WWUTT 1571 When You Come to the Lord‘s Table (1 Corinthians 11:17-19)

The Lord's table is quite the equalizer in the church. We all receive the same bread, we receive the same cup, we humble ourselves before the Lord for he humbled himself for our benefit when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it. Visit our website at www .wutt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

The Lord's Table as an Equalizer in the Church

Thank you, Becky. We're back to our study in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and we're picking up in verse 17 where Paul addresses the Corinthians about their conduct at the Lord's table. I'm going to go ahead and read 1 Corinthians 11, 17 to 34 out of the Legacy Standard Bible, the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth.

But in giving this instruction, I do not praise you, because you come together not for the better but for the worse. For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you, and in part I believe it.

For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you. Therefore, when you meet together in the same place, it is not to eat the Lord's supper. For in your eating each one takes his own supper first, and one is hungry and another is drunk.

For do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this I will not praise you. For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was being 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 took the cup also 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 death of the Lord until he comes. Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.

But a man must test himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick and a number sleep.

But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord, so that we will 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 you will not come together for judgment. The remaining matters I will direct when I come. So once again, as we have started chapter 11 here, we have this heading in verse 1 with Paul saying, be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.

So what Paul has to address here has been given to the Corinthians. They have seen this modeled in the Apostle Paul. He says in verse 2, I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the traditions just as I delivered them to you.

And then we have the section we looked at last week concerning head coverings. Now in verse 17, he addresses another matter. In the previous matter, he praised them for holding fast to the traditions that were delivered to them.

But concerning the Lord's Supper, he says, I do not praise you. In giving this instruction, I do not praise you because you come together, not for the better, but for the worse. The way that the Corinthians were meeting at the Lord's table or what they were even calling the Lord's Supper.

Like if I say to you, what's communion look like? What does the Lord's table, what should that look like? You probably have an idea in your head of the bread and the cup. I mean, it's a very limited table, right?

What the Corinthians were doing with the Lord's table, you wouldn't even call it that. It looked completely different than what we typically think of as being the church gathering together for communion.

They were having complete feasts. People were bringing food and those who had a lot brought a lot and they ate a lot. Those who did not have as much did not bring as much and they left hungry because they weren't as wealthy.

You could identify the factions in the church separation by class because of the way they handled the Lord's table. You would be able to know who the rich were. Well, those people over there are poor.

This is what the Lord's table looked like in Corinth. When we partake in the Lord's table in a worthy manner, when we do it the way the scriptures prescribe the way that Jesus told his disciples and the way that Paul tells the church in Corinth here in chapter 11, when we do it the way the Bible says to do it, it's very simple.

Is it not? It is a, it is a very limited table. We're just talking about bread and we're talking about the cup and that might be juice or it might be wine, depending on what kind of church you attend.

Some are convinced that we have to have fermented wine. Others say no. If we have teenagers, they can't even legally drink alcohol. So juice is fine. How did we get to these, this difference of opinion over the cup?

We'll talk about that when we get to the elements of the Lord's table a little bit later on. But for now, again, you just have a simple table. You have the bread and the cup. And because the elements of the Lord's table are so simple, this is also very unifying.

Nobody is greater than or less than at the Lord's table. We are all partaking of the same elements. We all come to this table as equals. We are all sinners in need of a savior. And whether rich or poor, Christ died for his church and all who are in Christ Jesus, we are sons and daughters of God.

The equalizer that we have between us is Christ. He is the unifier. He is the one who has brought us together. There can only be true unity in Christ. There is nothing else in this world that unifies people like the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If you want true unity in a church, you cling to Christ and to his word. The different kinds of psychologies and philosophies and anthropologies and all this other kind of stuff that has infiltrated the church and has claimed that we can't actually have unity unless we do these things.

All of that is a travesty because none of the world's ideas can unify a people. It is the world's ideas that separate us, that break us apart, that cause these factions. Paul has been confronting this over the course of this particular letter.

We are unified. We are brought together through Christ and his blood. We all have the same blood. We are covered with the blood of the lamb that forgives us of our sins. No one is a greater or worse sinner.

No one is a lesser sinner in the body of Christ. We are all sinners who were destined for hell until the gospel of Christ came. By faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have been forgiven and so we live.

We have been raised from death to life. Nobody has been raised to a greater life than another person has. We all receive the same inheritance. We are all fellow heirs with Christ. How many ways can I say that we are one in Christ Jesus?

No one is greater. No one is less. Although Jesus said to his disciples, if you want to be great in God's kingdom, you must be a servant of all. There is a call upon every one of us to humble ourselves, to consider others' needs ahead of our own, that we may build each other up.

And we go on through this letter, through 1 Corinthians, where Paul directs the church to use the gifts that God has given to you for the benefit of the body. It is not for you to utilize this gift to become a star in the church.

You use this gift to help your brother or sister, to grow them in their faith. God has given me a gift of teaching. I use that, that I may see my brothers and sisters in the Lord mature in the faith. For as it is said in Ephesians 4, we are building each other up.

The body builds itself up in love, that we may grow into mature manhood, holding fast to the head who is Christ. He unifies us. He is the one who is over us. No one else in the church is over another.

As we read in Colossians 1, verse 15, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible. Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself will come to have first place in everything.

Or as it says in some translations, in all things, he might be preeminent, top, above all things. This is Christ. But no one person in the church can assert themselves as being greater than another. Christ, who is over all, humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

And therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

As Christ humbled himself and did this for our benefit, dying on a cross for our sins, putting on human flesh and dwelling among us. We remember that here during the Christmas season, the incarnation of Christ.

He took on the likeness of sinful flesh, lived a perfect life, did this for us, died on the cross for our sins, rose again from the grave, so that all who believe in him, we will not perish, but we will have everlasting life.

As Christ has humbled himself in this way, when we come to the Lord's table, when we come together as a church, we humble ourselves. We humble ourselves to one another. We wait on each other. We serve one another.

We build one another up. This was not happening at the Lord's table in Corinth. And so Paul is strongly rebuking the Corinthians over the way that they have been conducting themselves at a table where they should be humbling themselves.

Christ humbled himself, modeling Christ, following his example. We should humble ourselves. Remember, once again, going back to 11 .1, be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ. Paul was humble because he followed the example of Christ.

And so the Corinthians following the example of Paul, who is following the example of Christ, should be humble toward one another, especially at this table. Again, I read verse 17, but in giving this instruction, I do not praise you because you come together not for the better, but for the worse.

This thing that Paul has to address with the Corinthians, this is literally a life or death issue, because the way that the Lord's table has been mishandled has led to some people getting sick and dying.

So Paul says, I have nothing to commend you for in this. For in the first place, this is verse 18, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you. And in part, I believe it.

Of course he does, because he's been confronting those divisions from the beginning of the letter. Now, you're going to see this come up throughout this section, verses 17 through 34. There's something that you'll see happen pretty regularly.

In fact, if you are following along with me in this and you outline or underline certain things, look for the different places where Paul says, come together as a church, or some manner of that phrase.

When you come together, when you come together as a church, we see that here in the description of the Lord's table. There is an understanding that you cannot even come to the Lord's table. There cannot be a right practice of communion if the church is not coming together.

This is one of those passages that I came back to during 2020, when churches were not meeting because of the pandemic. And people were going to church online, right? They were pulling up the live stream of their church on the internet, and they were watching it online.

And some churches were even talking about doing communion together on the internet. You can't do that. That is not how communion is done in the church. We come together for communion. You don't do communion virtually.

You don't do communion individually in your homes. We do it together as the body of Christ, because Christ's body was broken for us, that we might be one body in the Lord. And if we are separated from one another, that's just not the proper practice of how Christ has administered these ordinances.

So in verse 18, for in the first place, when you come together as a church, the first thing here, we come together as a church. Now, of course, Paul is confronting the Corinthians here, because I hear that divisions exist among you, and in part, I believe it.

So the contrast to this should be for us, that when we come together, we should be unified. There should not be any divisions among us. There should not be factions, but we are one body in Christ Jesus.

We are one in the Lord. So again, Paul says in the first place, when you come together as a church, that word in Greek is ekklesia, which means an assembly. It is a called out group of people. We've been called out from the world and assembled together under a banner of Christ.

That word itself inherently calls us to assemble. And Paul says, I hear that divisions exist among you, and in part, I believe it. For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you.

Now, that's not Paul saying that a church should be divided. Like, we should identify some divisions that are going on in the church there. That way, we can know who the genuine Christians are and who those are that are causing these divisions.

And therefore, a healthy church is going to involve some factions, so that we know who's genuine. That's not what Paul is saying. Rather, this is in fulfillment of exactly what Christ said would happen, what he warned his disciples about.

In Matthew 18, 7, woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks, for it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come. Nevertheless, woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes. Some translations read sin.

Woe to the world because of its sin. It is inevitable that sin comes. Nevertheless, woe to that man through whom the sin comes. Now, this statement here about factions, the word factions in verse 19, can also be understood as heresies.

It is contrary to the gospel and the teaching of Christ. And it causes division in the church rather than unity. So this separation is something that has happened as a result of some kind of a doctrinal error or a false teaching.

As we read in 1 Timothy 6, 3, if anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words those of our Lord Jesus Christ and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited, understanding nothing but having a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words out of which arise envy, strife, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth.

So if you're leaving what is taught by Christ and you're teaching other things, you're introducing heresies. You're introducing factions into the church. Once again, we cannot turn to the world's sociology, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, even the world's theology.

Like the world does theology. Theology is not inherently Christian. Theology can be heretical, but we can't turn to the world's ideas on these things and bring them into the church thinking that it's going to solve the church's problems and that we'll be unified, we'll be more unified together if we can just utilize some of the world's ideas.

No, that's exactly how to break people apart. That's exactly what will destroy a church because you brought the world into it. The world doesn't come into the church. The church is to go into the world, shining the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We show Christ and the teachings of Christ to the world. We don't bring the world's teachings into the church thinking that it's going to fix whatever human problems we have. The human problems that continue to plague a church, you know, as we're working out our sin issues, as we're growing in sanctification, these things can only be solved by the gospel, by the teaching of Jesus Christ.

Anything else is going to cause factions and divisions, and that's what we see going on in the church. So, again, Jesus warned that this would come, that there are people who will come in and attempt to divide the body of Christ, but woe to the person that brings those kinds of factions into the church.

These things must happen. Christ said they would, but woe to that person who brings them. Those who are genuine in the Lord, who know the truth, who truly know Christ and are growing in sanctification with him, love the church and are building it up to the glory of Christ, those people will be revealed when these factions come into the church.

You will know who's genuine and who is against Christ and his church whenever those kinds of episodes arise. You know, Paul says this also to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, where he says that a time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and they'll wander away from the truth on into myths.

These things are said to come. Why do we see so many false teachers in the church today? Why do Christians go after so many, many lies? Because God said it would happen, but we must continue to cling to the truth.

We reveal ourselves as genuine when we persevere in the truth in the midst of those heretical factions that attempt to divide believers. There must be factions among you, Paul says. It was said that factions would come in among you so that those who are approved may become evident among you, and this is another one of those issues attempting to break up the church when it comes to the proper practice of the Lord's table.

May we be found to be genuine disciples of Jesus Christ, obeying his command in what he has said about the proper practice of these ordinances when we come together for communion. We desire to learn more about this as we continue this lesson in 1 Corinthians 11 tomorrow.

Heavenly Father, thank you for what we've read here, and may it convict our hearts. May we examine our ways, test ourselves, and see that we are true in holding fast to what is right in the faith. Whatever way is in us that is not according to your word, may we recognize what's wrong with it.

May we remove it. May those who are genuine be revealed, and we continue to build one another up in this faith. Not tearing each other down, not causing division, but coming together in Christ who unifies us.

It is in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt .com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.

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