All right, let's turn to 1 Corinthians
chapter 11. When you're going through verse
by verse, it's hard sometimes to come up with a title for these. But in groups of verses, we always
have subjects. And I decided to title this one
How To and How Not To. But in verses, 17 through the
end of the chapter, here in chapter 11 of 1 Corinthians, Paul speaks
concerning the Lord's table. And he's going to give us some
examples of how it should not be practiced, and then he's going
to instruct us fully on how it should be practiced. If you'll
look here with me in verse 17. Now in this that I declare unto
you, I praise you not, that you come together, not for the better,
but for the worse. Now, many of the church historians
record that the Lord's table was preceded by what they called
a love feast. And this feasting included drinking
and partying, and they just made a big party out of it, is what
they did, a big celebration. And it got out of hand. There's
nothing wrong with a fellowship dinner at a church or a Saturday
morning breakfast. A lot of churches I'm affiliated
with, they have Saturday morning men will get together and they
have a breakfast and so on. But we've got to be careful about
how these things are conducted and that they're not mixed in
any way with the Lord's table. Their coming together was commendable.
what they were doing and how they were doing it was not. The
gathering on this occasion was for the worse, Paul said, and
not for the better. Verse 18. For first of all, when
you come to gather in the church, I hear that there be divisions
among you, and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies
among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest
among you. There was divisions in the church,
factions, cliques sometimes we refer to. And anytime there's
a division in the church, there's someone teaching or promoting
heresy. Did you notice that in the verse
how Paul went? He just kind of generally said
that when they were coming together, they were coming together for
the worse and not for the better, and then immediately he goes
and starts talking about heresies and divisions. Our union is in
the Lord Jesus Christ who is Himself the embodiment of truth.
Our union is in the Holy Ghost who dwells in us and teaches
us and reveals to us God's eternal mysteries, even the deep things
of God. The church in the scripture is
one body and one spirit. And we're all called with one
hope of our calling. We have one faith. We have one Lord. We have one
baptism. We have one God and Father of
all who is above all and through all and in you all. And most
of us who've been saved out of false religion have had our share
contention and controversy and differences of opinion. But those who are saved, saved
out of religion, saved from it, do not differ over primary doctrines
of the gospel. We're together on those. We're together on them. We may
have different opinions as to when and how the Lord's coming
back. We might have differences of
opinion on other things, but not on these basic principles,
these fundamental doctrines of the gospel. We don't differ on
those things. I remember when Henry had the
preacher school up in Ashland. He got us all together one day. It was on a Saturday morning. And he said, and there was some
bickering back and forth about this and that. He stopped everybody and he said,
let me tell you something. He said, it's going to be tulip or termination. It's going to be tulip or termination. And we don't disagree on those
things. Save men and women do not disagree
on those doctrines. Those doctrines are the basic
fundamental foundation of our hope, and we don't disagree on
those things. The Holy Spirit of God does not
reveal one thing to you and something else to me. One of us is deceived. Do you see what I'm saying? He
said there's just one body and one Spirit and one Father. All these things are one, one
faith, one baptism. It's all the same. It's all the
same. And it's all produced in us by the Holy Spirit of God,
and there shouldn't be all this controversy and division. There
should be communion. There should be a harmony of
the faith. The Holy Spirit of God does not
reveal one thing to you and another to me. He's the one who enabled
men by divine inspiration to pen the sacred scriptures. And
He's the one who accompanies the message of gospel preachers. And He's the one who reveals
the things of Christ in our hearts and minds. So where's the controversy
coming from? Not coming from Him. Divisions
and factions and little groups who go their own way are caused
by heresies. That's what Paul said. And Paul
tells us here that they're permitted. They're permitted to be in our
midst. It's no shock. He said, it's not a shock to
me. I believe that, he said. And then he tells us why, verse
19, that they which are proved may be made manifest among you. So here's what he's telling us.
The church at Corinth was divided, and these divisions were caused
by heresies. Somebody was teaching things.
It just wasn't so. Heresies concerning the preeminence
of gospel preaching and their worship services, and heresies
about marriage and married people's role in the church, and heresies
about men and women and their distinct role in the church and
in the home, and all these different things, heresies about divisions
and factions in the church and heresies concerning the Lord's
table and baptism. And now Paul is going to show
us what's right and what's wrong and the danger of trying to add
our own ideas and concepts to the Word of God. Verse 20, when
you come together therefore into one place, This is not to eat
the Lord's table. He said, that's not why you're
gathering together. For in eating, every one taketh before his own
supper, and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What, have
you not houses to eat and drink in, or despise you the church
of God, and shame them that have not? Should I praise you in this? I praise you not. Brethren, God's
given to us this blessed ordinance of the Lord's Supper to remember
Him by. That's why He's giving it. And
to be reminded of what He's done for us and what He means to us. And nowhere in the Scriptures
are we taught to turn this ordinance into a feast or a fellowship
dinner. Nowhere. This is the Lord's table. Did you notice the language Paul
used? He said, you brought your own
supper. We're not here to celebrate our
supper, we're here to celebrate His. His supper. He makes a distinction here.
This is the Lord's table. There's a practice as old as
mankind that the natural man take the simple truth of God
and change it into something more suitable to his twisted
reasoning and depraved nature. Adam had two sons. These are
the first two boys. His first two boys, Cain and
Abel. And he taught them both how to
worship God by the sacrifice of a lamb coming to an altar,
sacrificing that lamb exactly the way the Lord did to him and
before him and his bride in the garden. And he taught them that. They didn't dream this up. They
didn't just sit around and say, well, you know, God being God
and all, maybe we ought to worship Him. That's not how this came
about. Adam taught these two boys what
to do and how to do it. And he told them, demonstrated
to them, brought before them the Lamb. But this seemed a gross
thing to Cain. That wasn't his idea of worship.
There was nothing in a dying Lamb that he thought was conducive
to worship. A bloody lamb didn't raise his
spirits up. A bloody lamb didn't make him
feel better about himself. So he changed it and he made
it more suitable for him. And he brought the work of his
hands. He brought the results of his best efforts. He sacrificed
something that he worked hard to produce and God had no respect
to it whatsoever. The keeping of the ordinances
is an act of faith, it's an act of submission, and it's an act
of understanding. It is the Lord's supper. And
they turned it into their own supper. And instead of picturing
how God saves sinners, it pictured the twisted, depraved hearts
of men. Each family brought their own
food and wine, and some were well off and had plenty, and
others didn't have anything. And so some sat there without
anything and those that had everything was over there feasting and eating
pork chops and fried chicken and gravy and they were just
eating and these folks over here didn't have nothing. They didn't
have anything. And some were full, he said,
and some were drunken while others were hungry and without drink. And while we don't see this type
of thing so much in our day, we do see groups changing the
elements of the supper, changing the doctrine of the supper, and
changing the meaning of the supper. And they change these things
to suit themselves. Let's read now what Paul says
about the Lord's table here in verse 23. For I have received of the Lord
that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, that
same night in which He was betrayed, took bread. And when He had given thanks,
He broke it. And He said, Take, eat. This
is My body which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of
Me. Now this was not just any old
night. Anybody here know why they gathered
to eat this supper? It was the Passover. It was the
Passover. And the Passover was observed
as God moved through Egypt and killed all the firstborn in the
land. Do you remember that? And they
were told to kill a lamb and to eat it, and to eat unleavened
bread. And so that's the way they kept
it under the law of Moses and so on. That's the way that Passover
was observed. It was to be kept by slaying
a spotless lamb without blemish and eating that lamb with unleavened
bread. The bread which our Lord break
and pass to His disciples was unleavened bread. Leaven is a
picture of sin. A little leaven leaveneth a whole
lump. It's a picture of false doctrine.
And Jesus Christ was the spotless, sinless, unblemished Lamb of
God. And He was and is the embodiment
of all truth. Now, He said, You take and eat.
This is My body which was broken for you. He bore our sins in
His own body on the tree. He bore our shame and suffered
as our substitute under the wrath of God. This is my body which
was broken for you. And seeing His blood, seeing
His suffering and death, God's justice was satisfied and He
will pass over us. And the eating of this bread
symbolizes the act of faith which believes and trusts in God's
Lamb. This eaten bread, we eat this
bread and drink this wine and it goes in us and becomes a part
of us. So what faith truly believes
becomes a part of you. It becomes a part of you. All
right, verse 25. After the same manner also, he
took the cup when he had supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament
in my blood. This do ye as oft as ye drink
it in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread
and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He comes. This is wine. It's not grape
juice. It's wine. It's not flavored
Kool-Aid. It's wine. And it's wine to picture the
incorruptible blood and nature of Christ. They didn't call our
Lord a wine beaver. They didn't accuse Him of being
a wine beaver because He drank grape juice. Because He drank
wine. And there's countless heresies
practiced by false religion which are never taught in the scriptures
concerning the Lord's table. My point is this. What Paul was
telling them is you're not keeping this the way I delivered it to
you. You're not keeping this the way
the Lord instituted it and the way He commands it to be kept.
And it's important. It's important. And Catholics call the Lord's
Supper a Eucharist or a sacrament. And they teach that this ordinance
has a sanctifying effect on those who observe it. And they also
teach the doctrine of transubstantiation. And that's a great big word that
means when you eat the bread and it goes inside you, all of
a sudden it becomes the body of Christ, the real body of Christ. And the wine that you drink,
it's changed in its substance and it becomes the blood of Christ.
And many of the independent churches, they teach that we're converted
to the eating of the bread and the drinking of the wine. And
quite a few of them believe that about baptism. And many others
substitute the elements on their own because they don't believe
that believers partake of alcohol. They believe that's strictly
forbidden. And so they substitute this wine for grape juice. And
they eat crackers. instead of unleavened bread.
Or in one place Brother Don was at, they served just light bread. They just took a loaf of bread
and pinched it up and put it on a plate and passed it out.
All of these practices result from heresies concerning the
gospel of Christ. You see what Paul is saying here?
And they are filtering down into your understanding about marriage,
into your understanding about the Lord's table, into your understanding
about baptism. in your understanding about the
role of men and women. All of these things filter down
and they affect all these different parts of our life. This gospel
affects everything you do, everything you are, everything you say. This gospel. And all of these
practices result from heresies concerning the gospel of God's
sovereign grace and Christ. The Lord's Table, as well as
baptism, is a picture which symbolizes the salvation of God's elect
and His accomplished redemption in Jesus Christ our Lord. It's
not a celebration or a fellowship supper. It's not our supper. It's His. And as often as we
eat that bread and drink that wine, and to my knowledge, there's
nothing in the Scriptures, I believe Brother Don practices this every
week, they have the Lord's Table. But there's nothing in the Bible
as far as telling you exactly when to keep this. But it does
tell us how it's to be kept. And it said as often as you do
it, you do show the Lord's death till He comes. Now next week,
Lord willing, we'll finish up the chapter and we'll look here
at who's worthy and who's unworthy to take this table. And he tells
us that very clear, very plainly. Most of these doctrines are very
clear. It's just cutting through all
the preconceived concepts that men have about them and trying
to work your way through all the heresies to get down to it. When you finally get down to
it, it's pretty simple. Pretty simple. But what men teach
about it and the ideas that we've gotten from their teaching is
what makes these things so confusing.