Remembering The Sacrifice 1 Corinthians 11:17-29 Lesson for April 7-8, 2018 Jim Armstrong

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1 Remembering The Sacrifice 1 Corinthians 11:17-29 Lesson for April 7-8, 2018 Jim Armstrong My wife and I have only been married about two and a half years. We met online through a dating service for senior adults, and we ed each other for a while before we ever met. My wife has kept all those s. They help her remember how our relationship started and why she fell in love with me. I have been through a couple of computers since that time and have lost my copy of those s. But what I have kept is the memory of seeing Rosemary for the first time. What I remember is that when she walked into the restaurant where we met, she was shining. When she walked in, everything else and everyone else just faded into the background. For the rest of the evening, she was all that I saw. Now you need to understand that I can write well, but many times, my actions don't measure up to the words I use. And occasionally, Rosemary will bump up against me in some situation and it becomes a little harder to see that shining. That's life. However, Rosemary and I both started our relationship wanting it to be something special. We did not and do not want a lukewarm marriage. And one thing that helps us to not settle for less than what we wanted, in the beginning, is to step out of whatever circumstance is causing the friction in our relationship and to remember; for me to remember the shining I saw and for her to remember those early s. Remembering is very important. The quality of our lives, especially our spiritual lives is determined by the things in our past we choose to remember.. That is the focus of our lesson this week: remembering Jesus and the great salvation He accomplished for all of us. Our text this week is taken from First Corinthians 11: This passage contains Paul's instructions to the church at Corinth concerning the Lord's Supper. Let's look at the entire passage: 17But in giving this instruction, I do not praise you, because you come together not for the better but for the worse. 18For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you; and in part I believe it. 19For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you. 20Therefore when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper, 21for in your eating each one takes his own supper first; and one is hungry, and another is drunk. 22What! Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the

2 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. 23For 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; 24and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me." 25In 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." 26For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. 27Therefore 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. 28But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. (1 Corinthians 11:17-29 NASB) I. THE REBUKE As we read First and Second Corinthians one thing becomes readily apparent: this was a truly messed up church. They just couldn't do anything right. Their worship tended toward a lot of noisy jangling; they were unclear about how to deal with marriage; they were divided and quarreled among themselves; they were messed up about the resurrection, and some of them had even lost their appreciation for Paul, the man who had told them about Jesus in the first place. This church was completely out of whack, and I am so happy that they were. Just think about it. If they had been a healthy church, Paul would never have written these two wonderful epistles of First and Second Corinthians. We learn so much because they messed up so much. (It's almost like God knew what He was doing, isn't it?) Paul starts off this section of his letter with a rebuke: 17But in giving this instruction, I do not praise you, because you come together not for the better but for the worse. 18For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you; and in part I believe it. 19For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you. 20Therefore when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper, 21for in your eating each one takes his own supper first; and one is hungry, and another is drunk. 22What! 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. Here was a church that came to the meetings quarreling among themselves. Before they ever got to the Lord's Table, they had the problem that they didn't like each other very much. They were trying to have communion when there wasn't anything communal among them. Page 2

3 Prior to taking the Lord's Supper the Corinthians had the practice of eating a meal together called a "love feast." But because they were so divided there was very little love in this "love feast." And for many of the members, there was not even much feast. The wealthy would come with their pot roast and fried chicken while the poor had only a stalk or two of broccoli. And after the poor finished their broccoli, they then had to sit there and watch all of those rich chicken chompers eat until they got through, so they could all take communion together. Do you think that looked like the Body of Christ? In verse 22 Paul shows what he thought of the whole thing when he said that those pot roast gluttons were shaming their meatless brothers and sisters by eating all that beef in front of them. But what was worse, by shaming the poor among them, Paul says they were despising the church of God. God's position is that how we treat our brothers and sisters is how we are treating the church. It was not a doctrinal thing. It was a people thing. Yes, the church has doctrines, but first, it has people. And with God people are always the priority. Brothers and sisters, God has called us out. He has called us out of our races, out of our cultures, out of our opinions, out of our social status and most of all out of ourselves. Before we received Jesus, we could eat pot roast while others had only broccoli. But now, in the Kingdom of God, such things should never be! Our brothers and sisters are more important than our stomachs. They are not just members of the church; they are members of us. (Romans 12:5) Paul concludes that he cannot praise them for meeting together to celebrate communion because what they were doing had very little to do with Jesus. II. BACK TO THE BASICS 23For 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; 24and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me." 25In 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." 26For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Paul starts off by telling them something he received directly from Jesus i He had told them before, but now they needed to hear it again. So, as is so often true in life and especially in the Christian life, we need to go back to the basics. 1. "In the night in which He was betrayed" Jesus did all of this on His last night with His disciples. He knew the end was coming, but He thought this was important enough to do before He died. Page 3

4 2. Look at the simplicity of what Paul recounts. No big religious celebration. Just the bread and the cup. Simple things. Nothing fancy. ii (History shows us that the fancier the celebration becomes, the more removed it is from the real worship of Jesus.) 3. Jesus gave thanks. Does this mean that He simply said grace? I think not. Jesus knew that this meal was picturing His suffering and death. He could still offer thanks. Though He dreaded what was coming, even He was thankful it was going to happen because this was why He came. 4. "He broke it and said, This is My body which is for you ' He broke the bread as He, in a sense, was to be broken, and said, "This is my body which is for you." iii At that time the disciples had no idea what this meant as the revelation of the Body of Christ had not yet been revealed. But the words "my body which is for you" would come to have tremendous significance for those who later became followers of Jesus. 5. "Do this in remembrance of me." Why do we do this? To remember Him. His body is for us. But do we remember all that He had to go through so that we might become members of His Body? He was scourged and mocked. His flesh was torn, and His scalp was pierced with thorns. His hands and feet were nailed to a piece of wood, and His side was pierced with a spear. That suffering purchased our right to become not just His followers but members of His Body on the Earth. Do you remember? 6. "He took the cup also after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood" iv This was the big announcement: a new covenant. The Jews considered themselves to be a people in covenant with God. Now Jesus says there is a new covenant. Moses and the law are not operative any longer. Now there is a new covenant between God and man and God set it up. This covenant, like the first one, is a covenant ratified in blood. But not the blood of some animal. This covenant is established on the blood of the one and only perfect human, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of the living God. This blood was shed to pay for the sins of the whole world. In the first covenant, sin was committed, and then the blood was shed as an appeal for forgiveness. In the new covenant the blood was shed first, to get sin out of the way, so that men and women might live their lives for God. Do you remember? Men and women, do you see? Jesus shed His blood, and now we have a new deal with God. All that you have done is under that blood. All that you will do is under that blood. Under the first covenant sin was a big problem. But now there is, therefore, no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. v Stop feeling guilty! Stop feeling like you don't measure up. You were chosen and paid for by the Lord of Creation because He desired to have a relationship with you. Do you remember? There is a painting of a bunch of Iris flowers. At today's prices, if you added up the cost of the paint and the canvas and the frame, I am told it would all come to about $350. It is Page 4

5 an old painting, painted in The painter couldn't sell it so when he died he left it to his brother. Almost a hundred years later that painting sold for million dollars. Why was a painting made up of just $350 worth of materials, a painting no one wanted, a hundred years later worth over 100 million dollars? The answer is because that is what someone was willing to pay for it. A man saw it, wanted it, and paid what it took to buy it. The value of a thing is determined by what someone is willing to pay for it. (Oh yes. The painter of that painting was Vincent Van Gogh.) What are you worth? Chemically you are worth about $1, But God says you are worth a lot more than that. He saw you and wanted you, and He was willing to pay the highest price in the universe to have you for Himself. God spent the blood of His son, Jesus Christ, just so that He could have you. Never devalue yourself and never let anyone else do it either. The new covenant in His blood is absolute, eternal and without any reservation. Believe in Jesus and you become a member of that covenant and God declares you are precious and unique. Do you remember? 7. "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes" The celebration of the Lord's Table is a declaration. By taking the bread and the cup together as a church we declare that Christ died, and we are now one people, a new people, brought together out of every tribe and tongue and nation to show forth the wondrous love of God. We declare that Christ died, and all of our sins are paid for, and we now have free access to God. We declare to the heavens that Christ died, get ready for our arrival. We declare to the demons Christ died; you can all go into the lake of fire. By taking the bread and the cup, we declare that Christ died and made us the very special people of God! Do you remember? III. THE WARNING Paul concludes this passage with a warning. It is a serious warning. In the church where I became a Christian this warning scared us so badly that we only took communion once a year and on that Sunday when we took it we always had the lowest attendance of any Sunday on the calendar. We didn't understand what the warning meant, but we knew that if you messed up with the Lord's Supper, it was going to be bad. (This warning is even scarier in the King James Version which was the only version we had.) So, what is the warning? 27Therefore 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. After reading this it becomes very important to understand just what in an unworthy manner means. 28But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. No one is to take communion in a careless way. We are all called to examine ourselves. I see two things here. Page 5

6 1. First a person must examine himself. No one else is qualified to do that examination. There is no religious hierarchy set in place to determine who can or who cannot take the Table. 2. The point of the examination is to qualify you to take communion not to disqualify you. If in your examination God shows you something, confess it, commit to rectify the situation if that is required, and then take the bread and the cup and declare His death and your participation in it. 29For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. Now we are back to the eating and drinking in an unworthy manner thing. Just what does that mean? Many theologians in the past have interpreted "the body" in this verse to be a reference to the mystical body of Christ. That moves everything into the realm of the "undefinable spooky." That interpretation is not something you can get your mind around. But the meaning here is simple. Remember the rebuke at the beginning of the lesson? Those people were eating and drinking in an unworthy manner because they did not judge the body rightly in that they were shaming their brothers and sisters and ignoring their needs. They were worshiping as if they were islands rather than members of a body. The question here is not mystical at all. Where are you with the church? Have you made your commitment to Christ? Have you joined up with His people? (That's called joining the church.) Do you attend her gatherings? Are you supporting her work and ministry? Are you involved in any Christian's life beyond your own? Have you discovered your function; are you a kidney or a fingernail or a hair follicle or what. (You are something. Don't say you are not.) God saved you to bring you into a right relationship with Himself and into a right relationship to humanity, especially to the others for whom He died. He spent all He had to set us free from sin's power and condemnation. They whipped Him and nailed Him to a cross and hung Him up naked in front of everyone. That was the price God paid to buy you back. Do you remember? i There is some discussion among scholars today about whether Paul meant to say, "This is the tradition I received from others that came originally from the Lord." But the simplest interpretation of the text is that it means what it says, and that Jesus showed this about communion directly to Paul even though Paul was not present at the Last Supper. ii Yes, the Last Supper was part of the Feast of the Passover, but all that Paul talks about to the Corinthians is Jesus offering the bread and the cup to His disciples. I think it unlikely that the Gentiles in the church were aware of all that went on in the Passover celebration and the Jews who were present would have seen how Paul, a Jew himself, left out all of the other details. Page 6

7 iii "This is my body, which is broken for you" (KJV) The evidence for the inclusion of the word "broken" here is very weak. It was not part of the original text. iv "This is My body" and "This is My blood." The literal interpretation of these two statements has led to a great deal of error in the church. As this view gained preeminence, it caused a lot of superstition and silliness. Because the cup was considered to be the literal blood of Jesus, for centuries those who were not ordained priests were denied the right to take the cup because it was feared they would spill some of the sacred blood on the ground. In fact, those who were not priests were not even allowed to touch the elements. Today there are three main views of the meaning of these statements. The first view is called "transubstantiation" which sees the elements as the literal body and blood of Jesus. Those who hold to this position see the bread and the cup, or the Mass" as they refer to it, as a sacrifice of Christ again. This is a huge theological disaster. The second view which is held today is "consubstantiation." This view holds that the body and blood of Jesus are present in communion (real presence) alongside the bread and wine, which remain bread and wine. This view was first attributed to Martin Luther though most Lutherans today do not use that term. The third view, which is held by most evangelicals including most Baptists is the memorial view. This view states that Jesus used bread and wine in a symbolical way and that the purpose of the celebration is to cause us to remember all that He went through in dying for us. v Romans 8:1 Page 7