WWUTT 1577 Eating and Drinking Judgment on Yourself (1 Corinthians 11:28-30)

The Lord's Table and the Meaning of Communion

Whenever we partake in communion, in a right and a worthy manner, we proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes. But whoever takes of communion in an unworthy manner is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of Christ that men and women of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of 1 Corinthians 11, Paul's rebuke of the church in Corinth because of their misuse of the Lord's table. I'm going to begin reading in verse 23. We'll go through verse 34 out of the Legacy Standard Bible.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. 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 the 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. Yesterday we stopped at verse 27 where Paul says,. 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.

Jesus said when he passed the communion elements to his disciples, he said, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. And we read in Hebrews 9 .22,. Indeed under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

So we have the forgiveness of sins by the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and that forgiveness is given to us when we put our faith, our trust in the Lord Christ, who died as an atoning sacrifice for sins and rose again from the grave, so that whoever believes in him will not perish under the judgment of God that is coming against all the ungodliness and the unrighteousness of men.

But rather through faith in Christ, we have received his righteousness. We're forgiven our sins and clothed in his righteousness, so that when God looks at us, he sees not the sinner that is deserving of his wrath, but a forgiven saint who receives his love and his mercy and his grace.

When a person is living in sinfulness, when they are living in such a way that would separate them from the body of Christ, or in the case of the Corinthians here, even in their conduct there at the Lord's table was factious.

They were treating one another in such a way that did not demonstrate the unity that we have in Christ. You could have seen the class separation among the Corinthians there at the Lord's table. The rich are over here, the poor are over there.

And so because of these factions, the very manner in which they were partaking of the Lord's table was a kind of heresy. Even to the point that some were getting sick and dying, Paul says in this particular section, because they were misusing the Lord's table.

Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup in an unworthy manner is guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. Now, this is contrasting the previous statement in verse 26, where Paul said, as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.

Proclaiming his death in the sense that I've been buried with Christ in my sins and raised again to new life. That's what I testify in my life. One who walks in the grace of God, who flees from the passions of the flesh, from sexual immorality, from the schemes of Satan and clings to God and walks in the way of Christ.

As it says in 1 John 2 verse 5, whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

So we show that we are in Christ. We proclaim his death and his resurrection when we walk in the way in which Jesus walked. But if we are not walking in the righteousness of Christ, if we're still walking in the sinful passions of our flesh, we do not proclaim the death of the Lord, rather we're guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.

Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner is guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. We are not, we're demonstrating that we're not among those for whom Christ died.

We are among those who put the Lord to death. So be right in your heart, in your spirit, in your conduct, in your manner and way of life when you come to the Lord's table. Verse 28, a man must test himself and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

Now there's nothing prescribed here that says you have to have gone a certain amount of time without committing a sin. If you've committed sin in the last 24 to 48 hours or something like that, well then you can't partake of the Lord's table because if you were to do that, God would surely put you to death.

You're partaking in the Lord's table in an unworthy manner. Nothing in scripture says that exactly. So this is a discernment issue. This is going to be you examining yourself, testing yourself. Now Paul says this to the Corinthians at the end of his next letter.

In 2nd Corinthians chapter 13, he's concluding the letter by saying, test yourselves, examine yourselves to see if you are truly in the faith unless you fail to pass the test. So he is urging a self-testing in 1st Corinthians and even in 2nd Corinthians.

Now I believe that there is a testing that happens even within the body, most assuredly, for Paul has already rebuked this body for not calling one another to account. There are people in their midst who are sinning and they know they're sinning and they're not doing anything about that sin, in which case the whole church is guilty.

So you know that that person is in sin, but you haven't been confronting that brother or sister in the Lord. There are those in your midst even who are showing themselves not to be among the brethren or they call themselves brethren.

But as Paul said in chapter 5 verse 11, do not associate with any so-called brother if he is a sexually immoral person or greedy or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or a swindler, not even to eat with such a one.

And again, this most directly applies to the Lord's table. You cannot come to the Lord's table with such a person who is guilty of these sins, who is living in these sins and will not repent of them. He says in verse 13 of chapter 5, those who are outside the church, God will judge.

Remove the wicked man from among yourselves. Now if that person is disciplined, and again, the church in Corinth was not practicing church discipline. That was part of what Paul was rebuking them for.

If that person is disciplined and removed from the body, then they should be convicted over that. They recognize their sin, that it separates them even from the body of Christ, that they're not united in Christ because they're still going after their sin, the passion of their flesh.

So they recognize the severity of what it is that they have done that separates them from God so that they would repent. And in their repentance, being restored to the body of Christ, the church recognizes this person is genuinely repentant.

They're restored back to the body and the grace of God is demonstrated. That's how you will know that such a person who's living in these sins is truly a Christian. If after being confronted, if after being disciplined, they repent of those sins and come back to the path of righteousness.

But in the meantime, a person who is in this kind of conduct and they will not repent of this sin, they're supposed to be guarded from the table. This is a discipline or a practice that's referred to as fencing the table.

We prevent a person from coming to the Lord's table knowing that in their sin they are putting themselves in danger, mishandling, misusing the Lord's table or mishandling the body and the blood, the cup and the bread.

There are very few churches out there practicing this discipline of guarding the table. The last thing I read on this was several years ago that said less than 8 of churches in the US practice what they would call church discipline.

And it's probably lower than that now, because like I said, that article was years back. So less than 8%. How many churches, therefore, are not disciplining their members and they probably don't even have members because the church probably doesn't have regenerate membership.

They don't practice a system or a form of membership. So how many churches out there are serving the Lord's table in an unworthy manner and putting people in danger who are living in sin? And they come to that table and misuse, mishandle the Lord's body and the Lord's cup rather than proclaiming the death of the Lord when they practice communion.

They are guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord when they practice communion. Every church that I've pastored, that I've been a part of, practiced fencing the table or guarding the table. Now, it was usually the sort of a thing where, well, let me put it this way.

There was never a time where while we're in the middle of communion, I had to stand in front of somebody and saying, no, I'm not going to let you partake of this table. I know you're living in sin, and so I'm not going to let you take of these elements.

I've never done that. What I have done, though, is on those Sundays where we're going to be practicing communion. If somebody comes in that I've not seen in a long time, I might take them aside and I'll say, hey, brother or sister, we're going to be doing the Lord's table today.

I want you to not partake until we have the chance to talk because I'm concerned about where that person is in their walk. Or another occasion that's happened is somebody comes in and I know that they have been living in sin, and I will take them aside and say, I don't want you to partake in communion today.

Let's talk. I haven't seen you in a while. I've heard some things. We need to talk about this first before you take of the Lord's table. And there's been occasions in which a person was appreciative of that, and there's been other occasions where they got really mad and they just walked out.

But we've always practiced some form of fencing the table. And usually in those conversations, I have a witness with me. So it's not just me saying to another person, but another elder or a deacon might accompany me when I'm confronting that person and asking them not to partake of the table.

As we've been going through First Corinthians here, when we were talking about confronting adultery and sexual immorality in First Corinthians five and six, practicing church discipline there, I had mentioned that there was an elder in my previous church who was guilty of adultery and that we had to discipline him.

His wife was even opposed to the discipline process, and it eventually led to their excommunication. The only time I've ever had to do that. So he not only was unqualified as an elder and was removed and was put under church discipline, but he and his wife both resisted that process and had to be excommunicated from the church.

One of the things that they were contending against was because I was not allowing him to partake of the Lord's table. Now at that time, I was allowing the wife. She could still partake of the Lord's table, but he could not because he had not yet demonstrated a genuine remorse over the sin that he had committed, which was not just against himself and against his wife.

It was against the whole church on a Sunday that he would have been in adultery. He stood at the Lord's table and served it to the church. We found this out later. We didn't know it at the time. He was in adultery at that time, and he was serving the Lord's table to the church.

So he had sinned against himself, against his wife, his family, and against the church. He was told that unless you can repent and say to the church exactly what you've done, you're not going to be allowed to take of the Lord's table.

So he was still attending church, and he was sitting in church, but he could not partake of the Lord's table. Now going back to that episode where I was talking about this in 1 Corinthians 5, I mentioned that what should have happened was he should have been removed from the church altogether, and I regret that that wasn't what happened in that process.

He was excommunicated later, but it should have happened earlier than it did. Anyway, so one of the things that instead of going through a process of repentance, he went on some kind of revenge path, and he wanted to get me fired, tried to get people recruited to his side to get me fired.

I'm grateful that nobody was led astray by the lies that he and his wife told, but one of the things that they became so enraged over was because I would not let him take of the Lord's table. They were trying to put on this appearance of everything being normal, and the fact that they could not take of the Lord's table made it look to the rest of the church that something was wrong.

And so that made them really mad, really upset that they couldn't just hide everything and make everything look normal. But I was actually putting them through a process of, no, you have to confess what you have done, and you have to repent.

And they took it as something like I was doing something devious. I loved this couple. I did not want to put them in danger by them coming to the Lord's table and partaking of these elements in an unworthy manner, and therefore becoming guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.

The husband had a whole lot of anger that he had anger toward his wife. He had anger toward me and a bunch of other people as well, seemed to want to blame everyone else but himself for what it was that he had done.

And he ended up having a lot of psychological problems. And there was at one point where I had a conversation with him and said, now, again, this was a man who used to be an elder. He was he was an elder in our church.

And you hold elders to a much higher standard, as it says in James 3 .1. Not many of you should aspire to become teachers, my brothers, because you know that teachers will be judged with greater strictness.

And I was I was sitting and having a conversation with him one time, and I was talking with him about the the problems, the difficulties that he was having in his mind. Some of the things that he was wrestling with, the struggles that he had, the depression that he was in.

And I said to him, do you not understand that this this that you're wrestling with in your mind and in your heart, this is a result of the fact that you have stood at the Lord's table and partaken of these elements in an unworthy manner and have served these elements to the church while you were in adultery.

You don't see the connection between the the depression that you are experiencing and the sin that you have committed. And he was outraged that I would even declare such a thing, kept saying over and over again, I'm getting counseling, I'm getting help.

Why is that not enough? But again, he was trying to throw all of his sins on some sort of psychological issue rather than admitting the man committed adultery. And he served the Lord's table while he was in adultery, and as long as he continued down that path, the Lord was not granting him repentance and rather this this war continued in his mind and in his heart that was that was driving him crazy and was causing him to lash out at other people and ruin the lives of others that were around him.

It was devastating, was absolutely heartbreaking to watch all of this take place. But I believed it was a judgment of God upon that man because he had stood at the Lord's table and served it while he was an elder.

In an adulterous relationship, I do believe that the Lord still acts with this kind of judgment, even in our present day, whoever eats the bread and 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, so we must self-examine, we must test ourselves, we must judge ourselves before we come to the Lord's table, if we misuse those elements there at the Lord's table, if we come and we eat of the bread or drink of the cup in an unworthy manner, if we come with divisiveness in our hearts against other members of the body, then we eat and drink judgment on ourselves.

So judge yourself first that you would not be judged. When you eat of the bread and drink of the cup. Now, here at our church, at First Baptist Lyndale, to encourage our members towards self-examination, this is just, you know, an idea, it's something that we do, but the bulletin the Sunday before we have communion, there's an insert in the bulletin telling the congregation we're going to we're going to have communion next week.

And here's some things to think about. Here's how to prepare yourself for when we come to this table next week. And again, this is this is out of care for our members. It's out of love that we would call the people of God to examine themselves, to judge themselves so that they would not be judged.

So there's a week right there. You have been told the Lord's table is going to be next week. Spend the week examining yourself, confessing yourself before the Lord if you need to repenting of sin. And then coming to the table together on that Sunday, we gather together as a church, delighting to take of the bread and drink of the cup, the body that was broken for us, the blood that was spilled for the forgiveness of sins, because we know that it is in these things.

We've not only been forgiven, but we've been unified in Christ. We are this body unified in Christ. The encouragement here by the Apostle Paul in First Corinthians 11 is that you come to the table. You're not looking for a reason to not partake of the bread or of the cup, but rather you should be.

You should come to the table and partake of communion. It is a delight. We rejoice to do communion together as a church. We shouldn't be looking for reasons to be like, you know, I just I don't feel right in my spirit today, so I'm not going to partake of the cup.

You've got plenty of time to be examining that way in your heart so that you may come and that you partake in a right way. Now, some people believe that communion should be rare, like we do it once a quarter or once a year.

The Presbyterian isn't that the Presbyterian Church of Scotland? It's only once a year that they have communion. Then there are others that do it once a month, and some churches even do it every single week, practicing communion every single Sunday.

But there are some that believe, no, we shouldn't do it every single Sunday because, you know, they don't want to come to the Lord's table, so they wish it would be a little bit more rare than that. There's no right or wrong answer here.

If a church does it every Sunday, praise God. If they don't do it every Sunday, do that unto the Lord. But rejoice in the Lord when you do it. Don't be looking for reasons to not come to the table this Sunday.

If your church is having communion, examine your heart, test yourself according to what the scripture says. Desire to walk in holiness after Christ and then in the name of Christ coming together at his table where he is present with his body, with his church, that we may remember the body that was broken for us, the blood that was spilled for the forgiveness of sins and continue in these things until the day of the Lord, when we will drink of the eternal vine forever with God in glory and at the wedding feast of the Lamb.

Amen. We'll stop there. We'll pick up and finish First Corinthians 11 tomorrow. Heavenly Father, forgive us our sins. Forgive us our pride and thinking we are much better than we really are. May we regularly humble ourselves before you, confessing our sins, acknowledging that we need a savior today.

We need this savior every moment of our lives, that Christ would cleanse us of all unrighteousness and clothe us in his righteousness, that we may walk holy and blameless before you. Lead us in paths of righteousness for your name's sake.

Grow us and sanctify us until we are ultimately glorified with you in your presence. As we partake of the Lord's table now, may it be something that not only gives us a taste of what was done for us in the past, but the sanctification the Lord is giving us in the present and the promise that we have of being in the presence of God forever in glory.

And all of these things we rejoice when we partake of this table. May we do so in a right and a worthy manner in worship unto the Lord. And we help one another to do this in a right manner as well. It's in Jesus name we pray.

Amen.

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