Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. The main subject of this sermon is the Lord’s Supper.
sermon transcript
Part of Our Inheritance Stipend…. But the Checks Are Uncashed
Some time ago, I was reading about a Major League baseball player who was something of a flake, weird guy, strange in his thinking, but a tremendous hitter, and they’ll pay good money for good hitters. And so, this guy had a contract paying him over 150 million dollars over a number of years to hit a baseball. At the end of the season, an orderly was cleaning out his locker and found at the bottom of his locker, multiple uncashed paychecks, tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars, just in the bottom of the locker, never cashed. He was doing fine financially, don’t worry about him. All of his needs were met, but there were these checks uncashed. What a weirdo. [chuckle] Except that I’ve done it once, actually, thank God for our financial secretary, found one that I hadn’t cashed and she re-cut the check. Praise God for Clarissa Bacon. [laughter] So, how weird is that? Beware, lest you be exposed as a hypocrite!
Scripture talks about the Holy Spirit as a deposit, a down payment guaranteeing our full inheritance. And it tells us that through the Spirit we are ministered some foretaste of heaven. Some, if you could put it this way, some checks out of a trust fund that’s been set up until we come into our full inheritance in Heaven, and that these checks, so to speak, come to us by the ministry of the Word, by the power of the Spirit, and they give us a foretaste of heavenly life that is vital to our spiritual health. And by means of this, we are filled with hope and energy and joy and power in the Christian life, and we are able to serve Him, we’re able, as we were just talking in Bible For Life, we’re supposed to live so filled with hope that non-Christians ask us for a reason of the hope that we have. We’re supposed to be so radiantly filled with hope that it’s just so unnatural. It’s supernatural.
And I think some of the Lord’s checks are going uncashed when it comes to the Lord’s Supper. I feel that in the evangelical world, we do not receive the full benefit of the Lord’s Supper that we should. And I’m praising God that here at FBC, we do take the Lord’s Supper seriously, I feel very refreshed. I come expecting to be blessed by the Spirit every time, and it never fails, and I think many of you do as well. But it could be that even some of you are leaving some of your checks uncashed, because you haven’t really looked at 1 Corinthians 11, you haven’t looked at the Scripture, you haven’t attended to this topic, and therefore you underestimate the Lord’s Supper and come, not really expecting much, except that you know you’re gonna get let out of church late a little bit, which may not happen this week, I don’t know, maybe, maybe not, doesn’t matter. What would you do with the extra 11 minutes anyway dear friends?
But the fact of the matter is that because you don’t come with that expectant heart, because you haven’t attended throughout the week to say, “Hey, the Lord’s Supper is coming up,” you’ve underestimated and you don’t receive the full benefit. You may receive some benefits, you don’t have the full benefit. And I think there are other churches in the evangelical world that’s even worse. This problem is even worse. Some churches, some mega churches I was reading about, have the Lord’s Supper quarterly on Sunday evening. Now, you just must know as a pastor, you’re only gonna get a percentage of your people back on Sunday evening, and to do it quarterly, I think you can go years in that church as a member in good standing, I think, I don’t know, maybe they address it in their by-laws and never partake in the Lord’s Supper. Those checks are going uncashed.
There are some advantages that could be flowing into their lives, and it’s because the leadership of that church has minimized, has underestimated, the Lord’s Supper. Why is that? Well, there’s sadly a long history from the reformation on, of squabbling and fighting over the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper among people who claim to be Christians. Some people that teach a doctrine called “real presence”, that the actual incarnation, the incarnate Lord is present in some mysterious way, in the actual bread and the wine or the juice that it becomes in some way the actual body of Christ, or as the Lutherans would put it, he is present in, with, by and under the actual elements of the… in the doctrine of “real presence”. Others, following the Reformed churches in Switzerland, Ulrich Zwingli said, “No, it’s just a memorial,” sometimes even add an adjective like a “bare” memorial.
And if you run along that road long enough after a while, you’re gonna have a quarterly in the evening, because it really isn’t worth much in that view. And it’s interesting, as we come to 1 Corinthians 11, we find that the Lord’s Supper has always had controversy and misunderstanding and issues surrounding it, from the very beginning of church history. So, Satan seeks to rob us of our down payment checks. He doesn’t want us to have that full joy and ministry that the Lord’s Supper could be giving to us if we just came to it with understanding and with faith. And so, we come to 1 Corinthians 11 and I’m seeking to give a careful exposition of this text, to strengthen your faith, so that you may understand, and so that from this point on, again and again, the Lord’s Supper may be just an avenue of blessing, a river of blessing to you as it should be. And so, in Verses 17-22, we see Paul addressing these abuses of the Lord’s Supper, the Lord’s Supper was being abused in Corinth.
The Lord’s Supper Abused in Corinth (vs. 17-22)
Look at Verses 17 and following, in the following directives. He said, “I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent, I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat. For as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else, one remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes 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 praise you for this? Certainly not.” So clearly, big problems in the observance of the Lord’s Supper at Corinth. Strong rebukes. He says, “I have no praise for you in this area,” so that’s a strong rebuke. He says, “When you gather together, your meetings actually are doing more harm than good.” That’s another very, very strong rebuke.
And he speaks of divisions in the church. If you know anything about 1 Corinthians, you know that that is one of the central problems they were facing. I follow Apollos, I follow Paul. There was just factionalism and different things. I follow Jesus. Those are my favorite people, the Jesus people. You can say, Well, aren’t they… Yeah, it’s when you say, I’m following Jesus and you’re not, that’s when there are problems. I don’t know, but I guess that that was some of what was going on. So there are these factions, these divisions, he says in Verse 9, “No doubt there have to be differences or divisions among you to show which if you have God’s approval.” Hard verse to interpret. Some people think he’s speaking plainly and saying, “There are reasonable distinctions in the body of Christ.” I actually don’t think that’s what’s going on there. Paul frequently speaks sarcastically to the Corinthians, he does. In 1 Corinthians Chapter 4, he says, “Already, you have become rich. Already, you’ve become kings. You’ve become kings and that without us. I wish you really had become kings.”
Okay, so you don’t think they’ve become kings. No. Why did you say it? For effect. He’s trying to shock them, and so he’s saying, “Yeah, no doubt, there had to be these kinda divisions to show, which one of you God approves of, and he doesn’t improve any of the others.” Divisions, factions, and the divisions in the church were coming down to roost when it came time for the Lord’s Supper. And there were selfish practices that he’s rebuking here. For example, eating without waiting for anyone else, people just kinda came and ate right away, saying, “I’m all that matters, as long as I get mine, that’s all it really matters,” without having any sensitivity of the body of Christ. And so, he really works on unity a lot of times with the Lord’s Supper, one-loaf-for-all eating. At the end, he says, “Wait for each other.” So “we all eat together” is a sense of unity. And along with that, allowing poor members to get completely shut out, it became kind of hierarchical by economic prosperity.
You know, the wealthy ones were getting advantaged and the others were not, and so, it was… There were divisions in that regard. It was a hierarchy based on material wealth and power, and even worse, the ultimate disgrace, drunkenness. They were drinking so much at the Lord’s Supper, they were actually getting drunk. It’s really shameful, if you think about it, it’s really sad, and it’s really disgusting. And in some way, they were despising the church of God, they were looking down on the church, they were underestimating the church. They didn’t see the church rightly. The church, he says in another place, is the pillar and the foundation of the truth to a lost and watching the world. I like that statement, he says, “Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in?” [chuckle] It’s not what we’re doing here at the church.
By the way, I find that an interesting statement, I don’t know if I should go too far with it, but there’s a lot of emphasis placed on there not being church buildings back then, and house churches… There clearly were house churches. This implies that maybe there was a place that they used to meet. And so, they would come there when they came there, he said, “Look, don’t you have homes?” The home is where you’re supposed to take care of those needs. When we come here, there’s a different thing. I’m not gonna push the point too far. But at any rate, the church is the assembly of the people of God, and they were despising it by how they were behaving. And that’s a big problem. And so, he gives them this rebuke in Verse 22, “What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not.”Well, what’s the remedy? Well, the remedy to these excesses, the remedy to any problem in the Christian life is sound instruction pressed into the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, bringing about repentance and a change of life.
But without the sound instruction, there cannot be the repentance and the change of life. We won’t know an accurate diagnosis of our problem. We have to have that doctrine. And so, Paul gives them instructions, and at the end of this section, and when I come, I’ll have further instructions for you, it’s doctrine, he wants to give them solid doctrine. Now, I praise God again at FBC, I fully expect when we come for the Lord’s Supper, that it’s going to be a time of blessing. I don’t see these kinds of excesses and these kinds of sins and divisions here in our church. I’m not preaching this sermon now, because I say that FBC has the exact same kinds of problems. Not at all. But my desire is that through the rightly dividing the Word through teaching and preaching and through the ministry of the Spirit, our experiences with the Lord’s Supper will be greatly enhanced. That we’ll have an intense experience of the living God through the ordinance without going off into false doctrine. And so, we have to have this right instruction.
The Lord’s Supper Instituted by Christ (vs. 23-25)
And so, in Verses 23-25, he begins to give that instruction. “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you. The Lord Jesus, on the night 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, after supper, he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.'” So this doctrinal section begins with the word “for”, links it back. He says, “Shall I praise you? No. I’m not gonna praise you for”, etcetera. The reason I’m not gonna praise you is, I wanna set you straight on how you should think, and he goes back to the history of what actually happened, the institution of the Lord’s Supper. “What I received from the Lord, that’s what I passed on to you.” This is the apostolic ministry where the apostle takes directly from Jesus and then makes it known to the church, “what I received from the Lord.”
Now, Paul was no eyewitness of the Last Supper. He wasn’t converted yet at that point, as you know. He says, he was as one untimely born. And so, what he was doing that night, he probably was in Jerusalem, maybe at the home of Gamaliel, his mentor, or maybe with the Synagogue, members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen. He was observing the Passover, not thinking a lot perhaps about Jesus at that point, although he probably was aware of the triumphal entry. I don’t know what was going on in Saul’s life, I just know he wasn’t converted and he wasn’t an eyewitness of the Last Supper. And neither were any of these Corinthian Christians, they weren’t either, and neither are any of us. But Paul is an apostle and then the others who were the source of the information from Matthew, Mark, and Luke – they were eye witnesses, and they received from the Lord this thing that he did. Paul as an apostle, received this doctrine directly from heaven, directly from Christ.
As we’ll talk about Easter Sunday, 1 Corinthians 15, the gospel, he said, “For what I received, I also passed on to you, the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. “So what I received, I passed on to you.” He said, I didn’t make this up. The Lord’s Supper wasn’t something that man made up. It wasn’t something that we thought would be a good idea. As he says of the Gospel in Galatians 1, “I want you to know, brothers, that the Gospel I preach is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” So, he passed on these things he received it from the Lord, “I passed them on to you.” He’s already instructed them, they were doing the Lord’s Supper, but they had gotten into some problems.
So “what I received, then I passed on to you”, and now I’m trying to remind you of what it was. And so, also from us, if we wanna have a right understanding of the Lord’s Supper, we have to go back to the apostolic teaching. We have to go back to the Scriptures and try to understand what the Lord intended in giving us this Last Supper. And then he immediately gets into the timing of the Last Supper, “For what I received from the Lord, I also passed on to you, the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed.” So he brings us, in our minds, back to that night, the last night that Jesus was alive before he was betrayed, before he was killed, that Passover meal that he ate with His disciples, with His apostles in the upper room. You remember, and you’ve read about it, back to that night. And he’s identifying it this way, “the night he was betrayed.” Actually the Greek word for “betrayed” here is the same word that’s frequently translated “delivered, delivered over,” that kind of thing. And so, it’s a powerful meditation to consider: who delivered Jesus over to death?
And let’s go right to the heart of the matter: it was God the Father who delivered His Son for us. It’s very powerful. Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also along with Him graciously give us all things?” So God the Father surrendered or delivered Jesus over to death for us. It’s the same word. And then again in Romans 4:25, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” This is the Gospel that Jesus was delivered over to death. But most of the translation, all of them, I don’t actually know any translation that doesn’t go with betrayal here, on the night that he was betrayed, and this word is translated sometimes betrayed, and I think that’s what Paul had in mind. So it’s speaking really of His betrayal by Judas Iscariot, one of the 12. Judas betrayed Him to His enemies, on the night he was betrayed. And so, Judas was one of the 12, he was one of Jesus’ inner circle, he was in one of the Psalms prophetically, he was his friend, his close friend, whom he trusted.
Now, don’t misunderstand about Jesus, he always knew who Judas was, it’s not that. But he had given him a position of importance, he had entrusted some things to him, like the money bag, for example, and certain aspects of ministry, and he was in that circle of friends. And so, that Psalm, Psalm 41, which is quoted in John 13:18, to fulfill the Scripture, “He who shares my bread has lifted up his heel against me.” There’s a strong sense of betrayal, you can’t betray a stranger. And so, there’s got to be relationship, that trust, that friendship, in order for there to be betrayal, and there was. And I just meditate on this, this issue of betrayal, and I think about it, not everyone who sits at the table with Jesus is a true believer in him. Not everyone who partakes in the Lord’s Supper is going to heaven. Not everyone has a genuine faith in Jesus Christ. And the people that don’t, they’re just in many ways indistinguishable from those that do. God knows the difference. But Judas… I mean, the other 11 didn’t know he was the one. They didn’t know who it was. But it was in receiving that actual piece of bread that Jesus dipped into the dish, it was by taking that he accepted the role of betrayer. Satan entered into him. It was betrayal, dear friends. There’s a strong sense of betrayal.
So, as a result of this theme that I’m opening up for us, one of the big issues when it comes to the Lord’s Supper is the theme of self-examination. Someone ought to examine himself. We should examine ourselves when we come to the Lord’s Supper. We’ll get more to that later on, but because of this issue of betrayal. So this is when it happened, the night he was betrayed, a certain specific night in history. Well, what did he do? Well, he took bread in his hands and he gave thanks for the bread, and he broke the bread, and he gave the bread to them all. And then he established the significance of these actions. “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And then in the same way, after the supper, he then took the cup, and he made a similar statement. He said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.” So we have a simple command, “Do this.
Do you see, by the way, the power of the Holy Spirit? The church has done this now for 2000 years, the church has done this. The Holy Spirit would not let this thing fall by the wayside. The Spirit does his work. Now, we don’t always rightly understand it. We don’t always get it right. We’re always messed up, but we’re doing it. But this was a command given by the Lord to do it. Now, what is the theological significance of this? This is clearly meant to be a significant thing. I wanna bring out four themes just right from the text here, there are many others we could get. The first four doctrinal themes, the first is the theme of thanksgiving. He took the bread and he gave thanks. He gave thanks. The Greek word for give thanks, eucharisteo, from which we get Eucharist, it just means to give thanks. And so we come to the table, we should, filled with thanksgiving. It is very sweetly others-centered to be a thankful man or woman. Amen? To just live your life filled with thankfulness, it’s a happy occasion. When you come and you’re able to say to God, “Thank you. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for all that you’ve done for me. Thank you for sending your only begotten Son for me. Thank you. And thank you for the good things that are yet to come,” just to be filled with thankfulness.
Paul can’t write an epistle without thanking God for the salvation of the people he’s writing to, whether the Romans or the Corinthians. He’s just thankful to God, always. My favorite verse on thankfulness, in that regard, Romans 6:17. I love that verse. “Thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed that form of teaching to which you were entrusted.” I preached a whole sermon, the sermon title is… I love that title. It’s one of my favorite titles. “Thank God, You Obeyed.” That will blow your theological circuits. You’d be thinking about that the rest of your life, and you’ll never figure it out. Thank God, you obeyed the gospel. To God be the glory, that you’re not sitting here as some atheist, some unbeliever, you’re sitting here as a believer in Jesus. You obeyed the gospel. Thank him for it, ’cause he should get the credit. And not only that, but thank God your brothers and sisters obeyed too. Amen? ‘Cause Paul’s doing that in Romans 6:17, “I thank God that you obeyed.” So thankfulness.
Secondly, the necessity of the incarnation. Very physical here. He took bread in his hands, and he broke it. I had the picture in my mind of little tiny bread crumbs falling as he breaks it. It’s very physical. When I was an altar boy in the Roman Catholic Church, I was supposed to hold this polished brass patent kind of plate under the mouths of people so that if any crumbs would fall they would be caught. It was a way that they thought, I think, of giving reverence to what was going on there. But I’m just saying on the night of the first… I think there were crumbs that fell down on the table. I just think it was physical, it just happened. He had hands, there was a physical bread, and all of this points to the physicality of our salvation. We were saved by a body. We were saved by a dead body. You see what I’m saying? And we have to believe in the incarnation to believe the gospel. Colossians 1:22, “But now he, God, has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation.” Trace it all back, because of the body, that’s what you have. Because of the body of Jesus, given over to death, you are free from sin.
The physical nature of our salvation, physical. Jesus was really human, didn’t merely appear to be human. It was foundation, the foundation of the gospel the apostles preached. 1 John 1:1, he says, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim to you concerning the word of life.” But this does not mean I espouse a doctrine of real presence, still less of transubstantiation. I don’t think that the words, “This is my body” or, “This is my blood,” mean that we as Christians have to believe in real presence, that that’s literally the body or literally the blood, or that if I had priestly skills laid on me by the archbishop that I would be able to transubstantiate it into such. I don’t believe in that. I don’t think it’s required. And I actually think it’s not what the Bible teaches, that the incarnation was centered on Jesus’ body. His hands were touching bread that night, not his body that night. And so those words themselves would have been incomprehensible to the apostles that night. Real presence would have meant nothing. Now, I know that there are many that believe it. I don’t wanna get into that debate, I just don’t think that’s what it means.
Thirdly, doctrinal theme, the necessity of substitutionary atonement. He said, “This is my body, which is for you.” Do you see that? “This is my body, which is for you.” I took on a body for you, I am going to lay down my body for your sake. Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” He gave himself in my place, he stood in my place. As the hymn put it, “In my place, condemned, he stood.” Took our place. So this is my body, which is given for you. Isaiah 53, “He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Substitutionary atonement. Jesus took on a body, and that body was nailed to the cross in our place. And that if we trust in him, if we believe in him, the transfer of guilt moves from us to him, and he is our savior by his physical body. This atonement is especially spoken of as having been done in his blood. There’s a focus on His blood, the blood atonement, through faith in his blood. So “without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.” Hebrews 9:22.
And so that brings me to the fourth, final theme I wanna bring out doctrinally, the establishment of a new covenant in his blood. A new covenant was established. The old covenant was in the blood of bulls and goats, animals. It never took away any sin, symbolic only, covered that in Hebrews. But now there is this new covenant, and it was also established in blood, once for all time, never to be repeated. That’s part of the problem with the Mass, is the repetition of the sacrifice given again and again. It’s not needed. Once for all offered in his blood. And through that, we have a new covenant. And we talked in Hebrews 8 about the elements of the new covenant. “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time,” declares the Lord. “I’ll put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts.” That’s a transformed nature; heart of stone removed, the heart of flesh given; regeneration. “I will be their God and they will be my people.” That’s adoption through faith in Jesus. “No longer will the man teach his neighbor, a man, his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” perfect knowledge. “Now, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God.” We’ll have intimate knowledge. “For I’ll forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more. Complete forgiveness of sins, it’s always been by this eternal covenant, the blood of Jesus. And this reminds us of all of that. And so the theology of the Lord’s Supper: It’s a meal of thanksgiving. It’s a meal focused on the incarnation, not in any way believing in real presence or transubstantiation, but remembering that Jesus took on a body for us and that it was necessary for our salvation. Substitutionary atonement, that’s why the body was given, bringing about a new covenant in his blood.
The First Purpose: Proclamation for Remembrance (v. 26)
All right, so why do we do it? Well, the first purpose that Paul mentions is proclamation for remembrance. Look at verse 26. “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” It also says, “This is my body, which is for you, do this in remembrance of me. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.” So we come to this issue of remembrance. In a way, it’s astonishing that we would need to be reminded of Jesus. Isn’t that a bit strange? It’s like, “Oh yeah, Jesus.” But you know, how many of us, being honest, don’t have “Oh yeah, Jesus” moments every day? It’s really a tragedy of the flesh that we are just constantly forgetting the things that God wanted us to remember. He said it would happen to the Jews when they entered the Promised Land. “When you enter this land,” Deuteronomy 8, “Be careful that you don’t forget all that God has commanded you and all that he’s done in view of you.” When you get in that Promised Land, and you start eating all of those crops you didn’t plant, you live in fine houses you didn’t build, and you drink from grapes you didn’t plant, when all of that happens your hearts are gonna become proud and you’ll forget me.
Well, the Lord instituted this so that we would not forget him, that we would not forget him, that we would remember what he did, and that it would be intense, that remembrance. And not only would we remember, but we would by doing this, proclaim, proclaim. The word is used 11 times in the Book of Acts for the proclamation of the Gospel. So, in some way, the death of Jesus is being proclaimed by this. We are proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes. So we’re proclaiming a past history and a future reality that we’re looking forward to by faith, filled with hope, the second coming of Christ. And so we are proclaiming the Lord’s death, and we’re gonna keep doing it until he comes, looking ahead. So this proclamation looks backward, and it looks forward, the past and the future. That’s the first purpose.
The Second Purpose: Self-Examination in Light of Christ (vs. 27-32)
The second purpose of the Lord’s Supper, the reason we do it, is for self-examination. I already mentioned this, but look at verses 27 through 32. “Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.” “A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.” These are serious words of spiritual warning centered around the Lord’s Supper, very serious. And the press of all of them, all, if we could boil it all down to one thing, it’s “examine yourselves.” That’s what it’s all about. So we proclaim the Lord’s death, but we also examine ourselves. We look inward to see, “How does it stand with me and God?” It says that if we eat or drink without recognizing the body of the Lord, we will eat and drink judgment on ourselves. What does it mean then to recognize the body of the Lord? I don’t think, again, it means real presence, that by looking at the bread, you say, “That’s the body of the Lord.” I think instead, the same word is used in verse 31, same Greek word, if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.
So recognize, truly, Jesus, recognize that he is the only begotten Son of God. That means have a saving faith in Jesus, recognize him, assess it properly by sober judgment, by faith, a serious, weighty, joyful thing. It is for this reason that we believe that only baptized believers in Jesus should partake in the Lord’s Supper. We do not open it to anyone from the community to come and take, but you have to have believed in Jesus, trusted in him as your Lord and Savior, and testified to that by water baptism. Because I think that an unbeliever could only possibly be eating and drinking judgment on themselves, ’cause they cannot recognize the body and blood of Jesus. They’re not believers yet. If they become a believer, as I prayed this morning that some would become believers as a result of listening to this sermon, if that is happening to you, the first thing you need to do by ordinance is water baptism, not the Lord’s Supper. And that way you’re standing in front of the world and saying, “I am a believer in Jesus. I’m a believer in Jesus,” and you’re willing to be baptized, then the Lord’s Supper comes.
I don’t think simply being an unbeliever is the only way, however, to not recognize the body and blood of Jesus. Clearly, these Corinthian people were being disciplined by God because they were eating in an unworthy manner. So remember what they were doing. They were coming, it’s a raucous thing, eating quickly, not looking to anybody else, getting drunk. And as a result of that, God was disciplining them. Pretty soon, in Hebrews 12, we’re gonna talk about the Lord’s discipline. God has power to discipline his children. And here it says the discipline’s linked to the Lord’s Supper. If you don’t see the Lord’s Supper properly, you don’t come with a referential attitude by faith, you’re open to the Lord’s discipline. And that’s why he says, “A number of you are weak.” Think about that, your weakness comes because you haven’t recognized the Lord’s Supper properly. A number of you are sick, you have a sickness in your life. There are some sicknesses that come from sin, they are disciplines of God. And a number of you have fallen asleep, that means they’ve died because they did not recognize properly the Lord’s Supper. It’s very serious, if you think about that. So these are serious words of warning, and there’s a need for faith. So as we come to this, we come by faith.
Remember how Jesus said to the two blind men by the side of the road, “Lord, we want our sight.” He said, “All right, according to your faith, it will be done to you.” So it is with the Lord’s Supper. So it is as you come here, according to your faith, it will be done. If by hearing this sermon, your faith is expanded, it’s stronger, you have a sense of the body and blood of Jesus, according to your faith, it will be done to you. If not, it will be bare memorial, to use that language. Maybe not even that. But if you have a strong, vivid faith through the ministry of the Holy Spirit as he’s moving through this sanctuary even now convicting, strengthening, working in your hearts, then this will be a very powerful and meaningful time. And therefore, this is a time, verse 28, to examine yourselves before you eat and drink. Ask, number one, “Am I truly a Christian? Am I born again, really?” It says in 2 Corinthians 13:5, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.” Test yourselves. It’s not a wrong thing to do. Do that, test yourselves. Don’t you realize that Christ Jesus is in you, unless of course you fail the test? So do you believe that Jesus is God in the flesh and that he died on the cross in your place for sin?
Are you trusting in Christ’s death, in his death alone, for the forgiveness of all of your sins? Not your own righteousness. Do you see evidence of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in your life? Is the Spirit testifying with your spirit regularly that you are a child of God? Does God pour out his love into your heart by the Holy Spirit whom he has given you? Does that love, through the Spirit, extend to other brothers and sisters in Christ? You’re loving the brothers and sisters because they’re Christians. Do you see a principle of spiritual vitality in your life so that you are by the power of the Spirit putting sin to death, the deeds of the body, regularly? I’m not talking about sinless perfection. Do you hunger and thirst for the things of God? Do you yearn for God’s word? Do you yearn for heaven? Do you yearn for righteousness? Are these the desires of your heart? Do you see spiritual warfare going on in you and around you as the devil battles what you’re trying to do? Do you yearn for heaven and to see God face-to-face? Well, listen, all of these questions really should be in front of you every day, but at the Lord’s Supper, especially so. You should come and ask those kind of questions.
Secondly though, not just Am I a Christian, but, Am I healthy? Am I doing well in my Christian life? Am I growing? Am I actually growing? Am I more like Jesus than I was a year ago? Five years ago? Is there a principle of growth in my life? Or are there increasing patterns of idolatry, entrenched sin that’s taking root in my life, and I need to fight better? Are there broken relationships horizontally? Do I have some unforgiveness in my heart, some bitterness toward another brother or sister in Christ? You know, is there brokenness? Am I drifting spiritually? Am I drifting? Am I not so sharp in my spiritual disciplines as I used to be, not reading the Bible like I used to be or praying like I used to be, or memorizing Scripture? Am I drifting or am I getting stronger? Am I healthy? Am I growing? And so the Lord’s Supper is a time to examine yourself. And he says, “If you will discipline yourself,” God’s saying, “I won’t have to do it.” Isn’t that what he’s saying? If we discipline ourselves, if we judge ourselves, we will not come under judgment. So you take care of it, and I won’t have to.
So what he does is he gives you time, he gives you time to repent. If you won’t, he will act. We’ll talk more about that in a few weeks on discipline, but he’ll act. And you saw what happened in the Corinthian church: Weak, sick, some had fallen asleep. You don’t want that to happen. And so head it off at the pass and bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance, that’s what he’s urging. Examine yourself. If something comes up, address it, deal with it. He’ll give you time, and then you won’t have to come under judgement. But even if you are judged by the Lord, keep in mind it’s still different than the non-Christians. He’s doing that so that you will not be condemned with them. So even when he brings strong smitings on you, he’s doing it so that he can save your soul. Does that makes sense? So there’s still love even if there is discipline. So in sum, the Lord’s Supper is a powerful time to reflect on Christ, past, future, present. It’s a time to give God thanks for our salvation. It’s a time for the unity of the body, a time for serious soul-searching and killing of sin.
In a few minutes, you’ll have a chance to partake. I’m gonna pray now for the blessing. We’re gonna hear a song, and then we’ll be able to come to the table. Father, thank you for the Word of God. We thank you for the things that we’ve learned. Father, I ask that you would take your Word now and press it home to our hearts. Help us to understand this incredible gift you’ve given us in the Lord’s Supper. Bless now this song. And Lord, as we come to the table, we pray for your blessing, in Jesus name. Amen.
sermon transcript
Part of Our Inheritance Stipend…. But the Checks Are Uncashed
Some time ago, I was reading about a Major League baseball player who was something of a flake, weird guy, strange in his thinking, but a tremendous hitter, and they’ll pay good money for good hitters. And so, this guy had a contract paying him over 150 million dollars over a number of years to hit a baseball. At the end of the season, an orderly was cleaning out his locker and found at the bottom of his locker, multiple uncashed paychecks, tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars, just in the bottom of the locker, never cashed. He was doing fine financially, don’t worry about him. All of his needs were met, but there were these checks uncashed. What a weirdo. [chuckle] Except that I’ve done it once, actually, thank God for our financial secretary, found one that I hadn’t cashed and she re-cut the check. Praise God for Clarissa Bacon. [laughter] So, how weird is that? Beware, lest you be exposed as a hypocrite!
Scripture talks about the Holy Spirit as a deposit, a down payment guaranteeing our full inheritance. And it tells us that through the Spirit we are ministered some foretaste of heaven. Some, if you could put it this way, some checks out of a trust fund that’s been set up until we come into our full inheritance in Heaven, and that these checks, so to speak, come to us by the ministry of the Word, by the power of the Spirit, and they give us a foretaste of heavenly life that is vital to our spiritual health. And by means of this, we are filled with hope and energy and joy and power in the Christian life, and we are able to serve Him, we’re able, as we were just talking in Bible For Life, we’re supposed to live so filled with hope that non-Christians ask us for a reason of the hope that we have. We’re supposed to be so radiantly filled with hope that it’s just so unnatural. It’s supernatural.
And I think some of the Lord’s checks are going uncashed when it comes to the Lord’s Supper. I feel that in the evangelical world, we do not receive the full benefit of the Lord’s Supper that we should. And I’m praising God that here at FBC, we do take the Lord’s Supper seriously, I feel very refreshed. I come expecting to be blessed by the Spirit every time, and it never fails, and I think many of you do as well. But it could be that even some of you are leaving some of your checks uncashed, because you haven’t really looked at 1 Corinthians 11, you haven’t looked at the Scripture, you haven’t attended to this topic, and therefore you underestimate the Lord’s Supper and come, not really expecting much, except that you know you’re gonna get let out of church late a little bit, which may not happen this week, I don’t know, maybe, maybe not, doesn’t matter. What would you do with the extra 11 minutes anyway dear friends?
But the fact of the matter is that because you don’t come with that expectant heart, because you haven’t attended throughout the week to say, “Hey, the Lord’s Supper is coming up,” you’ve underestimated and you don’t receive the full benefit. You may receive some benefits, you don’t have the full benefit. And I think there are other churches in the evangelical world that’s even worse. This problem is even worse. Some churches, some mega churches I was reading about, have the Lord’s Supper quarterly on Sunday evening. Now, you just must know as a pastor, you’re only gonna get a percentage of your people back on Sunday evening, and to do it quarterly, I think you can go years in that church as a member in good standing, I think, I don’t know, maybe they address it in their by-laws and never partake in the Lord’s Supper. Those checks are going uncashed.
There are some advantages that could be flowing into their lives, and it’s because the leadership of that church has minimized, has underestimated, the Lord’s Supper. Why is that? Well, there’s sadly a long history from the reformation on, of squabbling and fighting over the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper among people who claim to be Christians. Some people that teach a doctrine called “real presence”, that the actual incarnation, the incarnate Lord is present in some mysterious way, in the actual bread and the wine or the juice that it becomes in some way the actual body of Christ, or as the Lutherans would put it, he is present in, with, by and under the actual elements of the… in the doctrine of “real presence”. Others, following the Reformed churches in Switzerland, Ulrich Zwingli said, “No, it’s just a memorial,” sometimes even add an adjective like a “bare” memorial.
And if you run along that road long enough after a while, you’re gonna have a quarterly in the evening, because it really isn’t worth much in that view. And it’s interesting, as we come to 1 Corinthians 11, we find that the Lord’s Supper has always had controversy and misunderstanding and issues surrounding it, from the very beginning of church history. So, Satan seeks to rob us of our down payment checks. He doesn’t want us to have that full joy and ministry that the Lord’s Supper could be giving to us if we just came to it with understanding and with faith. And so, we come to 1 Corinthians 11 and I’m seeking to give a careful exposition of this text, to strengthen your faith, so that you may understand, and so that from this point on, again and again, the Lord’s Supper may be just an avenue of blessing, a river of blessing to you as it should be. And so, in Verses 17-22, we see Paul addressing these abuses of the Lord’s Supper, the Lord’s Supper was being abused in Corinth.
The Lord’s Supper Abused in Corinth (vs. 17-22)
Look at Verses 17 and following, in the following directives. He said, “I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent, I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat. For as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else, one remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes 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 praise you for this? Certainly not.” So clearly, big problems in the observance of the Lord’s Supper at Corinth. Strong rebukes. He says, “I have no praise for you in this area,” so that’s a strong rebuke. He says, “When you gather together, your meetings actually are doing more harm than good.” That’s another very, very strong rebuke.
And he speaks of divisions in the church. If you know anything about 1 Corinthians, you know that that is one of the central problems they were facing. I follow Apollos, I follow Paul. There was just factionalism and different things. I follow Jesus. Those are my favorite people, the Jesus people. You can say, Well, aren’t they… Yeah, it’s when you say, I’m following Jesus and you’re not, that’s when there are problems. I don’t know, but I guess that that was some of what was going on. So there are these factions, these divisions, he says in Verse 9, “No doubt there have to be differences or divisions among you to show which if you have God’s approval.” Hard verse to interpret. Some people think he’s speaking plainly and saying, “There are reasonable distinctions in the body of Christ.” I actually don’t think that’s what’s going on there. Paul frequently speaks sarcastically to the Corinthians, he does. In 1 Corinthians Chapter 4, he says, “Already, you have become rich. Already, you’ve become kings. You’ve become kings and that without us. I wish you really had become kings.”
Okay, so you don’t think they’ve become kings. No. Why did you say it? For effect. He’s trying to shock them, and so he’s saying, “Yeah, no doubt, there had to be these kinda divisions to show, which one of you God approves of, and he doesn’t improve any of the others.” Divisions, factions, and the divisions in the church were coming down to roost when it came time for the Lord’s Supper. And there were selfish practices that he’s rebuking here. For example, eating without waiting for anyone else, people just kinda came and ate right away, saying, “I’m all that matters, as long as I get mine, that’s all it really matters,” without having any sensitivity of the body of Christ. And so, he really works on unity a lot of times with the Lord’s Supper, one-loaf-for-all eating. At the end, he says, “Wait for each other.” So “we all eat together” is a sense of unity. And along with that, allowing poor members to get completely shut out, it became kind of hierarchical by economic prosperity.
You know, the wealthy ones were getting advantaged and the others were not, and so, it was… There were divisions in that regard. It was a hierarchy based on material wealth and power, and even worse, the ultimate disgrace, drunkenness. They were drinking so much at the Lord’s Supper, they were actually getting drunk. It’s really shameful, if you think about it, it’s really sad, and it’s really disgusting. And in some way, they were despising the church of God, they were looking down on the church, they were underestimating the church. They didn’t see the church rightly. The church, he says in another place, is the pillar and the foundation of the truth to a lost and watching the world. I like that statement, he says, “Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in?” [chuckle] It’s not what we’re doing here at the church.
By the way, I find that an interesting statement, I don’t know if I should go too far with it, but there’s a lot of emphasis placed on there not being church buildings back then, and house churches… There clearly were house churches. This implies that maybe there was a place that they used to meet. And so, they would come there when they came there, he said, “Look, don’t you have homes?” The home is where you’re supposed to take care of those needs. When we come here, there’s a different thing. I’m not gonna push the point too far. But at any rate, the church is the assembly of the people of God, and they were despising it by how they were behaving. And that’s a big problem. And so, he gives them this rebuke in Verse 22, “What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not.”Well, what’s the remedy? Well, the remedy to these excesses, the remedy to any problem in the Christian life is sound instruction pressed into the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, bringing about repentance and a change of life.
But without the sound instruction, there cannot be the repentance and the change of life. We won’t know an accurate diagnosis of our problem. We have to have that doctrine. And so, Paul gives them instructions, and at the end of this section, and when I come, I’ll have further instructions for you, it’s doctrine, he wants to give them solid doctrine. Now, I praise God again at FBC, I fully expect when we come for the Lord’s Supper, that it’s going to be a time of blessing. I don’t see these kinds of excesses and these kinds of sins and divisions here in our church. I’m not preaching this sermon now, because I say that FBC has the exact same kinds of problems. Not at all. But my desire is that through the rightly dividing the Word through teaching and preaching and through the ministry of the Spirit, our experiences with the Lord’s Supper will be greatly enhanced. That we’ll have an intense experience of the living God through the ordinance without going off into false doctrine. And so, we have to have this right instruction.
The Lord’s Supper Instituted by Christ (vs. 23-25)
And so, in Verses 23-25, he begins to give that instruction. “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you. The Lord Jesus, on the night 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, after supper, he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.'” So this doctrinal section begins with the word “for”, links it back. He says, “Shall I praise you? No. I’m not gonna praise you for”, etcetera. The reason I’m not gonna praise you is, I wanna set you straight on how you should think, and he goes back to the history of what actually happened, the institution of the Lord’s Supper. “What I received from the Lord, that’s what I passed on to you.” This is the apostolic ministry where the apostle takes directly from Jesus and then makes it known to the church, “what I received from the Lord.”
Now, Paul was no eyewitness of the Last Supper. He wasn’t converted yet at that point, as you know. He says, he was as one untimely born. And so, what he was doing that night, he probably was in Jerusalem, maybe at the home of Gamaliel, his mentor, or maybe with the Synagogue, members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen. He was observing the Passover, not thinking a lot perhaps about Jesus at that point, although he probably was aware of the triumphal entry. I don’t know what was going on in Saul’s life, I just know he wasn’t converted and he wasn’t an eyewitness of the Last Supper. And neither were any of these Corinthian Christians, they weren’t either, and neither are any of us. But Paul is an apostle and then the others who were the source of the information from Matthew, Mark, and Luke – they were eye witnesses, and they received from the Lord this thing that he did. Paul as an apostle, received this doctrine directly from heaven, directly from Christ.
As we’ll talk about Easter Sunday, 1 Corinthians 15, the gospel, he said, “For what I received, I also passed on to you, the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. “So what I received, I passed on to you.” He said, I didn’t make this up. The Lord’s Supper wasn’t something that man made up. It wasn’t something that we thought would be a good idea. As he says of the Gospel in Galatians 1, “I want you to know, brothers, that the Gospel I preach is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” So, he passed on these things he received it from the Lord, “I passed them on to you.” He’s already instructed them, they were doing the Lord’s Supper, but they had gotten into some problems.
So “what I received, then I passed on to you”, and now I’m trying to remind you of what it was. And so, also from us, if we wanna have a right understanding of the Lord’s Supper, we have to go back to the apostolic teaching. We have to go back to the Scriptures and try to understand what the Lord intended in giving us this Last Supper. And then he immediately gets into the timing of the Last Supper, “For what I received from the Lord, I also passed on to you, the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed.” So he brings us, in our minds, back to that night, the last night that Jesus was alive before he was betrayed, before he was killed, that Passover meal that he ate with His disciples, with His apostles in the upper room. You remember, and you’ve read about it, back to that night. And he’s identifying it this way, “the night he was betrayed.” Actually the Greek word for “betrayed” here is the same word that’s frequently translated “delivered, delivered over,” that kind of thing. And so, it’s a powerful meditation to consider: who delivered Jesus over to death?
And let’s go right to the heart of the matter: it was God the Father who delivered His Son for us. It’s very powerful. Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also along with Him graciously give us all things?” So God the Father surrendered or delivered Jesus over to death for us. It’s the same word. And then again in Romans 4:25, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” This is the Gospel that Jesus was delivered over to death. But most of the translation, all of them, I don’t actually know any translation that doesn’t go with betrayal here, on the night that he was betrayed, and this word is translated sometimes betrayed, and I think that’s what Paul had in mind. So it’s speaking really of His betrayal by Judas Iscariot, one of the 12. Judas betrayed Him to His enemies, on the night he was betrayed. And so, Judas was one of the 12, he was one of Jesus’ inner circle, he was in one of the Psalms prophetically, he was his friend, his close friend, whom he trusted.
Now, don’t misunderstand about Jesus, he always knew who Judas was, it’s not that. But he had given him a position of importance, he had entrusted some things to him, like the money bag, for example, and certain aspects of ministry, and he was in that circle of friends. And so, that Psalm, Psalm 41, which is quoted in John 13:18, to fulfill the Scripture, “He who shares my bread has lifted up his heel against me.” There’s a strong sense of betrayal, you can’t betray a stranger. And so, there’s got to be relationship, that trust, that friendship, in order for there to be betrayal, and there was. And I just meditate on this, this issue of betrayal, and I think about it, not everyone who sits at the table with Jesus is a true believer in him. Not everyone who partakes in the Lord’s Supper is going to heaven. Not everyone has a genuine faith in Jesus Christ. And the people that don’t, they’re just in many ways indistinguishable from those that do. God knows the difference. But Judas… I mean, the other 11 didn’t know he was the one. They didn’t know who it was. But it was in receiving that actual piece of bread that Jesus dipped into the dish, it was by taking that he accepted the role of betrayer. Satan entered into him. It was betrayal, dear friends. There’s a strong sense of betrayal.
So, as a result of this theme that I’m opening up for us, one of the big issues when it comes to the Lord’s Supper is the theme of self-examination. Someone ought to examine himself. We should examine ourselves when we come to the Lord’s Supper. We’ll get more to that later on, but because of this issue of betrayal. So this is when it happened, the night he was betrayed, a certain specific night in history. Well, what did he do? Well, he took bread in his hands and he gave thanks for the bread, and he broke the bread, and he gave the bread to them all. And then he established the significance of these actions. “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And then in the same way, after the supper, he then took the cup, and he made a similar statement. He said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.” So we have a simple command, “Do this.
Do you see, by the way, the power of the Holy Spirit? The church has done this now for 2000 years, the church has done this. The Holy Spirit would not let this thing fall by the wayside. The Spirit does his work. Now, we don’t always rightly understand it. We don’t always get it right. We’re always messed up, but we’re doing it. But this was a command given by the Lord to do it. Now, what is the theological significance of this? This is clearly meant to be a significant thing. I wanna bring out four themes just right from the text here, there are many others we could get. The first four doctrinal themes, the first is the theme of thanksgiving. He took the bread and he gave thanks. He gave thanks. The Greek word for give thanks, eucharisteo, from which we get Eucharist, it just means to give thanks. And so we come to the table, we should, filled with thanksgiving. It is very sweetly others-centered to be a thankful man or woman. Amen? To just live your life filled with thankfulness, it’s a happy occasion. When you come and you’re able to say to God, “Thank you. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for all that you’ve done for me. Thank you for sending your only begotten Son for me. Thank you. And thank you for the good things that are yet to come,” just to be filled with thankfulness.
Paul can’t write an epistle without thanking God for the salvation of the people he’s writing to, whether the Romans or the Corinthians. He’s just thankful to God, always. My favorite verse on thankfulness, in that regard, Romans 6:17. I love that verse. “Thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed that form of teaching to which you were entrusted.” I preached a whole sermon, the sermon title is… I love that title. It’s one of my favorite titles. “Thank God, You Obeyed.” That will blow your theological circuits. You’d be thinking about that the rest of your life, and you’ll never figure it out. Thank God, you obeyed the gospel. To God be the glory, that you’re not sitting here as some atheist, some unbeliever, you’re sitting here as a believer in Jesus. You obeyed the gospel. Thank him for it, ’cause he should get the credit. And not only that, but thank God your brothers and sisters obeyed too. Amen? ‘Cause Paul’s doing that in Romans 6:17, “I thank God that you obeyed.” So thankfulness.
Secondly, the necessity of the incarnation. Very physical here. He took bread in his hands, and he broke it. I had the picture in my mind of little tiny bread crumbs falling as he breaks it. It’s very physical. When I was an altar boy in the Roman Catholic Church, I was supposed to hold this polished brass patent kind of plate under the mouths of people so that if any crumbs would fall they would be caught. It was a way that they thought, I think, of giving reverence to what was going on there. But I’m just saying on the night of the first… I think there were crumbs that fell down on the table. I just think it was physical, it just happened. He had hands, there was a physical bread, and all of this points to the physicality of our salvation. We were saved by a body. We were saved by a dead body. You see what I’m saying? And we have to believe in the incarnation to believe the gospel. Colossians 1:22, “But now he, God, has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation.” Trace it all back, because of the body, that’s what you have. Because of the body of Jesus, given over to death, you are free from sin.
The physical nature of our salvation, physical. Jesus was really human, didn’t merely appear to be human. It was foundation, the foundation of the gospel the apostles preached. 1 John 1:1, he says, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim to you concerning the word of life.” But this does not mean I espouse a doctrine of real presence, still less of transubstantiation. I don’t think that the words, “This is my body” or, “This is my blood,” mean that we as Christians have to believe in real presence, that that’s literally the body or literally the blood, or that if I had priestly skills laid on me by the archbishop that I would be able to transubstantiate it into such. I don’t believe in that. I don’t think it’s required. And I actually think it’s not what the Bible teaches, that the incarnation was centered on Jesus’ body. His hands were touching bread that night, not his body that night. And so those words themselves would have been incomprehensible to the apostles that night. Real presence would have meant nothing. Now, I know that there are many that believe it. I don’t wanna get into that debate, I just don’t think that’s what it means.
Thirdly, doctrinal theme, the necessity of substitutionary atonement. He said, “This is my body, which is for you.” Do you see that? “This is my body, which is for you.” I took on a body for you, I am going to lay down my body for your sake. Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” He gave himself in my place, he stood in my place. As the hymn put it, “In my place, condemned, he stood.” Took our place. So this is my body, which is given for you. Isaiah 53, “He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Substitutionary atonement. Jesus took on a body, and that body was nailed to the cross in our place. And that if we trust in him, if we believe in him, the transfer of guilt moves from us to him, and he is our savior by his physical body. This atonement is especially spoken of as having been done in his blood. There’s a focus on His blood, the blood atonement, through faith in his blood. So “without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.” Hebrews 9:22.
And so that brings me to the fourth, final theme I wanna bring out doctrinally, the establishment of a new covenant in his blood. A new covenant was established. The old covenant was in the blood of bulls and goats, animals. It never took away any sin, symbolic only, covered that in Hebrews. But now there is this new covenant, and it was also established in blood, once for all time, never to be repeated. That’s part of the problem with the Mass, is the repetition of the sacrifice given again and again. It’s not needed. Once for all offered in his blood. And through that, we have a new covenant. And we talked in Hebrews 8 about the elements of the new covenant. “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time,” declares the Lord. “I’ll put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts.” That’s a transformed nature; heart of stone removed, the heart of flesh given; regeneration. “I will be their God and they will be my people.” That’s adoption through faith in Jesus. “No longer will the man teach his neighbor, a man, his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” perfect knowledge. “Now, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God.” We’ll have intimate knowledge. “For I’ll forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more. Complete forgiveness of sins, it’s always been by this eternal covenant, the blood of Jesus. And this reminds us of all of that. And so the theology of the Lord’s Supper: It’s a meal of thanksgiving. It’s a meal focused on the incarnation, not in any way believing in real presence or transubstantiation, but remembering that Jesus took on a body for us and that it was necessary for our salvation. Substitutionary atonement, that’s why the body was given, bringing about a new covenant in his blood.
The First Purpose: Proclamation for Remembrance (v. 26)
All right, so why do we do it? Well, the first purpose that Paul mentions is proclamation for remembrance. Look at verse 26. “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” It also says, “This is my body, which is for you, do this in remembrance of me. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.” So we come to this issue of remembrance. In a way, it’s astonishing that we would need to be reminded of Jesus. Isn’t that a bit strange? It’s like, “Oh yeah, Jesus.” But you know, how many of us, being honest, don’t have “Oh yeah, Jesus” moments every day? It’s really a tragedy of the flesh that we are just constantly forgetting the things that God wanted us to remember. He said it would happen to the Jews when they entered the Promised Land. “When you enter this land,” Deuteronomy 8, “Be careful that you don’t forget all that God has commanded you and all that he’s done in view of you.” When you get in that Promised Land, and you start eating all of those crops you didn’t plant, you live in fine houses you didn’t build, and you drink from grapes you didn’t plant, when all of that happens your hearts are gonna become proud and you’ll forget me.
Well, the Lord instituted this so that we would not forget him, that we would not forget him, that we would remember what he did, and that it would be intense, that remembrance. And not only would we remember, but we would by doing this, proclaim, proclaim. The word is used 11 times in the Book of Acts for the proclamation of the Gospel. So, in some way, the death of Jesus is being proclaimed by this. We are proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes. So we’re proclaiming a past history and a future reality that we’re looking forward to by faith, filled with hope, the second coming of Christ. And so we are proclaiming the Lord’s death, and we’re gonna keep doing it until he comes, looking ahead. So this proclamation looks backward, and it looks forward, the past and the future. That’s the first purpose.
The Second Purpose: Self-Examination in Light of Christ (vs. 27-32)
The second purpose of the Lord’s Supper, the reason we do it, is for self-examination. I already mentioned this, but look at verses 27 through 32. “Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.” “A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.” These are serious words of spiritual warning centered around the Lord’s Supper, very serious. And the press of all of them, all, if we could boil it all down to one thing, it’s “examine yourselves.” That’s what it’s all about. So we proclaim the Lord’s death, but we also examine ourselves. We look inward to see, “How does it stand with me and God?” It says that if we eat or drink without recognizing the body of the Lord, we will eat and drink judgment on ourselves. What does it mean then to recognize the body of the Lord? I don’t think, again, it means real presence, that by looking at the bread, you say, “That’s the body of the Lord.” I think instead, the same word is used in verse 31, same Greek word, if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.
So recognize, truly, Jesus, recognize that he is the only begotten Son of God. That means have a saving faith in Jesus, recognize him, assess it properly by sober judgment, by faith, a serious, weighty, joyful thing. It is for this reason that we believe that only baptized believers in Jesus should partake in the Lord’s Supper. We do not open it to anyone from the community to come and take, but you have to have believed in Jesus, trusted in him as your Lord and Savior, and testified to that by water baptism. Because I think that an unbeliever could only possibly be eating and drinking judgment on themselves, ’cause they cannot recognize the body and blood of Jesus. They’re not believers yet. If they become a believer, as I prayed this morning that some would become believers as a result of listening to this sermon, if that is happening to you, the first thing you need to do by ordinance is water baptism, not the Lord’s Supper. And that way you’re standing in front of the world and saying, “I am a believer in Jesus. I’m a believer in Jesus,” and you’re willing to be baptized, then the Lord’s Supper comes.
I don’t think simply being an unbeliever is the only way, however, to not recognize the body and blood of Jesus. Clearly, these Corinthian people were being disciplined by God because they were eating in an unworthy manner. So remember what they were doing. They were coming, it’s a raucous thing, eating quickly, not looking to anybody else, getting drunk. And as a result of that, God was disciplining them. Pretty soon, in Hebrews 12, we’re gonna talk about the Lord’s discipline. God has power to discipline his children. And here it says the discipline’s linked to the Lord’s Supper. If you don’t see the Lord’s Supper properly, you don’t come with a referential attitude by faith, you’re open to the Lord’s discipline. And that’s why he says, “A number of you are weak.” Think about that, your weakness comes because you haven’t recognized the Lord’s Supper properly. A number of you are sick, you have a sickness in your life. There are some sicknesses that come from sin, they are disciplines of God. And a number of you have fallen asleep, that means they’ve died because they did not recognize properly the Lord’s Supper. It’s very serious, if you think about that. So these are serious words of warning, and there’s a need for faith. So as we come to this, we come by faith.
Remember how Jesus said to the two blind men by the side of the road, “Lord, we want our sight.” He said, “All right, according to your faith, it will be done to you.” So it is with the Lord’s Supper. So it is as you come here, according to your faith, it will be done. If by hearing this sermon, your faith is expanded, it’s stronger, you have a sense of the body and blood of Jesus, according to your faith, it will be done to you. If not, it will be bare memorial, to use that language. Maybe not even that. But if you have a strong, vivid faith through the ministry of the Holy Spirit as he’s moving through this sanctuary even now convicting, strengthening, working in your hearts, then this will be a very powerful and meaningful time. And therefore, this is a time, verse 28, to examine yourselves before you eat and drink. Ask, number one, “Am I truly a Christian? Am I born again, really?” It says in 2 Corinthians 13:5, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.” Test yourselves. It’s not a wrong thing to do. Do that, test yourselves. Don’t you realize that Christ Jesus is in you, unless of course you fail the test? So do you believe that Jesus is God in the flesh and that he died on the cross in your place for sin?
Are you trusting in Christ’s death, in his death alone, for the forgiveness of all of your sins? Not your own righteousness. Do you see evidence of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in your life? Is the Spirit testifying with your spirit regularly that you are a child of God? Does God pour out his love into your heart by the Holy Spirit whom he has given you? Does that love, through the Spirit, extend to other brothers and sisters in Christ? You’re loving the brothers and sisters because they’re Christians. Do you see a principle of spiritual vitality in your life so that you are by the power of the Spirit putting sin to death, the deeds of the body, regularly? I’m not talking about sinless perfection. Do you hunger and thirst for the things of God? Do you yearn for God’s word? Do you yearn for heaven? Do you yearn for righteousness? Are these the desires of your heart? Do you see spiritual warfare going on in you and around you as the devil battles what you’re trying to do? Do you yearn for heaven and to see God face-to-face? Well, listen, all of these questions really should be in front of you every day, but at the Lord’s Supper, especially so. You should come and ask those kind of questions.
Secondly though, not just Am I a Christian, but, Am I healthy? Am I doing well in my Christian life? Am I growing? Am I actually growing? Am I more like Jesus than I was a year ago? Five years ago? Is there a principle of growth in my life? Or are there increasing patterns of idolatry, entrenched sin that’s taking root in my life, and I need to fight better? Are there broken relationships horizontally? Do I have some unforgiveness in my heart, some bitterness toward another brother or sister in Christ? You know, is there brokenness? Am I drifting spiritually? Am I drifting? Am I not so sharp in my spiritual disciplines as I used to be, not reading the Bible like I used to be or praying like I used to be, or memorizing Scripture? Am I drifting or am I getting stronger? Am I healthy? Am I growing? And so the Lord’s Supper is a time to examine yourself. And he says, “If you will discipline yourself,” God’s saying, “I won’t have to do it.” Isn’t that what he’s saying? If we discipline ourselves, if we judge ourselves, we will not come under judgment. So you take care of it, and I won’t have to.
So what he does is he gives you time, he gives you time to repent. If you won’t, he will act. We’ll talk more about that in a few weeks on discipline, but he’ll act. And you saw what happened in the Corinthian church: Weak, sick, some had fallen asleep. You don’t want that to happen. And so head it off at the pass and bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance, that’s what he’s urging. Examine yourself. If something comes up, address it, deal with it. He’ll give you time, and then you won’t have to come under judgement. But even if you are judged by the Lord, keep in mind it’s still different than the non-Christians. He’s doing that so that you will not be condemned with them. So even when he brings strong smitings on you, he’s doing it so that he can save your soul. Does that makes sense? So there’s still love even if there is discipline. So in sum, the Lord’s Supper is a powerful time to reflect on Christ, past, future, present. It’s a time to give God thanks for our salvation. It’s a time for the unity of the body, a time for serious soul-searching and killing of sin.
In a few minutes, you’ll have a chance to partake. I’m gonna pray now for the blessing. We’re gonna hear a song, and then we’ll be able to come to the table. Father, thank you for the Word of God. We thank you for the things that we’ve learned. Father, I ask that you would take your Word now and press it home to our hearts. Help us to understand this incredible gift you’ve given us in the Lord’s Supper. Bless now this song. And Lord, as we come to the table, we pray for your blessing, in Jesus name. Amen.
