Let us turn in our Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, the passage that almost at every Lord’s table is referred to when the bread and the cup are being set before us. I want to read the entire paragraph within which we have what we commonly call “The Words of Institution.” That paragraph begins in verse 17 and goes to the end of the chapter.
1 Corinthians 11:17-34, “But in giving you this charge, I do not praise you, that ye come together not for the better but for the worse. For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that divisions exist among you; and I partly believe it. For there must also be factions among you, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you. When therefore ye assemble yourselves together, it is not possible to eat the Lord’s supper: for in your eating each one takes before other his own supper; and one is hungry, and another is drunk. What, do ye not have houses to eat and to drink in? Or do ye despise the church of God, and put them to shame that have not? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this I do not praise you.
“For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread; and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you: this do in remembrance of me.’ In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come. Wherefore whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of the bread, and drink of the cup. For he that eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment unto himself, if he discern not the body.
“For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep. But if we discerned ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world. Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, wait one for another. If any man is hungry, let him eat at home; that your coming together be not unto judgment. And the rest will I set in order whensoever I come.”
No single church in the apostolic age was plagued with such aberrations as was the Corinthian church, both morally, ethically, as well as doctrinally. Yet, the epistle is so rich in its instruction, because, in facing this broad spectrum of doctrinal error and of ethical aberration, the Apostle brings us again and again into rich veins of doctrinal perspective and of Christian truth.
One such area of sinful behavior in the Corinthian church is to be found with respect to the sins they were committing at the Lord’s table. Surely, if anything is a gross contradiction, it is sinning at the Lord’s table! The Lord’s table is a remembrance of the death of Christ. The purpose of the death of Christ was to deliver us from sin. What a horrible aberration—to be using the very occasion of the celebration of the work of the Saviour from sin, and find opportunity to sin in that very act! That’s exactly what the Corinthians were doing. Some of them, according of the passage read, were coming burping with excess and bleary-eyed with drunkenness, and others were sitting there with growling stomachs, not having had sufficient food to put away the distraction of gnawing hunger.
So, the Apostle addresses these aberrations head-on, and in the midst of it we have those wonderful Words of Institution which are read month after month when we come to the table. Remember how they come to us. They come to us nestled in the Apostle’s willingness to dive into this ethical and moral wrong in the Corinthian church. As he is sorting out the issue, God gives to us these wonderful Words of Institution, which again will be read, no doubt, as we come to the Lord’s table.
What I propose to do in our brief meditation is to fix your attention on the last statement, with respect to those Words of Institution, the words of verse 26, “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come.”
The Apostle tells the Corinthians—as he is seeking to anchor them in a solidly biblical perspective concerning the Lord’s table and in God-honoring activity at that table—that among the major things they are doing when they come and eat and drink at the Lord’s table is to engage in gospel proclamation conditioned by a glorious anticipation. It is gospel proclamation conditioned by a glorious anticipation, “Till he come.” I want us to just park on those two lines of thought for the time allotted to us for our meditation.
First of all, let us consider together our corporate gospel proclamation. The Apostle writes to the entire church, not just to those who were given a gift of utterance and a place of public instruction and proclamation within the assembly, but within the entire gathered assembly of God’s people. He says that when they came—not with their minds dull with too much alcohol and their bodies listless by being stuffed to the gills, but when they came with sufficient nourishment eaten in their homes—what they ate at the Lord’s table was not to satisfy physical hunger, but it was to engage in loving remembrance of the Lord Jesus.
When they took of the fruit of the vine—not to bring up the level of their alcohol another two notches and become more bleary-eyed and drunk, but with the full grasp of all of their mental faculties, undulled by excessive alcohol—it was that they might drink of the cup in remembrance of the Lord Jesus, who shed His bled. He said, “When ye eat and drink in this way,” according to the divine purpose and pattern for the Supper of Remembrance. In the context he is saying to eat it in the way appointed, in a spiritual, mental, and physical condition mandated by God. “As often as ye eat this bread”—in that context of the Word of God regulating the state of your own mind and body when you eat. “And as often as ye drink the cup”—in the spiritual frame and physical condition mandated by the passage. He says of the whole congregation, “You are engaged in corporate, gospel proclamation.” “As often.” Each time, every instance in which you eat the bread and drink the cup, you proclaim and solemnly preach the Lord’s death until He comes. This highlights our corporate gospel proclamation at the Lord’s table.
Bible Reference: 1 Corinthians 11:17-34
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