1 Corinthians 11:17-34

• Proclaiming the Lord’s Death Through the Lord’s Supper

  Text: 1 Corinthians 11:17–34

  • The Lord’s Supper is meant to be a sacrament of unity, but divisions in Corinth (and in church history) often turned it into disunity.

  • Merely going through the motions with bread and cup does not mean one is truly celebrating the Lord’s Supper. Factions, cliques, and selfishness distort its meaning.

  • Christ Himself instituted the Supper; it is rooted in His command and His redemptive work, not merely tradition.

  • Both truths must be held: “This is my body” (real spiritual presence of Christ) and “Do this in remembrance of me” (memorial of His saving work).

  • Calvin rightly emphasized that the Spirit lifts us to feed on Christ spiritually—real presence, but not physical.

  • Self-examination is required, but it does not mean making oneself “worthy.” Worthiness comes only through Christ. To eat in a “worthy manner” means coming humbly, acknowledging sin, and trusting Christ as the only Savior.

  • The Supper proclaims Christ’s death until He comes, pointing backward to the cross, nourishing us in the present, and forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Bible Study Guide

1. Biblical Themes

• Unity of the Church – The Supper is a sign of one body (1 Cor 10:16–17). Divisions deny its meaning.

• Christ’s Institution – Instituted by Christ as a covenant meal (Matt 26:26–29; 1 Cor 11:23–26).

• Remembrance & Presence – Both memorial and real spiritual participation in Christ (John 6:53–57).

• Self-Examination – Not self-righteous perfection, but humble recognition of unworthiness and trust in Christ (1 Cor 11:27–29).

• Proclamation & Hope – The Supper proclaims the gospel until Christ returns (Rev 19:6–9).

2. Historical Context

• Early church often celebrated the Supper in the context of a communal meal, but social and economic divisions corrupted it.

• Reformation debates (Luther vs. Zwingli) highlight how the Supper has been a source of division in church history.

• Calvin’s teaching balanced the real spiritual presence of Christ with the memorial aspect.

3. Westminster Standards

• Confession of Faith 29.1–2: The Lord’s Supper is a sacrament instituted by Christ, not a sacrifice, but a commemoration of His once-for-all offering.

• Larger Catechism Q.168–177: Explains the nature, benefits, and preparation for the Supper, emphasizing feeding on Christ by faith.

• Shorter Catechism Q.96–97: Defines the Supper as a means of grace to strengthen believers, requiring self-examination before partaking.

4. Practical Applications

• Pursue reconciliation before coming to the Table; divisions dishonor Christ.

• Approach the Supper not casually, but with reverence, joy, and dependence on Christ.

• Receive it frequently with thanksgiving; it is spiritual nourishment for weak sinners.

• Use it as a witness—by partaking, the church proclaims the gospel to the world.

Our scripture text this morning is classic text on the Lord's Supper. I was thinking that we oftentimes don't really preach enough on this and what the Lord's Supper is all about. So we'll be reading 1 Corinthians 17-34. The passage on the classic text, as I said, on the Lord's Supper from the Apostle Paul, this is God's word. Let's pay attention to heed what the Lord says to us speaking through the scriptures. But in the following instructions, I do not commend you because you have come together. It is not for the better, but for the worse. In the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear 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 not be recognized. When you come together, it's 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 for this? No, I will not. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night when he was betrayed took bread. And he given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. The same way also he took the cup after supper saying, 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 the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. This is why many who are weak and ill and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. So then, 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. Let's pray. Gracious Lord, this is your word, and we would be attentive to it. Give us an ability to think through what you have to say, to listen, that your spirit would take the word, And as we've been reminded this morning, it's especially through the preaching of the word that you apply your grace to the congregations. Lord, we would ask for your spirit to help each of us to discern what you say to us through your word, that you would help me to proclaim it carefully, and above all, that it would be your word that we hear today. through the scriptures. From Christ's name we pray, amen. The Lord's Supper, sometimes called communion, some churches call it the Eucharist, is probably the most recognized and many would say the central ritual that the Christian church takes part in. But many people have pointed out that what is intended to be the sacrament of unity has often become a sacrament of disunity. With churches requiring very particular beliefs about the nature of the elements before one is able to partake, lots of fights. If you know your church history, you know it was over the Lord's Supper that Luther and Zwingli split. There's that famous recording about when they agreed in the time of the Reformation on a lot of points, but it came to that one point of the nature of the sacrament. Luther was He just would not change. And they said that he basically banged his fist on the table and kept repeating, in Latin, hocus corpus meum, this is my body, to uphold his distinct view of the presence of Christ in the supper. And it broke down the unity of the Reformation movement. So the Lord's Supper, an important rite in the church, has sometimes been a source of disunity. On the other hand, there are churches that approach the Lord's Supper so cavalierly that it seems as it has almost become a meaningless ritual. Jenny and I had this experience with a friend of mine from college. He took a position teaching in a certain town in southern Illinois, and we went down there to visit him. In this particular church, The way they did the Lord's Supper, there were no words of institution, there was no reading of the scripture, there was nothing. Just all of a sudden, in the middle of the service, they were passing elements. And I turned to Jenny and I said, I don't think this is the Lord's Supper. And I honestly could not partake in that particular church, because it was just like, oh, this is what we do. We pass the bread and wine up and down the aisles, and you just take it, and that was it. Beyond the act of doing it, they did it because Jesus said to do it, but there seemed to be little understanding at all by anybody in the church as to what was going on. Well, the Apostle Paul gives us here this, our most complete description of the Lord's Supper in the early church. Now it's set in the context of 1 Corinthians, which is important because he's gonna touch on in this text, a key problem. And we'll wait to talk about that in more detail in 1 Corinthians. But the big problem, of course, was factions. Remember, he opens it up, the book of 1 Corinthians, saying, I hear there's all these factions among you. And there was also disorderliness, and that shows up in our text as well. And there was also immoral behavior, which he doesn't touch on as much in this passage, it's hinted. But the Corinthian church was not particularly a model church. So anybody who says, we just got to get back to the early church, you're thinking, OK, this church? This church is far from a model church. And I had a seminary professor who had a very dry sense of humor, and he wasn't. And his particular church tradition, he said, You know, brothers, he said, I know that my church tradition is the early, is the true church, he says, because read that first chapter of 1 Corinthians, all those divisions. He says, my tradition has had divisions all over the place down through its history. So I know we have to be the true tradition because we have more divisions than anybody else. And that's what the early church had. Now he was obviously joking there, but there's a point. The Corinthian church was just loaded with divisions and that's going to come up in this passage. This text does not teach us everything we want to know about the Lord's Supper, but it is our most important Biblical source about learning about the significance of the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is a proclamation of the work of Christ, both in his death as well as his present and future work. And there are three truths that we're going to focus on this morning as we look at this. First truth we're going to focus on is that merely observing a ritual with outward elements in a Christian setting doesn't guarantee you're having the Lord's Supper. Let me repeat that. Simply going, basically I'll paraphrase, going through the motions of having bread in the cup in a worship service doesn't necessarily mean they're celebrating the Lord's Supper, because that is what the Apostle Paul says here. Paul begins this section by saying, I can't praise you. I can't commend you. He says, you're having a ritual and you're calling it the Lord's Supper, but the Apostle Paul says, It's not really true. You are not really having the Lord's Supper there. He says that your attempts are actually causing more harm than they're causing good. The situation is serious and the Apostle Paul isn't just giving academic advice. He says there are spiritual issues at stake here. And the issue heavily focuses on the fact that of these factions that I alluded to earlier, or divisions. He says, this is a fundamental problem. He says, when you come together, look at verse 18, I hear there are divisions or factions, depending how it's translated in your translation, among you. He says, this is the foremost sign I can tell that you really aren't celebrating the Lord's Supper. Now, you might say, what is going on here? What are these divisions? It seems like there was certainly an economic core going on here. Although it's possible there were things like there were Jews and Gentiles, and there were kosher and non-kosher food involved. That's a possibility. That has been suggested by some biblical scholars. The kosher food had to have been blessed in a certain kind of way. And if they were Jewish believers, maybe they didn't eat non-kosher food. That's a possibility, but it's probably at its core economic. You might say, well, how does that work its way out? Well, you have to put yourself back in the early church and realize where they met. They met in homes. Oftentimes they would meet in a wealthy person's home because they were the only ones that had a big enough meeting area where they could hold anything more than half a dozen people. Well, how were wealthy homes set up? Wealthy homes had a dining room that could maybe seat nine, 10 people. And then there was a portico off the kitchen where it was customary for the poorer guests to eat. The average wealthy home practiced wealth segregation and how you ate. And it seems like this had been carried over into the meetings of the early church. from the best we can reconstruct this. There were people who said, okay, this is the way we always do it. The wealthy, more prosperous folks, they get to eat in a nice dining room. And all you plebeians, that's literally what they would call them, you get to eat in the little tiny room, crowded little room. And they carried that over into the Lord's Supper. Facts, factions, cliques, divisions, that was at the root of their problem. And it had reared its ugly head in the Corinthian church. Now, it's interesting that the word for factions here is actually the root of the word that we get our word heresies from. That's literally what he says. I hear, we could paraphrase it this, I hear that there are heresies. Our word for heresy, false teaching, comes from a group that's a false faction, a false clique, a false division. So this is the problem that they have there. And Paul makes an interesting comment in verse 19. He says, there must be factions among you in order to show who are the true believers and who are not. Now, you might say, that's pretty strong language. But God in his providence had said, God was going to use this to show who were genuine believers and who weren't. But the bottom line that the Apostle Paul is saying here, he says, it ends up that with these divisions where you're segregating people and making socioeconomic divisions and saying some people are better than the rest of the people. You're in a higher social class, you have more money, whatever the exact winnowing out was, You get to eat in the dining room when we serve the Lord's Supper. The rest of you got to go in that crowded little room off the kitchen when we serve the Lord's Supper. Paul says here it's destroying the unity which the Lord's Supper is supposed to show. That very action of allowing these socioeconomic divisions to come into the church and to segregate one group over here and another group over here is destroying the unity which God's people are to have. The Lord's Supper was oftentimes in the early church celebrated as part of a love feast. Well, oftentimes the reason they needed these dining rooms and normal eating places is because they serve the Lord's Supper in conjunction with a meal where they were already seated and eating an ordinary meal, and then they celebrated what we would call the Lord's Supper as a part of that. And Paul says that this was nullifying, making of no good, no account, the spiritual significance of the Lord's Supper. So the disorder was then being shown also in the fact that he refers to some of you are going ahead and eating before everybody else. Maybe that was, we don't know for sure, but we think it's possible that they were eating the better food first, and then the leftovers got sent to the poor people. Clearly there was drunkenness, because Paul talks about it in here. Some of you are getting drunk. All of this means that it had turned into anything but a celebration of the Lord's Supper. Yes, there were the elements. Yes, the words of institution were probably being read. But you see what Paul is saying here is your actions in the what you're doing here are nullifying that this is genuinely the Lord's Supper. Now, you might say, oh, glad we don't do that. We don't segregate the poor people. Rich people over here, poor people over here. Nope, clean. Let me ask you this. Have you ever known a church, though, that has divisions, that has cliques in it? Ooh, that strikes a little closer to home sometimes. Because churches can be racked with divisions. Every church that has ever split is because there were divisions, racked with divisions. The Lord's Supper is to celebrate our unity. The Apostle Paul had said a chapter earlier, there's one loaf, there's one cup. Now we obviously divided out when we serve all of you, but it starts out as one loaf, starts out as one cup. And he said, this is supposed to be unity and you're making it into divisions. They're violating the spirit of the Lord's supper. Where do our divisions come from here? Sometimes it's because of differences of opinions over how we should do certain things. Sometimes it can be just longstanding traditions in the church. And this is something which I'll just tell you what a church with a history like Sharon, old established church, how can you get divisions? Think about this. Some of you might say, well, my family are buried in that cemetery over there. You can go out there, and I won't have to go down the family names, but you all know what those family names are. And you can say, I can show you 10 of my family members or 15 or 20 of them that are buried in that cemetery. So that gives me more clout to say what goes on. I don't say that, but isn't that what you feel? I really have more authority here because I can point you to 15 of my ancestors that are buried, and these new people here, they don't have anybody buried in that cemetery. What right do they have to come in and say how that things should go on in this church? Some of you said, well, I don't know, but I married into that family, and I can show you, now my married name is out there on one of those gravestones. That's just one example of how you can get factions. And you can get divisions in the church. They can show their head in all sorts of ways. But the point is divisions and factions. Now, sometimes there are legitimate divisions when false teaching shows up. I'm a church historian. Where do false teachings come from? Somebody is taking and not understanding the scriptures and teaching false teachings in the church. Those are factions that Paul will have to say later, you root those out. You get rid of those. But factions here are nothing to do with false teachings. They have everything to do with socioeconomic differences, cultural differences. Those are things that Paul says it's actually destroying your having a genuine Lord's Supper in this congregation. So this basically is saying, just the fact that we have this, If the church is wracked with divisions and fighting and infighting, sometimes that means people, before they come, probably should reconcile with somebody else. I have no idea if any of you are at odds with someone else, but if you are, and you refuse to be reconciled, pass the elements by, because divisions are a bad thing in the church. Of course, the other problem, when you have no instruction or warning, that also can reduce it to a sacrament with almost no significance. That is not the problem I don't believe you ever had or will ever have, and I can see here at Sharon. What Paul is saying here is, though, make sure that your heart is right, that the church is emphasizing its unity and not all torn up by factions. The Lord's Supper, as we will proceed to see, is when the sacrament is truly, clearly focused on Jesus Christ, which leads us to our second truth we wanna look at this morning. The Lord's Supper as a sacrament was clearly instituted by Christ. Do you see in verse 20, 23 here says, 23 actually, I do receive from the Lord what I also delivered to you. This is actually the oldest account we have of the Lord's Supper. You might say, wait a minute, aren't the Gospels earlier? Not really. Paul wrote this probably a few years before the Gospels, the three Gospels that record that were written. They record the same basic thing. There are a couple of minor word differences. They're probably going, Jesus was speaking in Aramaic, and so coming into Greek, there would have been a slight couple minor word differences. But basically, Paul is saying here, this I received from the Lord, what I deliver to you. Now, it's fascinating when you think about this, because oftentimes in our Reformed churches, our Reformation churches, we'll say, we stand on the scriptures, not on tradition. Well, you have to be careful there because there's a bad and a good use of tradition. There's a bad use of tradition when tradition trumps the Bible. But if a tradition is based on scripture, then it's a good use of tradition. There's a whole big discussion about, and among the theologian, they call it tradition one, tradition two, two version of tradition and tradition version three. And the reformers believed in tradition one, that there was good tradition that was passed down. It's the same thing as taught in scripture, but it's good tradition. And that's what Paul is talking about here. He says, I received this from the Lord. It's a valid, solid tradition. And what makes the Lord's Supper a sacrament is that Jesus Christ instituted it and told us to do it. But not more than that, because there are other actions that Jesus said to do. He said, you know, he washed his disciples' feet. And he said, you know, have this kind of attitude toward each other. And there are a few churches that have made an ordinance in the church where you wash feet. And they have biannually foot washing services. I had a friend that grew up in one of those churches and he said, all the women got pedicures every week before the foot washing service, because they said, I'm not going to let them see my stinky, dirty feet. My toes are going to look nice when they wash my feet. That's true. I've talked to a couple of people that have grown up in those churches, and that's the truth. But the point is that why do we not celebrate that as a sacrament? Because it's not focused on the redemptive work of Christ. The Lord's Supper and baptism are the two sacraments we celebrate because they are connected, they're instituted by Christ and they're connected with Christ's redemptive work. If you look at the gospels, you see the same thing, Matthew, Mark 14, 24 and the other two parallels. Now it does have a clearly a connection as we were reminded when John read the Passover account to the Passover. because just a few chapters earlier in 1 Corinthians 5, 9, Jesus says, Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed, so let us, therefore, keep the feast. There is a connection to the Passover, but it's not absolutely identical. There's a meaning behind it, that Jesus Christ is our Passover lamb. But otherwise, we would just celebrate the Lord's Supper once a year in the springtime, if it was an absolute parallel. By the way, that's why sometimes in the medieval church, that was the minimum that you were supposed to receive the Lord's Supper because they said on the basis of the Passover, you were supposed to have it at least once a year. Look at Luke 22, you also see the connection with the Passover. But the text here makes a couple of statements that are crucial for us understanding what the Lord's Supper is all about and how it's a sacrament instituted by Christ. Look at verse 24 and 25. He says, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. The same way after the supper, he took the cup and saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it. and remembrance of me. Two statements in here. There's the this is, and there's the do this in remembrance. What you discover sometimes is that in churches and traditions, you'll get those who emphasize one or the other. Some churches will emphasize the this is. Good friend who, Out of the clear blue, his particular church tradition emphasizes that this is. He posted something on Facebook a few year or two ago, something he says, this has to be literal body and blood of Jesus because I don't want to make Jesus a liar. Jesus says, this is my body. I'm going to make Jesus a liar if it's not literally the physical body and blood of Christ. He was like Luther, and I don't have to tell you what church tradition he happened to belong to, but he said, Jesus said, this is, this is, is means is, this is literal body and blood of Jesus, somehow in those elements. On the other hand, you have church traditions that emphasize do this in remembrance of me. I was in a church, the pastor was a friend of mine, and we were visiting there, And he spent, I think, about half of his time in an explanation to remind us, this is a remembrance. This is not the body and blood of Jesus. Remember, this is a remembrance. And he turned around again. Remember, this is a remembrance. It's not literal body and blood. Remember, it's a remembrance. And after about the fourth time, I thought, Tim, when are you going to stop saying that? Yeah, I got it. You believe it's a remembrance. Why do we push these two apart and emphasize one over the other? True biblical theology emphasizes both properly. When we say, this is my body, we have to understand it in what Jesus is saying. First of all, Jesus was probably standing when he was doing this, because that's what the host would do. And he stood there, and on the night he instituted the Lord's Supper, and he distributed the elements. He hands it to the disciples, and he says, this is my body, this is my blood. I'm 100% positive that his disciples did not think that he was saying literally that there was literal body and blood in there because they were looking at him and saying, you know, okay, I'm looking at Jesus. He's not cut off a piece of his finger and handed it to me. So there's obviously some other sort of significance what it means when he says this is, but we don't want to dismiss that and just make it sort of a mere, just a mere symbol as we say. On the other hand, Jesus says, do this in remembrance of me. The Apostle Paul will also, in the chapter before, emphasize other aspects, not just something that happened in the past, and Jesus himself will do that. Jesus emphasizes I won't eat this again with you until I eat it with you in my Father's Kingdom." So there's this forward-looking aspect as well. The Apostle Paul says the Lord's Supper is a communion or a participation in the body and blood of Christ. What does he say? That verb tense is present tense. So you've got three tenses here. present and future connected with the Lord's Supper. So all we talk about is we're doing it as another minister I heard say one time in private, he said to me, he says, well, it's not just a memorial feast for the late great Jesus. It's not just a memorial feast for the late great Jesus. It's something where we were presently feeding on him. There's a present and a future element. Okay, how do we put this together? John 6 is our answer here. Also, while Jesus is alive, standing there, he's not cutting off a piece of his finger and handing it to the people, but he says, I am the bread of life. Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. He's standing there, he's alive. What does he mean? He's saying, You feed upon me. John 6 points us to understand this, that when we celebrate this in just a few minutes. Some in some mysterious way, nobody has said this better than John Calvin in his institutes and his commentaries on John six and other places. If you ever want to read this in seminary, when I first read him, it really opened my eyes to understand this. He says, it's Calvin uses this image. It's as if the Holy Spirit lifts us up to heaven and spiritually we feed on Jesus who's seated at the right hand of the father. And he is our spiritual food. He is our spiritual drink. We feed spiritually. So it's not just a memorial service. We're not just doing to remember that Jesus died many, many years ago. We are presently feeding upon him spiritually. He is our spiritual substance, our spiritual sustenance. We are feeding upon Jesus. This is my body. This is my blood. This is your spiritual nourishment. You might say, well, can't I get that spiritual nourishment from reading the scriptures and hearing the sermons? Yes, you can, but it's another visible way. And as the Heidelberg Catechism, that one of the great reformed catechism says, puts it this way, just as we chew on the bread and just as we ingest the cup, so that seriously we feed upon Jesus, a different form, but why does God say you need to have this Lord's supper? because it's a tangible way of focusing us to say just as that goes down my gullet into my stomach so in that same way I feed spiritually upon Jesus who is the bread of life. Apostle Paul here also says you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. We are proclaiming Jesus every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper. We're proclaiming he is our spiritual sustenance. He is the one that we proclaim and live on. Just want to recommend Something, if you ever want to read more of this, and I can give this to any of you afterwards, in my denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, a friend of mine, I say that he was a, we both had churches in the same presbytery, our first church. And Larry and I have parted ways, I haven't seen him for a number of years, but he wrote an article in the New Horizons in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, March 2025. The most beautiful little short two-page article I've ever written. read on the Lord's Supper and I highly recommend it to you if you want to just get a short little beautiful summary of what the Lord's Supper is all about. So Christ is spiritually present. It's a different form of than physical, but nevertheless very real. So people ask you as a Reformed believer, do you believe in the real presence? You say, yes, but the real spiritual presence of Jesus Christ in those elements, not a real physical presence. It doesn't magically somehow become the body and blood of Christ, but spiritually, Jesus is present as I partake of those elements. Sacraments, then, are instituted by Christ and he said to do them because there's benefit to them. It's God's appointed way for us to refocus our attention on Christ and to be strengthened and fed by him. Now this doesn't answer every question that we're gonna have on the Lord's Supper. For example, how often should you have it? And by the way, let me just say here, if your argument that you should have infrequent Lord's Supper is because it makes it more special, that is not a good argument. If you use that argument, get rid of it, that's a bad, bad argument. Why? Let me put it this way. If you tell your wife, I'm only gonna kiss you two times a year because it'll feel more special if I only kiss you twice a year, what do you think your wife would say? She would probably say, what do you mean you're only gonna give me a kiss twice a year because it makes it more special? You have to decide on the frequency of the Lord's Supper on some different argument than simply infrequent Lord's Supper makes it more special, bad argument. It also means that we have to recognize that there have been differences of opinion. Calvin, who I think is the master on the Lord's Supper, was pretty vocal about this. Do you know how often Calvin said you should have the Lord's Supper? At least once a week. at least once a week, not just once a week, but at least once a week, because they had church services more often. They had a couple of midweek services, and he offered the Lord's up, wanted to offer the Lord's up. His consistory would not let him do it. He was mad. The rest of his time he was there, argued with him. They never would let him do it. He also, in the Institutes, it's Institutes 4, 1845, if you wanna know where he says this, he also said that the very infrequent communion of the Roman Catholic Church, which I think were said at minimum once or twice a year or something like that, he said, that was a lie of the devil. He said that very infrequent communion was a lie of the devil. So he had some pretty strong opinions. Now Calvin is not infallible, but he is certainly one of our great reformed forefathers. And so somebody worth listening to. Doesn't answer questions about the particular elements here. Leavened and unleavened bread. Some churches, you go and you get some, I'll tell you this, I hate it when those little stale little wafers in some little churches, tasteless wafers, I don't think they like them. I like real bread. Some churches will take matzo crackers and break them up in little irregular pieces because they weren't convinced it should be unleavened bread. Well, Jesus probably had unleavened bread because he was serving the Passover. But the early church did not necessarily use unleavened bread. We know that. The issue of fermented versus unfermented, well, let me put it this way. These people were getting drunk here. I don't know how you get drunk on Welch's grape juice. So it was clearly fermented. But we also know that you can get, From the early church, what we discovered is that they had no refrigeration and there was no way, by the way, Welch's grape juice wasn't invented till 1869. That's when they learned how to pasteurize it. And it was originally done by a teetotaling Methodist minister who was so opposed to alcohol that he wouldn't even touch it in his hands. And churches were having trouble when the temperance movement came along, they couldn't get anything that was unfermented. applied the new method of pasteurization, Mr. Welch did, so they could have unfermented communion elements. And he made a lot of money and started the Welch's Grape Juice Company. But so you can get in big arguments about that. The early church probably used fermented wine, but they diluted it two or three times with water. So what do you do with that? In other words, the church has been all over the board on this issue. Those are local things that churches need to work out. I'm not here to tell you one way or the other what you should do on that. But the point is that churches can then get in big arguments about that. And you can honestly get factions. A lot of churches will have, you know, two different types going around, slightly different colors, and that always sometimes solves the problem for me, because then the individual person can decide what they wanna do on that. But anyway, the point is, is this text doesn't answer that. It's not gonna answer those questions. What it's saying, though, is the key thing is not whether you decide all of those issues, but the key thing is, is it talking about Christ? Is it instituted by Christ? Are you spiritually feeding upon Jesus? And that leads us to our last point. The Lord's Supper is truly observed when it's focused on the whole work of Christ. Paul calls us for self-examination. Now, this phrase has sometimes been misunderstood. And it means, some people have said that means that you have to be in a, what, something similar to the medieval Roman Catholic view that you need to be in a state of no mortal sins. That's what they said and some Protestants take it almost that way. I have got a long list and I know I have confessed every sin that I have committed over the last week. Paul doesn't say anything about that here. Some have even argued that in the context of factions, Paul is as much concerned about the faction issue as anything else. And so some have tended to focus on these sociological issues, saying that contempt for the poor or contempt for a certain portion of the body is what Paul has in mind here. And we do remember that Paul had said just a chapter earlier, one loaf, one body. And that is important. As I said, if you have factions in the church or if you despise somebody else, you're probably not in the right state to come to the Lord's Supper. But that doesn't exhaust what Paul is talking about here. The focus is on Jesus Christ. We do this because Christ instituted. It points us to him. We remember him. And it means, as Paul says, we don't come in an unworthy manner. Now we need to unpack that a little bit. Because unworthy manner doesn't mean that somehow we can make ourselves worthy. Because if you're gonna think you can make yourself worthy to come to this table, I'm not even gonna serve it. I'm going to give you the benediction. We're all going to walk out and we're going to leave the elements right here. Why? There's not a single one of you that's really worthy in the sense, if you think worthy means that I am now in some sort of heightened state of spirituality, that I am worthy to come to the Lord's table. You know, there are churches that have fallen into this trap and places, you know, up in the highlands of Scotland and places like in some little pockets in the Dutch Bible Belt where some of my ancestors came from, they fell into that. And the statement was something like this. The pastor, the elders, and two old men took communion. The rest of the congregation just sat there. Why? They didn't think they were worthy. That's not what Paul is talking about here. What does it mean then to be worthy? It means someone who recognizes that they need a savior. Someone who says, I am not worthy in myself, but I serve a savior who is worthy. Someone who focuses on Jesus Christ, past, present, and future as their only hope, their only comfort in life and death. Self-examination then means a basic understanding of the work of Christ, which is why most reformed churches have required a serious profession of faith. So I think we actually need to revise our language. Oftentimes we talk about so-and-so joined the church. They stood up in front, yeah, yeah, they did, but that's not the key point. The key point is they professed that they belonged to Christ. They professed that they believed that Jesus Christ was their Lord and Savior, that they believed that they had no hope apart from Him. And that's why meeting with the session, the session is saying, yes, on the basis of your testimony, we can't look at your heart. Only the Spirit of God can look at your heart. But on the basis of your testimony, we believe you should be able to come to the Lord's table. That's important because you come as people recognizing you need a Savior. Again, it's not a relentless search for unconfessed sins. Should you confess your sins? Yes, but you always have to be careful. I never forget hearing Rod Rosenblatt, who used to, he was actually a Missouri Synod Lutheran, and he took part with a number of Reformed people on the White Horse Inn Forum, and he said he had grown up in a very pietistic Danish Lutheran tradition that really emphasized this, that before you came to the Lord's table, you had to have all your sins confessed. And he said, he remembered, and they used to of course come up in front and receive the Lord's Supper. He said, he remembered once, he said, yeah, I'm standing in line there. And he says, this is back in the 1960s. And he says, and there was Susie Rasmussen in that cute little mini skirt. I got right back around again, got to the back of the line. He said, I had some thoughts I shouldn't have had there, looking at her little mini skirt. In other words, He said he was so focused on this confession of sin that he missed the point. The point is the Savior. Yes, we should confess our sin, but that's not the point. The point is Jesus is our Savior. If you are truly repentant, truly trusting in Christ, then you are discerning the Lord's table. Now, if you're not somebody then who believes you need a Savior, you've not confessed your faith, Or maybe you did once, but you aren't certain. You don't really, maybe you think of yourself as someone who really is kind of worthy. Stay in the pew, pass the elements by. They're not for you if you think you're worthy. But if you believe you are unworthy, but you have a worthy savior, because did you notice what Paul says here? He doesn't say we are worthy, but we're eating and drinking in a worthy manner. that word-worthy manner is crucial. We're eating and drinking as we're trusting in Jesus. Only those who know their own need of grace and sense the overwhelming importance of the total sufficiency of Christ's work, past, present, and future, really celebrate the Lord's Supper. We can have minor differences sometimes. We can sometimes believe slightly different things about smaller matters. But the key thing is, do you believe in Jesus Christ? Is he your Lord and Savior? If you know your need of grace, you professed your faith in Christ, you met with the session, you're either a member here of this church or of another church and have been approved by the session to come to this table, you're welcome. You're welcome, not because you're worthy of yourself. because you're trusting in a worthy Savior. The Lord's Supper then rightly focuses on Jesus Christ. Come today, not to focus on your need, although that need is what drives you to the table. It's your need of a Savior that drives you here. That's literally the truth. Jesus Christ is what drives, and our need for Him is what drives us to the Lord's table. But we come here to find grace. As we receive the elements, we're receiving that reassurance from Jesus Christ, you're mine. We're feeding upon him. Jesus is the bread of life. Jesus is the true vine. He is our sustenance. He is the one we're waiting and depending upon. If you don't believe that, I'm sorry that you don't, but I would urge you on the basis of Scripture, not only to pass the elements by, but to look at your own state and ask yourself, why do I think I am worthy? Because there is no one worthy. Only Jesus Christ is worthy. Well, to summarize the Lord's Supper here is the sacrament of proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. His death is the foundation of his present intercession. He's interceding for us on the basis of His sacrifice. He's ascended into heaven. He rose again. We celebrate it until He comes. We wait and we look forward to that day when we'll celebrate it in that marriage supper of the Lamb. Come to His table today. Come and receive His grace and be refreshed and nourished as Jesus tells us we should be. Well, let's pray. Father, We thank you for your word. We thank you for the good news of the gospel, that Jesus Christ is an all-sufficient Savior, that he lives and reigns. He's ascended and seated at the right hand of the Father, and we can worship and we can feed upon him to receive that spiritual sustenance that he wants to give us. We thank you for that today, Lord. In Jesus name, amen.

• Why is unity so central to the meaning of the Lord’s Supper?

  • How do we avoid turning the Supper into either empty ritual or mere symbolism?

  • What does it mean to “eat and drink in a worthy manner”?

  • How does the Supper both look back to the cross and forward to Christ’s return?

  • How should the Supper shape our daily walk with Christ outside of worship?

• Sacrament – A holy ordinance instituted by Christ, conveying grace through visible signs.

  • Real Spiritual Presence – Christ is truly present in the Supper by His Spirit, not physically in the elements.

  • Covenant Meal – A meal confirming God’s promises and sealing fellowship with Him.

  • Self-Examination – Honest reflection on faith, repentance, and love before the Supper.

  • Proclamation – Public declaration of Christ’s death and resurrection until His return.