First Corinthians 11:23-26 Remember Him and what He did
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 · Mike Doyle · Apr 18, 2021
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 53
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261922336942

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, so today we're working ourselves through 1 Corinthians 11. Last week we talked about several things that were problems in Corinth. I find it interesting that we're going to cover 11.23-26 today, which are the Lord's Table verses. But to set that up in the middle of all of this chaos, here are the verses we'll discuss. What we saw was that the abuses that were reported to Paul by the Corinthian church were pretty detailed. And Paul said he believed enough of this to conclude that there was probably a serious problem, so he addresses it.

To act in the spirit of selfishness, of selfish disregard for the needs of a brother, was to despise the church of God, composed not of lifeless stones, as we said last week, but of living people who could be grievously hurt. So the early church was the one place in which all the ancient world, in all the ancient world, where the barriers which divided the world came down.

In the ancient world, there was division between free men and slaves. There was division between Greeks and barbarians. If you didn't know the Greek language, you were considered a barbarian. There were divisions between Jews and Gentiles, between Roman citizens and those that weren't Roman citizens. The Roman citizens considered them a lesser class of people.

There were the cultural, there were the ignorant, and I could add in, of course, all of the divisions we have in our society today. We spent almost all of our Sunday school talking about the divisions that exist, gender, identity, and all these other things.

But the church is the one place where all men could and did come together. We need to keep that in mind as believers that the church is where the social class distinctions exist. Let me say it this way. I'll put it on the slide. A church where social and class distinctions exist is no true church at all. A real church is a body of men and women united to each other because all are united to Christ. We're all in Christ. So for us to have not been together for this year plus is not normal for us as believers.

So Paul had reprimanded the Corinthians for their waywardness in the Lord's table. The wealthy were eating their food, and the poor didn't have enough food, and people were drinking wine and getting drunk. And so he lays down clearly now the revelation that the risen Christ gave him from heaven concerning the proper observance of the Lord's table.

So that's what we're going to talk about this morning. So you all know these verses, but I'm going to read them and then we'll get into them. Paul says, in verse 23, For I received from the Lord that which also I delivered to you. that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and he said, this is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, he took the cup also after supper, saying, this is the cup. 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 this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." So, verse 23, I receive from the Lord Jesus that which I also delivered to you. It's interesting.

It's been pointed out that the Apostle didn't have any special revelation about baptism, but he certainly had a special revelation about the Lord's table. He was given this revelation by the Lord, the resurrected, glorified Christ. Paul himself, I think, was probably baptized like anybody else who had come to Christ. As a matter of fact, we know that when Ananias went to see him, he's the one that baptized him. So it isn't as important, I shouldn't say as important, but it isn't. God didn't give Paul a special revelation about baptism, but he certainly did about the Lord's table. Baptism attaches the individual confessor of faith and would have its place in the sign of the great Christian basis, which is based on the death and resurrection of Christ. if there had been no such thing as baptizing of believers by the Spirit into one body, the church. The point is, baptism places us in Christ and the ordinance of baptism just as a reflection on what the Spirit has already done.

But in the Lord's Table are found great truths connected with the one body that were especially given to Paul to make known to the Gentiles. And so, although the supper was given to the twelve on the night that the Lord Jesus was betrayed, it was not from them that Paul got this knowledge.

It was a special revelation from the Lord to be delivered to the Gentile believers. So this is such an important element of the Christian church, that the Spirit of God, through the Lord Jesus Christ, made it known to Paul, here's what the Lord's Table is all about, and I want you to do this. And I want you to teach, because you're the apostles to the Gentiles, I want you to teach this to the Gentiles. They need to know about this event. So, besides it being a memorial to Christ, It had to do emphatically with his death and is now bound up in the body of Christ that we have seen.

If you take a look at 1 Corinthians chapter 10, which we covered, I think, a month or so ago, Paul said there, the cup of blessing which we bless is not, is it not the communion or the fellowship of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? This word communion is the word koinonia, which most Christians understand to mean fellowship. For we though, though many, are one bread and one body. For we all partake of the one bread. So the point of unity The fact that Paul would insert this right here with all of the chaos that's going on in Corinth, this was the four verses he's going to use to unify them.

And it has to do with the Lord's table. So when he says, I received from the Lord, which I also delivered unto you, he's a chosen vessel. He's a specific one in which this mystery of Christ and this mystery of the church has been revealed to, so that it seemed good to the Lord that he should receive a special revelation about the Lord's Supper. And you will hear me refer to the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Table, they really mean the same thing. So the Lord's Supper was directly instituted by Jesus And you can look at Mark 14, 22, and Luke 22, 17, and when Christ did it at what is known as the Last Supper, or the night before He was crucified, and right before the Passover.

And it was celebrated, in this case, with the Passover. This was considered right before the Passover meal, or the Passover taking place. The Passover anticipates the cross. If you know, studied Exodus, you know what the Passover is all about. And you know that the Jews in Exodus ate the Passover meal, fully dressed, bags packed, ready to move. Because that's the night that the death angel showed up and they left that very night. The Passover meal also, though, anticipated the cross of Christ, because it has to do with the death of Christ and what was going to happen there.

So you have what is known as a chain of revelation, and it demonstrates that the doctrine comes topside down. Scripture has always been that way. It means that the Bible is not a product of human thought and research. It's not man's reaching upwards to God, but it's God communicating from Himself downward. Revelation from God carries with it obligation. The responsibility is to pass it on, unaltered and unmodified. So this is Paul's claim in these verses and that comes from Macaulay. So the word received here is, make sure I got my slides right, Yeah, I'm good.

The word received here means that it was received and passed on, or it was delivered, exactly as Paul got it, which occur again in, if you look at 1 Corinthians 15.3, which is where the gospel is mentioned, Paul says exactly the same thing. He says, I deliver to you first of all that which I also received. In other words, as I got it, you get it. And I haven't changed the word. It's exactly as I've got it, that Christ died for sins according to the scripture. That's the gospel message in 1 Corinthians 15.

And this received and passed on or delivered are technical terms really from Paul's Jewish heritage for the transmission of religious instructions according to Constable. This is exactly how he did it. When an Old Testament prophet got a revelation from the Lord, it was precisely passed on exactly as said. Nothing added to it and nothing taken away. Your opinion, the opinion of the prophet didn't matter. So he presents the concern.

His present concern is to establish that the tradition about the Lord's table they had received from him came from Jesus Christ himself. I received it from the Lord. The word betrayed is a continuous action verb and betrayal was in the process or in progress when the Lord's Supper was instituted. 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, he took bread. This is from a colleague, and I thought this was really terrific.

These facts tell us three things about Christ's death, really important things. One, it tells us the kind of death, the kind of men for whom he died. He died not merely for weak men, but he died for those who were his enemies. Two, it shows the kind of salvation that he brings. It is a salvation by grace alone, not a salvation of human merit. And the third thing it shows is the kind of love that his death demonstrates.

He gave himself for men in the face of one who betrayed him. So it's really cool, I think, right here that it's structured this way, in the night in which he was betrayed. He could have said, well, the night of the Last Supper or the night that we all got together and had dinner. But now he specifically says, in the night in which he was betrayed. He reminds us of the touching circumstances under which the Lord instituted the supper. The very night in which the evil of man rose to its height, the unselfish love of the Lord Jesus Christ was most blessedly displayed. When greed led to betrayal, love instituted the supper." Verse 24, he said, 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."

Now, since this was part of the Passover meal, I think we can be reasonably certain that the bread was unleavened. You know, I've told you the story about buying leaven from the rabbi across the street. And the other thing I want you to notice is that in the references to the wine, It's always referred to as the fruit of the vine rather than wine. Why is that? During Passover, there was never allowed any leaven in any Jewish house, any time. And so what would happen? They had to clean their houses out of leaven.

Well, fermented alcohol is leaven. So it's got to go. So I think what they were drinking was grape juice. Unfermented. Because leaven represents sin. And the absence of sin in the bread and the wine had to be part of the Lord's table. It's a sinless son of God who was going to die.

Now the Greek word Eucharistio means to give thanks. And I think that's where we get the term Eucharist. for the Lord's Supper. Likewise, some Christians call it the breaking of bread because Jesus broke the bread as Paul stated. But notice, Jesus invited his disciples to take the bread that represented his body.

Thus he gave them a share of his body. His body was for them in a double sense. It was not It was what secured atonement on their behalf. When you get to chapter 15, verse 3 and Romans 5, 6. And it was a body offered in place of them. In place of them. So when this is my body, there's been various interpretations of what Jesus meant by this is my body. I came out of Roman Catholicism, and they had this doctrine of transubstantiation, and it literally means that bread really becomes the body of Christ, and the contents of the cup become the blood of Christ.

I remember that was, I think, what did they call it? First Communion. I think it was a first or second grade in grade school. And they hammered this point home because, and I don't know how they do it now, but if you happen to be taking communion and they dropped a wafer on the floor, you couldn't touch it because it was the body of Christ. Only the priest could do it.

And you know, when you're in the first or second grade and they're teaching you this kind of stuff, it makes it kind of scary. You want to make sure you're You stick your tongue out, they put it on the tongue, you put it in your mouth, you want to make sure somehow it makes it into your mouth. So they believe this is true when duly authorized representatives of the church conduct a service properly. It's what they call transubstantiation.

And that was the other thing that was interesting. Notice when the Lord's table was done, who did it? The disciples were around, twelve of them, eleven of them, and the Lord Jesus. And He instituted it. But going forward now with Paul saying to the Corinthians, you know, you guys do this and remember me, it was not something the clergy was in charge of. And so it was one of those things that was done as a community. Now, maybe the elders, you know, just for the sake of keeping order did it, but they were not put in a position where you had to have them to do it. You could have anybody do it that was a member of the body of Christ. So adherents believe that God transfers the body and blood of Christ into the substance of the elements. The bread still looks like bread, but from their viewpoint, it isn't anymore. The wine or the juice still looks like juice, but in their view, it isn't anymore. It's the body and blood of Christ. Now, really present.

Then there's what they call the view that the Lutherans have, which is not quite as literal. It's a consubstantiation view. And as the word implies, it advocates, you see, the body and blood of Christ is present in with or under the elements. Christ is really present, though not physically present in the Lutheran view. In the Catholic view, he's physically present. The third view, major view, is the spiritual presence view that Presbyterians and other followers of Calvin hold. For them, the spiritual presence of Christ is in the elements. And in the former view, God ministers grace to the communicant in a concrete way through their participation.

That last sentence is a really important one because I know in Catholicism, I'm assuming in Lutheran the same way, and with this third view, that the Lord's Table is considered to be a means of distributing more grace than what you've got now. That you benefited spiritually by taking the Lord's table? Well, if you look at the definition of grace that Macaulay has given us, and we've adopted, I think, as the definition, that it's the unlimited and unmerited blessings from God based on the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross, that grace is not a substance held in a jar someplace that's distributed It is the environment that we live in. We as believers live and breathe and function in the environment of grace. So to think that the Lord's table was somehow going to add more grace to you than you already live in, I think it's a misnomer. And I can remember from my grade school catechism class that a sacrament was a something instituted by God to give more grace. So if I participated in Catholicism, there were seven sacraments. I had more grace than I had before I participated.

I don't think it's true with the Lord's Table. I think because we live under grace, there can't be something that would add to what I already have. I have unlimited. unmerited blessings from God. If they're unlimited, that means I have it all. And if I didn't merit any of it by taking the Lord's table, am I meriting more than I had before? No. I already have it.

Now, the fourth view is the memorial view. And its advocates believe that Jesus said, this is my body means that this represents my body. In other words, they understood his statement as completely metaphorical. They view the elements as pictures or emblems of the body and blood of Christ. In contrast to the three other views, this does not see Christ present in any special sense in the elements. This view was held by Zwigli, who was a Swiss reformer, and today most of the churches of the anti-Baptist branch of Protestantism, i.e. Baptist, Methodist, independent Bible churches, follow this interpretation. So, I think this is our view. This is where we recognize, this is my body, represents his body. The identification of the bread with the body, and I found this, I don't know where I found this, but from Constable.

This Semitic definition, it's interesting, it says the definition of the bread with the body is Semitic. And I put in parentheses there what Semitic means. It means relating to or constituting a subfamily of the Afro-Asiatic language family, which includes Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, or Amharic. I guess I can say that. Did I say that right? Amharic imagery in its heightened form. As in all such identification, he means This signifies or represents my body.

That's the view that the disciples would have had and Christ would have had in the culture that they lived in. It lies quite beyond both Jesus' intent and the framework within which He and the disciples lived to imagine that some actual change took place or was intended to take place in the bread itself. such a view as transubstantiation could only have risen in the church at a much later stage when the Greek modes of thinking had rather thoroughly replaced the somatic thinking. So I think that's where it came from. I think that at least made a lot of sense to me because I can remember as a kid thinking when I go to communion I'm actually eating the body of Christ and drinking His blood.

That's what they're saying. I never could get that straight. 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. The words for you are really important. It's the preposition for means on behalf of. It's the Greek word hupere.

It means that Christ was our substitute. He went and died in our place. He was there in our place bearing the guilt and the penalty that was rightly due to us. It was our penalty. We sinned. We should have died. Problem is our death would not have been propitious. It wouldn't have satisfied God. It took God to satisfy God.

Some Christian groups refer to the Lord's Supper as one of the sacraments. This means the elements minister grace, which I've already talked about. The ordinance or sacrament is a right the Lord commanded his followers to observe. Most Protestant believers, there are two ordinances. There's baptism and the Lord's table.

Do this in remembrance of me and in 25 in the same way when he took bread, in the same way when he took bread, or took the cup also after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant of my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. As Jesus had taken the bread and given thanks, he also took the cup and he gave thanks.

Think of this. The memory is for the Lord and not for us. It is for the Lord. He says, do this in remembrance of me. Again, I'm referring back to my Catholic days and how I would talk to people about, well, you take communion and then you have a few minutes to sort of contemplate what you're doing or you're praying or whatever. What I discovered was that it was all about how I felt or they felt or what a wonderful emotional experience it was for me, that person, to take the Lord's table. But the verse says do this in remembrance of me. So am I to be all involved in the emotion for myself? Or am I supposed to have the Lord Jesus in my focus, in my memory?

It's interesting that the Lord's Supper then is to remind us of Christ and of His death, and not of our sins. But for our sins having been put away, and ourselves loved by God. It is in no way the old covenant of condemnation, but it's the new covenant. The new covenant is God known in grace, iniquity forgiven, and sins remembered no more. You get all that out of the way, and Christ is before you. This covenant is not yet made with the house of Israel, which is set before the land under the reign of the Messiah, but the bloodshed which is the foundation of the New Covenant.

And we who believe, Jew and Gentile, having it in spirit, not in letter, on this the cup especially is the pledge. The cup of the fruit of the vine is the standing testimony that the fact that redemption is alone through Christ's atoning blood. It's no other way.

So the point here is that the focus of the Lord's table is remembering Him and what He did. The focus is not, oh, I'm so glad He died for my sins. That's not the focus. The focus is Him. I find it interesting because most of what I read and study, and you read and study in Paul's epistles, do exactly that. They focus us on the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He's the focus. No mystery surrounds this meal, such as man relished to bring into it. It's pretty simple.

It's simply by touching the memorial of the death of Christ that bread speaks of his body, of himself, and the cup speaks of his blood, his work. The symbols of the body and the blood are separate, speaking of a dead Christ. Both the bread and the cup were to be taken, said the Lord in remembrance of me. So this gives the Lord's Table its distinctive character.

It's a supper of remembrance. We're to remember what Christ did and who He is. It is a supper of remembrance, not a celebration of something existing at the moment, but it's a remembering of something that happened in the past. The Lord's Supper is to remind us of Christ, of His death, not of our sins, but our sins remitted and ourselves loved, as I said before. You know, we have these discussions, I think, a lot of times about...

I drive by that church out there in Aurora, by the Costco, and it had that big sign that said, Sinners Welcome Here. Well, if that guy knew his position in Christ, he'd realize that from a positional standpoint, he's not a sinner anymore. that he's now a son of God.

He's been redeemed. He's a new creature in Christ. So when Paul refers to the cup rather than the wine, which would have been parallel to the bread to avoid the distinction of identification of the wine and blood, it was Passover, no leaven permitted. On the other hand, they viewed both these elements symbolically, the cup being a symbol of one's lot in life, and the bread a symbol of what sustains life. It's the resurrected life of Christ. And it's because of the cross. Do this in remembrance of me in the same way. In verse 25, he took the cup after the cup of the new covenant as my blood.

Do this. The emphasis here is do this. Do this. Creates an obligation. The Lord's Supper is found twice to do this in these two verses. It's interesting. Do this is a present tense, which means it's going on all the time, continuous action. It's imperative mood, which is a mood of command. And it's active voice. We do it. We do it. We're to remember Him and what He did all the time. all the time.

The Lord's request that His disciples remember Him by partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine has a lot of root significance. I was thinking when we went through this thing last fall where people were going around the country tearing down statues and stuff like that. Human beings have a tendency to erect stone monuments in memory of their leaders. and making pilgrimages to the sites of something that was important. What the Lord Jesus did, He said, in contrast, He said, remembering Him was real easy. It was really profound.

When you take the Lord's table, you eat the elements, you appreciate the fact who Christ really is within us. That's His memorial. Eating, and notice this, this is eating together. One of the things that is sort of, we've done the Lord's Table via Zoom. It's not the same thing. We're to come together. We're to be united together, shoulder to shoulder with other believers, because we are all members of Christ's body. Remembering. Interesting. In biblical terminology, it does not mean just calling to memory. It includes realizing what the event remembered involved.

If you look at Exodus 13.3, listen to what Moses says. Moses said to the people, remember this day in which we went out from Egypt, from the house of slavery, for by a powerful hand, the Lord brought you out from this place. Moses is telling them, and to this day, they still remember what happened that night. Remember this day.

The Lord's Table is not just something Christians do to bring the memory of Jesus back in their fresh view. It's a memorial of our salvation that He accomplished by His death on the cross. The word remembering means a call to mind. It's a vigorous word. that denotes intense mental activity and reflection. So the Lord's Table is a unique thing, that it calls to look away from ourselves and to fix our eyes on a person, on the person and work of the Lord Jesus.

It is only as we get into the thoughts of His love that we have the person before us. And I talked about this last time we did the Lord's Table. The Lord has his own way of creating affections of a body of believers. And that way is by the Lord's Table. And the simpler we are in taking up what the Lord suggests to us in it, the nearer we shall get to his heart, and the more truly shall we remember him.

He wants to fill our affections with himself. He wants us to be known and blessed in that way. What's interesting is that there's nothing in heaven or earth that's quite like the Lord's table. It's a concentrated appeal of divine love to us. And it treasures every moving influence that the Lord could present to us in order to shape our affections. We need to ponder the greatness of what's going on here.

And when we come together, the Lord would withdraw the saints into a seclusion of the Lord's table that we may think about it once again together. The Lord would say, as it were, It is in this way I would shape your remembering of me. What I delight in, my peculiar joy, is that you should remember me in the character of all gathered together, and I take this way to frame you into the kind of remembering which will suit my heart." It's really wonderful to think that such a person as the Lord Jesus having come in a body into the world, would go into death, would give his body in death in order that we might be secured for all that is the pleasure and delight of divine love.

That's why he does this. That's why he did this. And then lastly, he says, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. In eating and drinking this, you show the Lord's death until He comes. In other words, you act it out. The words which rebuke those from whom any cause for disuse. Do you know that within a lot of Christian churches today, they're just foregoing the Lord's table? They're not even doing it anymore. That's an awful thing.

The Lord's table is never to be set aside until He comes again. To proclaim the Lord's death does not merely mean to proclaim the fact that He died. To proclaim the Lord's death is to proclaim the significance of His death in the sense that it was substitutionary for all sinners. He didn't leave anybody out.

He got everybody. And you know why that's so true? If you think about the sin issue, The sin issue had to be resolved between the father and the son. And they had to get all the sins, because all of them were an offense against God. So he couldn't leave any. He had to take care of that offense. And so he got them all. And so our message to anybody who's not a believer is that your sins have been paid for. Your guilt is gone. And it's because God took care of it all. He didn't leave anything for you to clean up. He did it all.

This not only commemorates, but it also proclaims the gospel. The proclamation is the age-long privilege of the church. And it's going to be done until He comes. taking the Lord's table actually dramatizes the gospel. The service becomes a visual as well as an audible setting forth of the death of Christ and its significance. It's like it's an acted out sermon, an acted proclamation of the death which it commemorates. But it is possible that there is reference to some expression of belief and the atoning death of Christ as being usual element of service. In other words, this is normal. This is not something different for believers. It's not only a memorial celebration looking back at the Lord Jesus' first advent, but it also anticipates the celebration looking forward to His second advent. Paul here is doing one thing and one thing alone. He is impressing on the Corinthians the tremendous importance of doing just this, coming together, eating this bread and drinking this cup together. We celebrate his death at the same time.

It is the end of God's relations with the world on the ground of man's responsibility except for judgment. If God says, I have taken care of the sin issue, then you are not responsible for it anymore. A guy said to me one time, he said, you do realize that if you don't make it to heaven, it's God's fault. Because he guaranteed it by the death of Christ. This death has broken every link, has proved the impossibility of any link with sin in the world.

It shows forth his death until the rejected Lord shall return to establish new bonds of association. It is this which we proclaim in the ordinance when we keep it. That was a quote from that last part was a quote from John Darby. I'm going to read it again and then we'll close. This death has broken every link has proved the impossibility of any. We show forth his death until the rejected Lord shall return to establish new bonds of association.

It is this which we proclaim in the ordinance when we keep it." Let's close. Father, how we as believers desire to enter as fully as possible into the wonderfulness of the death of your son. And the fact that it solved the sin issue, it solved the guilt issue, and the Lord says, remember me about that until I come again. And we do. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.