Sermon Tone Analysis

“My brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another—if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home—so that when you come together it will not be for judgment.

About the other things I will give directions when I come.”[1]

"Love one another with brotherly affection,” wrote the Apostle.

“Outdo one another in showing honour” [*Romans 12:10*].

This is a principle that should guide every activity for the Christian; we should always endeavour to express our love for one another through courtesy.

The Corinthians acted nothing like brothers, and yet the Apostle addressed them as such.

In fact, the Corinthian Christians were not even as courteous or generous toward their fellow members as we would expect any service club that gathered for a meal to be.

Listen to the Apostle’s rebuke of the Corinthians.

“In the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse.

For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you.

And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat.

For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal.

One goes hungry, another gets drunk.

What! Do you not have houses 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 commend you in this?

No, I will not” [*1 Corinthians 11:17-22*].

In one denomination within which I pastored, it was the common practise to observe the Communion Meal at the conclusion of almost every convocation sponsored by the denomination.

The ecclesiology of that group had evolved, recreating the denomination as the church rather than the local congregation being the church—the model presented in the New Testament.

Consequently, the leadership of the denomination felt no hesitation in organising the Communion Meal for all the participants at the various assemblies.

However, I knew many of the pastors at these meetings.

Let me tell you a secret: pastors are human.

Pastors can be petty, mean-spirited, spiteful—they can reflect a sinful heart just as surely as can any other member of a congregation.

Though I believe most pastors work hard to honour God, there are nevertheless pastors who have bought into the philosophy of this fallen world, seeing their ministry as an opportunity for personal advancement rather than an opportunity to serve the people of God and to advance the cause of Christ.

I witnessed at various assemblies individuals who privately castigated others in, and yet solemnly joined in faux fellowship at the Lord’s Table.

Why not?

There was no accountability.

So long as one led his (or her in some strange instances) congregation to send money to the hindquarters, no attempt at accountability for Christian character and conduct was made.

I am aware of pastors who had been disciplined for moral failure who joined in the Communion Meal.

After all, they had been “cured.”

However, the people whose lives they had destroyed had yet to hear a confession or to witness repentance.

The denomination had become the church, and discipline was a foreign, uncharitable concept.

Moreover, no one was teaching the people what the Word of God said.

I never participated in such service, believing them to be unbiblical.

We have observed the Lord’s Table today, and I trust that none of us have fallen into such a trap as just described.

However, slipping into such error is distressingly easy.

It begins when we assume the Lord’s Table is an designed for private worship.

Whenever we fail to keep before us the biblical basis for what we are doing and the scriptural reasons for why we are doing it, we are moving toward a grave distortion of the Meal.

Moreover, once an individual, or a congregation, has embraced such fallacy, the error insinuates itself into every facet of Christian life, enervating spiritual vigour and creating moral inertia.

I know the teaching is by now familiar to you, but the message is sufficiently important that I am compelled to review once again the instruction we have received through the Apostle.

Join me, then, by turning to the closing words of the eleventh chapter of the First Corinthian Letter.

There, the Apostle provides his final words concerning the Corinthian error.

*The Meal is an Act of Corporate Worship *— “When you come together to eat, wait for one another.”

I really shouldn’t need to say anything on this point, but because errant assumptions have become so pervasive throughout Canadian Christendom it would be irresponsible for me not to remind you of what is communicated through the text.

Notice, first, that Paul specifies that he is speaking of a communal experience.

He says, “When you come together to eat,” indicating that he has in view the act of congregational union for a specific purpose.

The Apostle has in view the Lord’s Table.

Surely no one would assume that he is speaking at this point of entertaining guests in a home.

He has focused throughout the latter portion of this chapter on an egregious abuse of the Communion Meal which was being perpetuated in the Corinthian congregation.

At the heart of the abuse was the fact that many, perhaps even most, of the Corinthian church members were acting as if the Lord’s Supper was a private act of worship rather than treating it as corporate worship.

I do not deny that individuals participate in the Communion Meal, but the model we have received is that of individuals uniting in commitment to one another to participate as the Body.

Language is important, because what we say reveals our understanding of a situation.

The choice of words demonstrates the precision with which we have defined a given action.

In the case of the Lord’s Table, we would undoubtedly benefit from precision in our language.

What I mean is that we must recognise that this is not an act of private worship, but of corporate worship.

That is the purpose behind the declarations of the Meal.

For instance, this is a Meal of Remembrance—each one participating declares that he or she actively recalls the death of Christ the Lord because of his or her own sin.

Undoubtedly, we come to faith as individuals—a parent cannot believe for a child, or a grandparent for a grandchild.

We are saved as individuals; but that does not mean that we continue as individuals in our relationship to the Master.

The Word of God teaches that He places us within churches.

Those saved as the believers witnessed on the Day of Pentecost were added to something!

The text states that “Those who received [Peter’s] word were baptised, and there were added that day about three thousand souls” [*Acts 2:40*].

To what entity were these nascent saints added?

The appropriate answer is that they were added to whatever entity the other believers belonged.

The majority of ancient texts, reflected in the *New King James Bible*, say that “The Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved”[2] [*Acts 2:47*].

If the believers gathered in the Upper Room together with those saved at Pentecost constituted a church, then it is reasonable to assume that those being saved that day and subsequently were added to that same congregation.

It was an organised entity, and not an amorphous mass of people drifting in and out of fellowship.

It was within this organised entity—the first New Testament church—that the saved and baptised saints “devoted themselves to the Apostle’s teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” [*Acts 2:42*].

Those who were saved were baptised immediately because they had believed and not in order to believe.

Then, they committed themselves to the preaching of the Word, to the fellowship of the congregation, to the observance of the Lord’s Table as an act of worship, and to the prayer life of the community.

It is vital to note that within the pages of the New Testament there is not found a sole individual who can be said to be a Christian who was unaffiliated with a local congregation.

Though I dare not argue from silence, the model is of Christians added to a congregation as they are saved; and having been added to a church those redeemed and gifted individuals exercise their several gifts within the context of the Body.

To be specific, the model provided in the New Testament is that those who are saved are immediately baptised, identifying with the Master, and added to the particular congregation where the Spirit of God is pleased to place them.

One can only wonder about those individuals who profess to love Christ but see no need for the church.

Surely they do not understand the love of the Master for the local congregation.

Throughout Scripture we are presented with a consistent teaching demonstrating Christ’s love for the church.

This was not love for some amorphous entity that cannot be witnessed by anyone living in this world, but it was love for the local congregation—the gathered community of those who come to faith.

When the Risen Son of God says, “Those whom I love, I reproved and discipline” [*Revelation 3:19*], He speaks to the corporate body of Laodicean Christians.

The missive is addressed to “the angel of the church in Laodicea” [*Revelation 3:14*].

It is intended for the assembly and not merely for individuals who are wayward in their conduct.

In the Letter we have received as Ephesians, Paul urges husbands to love their wives just “as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her” [*Ephesians 5:25*].

Thus, we are taught that Christ the Lord loved the church—the institutional entity that we are compelled to distinguish as the local congregation.

We are compelled to designate the “local” congregation precisely because of the creation by learned scholars /ipse dixit/ of an unseen, nebulous monstrosity identified as the “universal church.”

Our Lord Jesus Christ is presented in the Word as “Him who loved us” [e.g.

*Romans 8:37*]; a designation based upon His own statement of love for His people.

His command that Christians are to love one another was first modelled through His love for us [see *John 13:34*].

Thus, we Christians are taught to “be imitators of God,” which imitation is described as walking “in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” [*Ephesians 5:2*].

The glorious truth is that Christ gave Himself for His people.

More particularly, each congregation can testify that Christ gave His life for that assembly.

Addressing the Ephesian elders on his final journey to Jerusalem, the Apostle admonished, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which He obtained with His own blood” [*Acts 20:28*].

While the warning undoubtedly applies in the broadest sense to every elder who has received divine appointment to provide oversight for a particular congregation, the immediate application served to caution the elders of Ephesus.

Moreover, Paul recognised that these elders had been made overseers, not over an amorphous entity that no one could see or benefit from, but they were overseers appointed to the particular flock then meeting in Ephesus.

The language makes it clear that their appointment was not to a vast, universal entity, but to a particular congregation.

Just so, any elder serves the particular congregation over which he is appointed, and not to provide guidance over a great mass of unseen people.

I am well aware that you know that the Meal is an act of corporate worship.

However, throughout the years of my service before the Lord, I have witnessed repeated instances of Christians who were presumably well versed in Scripture who nevertheless decided that the Meal could be served to an individual in a hospital bed, to a sick individual at home, or to a family who had been unable to come to church.

In essence, they were focused on the faulty view that the Communion Meal was an act of personal worship, ignoring the corporate worship demanded by the Meal.

Such action denies the corporate aspect of the Meal and enervates the congregational oversight for the Meal; but that is no greater violation of the doctrine than the commonly accepted attitude that treats the observance as an act of private worship.

Reading the passage that the Apostle wrote as a rebuke to the Corinthian Christians, it becomes apparent that the attitude of the Corinthians provided the motive force behind the error.