1 Corinthians 11:17-34 - Family Dinner

Main Idea: Remember Jesus’ sacrifice for sin through rightfully partaking in communion with His people.

• What is the Lord’s Supper?

  • The corporate remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice for sin for us.

  • A personal reflection on our spiritual walk with Christ.

  • A joyful anticipation of Christ’s return.

• How should we observe the Lord’s Supper?

  • We should be lovingly unified with our brothers & sisters in Christ.

  • We should be humbly repentant of our sin before Christ.

  • We should be submissively respectful of His church’s authority.

• When did early believers observe the Lord’s Supper?

  • Every day (Acts 2:46), and especially on Sundays (Acts 20:7-11) when they assembled together (1 Corinthians 11:17-20).

  • The earliest Christian documents reiterate this weekly habit.

  • Non-weekly observance was a change in the Dark/Middle Ages.

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

We're looking at 1 Corinthians 11. Family dinner. What word comes to mind when you think about dinners with your family?

Maybe your family right now, maybe growing up. Just shout out, what are some words that come to mind when you think family dinner? I hear conversation, conversation is good.

I think I heard drunk, which that can definitely be some. And we'll actually read about, yes, yes, it is drama. And we'll actually see some of that even today in this passage, believe it or not.

Family dinner can be a wonderful thing or it can be an awful thing. When family dinner is something that you have to go to, but you have no desire to be around those people.

Maybe you just really fight with your sibling or your mom's always commenting on your weight, and you're like, listen, I need you to lay off a little bit. Family dinner can be really good or really bad.

My family is kind of scattered a little bit across the country right now. I've got my parents are in North Carolina. I've got my siblings down at college in Pensacola, Florida.

I've got a sister and a brother-in-law that are up in York, Pennsylvania. And then I've got some of my wife's family that's over kind of more by Hagerstown. My family is all over the place.

And so whenever we get to get together, it's a really, really special time for me. I love my parents. I love my siblings.

And I wish that I could have some more family dinners with them. That's the kind of family dinner that as we look today at the topic of the Lord's Supper, you might also know it by Communion, the Lord's Table.

Depending on your denominational background, you might have even heard the phrase, the Eucharist before. We, as we think about the Lord's Table, we want to have a family dinner that we want to show up for.

How sad would it be if a dreadful, unwanted time in the Church of Jesus Christ was the time when we share a meal, where we remember Him, where we anticipate His coming, and when we think about our relationship with Him even right now.

We want to have a good relationship with God. Today, there's a main thought that I want us to come away with as we think about this family dinner. And it's this.

Remember Jesus' sacrifice for sin through rightfully partaking in communion with His people. Remember Jesus' sacrifice for sin through rightfully partaking in communion with His people. Would you pray with me?

We're going to read through 1 Corinthians 11, and we're going to walk through this together. Hopefully, you will be encouraged.

Maybe if you don't know why we observed the Lord's Supper like we did a couple of weeks ago, maybe if you don't know how often we should do it, I hope that this time in the Word of God will be encouraging and uplifting to you. Let's pray together.

God, thank you. Thank you that you have given us a way to consistently remember what you've done for us. That we remember that salvation is not just for someone else.

It's something that we can personally experience. God, that it's not just something that we're born into. It's something that we voluntarily enter into through faith in you, in your work.

And God, I pray today for every person that's here that you would encourage them, that you would help to draw their heart towards worship and love for you. God, may we see Jesus clearly.

Lord, if there's someone here today that doesn't know you as their Savior, I ask that today would be the day that they make that choice, that as they see what you've done, they would want to enjoy a relationship with you forever.

God, may you be glorified in your church today and may you be glorified in the words that I say. I pray all of this in your name. Amen.

All right, if you've got your Bible, turn over to 1 Corinthians 11. 1 Corinthians 11, and we're going to start in verse number 17. The Apostle Paul is writing this letter to the church at Corinth.

Church at Corinth was a gifted place. It was a really, really, really messed up place. There was tons of disunity.

There was fighting. People wanted to have the best, most visible spiritual gifts that everyone would go, wow, they're so spiritual. But they were some of the most unspiritual people around.

They were very carnal, fleshly, worldly. They were just doing stuff as a result of what they wanted to do, not what the Spirit wanted them to do.

And so in 1 Corinthians, Paul addresses what's going good in their church and some of the things that they needed to know, things that they had been doing wrong and things that needed to change.

So we're going to pick this up in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 17. It says, now, when giving this instruction, I do not praise you since you come together, not for the better, but for the worse. Is that how you guys want your church to be described?

That every time Tabernacle gets together, it's for the worse? No, this is bad. So I want to, whatever Paul has for us, I want to be listening to this.

God, help us to come together, that everything becomes better. Our relationship with the Lord becomes better as a result of us gathering together. Our relationship with each other gets better.

Our relationship in evangelism to our world becomes better through us getting together. Verse 18, for to begin with, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and in part, I believe it.

Indeed, it is, here you could put quotation marks. Paul's not saying there should be divisions. He says, indeed, it is necessary that there be factions among you, so that those who are approved may be recognized among you.

He says, some of you are wanting to be the big shot. And so you have, you know, team Apollos, you have team Seafis, you have team Paul.

He says, but you guys are isolating yourselves around individuals, and you're not isolating yourselves around Jesus. You're not saying, Jesus is the point. He's saying, you're splitting into these different groups, and this is bad.

And then he says this in verse 20, here's the specific way that this is coming out, that is awful, that you should not be doing. He says, when you come together then, it's not to eat the Lord's Supper.

When the church came together, they were supposed to be observing the Lord's Supper. It was supposed to be for the better. But he says, when you get together, you're not observing the Lord's Supper.

Like you have the bread and the wine, you're doing that stuff. He says, but you're not actually observing. He says, for at the meal, each one eats his own supper.

So one person is hungry, while another gets drunk. One of you that said, family dinner. This was happening in the church.

Can you imagine coming in to Tabernacle on a Sunday morning, or this would likely have happened during the evening time, so Sunday night, and half the people are like, man, I'm so hungry, I'm starving. And you've got people that are just drunk.

Here, this is supposed to be a holy time. Do you guys agree a church should be a holy place? Yes or no?

Yeah. And the Lord's Supper should be a holy time. Yes or no?

Is getting drunk a holy thing? No. This is what was happening.

This is a messed up church. Whatever is wrong with Tabernacle in the various parts of our life, we're at least not this far at this point. Praise the Lord, we're not getting drunk.

But this was a problem within this early church. He says, don't you have homes in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the Church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?

What should I say to you? Should I praise you? I do not praise you in this matter.

So here's what happened. Rich people bring all of the good stuff. They bring all the great food, they bring the good wine, and they show up to church early, and they're engorging themselves.

They're getting riotously drunk. And then you have those that are poor, that don't have means. And they come, they're not getting anything.

You've got the rich clique and the poor clique. Can I tell you, that should never be the case within the church of God.

James derides the churches for this in James chapter 2, where he says, you should not have favoritism, respect of persons for the rich over the poor. For some of you, you are more financially affluent.

God wants you to use your affluence to bless and benefit and care for others. That's the uniform testimony of scripture. Here, that was not happening.

People were using their wealth to benefit themselves and to ignore and deny others. Verse 23 then says, For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.

Jesus told Paul this, and I assume this also came by way of the apostles that were there during the Last Supper, what I also passed on you.

On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 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. I want to take just a moment.

What a joy that when Jesus' body was broken, he doesn't say this is an example for what you should do. He doesn't say, Just like I'm dying for sin, you should die for your sin.

He didn't say, I'm going through this incredible hardship, and so you as a result have to go through this hardship to obtain salvation. Jesus' body was broken for us.

That there was a price of justice that needed to be paid for your sin and for my sin, for the things that we think and say and do that are contrary to the nature and will of God. But we didn't have to take that punishment.

Jesus took that punishment for us, and his body was broken for us. In the same way, he also took the cup after supper and said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

The old covenant, it's a, if you will, it's a contract, it's a relationship between God and Israel. That was the old covenant. And God says, here's my promises to you.

Here's what I will do. And there is something that is asked of the people, that I will be your God, you will be my people. But Israel couldn't keep the old covenant.

None of us could keep the old covenant. So God had to do a new thing in which he changed us, not from the outside in, but from the inside out, that we would be saved and transformed on the inside by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And as a result of that transformation that took place, then we are able to live our lives for the Lord, living from the forgiveness of God, living from our relationship with him, not trying to earn it, not working for a relationship with God, but

from it. This is that new covenant in his blood. And then he says, do this as often as you drink it. So this is the bread and the cup, as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

This can happen whether or not you observe the Lord's table every day or whether you observe it once a year. Every time that you partake of the bread and the cup, you are to remember your salvation. That you were alienated from God, all of us.

From oldest to the youngest, from the most religious to the, I've barely stepped foot in church at all. All of us are sinners in need of a savior. God loved us, he created us for a relationship with himself.

We wandered far away from him, and we wandered the path towards sin and death and hell, but he loved us so much that he came in the person of Jesus Christ. He bore the just cost of our sin, the punishment that we deserve.

He took that on himself and invites us back into that relationship, not to be obtained through our works, but to be obtained through believing that what Jesus did is sufficient, calling on him to be our Lord and our savior.

Every time we partake the Lord's Supper, we remember that. We were sinners, God loved us, God paid the price for our sin, and now we have a relationship with him.

And one thing that the Lord kind of brought to mind to me this week, that I don't know if I'd ever thought about before, when we observe the Lord's Supper, each of us individually, like we hold the bread and we partake of it.

And Jesus, he loved and died for each of us, and we can each individually experience his salvation. That it's not just, yeah, Jesus died for people, Jesus died for you.

And you can remember that just as personal as this bread is to me, or just as personal as this cup is, that's how personal my Lord's salvation is for me.

I've heard it said before, if you were the only person that had sinned, only person that Jesus had to come for, Jesus would have come for you. He's the one who leaves the 99 to pursue the one to rescue us.

Then in verse 26, for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. When we observe the Lord's table, we are preaching the gospel until Jesus returns. Is it a good thing to preach the gospel?

Yes or no? Okay. So should we observe the Lord's table?

Should we proclaim the Lord's death till He comes? Yes or no? Yes, absolutely.

So this is something that we should be doing. He says, so then whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord. Okay, I want to look real quick at this.

In an unworthy manner, are any of us holy outside of Jesus? No. We are only holy through Jesus.

To partake in an unworthy manner at the very least means this. If you are not a believer in Jesus, if you have not professed faith in Christ as your Savior and your Lord, you should not observe the Lord's table.

This is something that would be, if you will, spiritually unhealthy for you to do. You are guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. You are doing a religious thing, but without actually having believed in it.

It's, I'm going to do this thing that says, oh yeah, I've believed in Jesus, but I do not choose Jesus as my Savior. It's insulting to the Lord. Don't do that.

If you're a parent in here today, like I love my kids, my kids are in here, it might be pretty cute for them to partake in the Lord's Supper. I'll give this one funny illustration.

A couple months ago, when we were observing it together, you know, we hand out the trays and all the stuff goes through. And my son saw the juice. And he was like, oh, mommy, I want juice.

And Samantha told him, she was like, well, this is just for believers in Jesus. And he was like, I believe in Jesus. Give me the juice.

But as cute as it might be, he has not made a profession of faith in Christ alone for salvation. He's five years old. Whenever the Lord, if you will, whenever the Lord allows him to have that understanding of the gospel, happy to have him partake.

But I encourage you, if you've got kids, wait until after they have professed faith in Christ, wait until they have followed the Lord in order to give them the Lord's supper.

Then verse 28, let a person examine himself in this way, let him eat the bread and drink from the cup. This is why every time before we partake, I encourage you guys, pray.

It's why every week before we are about to enjoy the Lord's supper, I tell you guys, pray, look in your heart, examine, is there anything in my life that I'm holding on to in defiance of God? That I say, God, like you are not my Lord in this area.

Like, God, I give you most of my life, but when it comes to, you know, when it comes to my marital life, that one's off limits to you, God, and I'll do what I want there. We ought to come to the table, recognizing I am a sinner in need of a Savior.

And when I come, I recognize, God, you are holy. I'm not, I need to repent of my sin and turn in faith to you for forgiveness. That's what we are called to do each time.

Now, we do not at our church have a communion police. Like, all right, you know, Dave and Roger, you guys are in charge. You got to check with everyone the week before and be like, listen, Jen, have you been perfect and holy this week?

Nope. Okay. Well, you don't get any.

We don't have that. What this verse says is let a person examine himself. And so we encourage you, look at your life with the Lord, because your life could look really clean and really pristine to everyone outside of you.

But for your own relationship with the Lord, you are to examine yourself and then partake. He says, for whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.

You would also read this word is sometimes translated as condemnation or judgment on oneself. He says, this is why many are sick and ill among you and many have fallen asleep.

This church had such rampant wickedness that because they so disregarded, because they lived in such a wicked, consistent way against the Lord, and yet we're still partaking in the Lord's Supper, the Holy Spirit says, this is why some of you are sick

and why some of you here have fallen asleep, some of you have died as a result of your blatant disregard for the Lord in observing the table. I want to tell you guys this. Religious things can be good. Religious habits can be good.

Reading the Bible, is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's a good thing. It's praying to the Lord.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Yeah. Observing the Lord's table, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

But any religious observance can be a bad thing in your life and mine when we do it just to be religious, when we think that this somehow will make God happy with me even though I'm ignoring him.

I can read the Bible every single day of my life, but if I'm living my life in sin, if I'm regularly stealing from my work, if I'm being unfaithful to my spouse, if any number of sins that I am persisting in, that I'm saying, God, I know you want me

to follow you in this area, but I'm going to refuse. That is a dangerous place for any person that would proclaim themselves to be a child of God.

When we come to the table, we don't come going, God, I cleaned up my act this week and so I'm worthy to come to the table. Instead, we say, Jesus, the only way that I'm able to be here is because you made the way for me.

And because I am like calling on you to, if you will, forgive my sin, to cleanse me from all of my unrighteousness, that's the only reason that I can come.

I want to encourage you guys, don't partake of the Lord's Supper at any time out of religious habit.

Come recognizing Jesus is my Savior, I repent of my sin, I turn away from it, I'm not going to make that what I center my life around, and I'm going to follow you instead. Says, if we were properly judging ourselves, we would not be judged.

If we go, yeah, I got that sin in my life, God, I'm not going to persist in this habit anymore, then we would not be judged. She says, but when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned with the world.

When God judges you, God is not judging you because he hates you. God is judging you so that you would be brought back into right standing. I don't know if you guys have experienced this in your life.

I know there's been times in my life where I wasn't walking with the Lord, and God had to end a friendship, or God had to have me go to some different location, or had to have me eat some humble pie, that I then go, okay, God, that didn't feel good.

I know that I was judged by you in this moment, but I'm thankful that you did it because you set me back on the right path. This is the difference between a godly conviction and just general shame in your life.

For godly conviction, he's calling you back into relationship, back into faithfulness and love.

A not godly conviction, maybe just a satanic shaming or guilting, says, you're terrible, you're awful, you can't ever get back, you should hide this from everyone and everything. Godly conviction says, let me help you get back on the path.

You're not on the path. That's where that conviction comes in. But I'm bringing you back into relationship.

He says, therefore, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, welcome one another. Two things I want to note there. When you come together to eat, this is a way that the early church often talked about their church experience together.

If I were to ask you guys, hey, why do you come to church? Maybe just say like one word. What comes to mind when I say, why do you come to church?

Fellowship, Jesus. Yeah. Some people, it might be like music, praise, worship.

For some people, it might be preaching. I love the answers of fellowship. One of the most common ways that the early church described why they came together as believers was to eat.

Now, sometimes that would be the Lord's Supper. Other times it could be like the Lord's Supper and like a picnic or fellowship meal, like we're going to enjoy today. But when the church came together, they came together to eat.

We don't just come individually to come to church. You are an individual. You have an individual relationship with God.

The Holy Spirit individually resides in you. But God made you part of a body. God made you part of a family.

When we observe the Lord's Supper, it's family dinner. It's not just you and God time. It's you, God, that person sitting next to you and the person sitting across from you time.

This is why it's so important when we come together, we want to have unity in the body, a love for each other. Can I tell you what gets in the way of that?

Me and you, we all have our hopes, anticipation of what other people are going to do and say, and people let us down. But when people let us down, we can do one of two things.

We can either go, God, you've forgiven me, I forgive them, or God, I know you forgave them, but I think I'd be really justified in not forgiving them.

When we think about our church family, is there anyone that you're like, man, I'm really at odds with them. I really don't like them. I really hope that they don't talk to me.

If that's our mindset, we are in sin. If you will, we're holding on to something that we should not be holding on to. We're holding on to unforgiveness or on to bitterness.

Let us repent of that and say, God, you have loved, you have forgiven, you have placed me within this body, and so I want to welcome one another. This is one of the reasons why we do like a greeting time.

It's not because I just have like 2 minutes I want to kill in the service. It's because y'all need to meet one another. Some of you have been coming here to church for decades.

Others of you have been coming for a few weeks, and all y'all need to know, all y'all. So this is why we do this. We welcome one another.

We love one another. We pray for each other. We encourage each other.

This is why we exist. Then verse 34, Paul says this, if any of you are actually hungry, eat at home, and then I'm going to deal with the rest of this when I get there. So that you won't come under condemnation.

So that's what Paul tells us. This is the Lord's Supper. We do it in love and respect for each other.

We do it remembering Jesus' sacrifice. We do it with a heart of repentance and humility before the Lord. And that's the, if you will, the baseline.

If you get nothing else from today, you need to know that. But I want to look just very, very briefly at a couple of questions that come from this. What is the Lord's Supper?

So why are we doing this? There are several names that are often used for the Lord's Supper. So there's the Lord's Table, the Lord's Supper, the Communion, and the Eucharist.

And these are all names derived from Scripture. So the Lord's Supper is what's said in 1 Corinthians 11 and verse 20. The Lord's Table is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 10 and verse 21.

The word Communion is used in 1 Corinthians 10, verses 16 and 17. And the word Eucharist comes from the Greek word for giving thanks. So Jesus, when he had given thanks, gave the bread.

So all of that's words from Scripture. Based on your denominational background, you may have heard one of those more often than another. How many of you grew up calling it Communion?

Okay, how many of you grew up with like Lord's Table or Lord's Supper? How many of you with Eucharist? Okay, very few.

Interesting. Different places have that differently. All these terms that the church uses and has used are referring to the same thing, but are simply emphasizing different aspects of it.

So it's the Lord's Supper. It's Jesus. He's the focus in the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Table.

The participants in it, that's the church. We commune together. And one of the purposes of it is to give thanks to the Lord.

It's the Eucharist. The Lord's Supper is taken. Jesus, when he gives it, he's observing the Passover meal.

So he remembers when Israel was in Egypt. God had just brought the nine plagues on to Egypt. The tenth plague was about to come.

And God wanted Israel to know that they had his protection, his love, as a result of his relationship with them. And so he commanded them to eat the unleavened bread and the juice, the wine, the cup that they had at that time.

And he says, tomorrow, you're going to go out free. You can look much more at that. We don't have time to go into everything with Exodus, but just know this.

Jesus didn't pull this out of thin air. This was something that the Jewish people were already doing. And Jesus gave it a new meaning.

It carries over some of the thoughts of we are protected from the wrath of God. You can think of the death angel that came through Egypt and the death of the firstborn.

Jesus is the one that he was the firstborn that died for us so that we would be protected and so that we would have a relationship with God, that we are brought from the kingdom of darkness and evil and this world into the kingdom of God, just as the

children of Israel were taken from the kingdom of Egypt and brought into the promised land. All of that's brought over as well, so that's what we should be thinking of with the Lord's Supper.

Jesus' sacrifice, God's love and protection for us, all of that are things that we can think of. But I want us to look at 3 things, it's right there on your handout, that we can think of with regards to the Lord's Supper.

We corporately remember Christ's sacrifice for sin for us. We remember all together Jesus died for us. Ephesians 5 would tell us that Jesus died for his bride, the church.

Jesus died for you and I, certainly, but he died for his bride together. And so all together, it's why we gather for it. It's not just, okay, you know, Jen, this Tuesday, you know, sit down for breakfast and have Lord's Supper.

It's something that together, we get together to do, we corporately remember this. Jesus did it with his 12 apostles. And then the apostles in the Book of Acts, and then in the 1 Corinthians, they did this act together.

Not only is it a corporate remembrance, it's a personal reflection on our spiritual walk with Christ. We just read through some of the people in Corinth. They were using this as their personal time to get drunk or to engorge themselves.

As a result, God caused many of the offenders to become sick, and some even died as a result of their blatant disrespect for God.

We should never view communion as a fearful time, like, I hope God doesn't strike me down, because I forgot about some sin, but we should always view communion as a serious time.

It reminds us of the seriousness of your sin and my sin that Christ had to go through unfathomable pain and suffering to pay for our freedom. It reminds us of Jesus' incredible love for us in our brokenness and in our rebellion.

It reminds us of our desperate need for God and how Jesus came because there was no hope of restoration or salvation for us other than Him.

Each time we partake together, we are reminded of where we were without God, hopeless and slave to sin, and where we are now, forgiven, redeemed, and restored. And we're called to live lives worthy of His call.

In addition, whenever we humble ourselves before God, we are promised His grace. So James 4, 6, don't live in pride because God resists the proud, but He gives grace to the humble.

And when we humbly partake of the Lord's Supper, we receive God's grace, just as much as when we pray and ask for God's grace on a daily basis, or every time we repent before Him, we receive the grace of the Lord. This is one of those times.

And then Lord's Supper is also a joyful anticipation of Christ's return. We talked about this at length last week. When we get back with Jesus, we're going to have the marriage supper of the Lamb.

When Jesus was initially giving the Lord's Supper to His apostles, He says, I'm not going to partake in this with you again until I eat it with you new in my Father's kingdom.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 11 says, as often as we do this, we preach, we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes back. So we remember that Jesus is going to return.

So it's our corporate remembrance, it's a personal reflection, and we are awaiting Jesus' return. That's what the Lord's Supper is. How should we observe the Lord's Supper then?

Our second point for today, we should be lovingly unified with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

If you're carrying bitterness or resentment towards another Christian at Tabernacle, or maybe outside of Tabernacle even, you should not hold on to that and partake of the Lord's Supper.

Go to the other person before that Sunday, hash it out, have the conversation, reconcile with them, and enjoy the unity that Christ died to give us. Why?

Because in the Supper, we are spending time with God himself in prayer and obeying his word and meditating on Christ's sacrifice.

In that holy place of love and forgiveness before the throne of God, sin and resentment and hatred have no right to exist. So we should be lovingly unified. Secondly, we should be humbly repentant of our sin before Christ.

If you know that you're holding on to a sin that you're not wanting to be rid of, you shouldn't hold on to it and partake of the Lord's Supper. What it means to be a Christian is to repent of our sin and to believe in Jesus's forgiveness.

To then partake in the Lord's Supper while not repenting of your sin is the height of hypocrisy. This is why for most of Christian history, they didn't have a time like we have today at the end of a service of the invitation.

The call to repent of your sins and to believe in Jesus was shown each week in their observance of the Lord's table.

It was in essence, will you choose to leave your sin and to come to the table or stay in your sin and don't enjoy communion with Christ and his church? When we come to the table, we come repenting of our sin.

And then thirdly, we should be submissively respectful of his church's authority. The Lord's Supper is a church ordinance. It's not an individual ordinance.

God's not saying, all right, Shelby, Wednesday for lunch, you're doing Lord's Supper. This is something that's given to us together as a body. Christ instituted it with the apostles, the foundation of the church.

And every time it's observed, it's observed with the church. And Paul tells us to wait till everyone's together to observe it. The church has the authority to determine who can and who cannot partake of the Lord's Supper.

This is what's intended by the word excommunication, excommuned, that though often people use that phrase, excommunication as like a synonym for you've been blacklisted from the church grounds, you can't come here anymore.

What the word excommunion means is you can't observe the Lord's Supper with us together. When Jesus talks about in Matthew 18, the keys to the kingdom, you have baptism in the Lord's Supper.

I've heard it talked about as baptism is like your birth certificate, that yes, I have been born into the kingdom of God.

And you have the Lord's Supper that is like your passport stamp, that every time you go through, they see, oh yeah, you are a citizen of this country.

We're strangers and exiles here on earth, but we have a passport and a birth certificate from our home country. So the church exercises these. This is why I said before, I encourage you, if you're not a Christian, don't partake in the Lord's Supper.

This would not be a good thing for you. This is something that should only be for Christians. Then very last of the day, how often did New Testament believers observe the Lord's Supper?

If you grew up like I did, I think we probably did it quarterly for most of my childhood.

And then when I went to my church in Washington, they had started off doing once, actually they were at twice a year, once the Sunday night before Easter, and then the Sunday night before Thanksgiving.

So we did ours twice a year on Sunday nights, was when we observed. Many of you may have grown up in a church that did it quarterly. I'll go by raise of hands.

How many of you did less than quarterly, like maybe once or twice a year you grew up? Okay. How many of you, it was quarterly or like four times a year, they observed?

Okay. Yeah, decent amount of you. How many did monthly?

Okay, quite a few. And how many did it weekly growing up? Okay, small number there.

So many of us are like, all right, there's no Bible verse that says, thou shalt observe quarterly or thou shalt not observe weekly. So when we come to this question, we're saying, all right, God, what do you describe for us in your word?

If you observe monthly, you're not in sin. If you observe once a year, you're not in sin. If you observe weekly, you're not in sin.

We just want to look at what does the Bible say about it? Well, Acts 2.46, we're going to look at this next week when we look at a church, God blesses. Acts 2.46 says, every day they met together and they broke bread together.

They observed the Lord's table together, and that included more than just the Lord's Supper. They were eating meals and fellowshiping together.

Some of you might like that if every single, some of you might like it too much if every single day we were getting together and you had to make food for everyone. You might get a little tired of it then, but every day they were meeting together.

And then especially on Sundays, we can read about this in Acts 20 verses 7 through 11, that they came together on the first day of the week, that Sunday, and they broke bread together.

When they assembled together, we read that in 1 Corinthians 11, 17 through 20, that they met together to eat. They came together to eat. So the early church did this often every day, and then especially on Sundays.

Some people, when it came to, like when you hear about observing the Lord's Table, maybe weekly, you think about it and go, oh, well, would that maybe cheapen it?

Would that make this something that isn't as special in remembering Jesus' sacrifice if we remembered it every week? I encourage you with this, doing something regularly doesn't cheapen it. Viewing it as something boring or unwelcome cheapens it.

I like breathing air. Breathing air is regular. If I could not breathe air, like, I'd be dead, that'd be a bad thing.

Just because I do it regularly doesn't mean that it is bad. Seeing a beautiful sunset, that's always a welcome sight.

We're right by kind of that back river area, and it's really cool to see some of the sunset sometime, even like over the water, you can see. It's just beautiful. Seeing a beautiful sunset, every time you see it, is great.

I promise, I'm not just saying this, because she just walked in. Every time I kiss Samantha, like it's still special. It doesn't matter if I've done it 100 times or I've done it twice.

Like, it's valuable to me. It's amazing. If I'm like, oh, great, I have to give my wife a hug.

You would go, something's wrong with you, bud. Like that's not a good mindset to have. So doing something regularly doesn't cheapen what is done.

One of our Bible professors at our Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, Dr. Jim Hamilton wrote this in one of his books.

He says, It's not clear to me why churches that seek to model themselves by the pattern of church life and structure seen in the New Testament would not also partake of the Lord's Supper on the first day of the week.

If it's subjected that this would diminish its significance, my reply is simply that those who make this argument typically do not claim that weekly observance diminishes the significance of the preaching of the word, the prayers of God's people, the

singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. And I doubt they'd be disappointed to have weekly baptisms. Everything that we do as a church body normally is something that we do each and every week.

And this is what we see even in the New Testament as far as when the early Christians observed the Lord's Supper. And next on your handout, you can see the earliest Christian documents reiterate this weekly habit.

So if you will, kind of the spiritual grandkids of the apostles, so the people that the apostles taught, it's those people that they taught. We have some of their documents from the 200s, and this is some of what they said.

And I'll have you go through this with me real quick, Jimmy. I'm always a little iffy on how to pronounce this. It's either the Didache or the Didachi.

This came from about 70 to 180. So within the life of the apostles, this is what they said about what Christians did.

Coming together on the Lord's Day of the Lord, hold the Eucharist, that's the giving of thanks, communion, and give thanks, confessing beforehand your sins so that your sacrifice may be pure.

And then Justin Martyr, who lived kind of one generation after that, 100 to 165 AD., he described what the church did on Sundays back in the second century.

He says, on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the members of the apostles or the writings of the prophets, that's the New Testament is the members of the apostles, and the writings of

the prophets, that's the Old Testament, are read as long as time permits. Then when the reader has ceased, the president, the one presiding over the meeting, we might say preacher, verbally instructs and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.

Then he says, after the preaching, reading and preaching of the word, he says, then we all rise together and pray. And as we before said, when our prayer has ended, bread and wine and water are brought.

And the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability. And the people assent saying, amen. There is a distribution to each.

So the Lord's Supper is given to everyone and a participation of that over which thanks have been given. And to those who are absent, a portion is sent by the deacons.

So you had people that went, OK, for those that weren't able to be here, we're going to go enjoy the Lord's Supper with them. Those who are well to do and willing give what each thinks fit.

So you have financial means, you're giving to others, and what is collected is deposited with the president.

He, the president, the pastor, helps the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause or want, and those who are in bonds, and the strangers sojourning among us. And then the word takes care of all who are in need.

That was so cool to me reading through and seeing, all right, what were God's people doing right afterwards? It's the same exact same types of things as we're going to read next week in Acts 2.

This is what God's people have done for the past two millennia. We get together, we hear the word, we pray together, we fellowship, we give, and we observe the Lord's supper together. We remember Jesus' sacrifice for us.

Now, if you like me grew up in a church that didn't observe the Lord's table weekly, you might go, okay, well, when did that change? Like, when did that stop happening? And from everything that I've read, they're the last thing on your handout today.

Non-weekly observance was a change in the dark and middle ages. So in the dark and middle ages, you had kind of a regression that the priests went, okay, we're not supposed to take in an unworthy manner. People are just too sinful.

They can't be trusted to observe the Lord's table weekly. We're the priests, we're really holy.

So we will still observe every week, but we're going to push it back so that the laity, the people in the congregation, they get to observe once a year, and they can just watch us partake the rest of the time. I gotta tell you guys, I'm a pastor.

That's messed up. That should not have been the way that that went down.

So when it came time for the Reformation, in the 1415 and 1600s, the Reformers, one of the big things that they did was to bring back the Lord's Supper, not to like holy priests, but to the people. So you had Martin Luther brought it back to weekly.

John Calvin wanted it to be weekly. His church slash his city government in Geneva was like, not weekly, but we'll do monthly. And he was like, great, I'm good with that.

The only person that was like, I don't know about monthly was a man called Zwingli. And he was like, okay, we'll do it once a quarter. So many of you guys grew up in churches that did that even from what we heard earlier.

But he was the only one. But even that was, we're going to do this three more times a year than was common at that point in history. So non-weekly observance, that wasn't the way that like Jesus started it.

It wasn't the way that the early church did it. But it was something that came about because people went, oh, well, you aren't holy enough to partake. Do you and I partake in the Lord's Supper because we are holy or because he is holy?

He is holy. And so this was why people did that. The Reformer's opinion was Jesus said to do this.

Jesus said to proclaim his death until he comes to remember him. And so we want to obey and to do that. We are all priests in Christ's priesthood.

And part of our priestly duties is eating the food from the altar.

As you read through the Book of Leviticus, you see that over and over and over again that the food that was brought to be sacrificed to the Lord, some of it was sacrificed to the Lord, and then a portion was given back to the priests that they would

eat of it. And every time that we are here at the Lord's Supper, we remember Christ's sacrifice for us. And we get to join in that meal in anticipation of the day when we get to eat the meal with Jesus himself during the marriage supper of the Lamb.

So what's the point of this? What do we do? We remember Jesus' sacrifice for sin through rightfully partaking in communion with his people.

If it was like totally up to Bryon, man, I do the Lord's Supper every single week. I love it. It helps me remember that Jesus died for my sin.

But if you don't observe weekly, that's okay. There's no Bible verse that says, thou shalt or thou must observe the Lord's table weekly. It's the pattern we see in the New Testament.

If it was up to me, I'd be like, yeah, let's do that. But whenever you observe, whether it's once a quarter, once a month, once a week, whatever, remember, Jesus loves me. He died for me.

He paid the price for my sin. God wants a relationship with me, and God saved me to have a relationship with my brothers and sisters in the Lord. God, would you help me to realize who you are, to realize your holiness?

Would you help me to love and pursue you? When we observe, we do so repenting of our sin and believing in Jesus. We do it unified with our brothers and sisters, and we do so anticipating that day when we are reunited with our Savior.

I know today we've been going through a few messages that aren't book by book, but I want to encourage you. We're going to be enjoying a church picnic today. A church picnic is not the same as the Lord's Supper.

There may be bread there, and knowing some of you, there might be some wine there. No, just kidding. Don't bring wine.

I think it's against the Beechmont Camp rules. There's bread, you know, there'll be bread that's there. But when you eat together as a church family, it's a time for all those same types of things.

God doesn't just want you to clean up your act for whenever you're doing the Lord's table. God wants you to be consistently going back to Jesus and repenting of your sin, being loving and unified with each other.

So today at the church picnic, it's not the Lord's Supper. Love each other. Remember what Jesus has done for you.

Worship him. Next week, we are observing the Lord's Supper, and so I encourage you to be preparing your heart even for that time together.