Sermon Tone Analysis

The Continuing Ordinance

1 Corinthians 11:23-32

 

/I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, 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.”

In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes/.

/Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.

A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.

For anyone who eats and drinks without recognising the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgement on himself.

That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.

But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgement.

When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world/.

| T |

he ordinances of the church too often become battlegrounds between the churches.

Gravely misunderstood in these closing days of the second millennium since our Saviour’s advent, these church rites are twisted to fit the fertile imaginations of mortal minds.

Too often these rites have been stretched to meet our expectations instead of moulding us to fit the Lord’s ideal.

Surely it is time that we who name the Name of Christ return to the ideals of the New Testament in our observance of these ordinances.

The ordinances of the church are, of course, two.

The initial ordinance is baptism, administered to those who have received Christ Jesus as Master of their life and as a testimony of their transformation.

We cannot, then, baptise infants or those who are incapable of confessing faith in Christ, but rather we baptise those who have by faith accepted His sacrifice in their place.

The continuing ordinance is the Communion Meal.

Referred to by various terms (Communion, the Lord’s Supper, or The Eucharist) the ordinance was delivered to the churches to be observed on a continuing basis.

It is the Lord’s Supper, since He gave the ordinance and since He is the One who determines who is invited to the meal.

It is the Communion Meal since it is a declaration of fellowship or communion of believers … communion both with one another and with the Lord Jesus.

It is the Eucharist, the Meal of Thanksgiving, as we rejoice in the love of God and our freedom from condemnation in Him.

Join me this morning in a brief examination of this second ordinance, the continuing ordinance, the Lord’s Supper.

To accomplish our aim of understanding the Lord’s will, I invite you to open your Bible to Paul’s first letter to the Church of God in Corinth.

This was a church which had severely distorted the observance of the Communion Meal, inviting the rebuke of God’s Apostle.

Fortunately for us, their rebuke serves to instruct us so that we may know how to please the Lord.

The Origin of the Observance — /I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you/.

The Lord’s Supper originated in God’s direction to His people concerning the manner in which they should honour Him.

We have in this meal an ordinance given by the Risen Son of God Himself.

It is vital that we observe it according to His directions.

The meal has roots in the Passover.

It was at the conclusion of the last Passover observance that our Lord instituted a new observance.

Note Matthew’s language in *Matthew 26:26*: /While they were eating/…  The disciples would have known by heart the ritual associated with the Passover Meal.

Every Jew from earliest childhood watched this ritual and each was instructed in its significance.

They did not often, however, realise that the ritual was pointing forward to the final Passover; and it is that one great sacrifice which we have in view in the Communion Meal.

On one occasion I worked with a Jewish Evangelism Team in the city of San Francisco.

Visiting the homes of Jewish people in the city, I knocked on one door and having introduced myself I asked if the family was Jewish.

The man pointed to the mezuzah on the door and said he was Jewish.

Since the Passover was near I asked if he had a lamb.

“A lamb!” he scoffed.

“This is the city.

You can’t have a lamb in the city.”

“You can’t observe the Passover without a lamb,” I reminded him.

“You are to keep the lamb penned up, observing it carefully for any defects.

Then, only if the lamb is proven to be perfect may you slaughter it and your family must eat the entire lamb.”

He was intrigued since these facts were well known to him.

“Do you have a lamb?” he asked.

It was the opening I had sought and for which I had prayed.

I told him of the Lamb of God who provided a sacrifice for all who will receive it.

I pointed to Yeshua the Messiah who is God’s Passover.

Though I did not see him embrace Christ, he invited me to tell him more and promised that he would discuss the matter with his rabbi.

Others did turn to the Messiah, discovering that though they no longer kept the Passover as God dictated a better provision has been made in order that none need fail to honour God.

Jesus kept the Passover and at the end of that last Passover He did something strange and new.

The disciples must have been startled.

The remains of the Passover were yet on the table when Jesus reached out His hand and took bread.

Lifting His eyes to heaven He gave thanks and broke the loaf.

Then He gave the bread to His disciples and with these words invited them to eat it: Take and eat; this is my body [*Matthew 26:26*].

Dr.

Luke adds the information that the Master instructed the disciples that they were to maintain this observance in remembrance of Him [*Luke **22:19b*].

If that action seemed odd to the disciples, His next move must have confused them more, for He reached out and took the cup, again gave thanks and offered it to them with these words: Drink from it all of you.

This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in My Father’s kingdom [*Matthew 26:27-29*].

The disciples had witnessed the Master honour that which the Father had instituted through Moses, but they had also seen Him display divine prerogative in giving them an act which superseded and fulfilled the ancient rite.

The Lord’s Supper was, then, given by the hand of God and we who have been born into the Family of God through faith in Christ are enjoined to remember Him through this meal which He instituted.

Paul, in our text, tells us that he received knowledge of the Meal through divine communication.

Christ Himself instructed the Apostle in the significance of the Meal and in the manner in which it was to be observed.

Mark in your minds, then, that this is a divinely instituted meal.

We dare not change either the purpose or the observance itself if we will please God.

The Declarations of the Observance — /The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, 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.”

In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes/.

Quite often people approach me asking if they may participate in our Communion Service.

I make every effort to discover their purpose in raising this question since many people hold a sacerdotal view of the meal.

They think the meal is a vehicle to make them acceptable to God.

They see the Meal is a means of making them more holy—as somehow conferring grace on them or as a means of fitting them for heaven.

Those individuals who were baptised in a communion which teaches that baptism is necessary for salvation seem quite naturally to think that the continuing ordinance is also necessary for maintaining the state of grace they suppose they have received in their baptism.

However, since baptism is a testimony of grace and not a means of receiving grace this Communion Meal must also be seen as a testimony of relationship and not as a means of enhancing relationship.

Knowing that man would distort the declarations of the meal the Spirit of God gave us instruction through the Apostle so we would know what we are to do and the manner in which we were to keep this observance.

The meal itself is simple in design.

It is the eating of bread and the drinking of wine together with those whom we fellowship.

It would seem that the early practise was to observe the Communion at the conclusion of a potluck meal which was known as the ajgavph.

The ajgavph was similar to any potluck meal we might observe in our own church.

The people would unite for a common meal, each one bringing whatever they were able to contribute and all alike shared in the ajgavph meal.

This is the background to the Apostle’s rebuke which begins in *verse seventeen*.

/In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good.

In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it.

No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval.

When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else.

One remains hungry, another gets drunk.

Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in?

Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?

What shall I say to you?  Shall I praise you for this?  Certainly not!/

It is healthy for the church to see the meal as Communion, and as one means to assist in that understanding to plan for a potluck meal during which the Lord’s Supper is observed as a testimony of fellowship.

That is the meaning of the word communion.

The word koinwniva which is used in *1 Corinthians 10:16* was actually translated /communion/ in older translations of the Word.

The /cup of thanksgiving/ and the bread we break are a /communion/ in the blood and body of Christ—a declaration of fellowship in His Body.

Take a moment to make one crucial observation: this is a church observance.

/When you come together as a church/…  The Greek reads rather differently in this instance: /When you come together/ ejn ejkklhsiva~/.