1 Cor No.20 The Lord's Supper

In the following directives, 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.

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. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

May the Lord bless this reading of his word. I'd be glad if you'd have your Bibles open at 1 Corinthians and the 11th chapter. Let me also read to you a couple of earlier verses which I missed in these consecutive studies that we are engaging in from Corinthians.

And in the 10th chapter, there are two verses which refer to the Lord's table specifically, the 16th and the 17th. 1 Corinthians 10, 16, and 17, Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all all partake of the one loaf. It's good to have those verses in mind too, as we look at Paul's teaching concerning the Lord's supper from the 17th verse and onwards of chapter 11 of this epistle.

The experience on the Emmaus road was very significant for two depressed disciples of Jesus. You remember how the story is recorded in the gospel of Luke. They set out from Jerusalem and they go a Sabbath day's journey on their own, or so they think.

They're discussing the events that have happened, the demise, the execution of Jesus Christ. And then, almost imperceptibly, there draws into their company someone else. They don't realize that he's there immediately, and he starts to engage them, eventually in conversation.

The miles go by, and they are so attracted by what he has to say, that they give him an invitation, don't go beyond Emmaus, come to our house, and let's give you a meal. And you recall that what actually happens is that Jesus takes over as the host, and he breaks bread, and he gives it to them, and they recognize that it is none other than the risen Lord. And they say in the passage of scripture, it's recorded at the end of that particular experience, did not our hearts burn within us as he ministered to us by the way.

I don't know whether you've ever thought of that, but it really is the first occasion when the Lord's Supper was kept after the death and the resurrection of the Savior, and he was the president. Later on in the Acts of the Apostles, we find that it becomes the common custom of the early church to move into one another's houses, and to break bread and worship the Lord. We read, for example, in the 46th verse of Acts chapter 2, every day they, the disciples, the believers, continued to meet together in the temple courts.

They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of the people. Now it's to this institution, the remembering of the death of our Lord Jesus, the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine, which are essentials to it, that the apostle refers in this 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians. But before we can really make sense of what he has to say, there is something else that I need to remind you of or explain, and that is that in the days of the early church, they used to hold what were known as agapes, or love feasts.

And when the Lord's Supper was spread, it was in the context of a meal to which every member of the local church was invited. Sometimes, unfortunately it seems, in the Corinthian church, that this devolved into a very disorderly meeting. Things were happening which shouldn't have happened.

And the apostle Paul, when he's writing these instructions concerning the communion service, has to correct the Corinthians because of certain wrong practices that had developed in their love feasts around which was centered the Lord's table. And so he censures them and corrects them when he tells us in the 20th verses and onwards that they are going wrong. When you come together, is it not for the Lord's Supper you eat? For as you eat, each one of you goes ahead without waiting for anyone 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 the apostle Paul, and I'm not spending time dealing with this because it doesn't apply to us today, he has to correct the malpractices of these Corinthians who were holding these love feasts, and within the love's feast was the Lord's Supper.

But as a result of that correction, and thank God in one sense for the mistakes that these Corinthians were making, as a result of that correction, Paul is stimulated to give us the earliest account of the institution of the communion service. And he tells us in the 23rd verse, something that is really choice. He says, I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.

Remember he's talking, and it's beautifully described here in the heading of the New International Version of the Bible. He's describing the Lord's Supper. He's telling us certain details that are necessary for every church in every area to understand, and he appeals as his authority to the Lord Jesus Christ.

The very language that Paul uses here indicates that his teaching he got directly from the Savior himself. I don't know if you're aware of this, but the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians is recognized by scholars to be the earliest book in the Bible that was available to the Christian churches. It's earlier than most of the Gospels.

So here you have one of the first and clearest statements of what Christian people are to do when they spread what we lovingly refer to as the Lord's Supper. And it's these verses that I draw particularly your attention to this morning. For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.

The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread. In introducing us to the theme of the Lord's Supper, Paul first of all engages in a reflection on the past. He takes us back to one of the most significant evenings in the whole of human history, where there in the upper room Paul describes it graphically, and he smuggles in some very interesting detail.

Can you imagine the scene? There's our Lord present and 11 of his disciples, for one has left. It's before Gethsemane, it's before Calvary. The disciples believe that they're there to keep the Passover meal, the memorial feast which recalls God's great deliverance of the ancient Hebrews centuries ago.

But Jesus is going to transpose that meal. He's going to lift it from the meaning of the Old Testament setting, and he's going to give it a grander and a deeper meaning. He's going to speak about his own death which is yet to be.

He's going to take a piece of bread. He's going to take a goblet of wine, and he is going to read into his actions things that will have consequence throughout the whole of the church age. So much I would like to share with you about what our Lord does here, but my time is limited, so let me take out the essentials.

Here is our Savior, and we read at the end of the 23rd verse that he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you. And then we read on, 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.

Do you notice the fact that when Jesus breaks bread, and in the like fashion offers wine, he does it and before he offers thanks to the Lord. Perhaps you've never noticed it previously, but I find this incredible. Jesus is going to teach the disciples the bread stands for his body, the wine for his blood.

He has the horror of Gethsemane and Calvary in front of him, and yet he precedes the institution of his supper by giving thanks. There's not a murmur of complaint. All the powers of hell are getting arrayed against the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is going to be offered into the cruel hands of the Jewish hierarchy, of the Roman centurions. He's going to go through the devastation of Calvary, and yet as he predicts what is going to happen, he gives thanks. Well might certain aspects of the church refer to the Lord's supper as the Eucharist.

That word is a Greek word, and it means I thank, and here is the Savior who delights to do the will of God, thanking the Father for the opportunity of setting up this memorial feast, which predicts the awful death that he shall die. It's in the same night, says Paul, in which he was being betrayed. Can't you see Iscariot bartering with the priests? The money is passed from one hand into the other.

The whole scenario is being set up for the most pernicious display of injustice that ever there was. Jesus is aware of what is happening, but the same night as all that is going on, he institutes his supper, and he gives thanks. I find that incredible.

He takes the cup, and in the same way, he offers it to the disciples as he has done the bread, but he says this cup is the new covenant, and that little adjective new is so significant. It's going to replace the old. It's going to do away with forever those thousands of sacrifices which have been offered at the temple and previously at the tabernacle.

Those can never take away sin. The Mosaic covenant, the transaction God made with the ancient Hebrews, it was a temporary thing. It was a fleeting thing, but here is Jesus, and he sets up the new covenant, and his blood will redeem believing men and women throughout time as they confess who the Savior is.

Notice the very simplicity of the act, will you? That's why I tried to describe it. Here is our lovely Lord at the head of the table, perhaps reclining in eastern fashion, and his beloved disciples are with him, and he simply takes bread, and he simply takes wine, and he uses these ordinary objects as symbols of himself and the death that he shall die. There's no mystery here in the sense of magic.

There's no superstition. There's no incantations. There's no ringing of bells.

There's no incense burning. There's no reserved presents. There's no transubstantiation.

There's no reserved sacraments for any priest. Here in the essential simplicity of the upper room, Jesus sets the Lord's Supper, and he gives it abiding value down the church age, as twice he says to the disciples, and therefore to all who follow him, do this, in remembrance of me. I wouldn't be legalistic.

It's against my understanding of the New Testament, but I fail to comprehend sometimes how those who love the Lord Jesus, and follow him from the upper room to Gethsemane, and ultimately to Calvary, can sometimes let the weeks and the months roll by, and forget one of the final requests that left his lips, perhaps the final request, remember me. And not in the sense of remember my sacrifice before the Father, and offer it again, but for your own benefit, remember the kernel of salvation. Remember the heart of the gospel.

It's my shed blood. It's my broken body. Remember me.

Can I Gethsemane forget? O there thy conflicts see, thy cup of blessing I will take, and thus remember thee, when to the cross I turn my eyes, and rest on Calvary. O Lamb of God, my sacrifice, I must remember thee. When Paul talks about the institution of the Lord's Supper, he has to engage in a reflection on the past, but there's more to it than that.

Paul is going to say something else that's extremely significant. Thank you for your intense hearing so far. Let it continue, please, because there is something of equal, if not superior, importance to share.

This says the apostle, speaking for our Lord, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me, for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he come. Not only a reflection on the past, but a proclamation for the present.

You proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. What does the word proclaim mean? I'll tell you, and it may shock you, at least surprise you. The word proclaim means preach.

You preach the Lord's death by being in at the communion service. This is the one moment of your life, says Dr. Alan Redpath, the one moment of your life above all other things, when you are preaching a sermon. When I come before this table and I take this bread and eat it, I take the wine and I drink it, what am I proclaiming? In front of satanic forces, the powers of darkness, I am proclaiming my belief in the crucified, risen Savior.

I am saying that I acknowledge that his death on the cross vanquished their power over me. I am saying that in the crucifixion of Christ, I identify myself and moreover in his resurrection, I participate. I am saying that the bread and the wine are the badges of my faith.

And as I wear them, as I partake of them, I am proclaiming to every hostile force that my soul is secure in the arms of Jesus Christ. What is more, I am preaching, if I may use the term, to my Savior, witnessing perhaps a more appropriate verb to use. I am witnessing to my utter faith and confidence in him.

I am saying, Lord Jesus Christ, I want to feed on you. I am part of your body. I realize that I'm incorporated into the family of God because you died and outside that death, outside that broken body and that spilt blood, I have no hope whatsoever.

I am witnessing to my faith in Jesus Christ. And this is why the early church in their practice, as you will see when you move towards the end of the Acts of the Apostles, determined that on the first day of the week, they would do this. If you have to miss other services, you should think twice before you miss this one because of the proclamation that's involved in it.

Proclaiming to the powers of darkness your faith in the risen Christ, witnessing to the Lord himself of your utter confidence in him. And what's more, you're preaching. You're preaching horizontally.

You're preaching to your brothers and sisters. You're saying, as this piece of bread was broken from one loaf, as this wine came from one goblet or from one bottle, I appreciate that with you I am bound into the one body of our Lord Jesus Christ. You belong to me and I belong to you and our ties are indissolvable because of all that Jesus has done.

You see, when the Lord's Supper was instituted, it required Paul to engage in a reflection on the past, but also to underline that involved in the supper is a proclamation. For the present. And what is more, if you follow the mighty apostle in his arguing, here is stimulation for the future.

Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. You see, there are three looks that are incorporated, if you like, into the Lord's Supper. There's the backward look.

There's the outward look. There's the upward look. I look back into history.

Horizontally, I'm confronted with my responsibilities today. And in the future, I'm filled with a holy optimism because bound into this sacrament of which there are only two, whatever the Pope might teach you. Bound into this sacrament is the claim that the Lord Jesus Christ shall return to this world.

We keep this feast only until he come. And that's not just what Paul himself tells us. We have the words of our Savior.

In Mark's gospel, when we read in the 14th chapter and the 23rd verse, the Lord Jesus took the cup, gave thanks, and offered it to them. And they, the disciples, all drank from it. This is my blood of the covenant, says Jesus, which is poured out for many.

He said to them, I tell you the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God. Every time we take these emblems, we acknowledge the fact that there is a limit upon our participation in as much as the day will once dawn in the future when our Savior shall return. And there is no need at all then to take bread and wine.

Christ, physically absent, will be present. It's very interesting if you read some of the early books of the Christian church, which were never incorporated into the Bible, what they have to say about the second advent of Jesus and the Lord's Supper. There's a book, for example, that was written in the first centuries by the name of the Didache, which is a Greek word which means teachings.

And the Didache says that when the early church people came together and they spread the Lord's Supper, at one point they'd all stand up and they would say in the Aramaic language, Maranatha. Or as you're probably more familiar with hearing it, Maranatha. What does it mean? The Lord is coming.

We're keeping this feast. We're looking to the past, yes, we're blessing God for the faithfulness of the Son. Historically, we're entranced as to what Jesus has done.

We recognize our present responsibilities too. We are to proclaim the benefits of his death. But Maranatha, the end of this will occur when he comes back again.

You can't realistically participate of a bread and wine and not believe in the advent of the Savior. By Christ redeemed, in Christ restored, we keep the memory adored and show the death of our dear Lord until he come, until the trump of God be heard, until the ancient graves be stirred, and with the great commanding word, the Lord will come. Oh blessed hope, with this elate, let not our hearts be desolate, but strong in faith, in patience wait until, until he come.

You see the significance of this feast, this beautifully described Lord's Supper. It takes us to the past. We review all that Jesus did.

We think of the majestic Christ, the courageous Galilean, who institutes a feast which will depict his death. He does not turn away from the terrors of Gethsemane and Calvary. He knows the treachery of Judas, and all the time that Judas is setting the scene, Jesus is instituting the feast.

And we marvel as we see the Son of God offering thanks to the Father that he should be so involved in the triune God's plan for the redemption of humanity. I take the bread and I take the wine, and as I do so I think of my responsibilities to God. I think of my testimony before the devil and evil forces in this world.

I think of my obligation to my brothers and sisters in India, and China, and Latin America, and throughout the world who don't know the gospel of Christ, and those who do also. I realize for the one, my need to communicate it. For the two, my need to undergird their ministry with my prayers and with my finances.

Now but it goes beyond that, not just the past, not just the present, but I look to the future, to that day when the ancient grave shall be stirred. I look to the time of the second coming of Christ. I look to the day when physically I shall receive my new body.

I look to the time when I'll see my Father again. I look to the time when friends that I have known years ago are with me around the throne of Jesus Christ as we move into that era, that eternal realm that God has yet to set up. I has not seen nor heard the things that God hath in store for them that love Him.

You say it was incredible that Jesus went to the cross. I agree with you. I don't understand it, but we haven't seen yet half of the incredible things which God has yet to do, and we have a kernel, we have a promise of it all bound up in this communion table.

I tell you there is nothing more central to the Christian faith than this table because it depicts the benefit of the cross. Yes, I know the Pope's coming to this country later on this year, and I know what he has to teach about the mass and some of our Catholic friends. I sympathize with their misunderstandings, but I tell you that this table is meant to be retained in all its simplicity.

The bread is for all who love Jesus. The wine for all who trust Him as Savior, and as we participate together, we remember the past, we get into perspective the present, and we prepare for the future. That's what Paul said, and he said he got it from Jesus and from nobody else, so it must be right.

Amen. Maranatha, even so come, Lord Jesus. Amen.