We are going to continue in our series in 1 Corinthians and we are going to talk about the meaning and purpose of communion. Just like James was saying, communion is a meal, a small meal, but cracker and juice is shared as we come forward and dip the piece of cracker in a glass of juice, so that I thought it would be fun to think about our favorite meal.
It might be the family meal we celebrate at Christmas. It might be your favorite fast food place. It might be the best BBQ in Austin. Our very own Dustin Rogers putting his BBQ skills on display that we enjoy every Easter.
In the early church, they didn’t do cracker and juice but they hosted a feast and as a result there were some in the Corinthian church who were enjoying the food and wine too much and there were some in the Corinthian church who were being completely overlooked, so that they didn’t get to celebrate communion at all.
In our passage this morning we get to take an in-depth dive into the meaning and purpose of communion. Let’s look at 1 Corinthians 11:17:
1 Corinthians 11:17, “17 But in giving this instruction, I do not praise you, because you come together not for the better but for the worse.”
Last Sunday we see the Apostle Paul use the words “I praise you because you are holding firm to things I taught you” but in verse 17 we see the Apostle Paul clarify, “No praise for you!”
Why? It’s because when the Corinthian church comes together for worship it isn’t for the better but for the worse. Do you see that in verse 17? Can you imagine the Apostle Paul shows up to North Village, sits through a worship service with our church family in Austin, TX and then says, “You should probably stop gathering as a church family?” Look at verses 18-19:
1 Corinthians 11:18-19, “18 For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you; and in part I believe it. 19 For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you.”
First of all, anytime someone gives you a “first of all” that’s not a good sign. Second of all, there’s no number 2, 3, or 4. The Apostle Paul is so frustrated that he can’t keep track of his numbers.
Third, if you are new to 1 Corinthians, then you need to know this frustration wasn’t new. The Corinthian church was struggling to get along. They are having sex with one another, taking one another to court, arguing with one another and in chapter 11 they are showing favoritism in the celebration of communion.
There were some in the Corinthian church who were wealthy so they were able to show up to worship early, enjoy communion early, eat too much, drink too much but those who were poor had to typically work, showed up later and as a result, weren’t able to participate in communion because the food was all gone, so that there was accepted division in the Corinthian church.
This is why in verse 19 the Apostle Paul does a play on words with division and factions, so as to say we need to remove the economic division and we need to insert spiritual maturity division to see who is serious about their faith in Jesus. Does that make sense?
You ever heard the quote about the time the reporter asked the football coach, “Is there division on your team?” The coach said, “No, there’s no division on our team but there’s about to be” because the coach wanted to create division between those who were serious about their commitment to football and those who were not serious about football.
Listen to me, that’s a little of what the Lord is doing in our church family in north Austin right now. We are being refined as a church family in Austin Texas. We are being pruned as a church family in north Austin. In the moment, it isn’t fun but what needs to happen is we need to see who are the people who are committed to our bible teaching church family in Austin.
Have you heard the leadership principle, “It would be better to have 10 people who are white hot focused and committed than have 1,000 people who are casually involved?” This is what’s taking place in our church family in Austin and this is what the Apostle Paul wanting to draw to the surface in the Corinthian church. Look at verses 20-21:
1 Corinthians 11:20-21, “20 Therefore when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper, 21 for in your eating each one takes his own supper first; and one is hungry and another is drunk.”
Do you see the tension of the passage? The Apostle Paul simply says, “This isn’t the purpose of communion.” Look at verse 22:
1 Corinthians 11:22, “22 What! Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? 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 will not praise you.”
This is the challenge for the Corinthian church in our passage this morning and this is the challenge for the local church in our day today as well. The common trend in the local church today is people saying, “I have to worship with people who are LIKE me.”
I need to worship at a place with people who vote like me. I need to worship at a place with people who are the same color as me. I need to worship with people who have the same education, stage of life, disposable income, because if I don’t have those types of people then I don’t fit into that church family in Austin.
In the most loving way, God’s Word presses in on our soul and says, “What?” Do you not have your own hobby, houses, and work to find people who line up with those interests? Are we going to shame the church of God and say, “Well, our common faith in Jesus is nice but for us to really connect I need alignment in these other areas as well?”
Listen to me church family, please don’t assume this is just a challenge for the Corinthian church. This is a challenge for us as well. It is easy to drift toward those who are familiar, comfortable, and laugh at the same jokes but God’s Word makes it clear that our greatest identity is in Christ, therefore, lets rally around Jesus. Look at verse 23-25:
1 Corinthians 11:23-25, “23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; 24 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.” 25 In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”
In verses 23-25 we see the first purpose for communion is remembrance. We are remembering Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection but we are also remembering a meal that Jesus celebrated with the disciples in Matthew 26.
But, even more important, the meal Jesus celebrates with the disciples is the celebration of another meal that starts in the book of Exodus in the Old Testament. This is awesome!
In Exodus we see Israel is enslaved to Egypt and the Pharaoh of Egypt is warned over and over and over to let the people of Israel go until the last warning is that of the Angel of Death that sweeps through the land of Egypt, taking every first-born child. If you don’t know this part of God’s Word, please read it on your own!
In Exodus the people of Israel are instructed to take the blood of a lamb, this is important, the sacrifice of the lamb is to take place for the sins of the people, so that the blood of the lamb is placed on the doorposts of the house, so that the Angel of Death passes over every home that is covered by the blood of the lamb.
After that day the people of Israel celebrated every year with what was called a Passover Meal and they celebrated that meal every year and still till this day.
But in Matthew 26, Jesus sits down with the disciples to celebrate the Passover Meal, which had been celebrated for thousands of generations, and Jesus applies the Passover Meal to Himself.
In Verse 24, Jesus takes the bread, and says, “This is My body, which is for you.” The bread in the Passover Meal is a symbol for the affliction Israel suffered in captivity, so that Jesus speaks of His death and says, “I am taking the greatest affliction upon Myself for you!” Does that make sense?
There are some faith traditions, primarily the Catholic church that will teach that the bread actually becomes the body of Jesus, but we don’t see that in God’s Word. Jesus often spoke in metaphors of vine, gate, bread and I think the disciples knew in that moment that Jesus wasn’t the bread.
In verse 25 Jesus takes the cup of wine and says, “This cup is the New Covenant in My blood.” Again, the cup is a metaphor that points to something larger.
The word “covenant” is the word for relationship, so that Jesus is borrowing language from the Old Testament like Jeremiah 31 says when Jeremiah writes, “Behold, declares the Lord, the days are coming when I will make a new covenant that isn’t like the old covenant.”
In the Old Covenant the Lord wrote His law on tablets of stone but Jeremiah writes, “A day will come when I will write My Law on their heart.”
So that when Jesus holds up that cup He is pointing the disciples to a new relationship that is coming. Does that make sense?
When you see the cup, the bread, the juice they are simple in presentation but majestic in meaning, and it is during the celebration of communion that we take time to remember the depth of what we are celebrating. Look at verse 26:
1 Corinthians 11:26, “26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
In verse 26 we see the second purpose for communion. Do you see it? The first purpose was to remember and the second purpose is to proclaim.
What are we proclaiming in the celebration of communion? We are proclaiming that we were in the bondage of sin but through faith in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we have been set free.
Today some of us might be weighed down by the challenges of life. We just celebrated Father’s Day, so there might be memories of hurt or pain that have been stirred up.
The heat of the summer might be weighing you down. The brokenness of our bodies might be weighing us down. There might be layers of pain in our words, our thoughts, our character…that’s all sin. It is sin that steals, kills and destroys, so that communion is a proclamation we have been set free. In Christ, we are just set free from death but we are brought into life with Him.
The meal we celebrate today is just a sliver of a greater feast that is coming one day. Today is just an appetizer, but Revelation 19 teaches us that one day, all who are in Christ, all throughout history will gather at the table to celebrate the ultimate meal. Does that make sense?
Today we might be weighed down with disappointment, loss, regret, but the gospel teaches us that one day we will walk into a room that is more glorious than we can imagine and on that day, we will see the Father who sees us and He will smile. He will smile because on that day we won’t be covered with shame, guilt, defeat, anxiety, fear, and despair but He will see us as we are, covered in the righteousness of Christ, covered in the blood of the lamb, made pure and without blemish.
So, when you see the cup, the bread, the juice they are simple but they are like little heralds, little trumpets, proclaiming to our soul that one day all things will be made new. Look at verse 27-28:
1 Corinthians 11:27-28, “27 Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. 28 But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup.”
In verses 27-28 we see the heart of these words that most concern the Apostle Paul. It’s possible you could think of communion as a religious celebration that doesn’t really matter but in verses 27-28 we see the third purpose for communion. Do you see it? The third purpose of communion is for self-examination.
We celebrate communion to remember. We celebrate communion to proclaim and the third purpose is to examine the spiritual health of our soul during communion.
In verse 27 there is a caution of “unworthy manner” because the Corinthian church is judging one another, offending one another, hurting one another and then trying to turn around and celebrate all that they have been given in Jesus and the Apostle Paul leans in on the Corinthian church so as to say, “You can’t do that!” Here’s why. Look at verse 29-32:
1 Corinthians 11:29-32, “29 For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. 30 For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. 31 But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. 32 But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.”
We touched on this in 1 Corinthian chapter 10. This isn’t judgment on those who are outside family who reject Jesus but judgment on those who are inside the church family in north Austin.
It is men and women who profess faith in Jesus yet persist in habitual, repeatable, unrepentant patterns over and over and over, so that the Apostle Paul writes, “Be careful!”
When we sow a life of lying, slander, gossip, pride, arrogance, sexual immorality, fear, anxiety over and over and over we would be naïve to think, “There won’t be any natural consequences.” That’s the challenge to the Corinthian church. That’s the challenge for us this morning.
It’s possible you might think, “Pastor Michael, are you trying to scare us this morning?” Yeah. Verses 27and 28 are to motivate us to take our faith in Jesus serious.
Verses 27-28 is to create that fraction of those who want to be committed to the Lord and those who just want to play with their faith, therefore, Gods Word exhorts us to examine our soul, especially during the celebration of communion. What does that look like practically?
Consider how we prepare to attend worship on Sunday morning. Perhaps we look in the mirror before we walk out the door? We check our clothes. Any food in our teeth? We are physically examining our appearances.
In the same way, might we take a few moments to spiritually examine our soul. Might we look at the passage we are going to study that morning? Might we spend a few moments in prayer? Might we ask ourselves questions like:
- What is the health of our relationships in the body of Christ?
- What is the health of our relationships with those outside of Christ? (Do we ignore people?)
- Are we hardhearted toward people? (Do we say, “I am not mad at that person. I just don’t talk to them.”)
Listen, we’re not going to be at 100% wholeness with every person in our life. There are relationships in our life where the best we are ever going to get is 10%. We aren’t mad at those people. We do talk to those people but for whatever reason the best we are going to get is 10% then let’s ask the Lord to help us have 100% of that 10%. Does that make sense?
A long time ago I once heard a pastor teach on this passage and he said during communion he set up tables with phones at the back of the church. This was before smartphones. He challenged his church family, “Maybe some of us need to make a phone call before we come forward to celebrate communion?” That’s the seriousness of the passage. Let us not be casual in this area of our life but reconcile where we need to reconcile.
- Am I playing with sin?
- Am I telling myself it’s just this one little area that isn’t hurting anyone? (Am I making excuses for sin? The word examine means to look deeply at our relationship with the Lord and our relationships with one another.)
- Am I avoiding areas of obedience where I know I need to obey?
The admonition to examine isn’t to condemn but the admonition to examination is to exhort us to live out our new identity in Christ. Do you understand the difference? The warning of judgment isn’t to scare but it is to set free!
In John 13 Jesus pours water into a bowl to wash the disciples feet and Peter says, “Lord, you can’t!” Jesus responded, “If I don’t, then you can’t have any part with Me.” Peter says, “Okay, then wash every part of me!”
Jesus says, “Peter, you’ve believed in Me. You’ve already been made clean. You just need to be washed.” That’s the purpose of communion. Through faith in Jesus, you’ve already been made clean. The examination isn’t to bring shame. The examination is to be set free. We just need to be reminded. Look at verse 33-34:
1 Corinthians 11:33-34, “33 So then, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. 34 If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that you will not come together for judgment. The remaining matters I will arrange when I come.”
I love the tone of verses 33-34, “So then, my brethren, when you come together.” Remember, he’s already told them they shouldn’t even gather together. They should stop but upon remembering communion, upon proclaiming communion, upon self-examination in communion, come together and this time, wait for one another.
Did you notice how the context of communion is plural? I think it is so easy to see the celebration of communion as individual. We see our faith as individual but God’s Word describes our faith as plural. The celebration of communion is one another. The importance of self-examination is about one another, therefore, let us practice what we have learned.