious. I think Pastor Quattro has said this before. We don't use Doritos and Mountain Dew. We take it to be serious.
And we do not mock the death of Christ on our behalf. It's a physical action. It's also a mental action. Verse 24, 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, this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. This is an act of worship. This is an act of worship that is a commemoration. We do this in remembrance of Christ.
He said, do this in remembrance of me. As we partake of this, we are remembering what Christ has done. Consciously remembering and thinking upon it that His body was literally broken as a punishment for transgressors.
That His blood was literally spilled for the forgiveness of sins. That through the blood of Christ, the new covenant was established. The same new covenant that Jeremiah speaks of in the text that we've been memorizing.
This is an act of commemoration. This is a mental action of remembering. But we do need to also avoid some ditches here that I believe are unbiblical. When we partake of the Lord's Supper, His body and blood are not physically present as the Catholic church believes.
That also brings up another set of ditches to avoid. We don't want to wrongly view this ordinance as in some way giving salvation. This is not in any way salvific. Or as the Catholic church would believe as imparting divine grace through this.
He says, do this in remembrance.
We do this remembering our Lord and Savior who died on the cross for our sins. And we remember that this is serious and this is important. And not something that we should take lightly. Many here in Corinth, they were clearly not partaking in order to remember Christ.
May we desire to avoid that ditch and that downfall. They were bringing food and wine and being gluttons and drunkards. Others were left without. They were missing the point and their actions were sinful.
It's a physical action. It's a mental action. It's also a spiritual action. Look at verse 27. Whoever therefore eats of the bread or drinks of 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 so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For if anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. Within this, we find a commemoration.
But also within this act of worship, we find an examination. We examine ourselves. Examine yourself. Examine yourself as we partake whenever we come and we gather. It is a time where we can examine our hearts.
We can examine ourselves. First off to examine whether we are truly in the faith. Whether we are truly trusting in Christ. Whether we are obedient to God in our lives. Whether there is fruit that is evident in our lives that would go with our faith.
That our faith is evidenced by that fruit. We must understand that this table, partaking of the Lord's Supper is not for the morally faultless. We must not have that view for the none of us should partake.
But there is examination needed. The text tells us to examine ourselves. And so each time as we partake of this act of worship, we should do just that. We should examine whether we're harboring unrepentant sin.
Verse 31, so that we might judge ourselves truly. We understand that partaking, it's a privilege to partake of the Lord's Supper. This is something to take serious for if you drink unworthily, unworthily, you're guilty of the body and blood of the Lord and you drink condemnation upon yourself.
Real quickly, turn back a chapter and look with me at 1 Corinthians 10. We'll look at verses 14 through 22. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people, judge for yourselves what I say.
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.
Consider the people of Israel, who are not those who eat the sacrifices, participants in the altar. What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything or that an idol is anything. No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons, not to God.
I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy?
Are we stronger than he? This is another passage that is highlighting the seriousness of what we do when we gather around the Lord's table. Verse 17 there of chapter 10 talks of that we are one body. We are one body who by faith, verse 16, participating in the blood and body of Christ, who are one body in Christ, by the blood of Christ.
And we, as when we partake of the table of the Lord, we are remembering the gift that has been given in Christ and the gift of being a part of the body of Christ. We are aligned with Christ in our participation.
Further illustrating that this is an ordinance for believers alone. It is done in praise from our soul offered to Christ our King. One commentator notes this of the Lord's Supper and our participation in it.
He thinks upon the word look as helpful to understand the significance. We should look back in remembrance, verses 24 and 25. We should look up in thanksgiving to God, verses 24 and 25. We should look round to make sure we are in a relationship of fellowship and love with God's people, verses 17 through 22.
We should look in in self-examination, verses 27 through 34. We should look forward to our Lord's coming again. We see that in verse 26. And we must not forget what Pastor Quatro reminds us of each time we partake.
We have within this act of worship, a memorial, an examination, but we also within this ordinance, we have a proclamation. A proclamation is taking place when we do this. The gospel is being proclaimed for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
We are proclaiming that Christ has come and died for his children. That his body has been broken for them, his blood shed, the wrath of God they deserved poured out upon him. This was done for sinners.
An unbeliever, it may just be the children in this room. If you have heard nothing else, kids, if y 'all have heard nothing else, in all that we have discussed,.
Hear this.
I know there are many kids, I can even think of Jack, who when we partake of the Lord's Supper, may look around and be like, when's my turn? Why don't I get to partake? When do I get to partake of the Lord's Supper?
Well, I want us to understand that it's only those who are under the blood. Only those under the blood can come to this table. And only those under the blood will go to be with him in his kingdom. All others will be cast into hell and torment for all eternity.
And we have the anticipation within this Lord's Supper. And that is an anticipation of Judgment Day. An anticipation of the Lord's coming. This is a glorious thought for the believer and a frightening nightmare for the lost person.
So, hear this unbeliever, hear this kids. Repent and trust in Christ. Repent and trust in the Savior who died. For when we partake, I'm looking at you Jack, I'm looking at you Amelia, Adeline, when we partake, when you see mom and dad, when you see maybe with Jack, when you see brother, when you see grandma, grandpa, partaking in this.
We do this in remembrance of our Savior. We do this in remembrance of Christ whose body was broken and his blood was shed and he beckons you to come. Repent and trust in him. Believe upon Christ. And understand, you know, I know there are some in our church that we've had different discussions with.
Maybe somebody listening to this that is a Christian but hasn't been baptized and joined a local church. If you are a Christian, you haven't been baptized, you haven't joined a local church,.
Pursue that.
Talk to Pastor Quatro or myself. We'll walk you through these things. If you're a believer, we want you to join us at this table, but only in obedience to him and his word. And may we as a local body partake of the Lord's Supper with a love in our hearts for God and for one another.
May we hope in him alone and may we have faith in the one who was broken and bled for us. And may we approach it with reverence, may we approach it with joy, may we approach it with the utmost seriousness.
And I do really, I look forward to partaking with this body next Sunday night at Bob and Tony's and I look forward to being with them, I look forward to being with you all. And I pray that this will be glorifying to God.
And be strengthening for his church.
Father, I pray that as we've looked at these things tonight, that we would have a better understanding of what we do when we partake of the Lord's Supper, that we would see it, Lord, as a commemoration, as we remember you, that we would see it, Lord, as the act of worship that it is, that we would see that it calls us to examine ourselves, it calls us to remember Christ, it calls us to anticipate his coming.
My prayer is for any unbeliever, maybe a child here, maybe my own child in Jack, that Father, it's my prayer that you might draw them unto repentance, that you might draw, by the working of your Holy Spirit, draw them to yourself, that they might trust in you, believe upon Christ, and one day join us in partaking of this ordinance that we believe you have given to the church.
