The Lord’s Supper (BFM #13)
Text: 1st Corinthians 11:23-34
By: Ken McKinley
We are continuing on with our study of the BFM and we are still on article 6 – the Church, but like I said last time, article 7 also includes the two ordinances of the Church so we are covering them as well in this study.
And what we’re doing today is looking at the second ordinance of the Church, but we’re looking at it in the scope of the four ministries every Biblical Church should be performing. And I’ll go over them again, just so you can get them down. They are:
1. The proper preaching of God’s Word.
2. The administration of the ordinances given to the Church.
3. The exercising of the gifts of each member in the Church.
4. Proper church discipline.
And we’re going over these ministries from the last one to the first, so we’ve already looked at #4 and #3, and half of #2. And today we come to the 2nd half of the 2nd point – the administration of the ordinances given to the Church. Last Sunday we looked at Baptism, and today we’re going to be looking at the Lord’s Supper, and actually taking Communion after the service. So if you will turn with me to 1st Corinthians 11:23-34 and lets look at our text (Read Text)
So when we look at the subject of Communion in the Bible, we actually don’t find a lot of references to it. In the Gospels we see where it was instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper, there are a few references of breaking of bread in the Book of Acts, and then we have our text here in 1st Corinthians.
When we look at our text here, the first thing we see is that Paul dates the institution of this ordinance for us. He says it happened on the “same night in which the Lord was betrayed.” In that same verse (vs. 23) Paul tells us that he received his understanding of this doctrine directly from the Lord. Paul also tells his readers in Corinth, that he didn’t just keep what the Lord had taught him, but that he also passed it on to them. As Christians we should be eager to share what we’ve learned of the Lord. But that’s a sermon in and of itself. And so, the Church did what Jesus told them to do in Luke 22 – He said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” They regularly began to… I guess you could say, “Re-enact” the supper in remembrance of Jesus and His death.
And so; what the Lord’s Supper is, or Communion as we sometimes call it, is an act done by believers, and we do this in order to remember the Lord, His death on the cross for our sins, and by doing this we also proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes – that’s what verse 26 tells us. But it also goes beyond this, because as we read in our text, Paul gives the Corinthians a pretty strong warning about partaking of the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner. His warning is so strong that Paul even says that some of the members of the Corinthian Church had lost their lives because of unworthy participation. Others were sick because of the same thing. And so I want us to take a good look at this and in order to do that, we have to go back in time a little.
In the Gospels, we see Jesus and His disciples eating the Passover meal. Historically the Jews celebrated the Passover and the meal was a special occasion designed by God to remind them of the deliverance He brought to the Israelites, when He brought them out of Egypt.
Israel had been slaves in Egypt for more than 400 years, but then God had grace upon them and delivered them. And His deliverance started with a series of plagues. We read about it in Exodus; and with every one of the plagues, Pharaoh refused the let the Israelites go, then finally; the last plague came – the killing of the first born son. And the Lord commanded the Israelites to take a lamb, kill it, and to smear the blood of the lamb on the door posts of their homes, and they ate the lamb along with some unleavened bread, and that was the Passover meal. That night, every door that had the blood of the lamb smeared on it, the angel passed over, but every door that didn’t have the blood of the lamb on it, the angel entered the home and took the life of the first born, and the result was that Israel was freed from slavery to Egypt. This is what Jesus and His disciples were doing that night, but then Jesus made a change. He said, “This cup is MY blood and this bread is MY body… do this in remembrance of me.”
So as Christians, we don’t go back to the lambs’ blood on the door post, we go back to the Lamb of God’s blood on the wooden cross. From that point on, Christians no longer celebrated Passover, they celebrated the Communion, because deliverance from Egypt was not to be the focus of the Christian, but deliverance from sin. Moses wasn’t supposed to be their focus, Jesus was. The blood on the door post wasn’t what they were to be looking to, they were to remember the blood shed on the Cross of Calvary.
So Communion is about Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. It’s a proclamation of the Gospel, of Christ’s death for our sins on the cross.
But Paul doesn’t just stop there; remember… he gives a warning to the Corinthians. If you read the chapter before our text, you see that the church in Corinth was having some trouble… there were divisions, selfishness and strife had crept into the church and was causing problems. People in the Corinthian church were engaging in gluttony, drunkenness, selfishness, the rich didn’t care if the poor went hungry and there was division and strife in the church. And according to Paul in verse 22, he says that this showed that despite what they might have claimed, it really showed that they despised the Church of God. And so specifically, when he says in verse 27 that we are to make sure we are partaking in a worthy manner, that we are not despising the Church… Look at verse 29 (Read).
And so; as we prepare to partake of Communion this morning, I want us to take a moment to examine ourselves. Do you understand that the bread represents the Lord’s body that was broken for you? That was beaten beyond recognition for you? That was nailed to a cross because of your sins? Do you understand that the fruit of the vine represents the blood of Jesus that was shed for you? That without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins? And do you understand that the person sitting next to you, or in front of you, or behind you, or our brothers and sisters sitting in churches in Woodward, or Buffalo, or Laverne, or Shattuck, or maybe even the person who isn’t sitting in a church today but has received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior… do you understand that they are all part of the Body of Christ, and are all equally valuable in the sight of the Lord, and we should love them as we love ourselves, because we are all part of the same Body of Christ…
I pray that we do understand this as we take Communion this morning.
INSTRUCTIONS and Communion service
