According to the Scriptures

Guest (Male): The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 that believers shouldn't take communion in an unworthy manner. So what did he mean by that? Well, apparently many people in the Corinthian church were participating in communion without really thinking about its significance. If we're being honest, many of us today are probably guilty of that ourselves from time to time.

Well today on According to the Scriptures, Pastor Damian Kyle reminds us of just how special it is to remember the Lord's supper. More importantly, how much it means to Jesus. And it is a good time to examine ourselves to see if there's any sin that needs to be confessed and repented of. Here's Pastor Damian.

Damian Kyle: 1 Corinthians chapter 11. And we pick things up where we left off last week at verse 16. We pick things up now in verse 17. Allow me to read them and you read along. "Now in giving these instructions, I do not praise you." That is the understatement of the year as we read through the passage. I mean, he's trying, but he can't find any cause for what he's addressing now, the Apostle Paul. "Since you come together not for the better, but for the worse."

"For first of all, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. For there must also be factions among you, that those who are approved may be recognized among you. Therefore, when you come together in one place, it's not to eat the Lord's supper. For in eating each one takes his own supper ahead of others, and one is hungry and another is drunk. What? Do you not have houses to eat and to drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you."

"For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, 'Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.' In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.' For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes."

"Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world."

"Therefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. But if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, lest you come together for judgment. And the rest I will set in order when I come." I don't know about you, but when I come to church I'm not saying, "Oh boy, I need judgment. I know just the place to go." No, we come to meet with the Lord and for grace and to be edified and to be built up. So it takes a lot of work to turn a church into what the church of Corinth had become. Paul found a need of course to rebuke and to correct it.

We remember that 1 Corinthians is a corrective epistle as most of the letters in the New Testament are, but it is a corrective epistle on steroids. The Apostle Paul spends 16 full chapters—it took him 16 full chapters to address even the most urgent of problems that they had in that church that needed immediate correction. He said, "The rest I'll put in order when I come." He hasn't exhausted what needs to be corrected, but the things that ran the risk of sinking the church and discrediting the Lord's name there within the city.

The Apostle Paul continues now in this chapter his correction of the church by addressing abuses that were going on in the church at Corinth associated with the partaking of the Lord's supper. The abuse he gives us in verses 17 to 22 and the abuse in his shocking assessment of it, again there in verse 17: "Now in giving these instructions, I do not praise you, since you come together not for the better, but for the worse." So Paul says to them, "Your church meetings do people more harm than they do good."

Now imagine that would be awful to have anybody say to you. It would be an awful thing to hear somebody say that if it were false. It would be more awful to hear someone say that as an assessment if it were true, and it would be twice as awful if it came from the lips of an apostle inspired by the Holy Spirit. And yet that was his assessment here of this church at Corinth. When people come to church, you are doing more harm to people than you are doing good. Very sobering introduction to this correction.

He speaks in verses 18 and 19 about divisions that were occurring within the church, and it appears that the church was divided related to this issue of communion. And there were some within the church that felt that how they were partaking of the Lord's supper was fine, and then there were others who were as appalled by it as the Apostle Paul was. They're the ones that informed Paul of the abuses that were going on and asking him to correct that.

This division has occurred in order that those that are partaking of it properly can be approved and be recognized as they're the ones that are right in their view of this. The background here is what was known in the early church as an agape feast. Agape is a Greek word for love, the love that God has for us. And it appears that in the early church that they partook of the Lord's supper on a weekly basis. And it appears that they partook of it either after the morning services or they partook of it prior to a Sunday evening service.

They partook of what got coined as an agape feast. And it speaks of God's love that He has for us, this agape, the love that He supplies to us by His Holy Spirit so that we can then love one another in that same way. So they called it an agape feast. This is what they did. And in calling it the agape feast, they didn't call it, "Well let's have a feast that acknowledges the fact that God loves us." That might have been a motivation on some level, but it was called an agape feast because it was a time for everyone in the church to come together and show love toward one another.

So what they were calling it and what that church meeting turned into and what that feast turned into were very, very different things. And so it was this agape feast, what we might call a church potluck today. There would be this shared meal that everyone would eat of. The meal would be brought, people would bring the food, and everybody would eat from the same food that had been brought for the potluck. And it communicated that they loved and they cared about one another.

They're all on the same level, and they're all one no matter what in the eyes of God, no matter what their wealth is or their power or their position or their age or their education or their race or anything like that. And so they partook of this shared meal following Jesus's example on the night before His crucifixion when He instituted the Lord's supper for us. Matthew chapter 26, verse 26 says, "And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, 'Take, eat; this is My body.'"

The meal was a time to say all for one and one for all as a body. We all care about each other, and the agape feast would then flow into the partaking of the Lord's supper. Really tremendous. Well, in the church at Corinth, as another kind of example of their carnality and selfishness, when they came together for their agape feast, they didn't share a common meal. Each family would bring their own meal, which they would then eat independent of everybody else.

That would be a very interesting meal or potluck. I don't know how edifying that could be. And the problem with that, a lot of problems with it, but one of the problems with it was that the wealthier families would then proceed and sit down to a sumptuous meal, the meals that they were accustomed to. And then the poor within the church, if everybody was dependent upon bringing their own food to that potluck, then they ate very, very little.

In many cases they had nothing to eat. Their bellies just gnawed with hunger at this agape feast. You remember that in the Roman Empire there were multiplied millions of slaves. It's estimated that there were six million slaves in the Roman Empire. And so many people that were getting saved in the early church were slaves. They were very fortunate if their masters allowed them to leave their place of responsibility to attend a church service.

They certainly weren't going to send them with food. So this was the one day in the week, the one meal in the week where those that didn't have anything had a pretty good shot at having a very, very good meal each week. But the carnality and the selfishness of the church prevented all of that. I remember when I visited Windsor Castle for the first time. The Queen wanted to consult me on some issues having to do with the British crown, and I was happy to head over.

But I remember visiting it of course as a visitor, and I was appalled as I was looking through it and then you could have these self-guided tours and all of that. The fact that the outer wall of the daily dining room there was made mostly of glass in order that the citizens of Windsor could come each day to the window and watch the ruling class eat those fabulous meals.

Who could think that was a good idea that is connected with reality in any kind of way? And yet what was happening in the church in Corinth was far worse than that. And then as if it couldn't get any worse, it does as Paul declares here that some of the Christians with their meal, they drank so much that they became drunk. Imagine partaking of the Lord's supper drunk.

You just cannot have a serious bone in your body to do that, to look upon that institution of Christ and to say a drunk condition is a satisfactory condition to partake of the Lord's supper, the symbols of His body and of His blood. And yet it was happening. It was happening there in Corinth. I've seen a lot of things in the years as a pastor, but thankfully I've never come across that, at least not knowingly.

At the service there, they take this issue of looking at—remembering Jesus's death upon the cross for us. I mean it is the single most other-centered sacrificial act in human history, Jesus's death on the cross for our sins, and they had just turned it into just the grossest exhibition of selfishness imaginable. Now Paul rebukes them in verses 20 through 22, and you notice what he says to them.

He told them that if anyone was so hungry that they needed a feast to satisfy their hunger, then they should eat at home and then come to the church and partake of the Lord's supper. And so not a bad idea if we look and say, "Well boy, I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." Or, "I'm so hungry as I'm heading to the church agape feast I could eat everything on the entire table and then be first in line." Might be good to stop at In-N-Out before you head to church and satisfy the greatness of that hunger and then come and partake with moderation in the partaking of that agape feast.

He declared that what they were doing presently in the church there in verse 22, he said it was to despise the church of God. It was to hold the church of God, God's people, other people in the church, to hold them in contempt. It was to view the church of God, a local assembly, and regard it as nothing. Because the church, when he says that, he's not talking about brick and mortar, not talking about these tilt-up concrete walls or anything like that.

The church is the people. It's the people. We're the church. We're the body of Christ. We're the called-out ones. And so he said what you're doing here is you are holding the church, the other people in the church, in contempt and treating them in this way and regarding them as nothing and regarding the Lord and His institution as nothing. And he said further that it shamed those that had nothing. It embarrassed them and it publicly humiliated them.

That's an awful thing to publicly humiliate another person. And imagine saying, "Boy I really want to go to church tonight and my owner has let me free to go and do that, but I don't know, I don't know if I can continue to take being as humiliated and shamed as I am when I go there by how people make clear what they think of me by how they treat me and how they treat themselves in comparison to how they treat me."

And all the while here all of this going on, Paul said, while partaking of the symbols of Jesus's blood and His body, the symbols—the sacrifice that makes all of us equal, the sacrifice that makes us all one body. So we're equal in our need as Christians and equal in His provision. Now obviously these kind of people are clueless about what the most simple understanding of the cross is intended to communicate to a Christian and how it applied to themselves.

And so here they are, they're total—living a life totally inconsistent with what communion represents. And so he instructs them in verse 22 and verse 34, he said again, eat at home if necessary so you can come to the agape feast and the Lord's supper spiritually minded rather than being belly-minded. Kind of reminds me of the old saying related to Esau, he was all kitchen and no chapel, and there was a lot of Esau in this church.

You notice further his warning to them in verses 27 through 34, and this is really one of the most sobering passages in the entire Bible. Verse 27, he says: "Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." Wow. That's really heavy, to be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.

Now what Paul isn't saying here is he isn't saying that we need to be perfect as Christians in order to partake of the Lord's supper. So often you have a Christian who has a very, very tender conscience toward God, and they will read something like this prohibiting the partaking of communion in an unworthy manner, and they'll assume that any sin in their life, any shortcoming in their life disqualifies them from partaking of the Lord's supper.

And so they won't partake of the Lord's supper because they've been less than perfect. That is not at all what Paul is saying here, or none of us would partake of the Lord's supper if that's what disqualifies us. What Paul is saying here is that when he talks about partaking of communion in an unworthy manner, it refers to partaking of it while deliberately living a life that is inconsistent with a life that is represented by the blood and by the cup.

Deliberately living a life that is inconsistent with a life of Jesus and living a life that dishonors the Lord or does harm to other people. Now we all sin, but we're talking about here a deliberate sin. We all sin and we become aware of it, we confess it to God and we receive His forgiveness of that sin in our lives. This is not what's going on here, and they were deliberately living a life that discredited Christianity, dishonored the Lord, and did harm to other people.

Now the Lord's supper, Paul tells us in verse 28, and very, very significant application to the church in Corinth, but application to every Christian all the way down through the ages, and that is that the Lord's supper involves self-examination. So you've heard me talk about the Lord's supper in the past perhaps as the fact that it is at once a retrospect, a looking back on things. It is a prospect, a looking forward to certain things, and then it's also an introspect, looking into our own lives.

So you see that at the end of verse 25, Jesus said, "Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of Me." Communion is a retrospect. It is a looking back and remembering what it is that Christ has done for us on the cross, done for the whole world yes, but done for us personally. And then in the end of verse 26 he says that we're to do this until He comes. That's the prospect.

The Lord's supper reminds us continually that the Lord is coming back, and we're to do this until He comes back. And he says that we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. When you and I partake of the Lord's supper then before the entire world or people that are unsaved around us or the angelic realm around us, we are proclaiming, we are preaching the fact that that death, burial, and resurrection 2,000 years ago is a historical fact, and that we are living recipients of everything that was birthed into human history.

By that death, burial, and resurrection as Christians, we believe in that for the salvation for us related to sins. Tonight when you partake of the Lord's supper, you say, "Oh boy, I would never want to preach." We preach every time we partake of the Lord's supper. We preach that our faith is in this historical fact, our lives are a product of the historical fact of His death upon the cross for our sins, and we believe in that and we want the whole world to know that.

He tells us then not only the retrospect and the prospect, but then in verse 28, the introspect: "But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup." And so what is this self-examination? We come together and partake of the symbols of Jesus's body and His blood, and we want to ask ourselves again as mature, serious Christians, not any kind of a thing where me as a preacher or something like that is going to try and rake people over the coals or anything like that.

But to just come as we partake of the elements, the price that was paid for us to be forgiven of our sins and also to free us from the power of sin, and then to ask myself is there anything in my life that I am practicing that is unworthy of this sacrifice that was made. Well everything is unworthy, but anything that is unworthy of someone who claims to be a disciple or a follower of Jesus. And of course that would mean any sin or disobedience to God's word.

Guest (Male): Today on According to the Scriptures, we've been in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 talking about the significance of communion. We'll continue this discussion with Pastor Damian Kyle tomorrow. Well for resource requests, like today's message on CD, reach out to us by phone. The number is 209-545-5530. That's 209-545-5530.

Pastor Damian Kyle's studies can also be heard online at accordingtothescriptures.com, oneplace.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we also have a church app where you can listen to Damian as well. Search for Calvary Chapel Modesto in the App Store or Google Play. If you'd like to partner with us financially with a financial gift, you can do that through our website at accordingtothescriptures.com. And thank you very much.

Well let me also give you our mailing address: According to the Scriptures, 4300 American Avenue, Modesto, California, the zip code is 95356. Don't miss our next study in 1 Corinthians when Pastor Damian Kyle will again open the Word helping us live our lives according to the scriptures. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Modesto.