Hey, well, good evening. It’s good to be afternoon. I still can’t decide what four o’clock is. Afternoon, evening-ish. It’s good to be with you. We’ve got a few families out this evening, but it’s good to be in God’s Word with you and to continue on in Corinthians. We’re moving a lot quicker through Corinthians. It took like two and a half, three years to get through Matthew. And we’re at 12 out of 16 chapters in Corinthians, so a little quicker. But we’ll be in chapter 11, verse 17. 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 17.

All right, but in the following instructions, I do not commend you. Because I do not commend you. Because when you come together, it is not for the better, but for the worse.

For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and I believe it in part. For there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat. 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 17. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal, and one goes hungry, another gets drunk. What? Do you not have houses 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 commend you in this?

No, I will not.

You know, I think one of the marks for me of a good restaurant, is not just quality, but quantity. I’m very unhappy if I go to an expensive restaurant especially, and even if the food’s really good, and you’re like, oh, I could have done like double what you just gave me. You know, you ever done that? You go somewhere, you spend the money, it’s this big thing, you get something good, and it’s the smallest portion, even if it’s good, and you’re like, I’m not coming back. I wish I had just gone to my favorite regular restaurant, and got what I got, and they give me enough, right?

Jesus invites us to His table. Jesus invites us to a spiritual feast. And the spiritual feast, the Lord’s Supper, it does not lack in either quality, what we eat at the Lord’s table in the Lord’s Supper, or in quantity. Jesus gives all of Himself to us, and Jesus, Jesus is the thing that satisfies our souls at the same time. We have all of Christ at all times and all ways, and Jesus is the satisfaction and nourishment for our souls. But that does not mean I can rush to the table and start grabbing food off. It does not mean I can take the Lord’s Supper however I want. It does not mean that there are no table rules, because there are. If we’re going to, eat at the Lord’s table, if we’re going to eat the feast of Christ, just as much as eating it, the very bread, the cup, the body, the blood of Jesus, God has prescription for what it looks like and what it means to come to the table in a way that’s appropriate, in a way that He invites us to the table. And the Corinthians, not surprising at this point, they’re in big trouble because they’re eating at the Lord’s table wrong. Wrong. So he says in verse 17, I do not commend you. He says it’s not for the better that y’all get together, but it’s for the worse. So imagine getting a letter from the Apostle Paul and saying your church gatherings are so bad, it would be better if you didn’t have church. You’re leaving spiritually wrecked in a way than before you even came in. So what we need to understand, first of all, and I’m going to have to beat this drum forever, especially as we go on deeper in the 21st century, we go on and as technology and the internet normalizes certain social practices, we are as the church a people that gathers. We are a people that gathers and we’re a people that gathers regardless of the culture we live in. And as it is, as you and I right now, we live in a scattered society. We live in a scattered society, especially think about COVID, just the normalization of not being with people. It’s very normal. And we have to be careful about that. What does the Hebrew writer say to us? He says, don’t neglect to meet together. What do we read in the early parts of the book of Acts? The church, they continually gathered day after day to hear the word of God and to offer up the prayers and the fellowship, they wanted to learn from the apostles. They wanted to take communion. So togetherness edifies us in a way that being separated on our own, we can never be edified. There is a certain edification spiritually that can only happen when we are together. And I want you to literally think about the word church with me. The word church comes from the Greek word ekklesia, which means what? It means gathered. It means assembled. We literally are an assembled people. We get together and we do Jesus stuff. We are the church. So gathering really matters. And I want you to constantly impress that on your soul, that being with God’s people, yes, in a variety of ways, but I’m talking specifically about the formal gathering of God’s people, should be important. And, you know, I grew up in a home, and maybe you do too, like, unless you’re dying, guess where we’re going to be Sunday morning? You know, there was no, you know, let’s just take a break, or we’ve had a long week at work, or this, like… And it wasn’t like a negative thing. I mean, it was just we value church. And I’m grateful for that legacy. Now, that doesn’t mean… I know that can be a negative thing, like that’s all your Christian life is, is you just show up to church and you check that box. So we’re not saying that that’s all that there is to it, but it’s not less than that, to miss out on that. To miss out on the formal gathering of God’s people. So it matters that we gather, but secondly, I want to say it matters how we gather. How we gather. Paul’s discourse previously about, remember, head coverings. It was inappropriate for men and women to show up in a certain way. He’s talking about communion. We’ll talk about spiritual gifts and the order of the service, what’s appropriate and not appropriate in a formal gathering. Why is he talking about all this? Because we don’t get to just come together and do church. However, we want the Bible gives us, as it’s good to do prescriptions that are good for us. And it’s imperative. We obey those prescriptions. Otherwise, what do we do? We foil God’s purpose for the gathering. And what’s worse, Paul’s saying, you don’t just foil the gathering, you reverse it so that you’re not spiritually edified. You’re spiritually tore down. So it’s not at all irrelevant how churches do church. And I know that we can do that. We could talk about goodness. We could talk about a great variety of churches today and how they’re doing church and all the elements that are brought into services today. We’re not going to go there, but I simply want to say it’s imperative we read God’s word and we let God’s word regulate the formal gathering of God’s people. It’s what you call the regular principle. OK, so the Lord’s word is going to tell us what it should look like when we get together, what it looks like. And it’s going to greatly affect our spiritual health. In one way or the other. And here’s what I want you to see. And we’ll see this at the end of this text. Failing to do it properly, it warrants the discipline of God. OK, it warrants the discipline of God. So formal gathering, we cannot escape it. We’re a gathered people and it is significant. And why is it so significant? Here’s why. Being gathered with God’s people in a formal setting throughout the course of your Christian life is one of God’s primary ways for keeping and preserving you in the faith. That’s why. To be a part of a church gathered. I’m with Christ’s body. And in that body, I am feeding on the word with God’s people. I’m being edified with God’s people. We’re worshiping together. We’re fellowshipping. We are growing up into what? The body of Christ together. So if I’m not a part of God’s, God’s intended formal gathering for me throughout the course of my Christian life, I’m saying no to one of God’s primary means by which He means to do me spiritually good. So I cannot do that. I cannot reject that.

So again, I’m not saying, just to be clear, if you show up on church on Sundays, box checked, you’re good. That would lead you down a different spiritual pathway that’s unhealthy. Yes, you need to be in life, life on life, discipling, you know, relationships. Yes, you need to serve. Yes, you need to evangelize in the community. Yes, men and women, we need to have healthy discipleships in our home. But we cannot do without the proper

biblically sanctioned gathering of God’s people. We got to get that right. So it’s not for the worse. I go to Providence Fellowship. Our gatherings are for the worse. We can’t seem to figure it out or get it right there. We don’t want to say that, right? I want to. Gather with you on Sundays at four o’clock and it’d be for your spiritual benefit. You’re leaving here better following Christ than you came. Okay? And here’s the thing about it. I want you to see with Paul. Paul is in verse 18, strangely positive about it. He says to us, well, it’s fine that it’s this way because how could we know the fraudulent from the real Christians? He’s saying, of course, some of you are sticking out like a sore thumb because how else can we know who’s real, who’s genuine? So church life is that great furnace in which the real and the fake are exposed.

So I take verse 18 to be a sober warning for myself and I want it to be that for you. Living on the fringe of church life is dangerous because I’m not eating the spiritual food, living the life God wants me to live to preserve me in my faith. At the same time, living careless inside the walls of the church of God’s expectations are dangerous because it’s exposing a fraudulent faith. I don’t care what it’s supposed to look like to be part of a church. I’m just doing it my way. Paul says what you’re doing is exposing yourself as false up to those who are genuinely concerned about doing things the way that the apostles passed it on and we have it recorded in God’s word. Okay? How is Paul saying that this is coming out? He’s saying what’s coming out in divisions, in factions. He says, I hear in verse 18, I hear that there are divisions among you and I believe it in part for there must be factions

among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. And so we talked about this to a degree a few weeks ago. Remember you had those like, no, I’m with Paul or I’m with Apollos or no, I give my allegiance to this person. Setting, like this is my theological hobby horse and I love this one and that’s our thing or we just have petty preferences about who in the church we do and don’t want to be around or there’s the issue here more, you know, frank is the marginalization of poor people and wealthy people and we’re starting to kind of create these cliques and we’re having these divisions. There’s these fellowship, you know, cliques among the wealthy. The very thing intolerable, and Paul’s saying there’s a fracture in your Christian fellowship. There’s a fracture in the body of Christ in Corinth because the truth of God’s word and the love that’s in Christ Jesus is not being manifested when you live like that. So fractures are seen in the improper observance of the Lord’s Supper. Okay, that’s the first thing I want you to see. These fractures are seen in the improper observance of the Lord’s Supper. So if we want to be in the Lord’s Supper, if we want to come to the Lord’s table and enjoy the feast of Christ and have the spiritual benefit that we should have, we have to take communion, one, in view of others. You have to take communion in view of others in your church. Look at verse 20. He says, When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat. For in eating, one goes ahead with his own meal, one goes hungry, another gets drunk. What? Do you not have houses? Do you 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 commend you in this? No, I will not. So if we go back to the ancient church, it was a normal practice for them to have what we call agape feasts or love feasts. And so Jude references the love feasts in his letter. You’re kind of getting that talked about here to a degree. But then just historical accounts and early church fathers would talk about. Love feasts. And love feasts seem to have been, from what was written,

exactly what it sounds like, a feast, a fellowship, a dinner party. And it was attached like an appendage to communion. So yes, we would take communion, but then we would have this big, happy, unified thing. And it didn’t matter who you were or whether you could bring something to the mill or not. It was just this big, happy party thing. And you say, well, that sounds like a fine thing, doesn’t it? Except that it became convoluted. It, over time, became merged. And what they were not told to do became the very thing they were doing. The sacredness of the Lord’s Supper and this common fellowship meal became the same thing. And they had this strange, unauthorized dinner whereby three sinful patterns were developed. Three sinful patterns crept in because they left what? The prescription.

The first thing is loss of unity. Paul says, one goes ahead of another. So it’s like, hey, I’m here, but that poor guy that works the hard job and he can’t get here till later, don’t care. I’m hungry and I’m eating. I’m not waiting on anybody. I’m doing my own thing.

Secondly, there was the marginalization, the embarrassment, the humiliation of the less fortunate. So you had in this church, wealthy people, well-off people showing up with all their food and they were eating and you had poor people, less fortunate people, just sitting there literally humiliated. Third, gross self-indulgence. He says, and you get drunk.

So you see how easy it is when we don’t keep our eyes on who Jesus is and exactly what Jesus is about, how quick you and I are to flip the script and make it look a lot like something that pleases us. They lost sight and grasp of that precious truth. Jesus gave His life, His body and spilled His blood for every church member. Jesus gave His body. He allowed it to be broken. He allowed His blood to be spilled so that poor, rich, everything in between,

smart, not so smart, whatever size of the tracks, whatever skin color, it was a thing where we come together and we have this meal and we remember what Christ did for us. So it was unthinkable to part, partake of the Lord’s Supper without the whole body present. Because we are the bride of Christ. We are the children of God. We are God’s people representing Him to the world. We’re full of God’s Spirit. We’re called to love and help and assist one another. So what kind of body is this where one’s doing its thing and another part’s doing its thing? One part doesn’t care for the other part. The Gospel of Jesus takes, all of us, with all of our different messes, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got messes. I look back over my 32 years and I’ve got messes. And I’m not perfect. And I’ve got sin patterns God’s still trying to work out of me. And I grew up in a different place than you grew up. And I just am a different person. And that’s what’s so weirdly amazing about the Gospel is it takes people with all these different life experiences and different records of wrong and it puts us together looking, at one another, eye to eye, at the Lord’s table.

Grace applies the work of Christ to all of us by faith indiscriminately. It’s the grace of God and that’s it. And what’s going on in Corinth looks a lot like just a worldly gathering where people are condescended, they’re labeled based off of where they came from and what they can accomplish or what they have done. But the church is for sinners. The church is for sinners. And that’s all of us, isn’t it? So, communion is necessarily celebrated with the whole body of Christ. It’s between not one of us or some of us in the Lord. Communion is between us, wherever that local church is geographically, everybody there, members of that church, it’s between us and the Lord. And I want you to think about what a meaningless religious observance communion would be if we don’t grasp the corporate significance of the Lord’s Supper. Jesus said, I lay down my life for a sheep, some sheep. No! Christ came to lay His life down for all of His sheep. He said not one will be lost. So how silly and meaningless is communion if it’s not for us in view of one another and for all of us in the world? It’s the climax of our lives together in fellowship in Christ. It’s in communion that I realize it’s not me. It’s we. It’s us being knit together as an eternal family, an eternal body in Christ. What do we behold in the Lord’s Supper if not Jesus’ radical love for sinners? What did the cross and empty grave accomplish if sinful men cannot be saved? How do we reconcile to one another inside the church? I think it makes the church a big sham, honestly, and a joke.

And that’s not to say that you and I can love one another perfectly. Again, I’ve been going to church my whole life. And if you’ve been in church for about five seconds, you realize, oh man, there’s a bunch of messed up people in here and things get broken sometimes. Yeah, they sure do. But you and I should be able to overcome things and love one another in a way that the world cannot. And so it’s a failure among us that didn’t have to be there. And it’s a poor witness to the world when we don’t live in the unity that is possible because of the broken body and spilled blood of Jesus.

So let’s not take communion if we’re not willing to love and forgive one another as we have been loved and forgiven.

Let’s not call ourselves Christians if we’re not willing to love and forgive. Let’s just not do any of it. Because there’s only one kind of Christian and it’s that who is pursuing all of Christ. We feast on Christ that His life may reign in us and through us to one another in the church.

I’m not the communion police, but I really like how here we take communion at the same time. And I don’t know, some of it’s given to trends. I think like a lot of churches today it’s popular like people go and you get your own elements and you know, you take it and you’re given this time to do it on your own. That’s fine. Again, I’m not like I’ve got the, I know the truth, but I like that we here take communion in unison and unity because we’re, we are together all of us feasting on Christ at the exact same time. And it reminds me as we do that together what unity, what togetherness communion produced

when Jesus, bled and died that we together can feast on Christ and Christ is keeping our fellowship right now. So I want you to think, I mean, this whole sermon is that I want, I want your whole just mind your theology on communion to go way up. You cannot just think vertically when you take communion. You must think horizontally. It is not just you. It’s us in the church. Communion should move you to cherish your fellow church members. Communion should move you to learn to love one another in the church, especially people who are difficult for you to love. Communion should remind us there’s no such thing as lone Christianity.

Communion is something we do as the body with and in Christ. So get neck deep in the church, be committed to it and desire that God would as difficult as it can be and it is to be in church life for a long period of time, long for God to draw out the genuineness of your faith as those we pray it not be so, but the Word of God says it as some prove themselves to be false. Put yourself in God’s furnace that He can refine you. Give yourself up in faith to the work of the Spirit that you will be shown proven. You cannot be, you cannot be shown to be a proven, genuine follower of Jesus if you are not neck deep committed to biblically regulated life in the local church. You can’t be. So love it. Love it.

Second thing, if we’re going to really enjoy the feast of Christ, we have to do it in view of one another. But secondly, Paul shows us we must do it, yes, in view of one another. In view of God. In view of God. Verse 23.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when 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 also He took the cup after supper, saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. Now that’s the passage that I use practically every time we take communion. And I like to use that because Paul’s function in giving that text is look, this is exactly what I was given by Christ, so this is exactly no more, no less what I’m giving to you. Cut out your ideas, cut out your imaginations, don’t do anything other than what God prescribed and gave. And you read that passage and you think, oh, well, of course, you take the thing and it represents the blood and the other one represents… And of course, don’t give yourself too much credit. I want to look at Leviticus chapter 10 with you, verse 1 through 3.

This is the short little story of Aaron, the first high priest of his two sons.

Now, Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them and they died before the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, this is what the Lord has said, among those who are near me, I will be sanctified and before all the people, I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace.

You cannot obey God. You cannot worship God however you would like.

God demands that we surrender to Him His way. Can you go to a doctor and the doctor said, ah, yes, you’ve got this illness, you’ve got this virus, oh, you’ve got this pain and this joint, you’ve got this, here’s what I’m prescribing you. And then you go away and you say, I’ll take two out of the three prescriptions and I’ll make up a couple of my own. You no longer have the doctor’s prescription. Meaning you no longer have the doctor’s remedy. Which means what? You lose the benefit of what he told you to do. You lose the health that you would have had. You cannot modify biblical prescription for communion. Communion or anything lest you lose the benefit and God Himself. I want to read to you a bit from the London, the Second Baptist

Confession of 1689. Second London Baptist Confession of 1689. I got that mixed up. Here’s what this very faithful doctrinal statement says. It says, the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by Himself and so limited by His own revealed will that He may not be worshipped according to the imagination and devices of men nor the suggestions of Satan under any visible representation or any other way not prescribed in Holy Scripture. Which again, you say, well, that’s fine. Yeah, let’s just read the Bible. But again, I want you to be sensitive to your weakness and I want you to be sensitive to the times in which you live. We live in an age, an age of modification, customization, personalization from the food you eat to the specs on your computer to the kind of clothes you wear, the inch refresh rate on your TV.

It’s pushing on into gender, morality. You know, we just, we like doing things our way. When I first started at the pregnancy center, they had us all fill out these forms so we can know what to get each other for Christmas. And it’s all these feminine things. And I’m like, I’m not filling this out. One of them was, what is your personal, oh, what’s the word when you get your initials? Monogram. Monogram. And I’m not picking on women. That’s fine. But what do women love? They love to have things monogrammed. I want it personalized. We like custom t-shirts. We like custom funny things on our coffee cup. Like we are very inundated with just kind of putting our own spin on things.

But God’s word is plain here. As He has given to us His supper, there is no modification. There is no changing. There is receiving it the way He gives it if we want to enjoy it the way He wants for us to enjoy it. What’s Paul saying? What’s Paul saying here? Paul’s saying, I never told y’all to eat these feasts. Nobody ever told y’all to have these love feasts. He says, look, here’s what Christ gave to me and here’s what I’m giving to you. Here’s what Christ gave to me and here’s what I’m giving to you. So I want you to think about the differences of the outworking of the two different things. Okay? What were the love feasts for? Self. What did these love feasts become? A means to satisfy my physical hunger? A means to elevate myself over other people? It had become all about me. The Lord’s table, the Lord’s supper rightly taken, is a feast of spiritual soul nourishment that turns me out to serve and love other people. So the concern’s not physical hunger. Physical hunger’s a real thing. And it honors the Lord when we take care of people who have that. The issue here is spiritual sustenance. So simply doing communion at the same time, that’s not going to be of any spiritual benefit to you. If I just do this thing, it’s this mystical sort of ceremony that Jesus told us to do. And if I do this thing, I’m somehow elevated to the place where God is. If I just take the element, if I just do it, this way, that’s not the case. It’s certainly not supernatural as the Catholic Church would teach it to be supernatural. So the elements, the bread and the wine or juice, don’t trans. They don’t transubstantiate, saying they don’t become something other than what they are. They are what they are. We wouldn’t agree either with Lutherans or those who would hold, or to consubstantiation.

Consubstantiating, meaning it is of the same essence and quality as the real thing. So I can’t believe, because I don’t think Jesus at all meant it, that the cup and the bread trans, they become something different, nor can I believe con, they are of the same essence and are full of Christ. Well, then what did Jesus give the disciples? He gave them bread, bread and wine.

Christ offered to His disciples a physical sign, a physical symbol, a physical emblem of a very real spiritual reality.

And that spiritual reality can only be experienced and enjoyed by faith.

So popping a cracker and taking a shot of grape juice, or wine, will do nothing for you spiritually. What does the Word of God say? That without faith, it is impossible to please God. And you think of how much of the Christian life is built on hinges on faith.

Starting with your salvation. If I trust this Jewish carpenter who lived 2,000 years ago, He’s going to keep me for eternity. I’m not going to go to heaven. He’s going to remember me. Faith alone. And when I go through hardships in life, and I experience things that I don’t understand, and I can’t see heaven, and I can’t see hell, and I can’t see angels or demons, and there’s this origin story about this garden and this snake, and Paul will say in 2 Corinthians, you’ve got to walk by faith, not by sight. So if that’s true, if that’s true, the Christian life is mostly that of believing that which cannot be seen, think about what a precious gift it is right before Christ ascended and we could see Him no more to give us a physical, tangible sign that we could touch and see.

I need all the helps I can get in the Christian life. So if Jesus is offering a physical sign to me that He sanctions and He says, hey, do this, and when you eat this bread, and when you drink this cup, it is to be for you a sort of boost to your faith, and so as you eat the bread and you drink the cup, your faith is encouraged, and as your faith is encouraged, you’re simultaneously feasting on Jesus in the Spirit. So no, it’s not this simple, quick, and this is how I grew up. Communion is like this really fast memorial service. Thank you, Jesus, for what you did a long time ago, and we appreciate that, and so we eat the little snack, it’s what it felt like, and you’re done.

It’s more than that. Because remembering Jesus is more than the chronological act of looking backwards.

Remembering Jesus is remembering, He said, I will be with you always. Remembering Jesus is remembering, He said, I will come back for you someday. So again, friends, I say to you, if you take the bread in one hand and you take the juice in the other, Christ has given, given it to you so that spiritually, your faith can be encouraged in your weakness and you see the sign, the sign encourages your spirit, and you truly feast on Christ spiritually. It’s the Lord’s Supper. And He nourishes His saints in the Spirit.

I want to read just a little bit of what Calvin says here because I think he’s hugely helpful on it. Calvin writes, You see bread, nothing more. But you learn that it is a symbol of Christ’s body. Do not doubt that the Lord accomplishes what His Word shows, that the body of Jesus, which you do not at all see, is given to you as a spiritual feast. It seems incredible that we should be nourished by Christ’s flesh, which is at so great a distance from us. Let us bear in mind that it is a secret and wonderful work of the Holy Spirit, which it were created, criminal to measure by the standard of our understanding. Hence, the Supper is a memorial appointed as a help to our weakness. For if we were sufficiently mindful of the death of Christ, this help would be unnecessary. The Supper then is, so to speak, a kind of memorial which must always remain in the church until the last coming of Christ. And it has been appointed for this purpose. That Christ may put us in mind, of the benefit of His death, and that we may recognize it before men. Hence, it has the name Eucharist. If, therefore, you would celebrate the Supper aright, you must bear in mind that a profession of your faith is required from you. Now, I want to say two things on that. One, Eucharist, when you hear that, feels awfully Catholic. Okay? And it usually, always, is used by Catholic churches. But now, Calvin is, is using it in a redeemed way. And I want to do a Calvin Zune here. So, Eucharist comes from the Greek word Eucharista, which means thanksgiving.

You see what he’s saying? If you were to feast on this, on this Supper of thanksgiving, and in your faith, truly eat Christ, you’re satisfied. And what does that do? It does the very thing Paul says you’re supposed to do in verse 26. Proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. What do you do if you’re hungry and famished and someone gives you a meal? You say, thank you. I was dying. I was hungry. I was without. And you nourished me. And now I can live another day. And I can live another day. In the same way, friends, when you and I, by faith, feast on Christ, and we’re thankful. Oh my gosh, how did I forget that? How was I living outside the power of the cross? I’m not only nourished, I’m nourished. I’m nourished so that I can go out and do what Paul’s telling me I’ve got to do in verse 26, and that’s proclaim Christ so more people could come to the table and eat. You see how outward communion is even. It’s, yes, good for me. It’s nourishment for me. But when it works the way it’s supposed to work, man, it energizes me to go live for God spiritually.

So no, it’s not strangely mystical, but neither is it this simple little memorial service. It’s a physical sign that represents a spiritual reality with very real spiritual ramifications by which you are not benefited if you do it wrong and don’t see it right. And here’s what I want to draw your attention to. Paul says, hey, don’t do it wrong because there are very serious consequences. Verse 27.

Paul says, whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died.

That’s an amazing and terrible thing that Paul’s saying. Here’s what Matthew Poole says. For an abuse offered to a sign reaches to that which it is a sign of.

As the abuse of a king’s seal or picture is justly counted as an abuse of the king himself whose seal and picture it is. Do not think communion is something and God is over here. Paul is saying to you clearly if you misuse, you dishonor the feast Christ sends before you, guess who you’re really dishonoring? The master of the house. And Paul said, oh, don’t do that. There’s judgment. You’ve got to wonder if they read this letter and took a huge gasp. That’s why such and such died last week. That’s why such and such is at home sick. We’re taking communion. Communion wrong.

So communion can be and should be for you, see this, God’s means of bolstering your spiritual life, satisfying your spiritual life, or if you so choose by disobeying, a means by which you’re killed and destroyed. Destroyed.

Have life in Christ. As you observe His Supper,

according to His command. Have life in Christ in unity, in love with others. Have life in the Supper as you believe, as you believe that the Spirit of Christ is nourishing your soul as you eat the bread and drink the cup. It is to your great spiritual benefit.

Don’t let it be for judgment and discipline.

Now, it’s a kind thing, I think even of what Paul says in these final verses. He says in verse 31, but if we judged ourselves,

truly we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we’re disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. So God is gracious and kind when His children, His people, do wrong because what does a good loving parent do? Discipline. And God’s saying, no, I’m not going to let you go the way of the world. I’m disciplining you, which in this case was getting sick and dying. But what foolish person would say, yeah, I’d like to know the love of my Father through discipline when I don’t have to. Let me do it wrong so Dad disciplines me. Well, no one would do that. And that’s what Paul’s saying is, friend, communion is supposed to be this road, this sweet, gently paved road by which you come to Christ quickly and watch you feast on Christ and you’re nourished in Christ and you’re flooded with the presence and power of Christ. Let it be the gift that it is. Don’t ask Dad to pull out his stick to whack you with. That’s not the point of it.

Take it for what it is and take it God’s way so that you can be nourished and built up. And again, I’ll speak for myself. I need all the helps I can get in the Christian life. And communion outside of the written word of God and baptism, it’s like it’s the only help that you and I have straight from the Lord that we’re sanctioned to do, we’re commanded to do in the formal gathering of the church.

Christ offers Himself to you as an eternal spiritual feast. Can I say that again? The living God, the living God above in space and time who’s always existed.

He offers to you Himself as a feast to satisfy you. Won’t you come to His table, His way and be satisfied. Thank Him for the invitation.

Be satisfied and then get up and go get some more people so you can bring them to the table. That’s the, I think, the beauty, the power, the wonder of the Lord’s Supper for us. And I want us to cherish it for what it’s supposed to be for us, that gift that God’s given it to us for. Amen. Let’s pray together.

Father, what can we say but we don’t have any words to say? We think that poor sinners like us have, not just been shown some kindness, but You have called us Your own children and in Christ Jesus You have given us eternal life. Christ offers us His very body, His very blood. Though we die, we may live in Him.

Thank You, Jesus. Thank You. Would You elevate our hearts and our minds to the spiritual place where Christ is? Would we see You for who You are? Would we see spiritual realities for what spiritual realities are? May we have the faith to grasp them. That we may grasp You. We may have You and be had by You.

This morning we’re going to take communion. It’s three weeks in a row. We had Easter and we normally do it on the last Sunday of the month, but I thought we were going to preach on communion, just take communion. So I’m just going to give you a few moments to pray and be with the Lord. Confess sin and we’ll come back together and take communion. Amen.