“Table Manners”
(1 Corinthians 11:23-34)
Series: Chaos & Correction (1 Corinthians)
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
Henderson’s First Baptist Church, Henderson
•Take your Bibles and join me in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11 (page 773; YouVersion).
While you are finding that, I want to remind you that there are folks praying for us during worship, meeting over here through these doors in the prayer room. We thank God for that.
If you are visiting with us we are preaching our way through the Book of 1 Corinthians, verse-by-verse. We left off last time at verse 22 so we’ll pick up at verse 23. Paul has been addressing problems at the church in Corinth, a church he himself started there in ancient Greece. And here in chapter 11 he is addressing problems as the church is gathering to observe the Lord’s Supper. We looked last time at his rebuking the Corinthians for their gathering together in selfish ways, dividing into cliques and failing to cultivate a sense of togetherness and unity.
And now Paul tells the church what it is they are to be doing as they gather together. He addresses the chaos of their situation with the correction of the Scriptures, passing along to the church instructions about how to go about observing the Supper rightly.
•Please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread;
24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
25 In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.
27 Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
29 For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
30 For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep.
31 For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged.
32 But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.
33 Therefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.
34 But if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, lest you come together for judgment. And the rest I will set in order when I come.
•Pray.
Introduction:
Most of us have been raised, or are being raised, in a home where we are taught the importance of proper table manners. When we sit at the table to eat a meal with our family we are taught what is acceptable and unacceptable conduct.
My childhood memories include my father’s continually telling me to keep my elbows off the table. For reasons I could not understand as a young boy, to eat with one’s elbows on the table was crass and crude and suggested one was a slob and disrespectful—bad table manners.
I also recall my father teaching me to eat a little bit of everything on my plate rather than eating all of one thing at a time. So, “Don’t eat all of your beans and then turn to your potatoes. Eat a little bit from both piles as you go along. It’s better table manners.”
And then there was also the image burned in my mind of my father looking over my plate, identifying pieces of meat on my pork chop that I had neglected. As far as I was concerned there was too much fat on these pieces, so my dad carefully took his steak knife and pointed out the pieces that were not fat and made sure that I ate them.
My older sister and I learned a few ways we could trick our parents, especially my father. We would spread our napkin out on our laps and when we came across a fatty piece of meat or something that we simply found otherwise unpalatable, we would deceptively drop that piece of food onto our lap into the napkin and later dispose of the food in the trash. This we thought was a classic way to address what we believed to be unfair table manners.
It was second only to another trick. We also found out when eating peas, and we hated those peas, but when our mother gave us peas, we found out that we could smash those peas onto our plates and sort of smother them around such that they might “become one” with the plate, almost existentially, giving the impression that they had been eaten when, in reality, they had been simply decimated, becoming virtually invisible.
And our favorite trick was those few occasions when our parents had left us to eat by ourselves. If any of the food was not to our liking, we would look at one another and say, “You tell on me, I’ll tell on you?” The other agreed and we’d throw the peas or whatever into the trash.
Now, don’t some of you younger people get any ideas here! I am not recommending any of these behaviors to you, and having exposed the tricks like a magician giving away his secrets, your parents will be on to you. Honor your mother and father and cultivate good table manners.
To say the Corinthians had bad table manners would be an understatement of the greatest magnitude. We spoke of this last time.
In early church history the Lord’s Supper followed a larger meal shared by Christians, a meal fondly called “The Love Feast.” Folks would eat this larger supper together and then observe the Lord’s Supper at the conclusion of the meal. At some point in early church history the larger meal preceding the Supper ceased and Christians began observing the Lord’s Supper as a sort of “stand alone” event, much as we do today when we observe the Supper.
But the Corinthians had gathered together for this huge feast so that by the time they observed the Lord’s Supper, some had so gorged themselves on food and were so full they could hardly move, others went hungry, and some were even drunk. These church members had become boorish, selfish, and cliquish, some of them eating together in their own little groups, ignoring if not despising other members of the church.
So Paul corrects the chaos by giving instructions about the proper way to observe the Supper. You might preface our action points this morning with the heading:
**What is Required of Christians Participating in the Supper:
And this is our concern this morning, proper behavior to counteract the poor behavior about which we studied last time. This study will be helpful to us in preparing to observe the Supper together in just a few weeks. First behavior required of Christians participating in the Supper, number one:
I. Thoughtful Commemoration (23-25)
23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread;
Paul says, “For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you.” It was certainly possible that Paul received these instructions by way of direct revelation from Jesus Christ Himself (cf 2 Corinthians 12:1–4; Galatians 1:12, 17). I think that’s a possibility.
On the other hand, when Paul says, “I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you,” he may be simply referring to what Christ had spoken during His earthly ministry. This would be much like back in chapter 7 where Paul was passing along the common knowledge of the Lord’s teaching about marriage and divorce. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7:10, “Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord,” and then Paul recites the Lord’s teaching. In any case, Paul is passing along information about the Lord’s Supper that originates with the Lord Himself.
He says in verse 23 that the Lord Jesus instituted the Supper “on the same night in which He was betrayed” or the same night He was “handed over.” Of course, Christ was betrayed by Judas Iscariot. And I am afraid that we read that phrase, “on the same night in which He was betrayed” as nothing more than a sort of chronological place marker. In other words, we read it and we say to ourselves, “Ah, yes. This is when the first Lord’s Supper took place, on the night that Jesus was betrayed, handed over by Judas Iscariot.” Of course that is true, but it is helpful to recall Paul’s preceding verses we studied last time. We read of all that selfish behavior going on at Corinth and Paul saying in verse 17, “You come together not for the better but for the worse.” And he adds down in verse 20, “When you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper.” In other words, you guys are not worshiping! You may be coming together, but it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper. You’re being selfish and self-centered and dishonoring God and one another. Paul adds in verse 22 that they are acting like they “despise the church.”
Retired minister Gary Denning has been worshiping with us in recent weeks. He retired from First Baptist Church in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and is visiting family in Arkansas this weekend so he’s not with us today. He had emailed some of his thinking on this passage and I just thought I’d cite him. He doesn’t know I’m doing this so it may be just as well that he’s out of town! But I love the way he put this about Paul’s comments here concerning Christ’s instituting the Supper on the night He was betrayed. Listen to this:
Having complained in such forceful language about the way the people are dishonoring God when they dishonor one another, such that their gatherings do not even look like the Lord’s Supper, now he comes to the supper itself and announces as one appalled by their disrespect, “Do you realize that it was on the very night that Jesus was handed over, the night that would cost him so very much, that he shared this precious moment with his disciples which we ought now to remember when we gather together. Think of what that night meant to him, then consider how our gathering together should be conducted – not with total disregard for one another, because that is the very contempt we spoke of back in verse 11:22 when we talked about despising the church.”
I’m not sure I ever thought of verse 23 in that way before. Here is Paul reminding these divisive church members that their behavior is diametrically opposed to the behavior the Supper demands. They were dishonoring the Lord and others by failing to appreciate the significance of Christ’s having gathered together with others at that first Lord’s Supper on not just any night, but on the very night in which He would be betrayed! It’s as though Paul is saying, “Think of the significance! Jesus always put others first. He lovingly and selflessly spent time with others, even on the very night He would suffer a horrible death—something else He did for others. And you Corinthians! For goodness’ sake, think of that when you come together!”
24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
There’s a tremendous irony here in that the Lord’s Supper, a meal designed to bring together believers in a demonstration of unity, actual led to disunity and division. What is more, the disunity and division continues today among Christians over the matter of the Lord’s Supper.
We won’t go into great detail here about the varying views, but it is helpful to review briefly the main differences. When Jesus says, “This is My body,” and, “This is My blood,” Catholics for centuries have believed that Jesus is saying that the bread and wine become the actual, literal, body and blood of Christ, hence the term “transubstantiation,” trans-to change; substantiation-substance. Catholics also believe that a real sacrifice takes place, another sacrifice of Christ to further atone for sin, this despite the emphatic and concise teaching of passages such as 1 Peter 3:18, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.”
Lutherans believe that the body and blood of Christ are present “in, with, and under” the bread and wine, a belief termed consubstantiation. Most Protestants, including Baptists, believe that Jesus is speaking figuratively here, intending us to understand that the elements of the bread and cup are to be understood symbolically, as a memorial to His body and blood. I would add, that while Christ is not physically present in the elements, He is always spiritually present, spiritually present in a special way as the church gathers together to worship Him in the Supper. I’ll share more about that in a few weeks when we next observe the Supper.
The background for the Lord’s Supper is the Passover as explained in Exodus 12. The Passover meal was celebrated by Jewish families who recalled God’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Before the meal, the father as head of the family would take a loaf of unleavened bread—flat bread, without yeast to recall the haste in which the Jews fled Egypt, so quickly they had to leave before yeast was added—so the father would take the bread and give thanks to God and then break the bread to give to his family.
In similar fashion, Jesus takes the bread and gives thanks. He prays and then He breaks the bread and says, “This is My body.” Of course, the very fact that He was holding the bread in His own hand and saying, “This is My body” refutes the notion that the bread is somehow a literal extension of His own body. No one sitting at table with Jesus would have concluded such a thing. It seems very clear that Jesus is speaking figuratively here as He holds the bread in His hand. The bread is emblematic of His body, a symbol to represent His body.
25 In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”
The “cup” harkens back to the Old Testament notions of the cup of God’s wrath (Psalm 75:8; Isaiah 51:17). When Jesus Christ died on the cross, He suffered the wrath of God that was directed at us for our sin. By dying for us He accepted God’s wrath as our substitute whose death atoned for our sin. Recall:
Matthew 26:39, (where Jesus prays), saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”
It’s the cup of wrath that Jesus drank so that we would not have to.
So the “new covenant” mentioned there in verse 25 is why we gather not just for the Lord’s Supper, but why we gather every Lord’s Day. The “new covenant” is why we gather at all. “The new covenant” is our salvation, it is our life, it is the Gospel, it is to be saved by grace, through faith, in Christ, alone.
The “new covenant,” of course, is contrasted with the “old covenant.” The old covenant is not to be confused with the “Old Testament,” which is the book containing the “old covenant.” The “old covenant” is that covenant God made with Israel on Mount Sinai, often referred to as the “Mosaic Covenant” because it was handed down through Moses. We’ve been talking about some of this covenant on Wednesdays in our intergenerational Bible study on the 10 Commandments. The “old covenant” is God’s covenanting together with the nation of Israel, promising His provision, protection, and in a word, His blessing upon the people if they will but follow His commands. It was a blessing of His grace. The people even said to God, “All that the Lord commands we will do,” but of course, they didn’t! The Israelites repeatedly broke the covenant time and time again by sinning against the Lord.
So God, according to His eternal decree, promises a “new covenant,” to replace the “old covenant,” a new covenant especially spelled-out through the Prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31:31-34. And the “new covenant” is also a covenant of grace, but one that takes care of every single one of the sins of God’s people—every single sin and transgression past, present, and future—all completely atoned for by the blood and body of Jesus Christ.
So when Jesus speaks of the bread and the cup, He is referring to His body and blood, broken, and spilled out for the atonement of our sins. This is what we are to remember as we partake of the Supper. It is a matter of thoughtful commemoration.
Secondly, the Lord’s Supper is about:
II. Joyful Proclamation (26)
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.
There is a sense in which every time the church gathers together and observes the Supper together, that the church at that moment is preaching the Gospel. The Lord’s Supper is about proclamation of this new covenant. When you eat the bread and drink the cup you are preaching.
You are proclaiming the Lord’s death. You are recalling and proclaiming that Jesus died to atone for sin. That is what the Christian recalls in eating and drinking. It is a joyful proclamation that takes place “as often as we eat the bread and drink the cup.” We are in a sense preaching the Gospel until Christ returns.
The Lord’s Supper evokes joy in the Christian because it reminds Christians of the Gospel. The Lord’s Supper reminds Christians that God accepts us not on the basis of our performance, but on the basis of the infinitely perfect righteousness of Christ.
He accepts us all equally in Christ. No one is better than another because he or she is rich and no one is inferior because he or she is poor. The cross is the great equalizer, humbling the proud and lifting up the downtrodden. We are all brothers and sisters equally in Christ.
We are “equally underserving, equally forgiven, and equally blessed.”—Dever and Laferton, 1 Corinthians.
What is required of Christians in observing the Supper—thoughtful commemoration, joyful proclamation, thirdly:
III. Prayerful Examination (27-32)
27 Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
There is an examination to take place as we prepare for the Supper. Unlike the Corinthians, entering into the ordinance with their bellies stuffed and their thoughts only on themselves, some of them even intoxicated, we are to enter into the observation of the Supper in reverence, prayerfully examining ourselves.
Paul warns in verse 27, “Whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.” The idea here is that we may fail to prayerfully prepare for the Supper and thus enter into it irreverently or hurriedly, guilty of the body and blood of the Lord like one of the Roman Soldiers who nailed Jesus to the cross, as guilty as they who knew not who Christ really was.
So Paul says in verse 28, “But let a man examine himself.” And in the context of what was going on in Corinth, the examination of one’s self includes the looking around at our brothers and sisters, making certain that each of us is cultivating a loving spirit of togetherness rather than selfishness. It’s like Jesus says in:
Matthew 5:23-24:
23 Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you,
24 leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
29 For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
What does this mean, “eating and drinking in an unworthy manner,” and, “not discerning the Lord’s body?”
Certainly it doesn’t mean that only “worthy” people can partake of the Supper. If that were true, who of us could participate in the Supper?! None of us is worthy.
Given the immediate context, especially as we noted last week about avoiding church cliques, that “eating or drinking in an unworthy manner” would be to eat or drink in a selfish manner, paying little to no regard for others in the church, failing to cultivate togetherness—points we understood from our study of verses 17-22 last week.
This would mean, then, that the phrase, “not discerning the Lord’s body,” would refer to the church, the corporate “body of Christ.” This could be precisely what Paul has in mind in using this phrase, “not discerning the Lord’s body (cf 1 Corinthians 10:17).”
And it may also be that Paul has in mind here the body of Jesus Christ Himself so that “eating and drinking in an unworthy manner” and thus failing to “discern the Lord’s body” may mean that a participant in the Supper fails to appreciate the significance of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, “not discerning, His, “the Lord’s body.”
Paul probably has both ideas in mind. Christians come together to observe the Supper in such a way that they think about both the Lord and His church. As we’ve noted before, worship takes place on both the vertical and horizontal planes.
So the “examination” called for in verse 28, “but let a man examine himself,” would be to pause long enough to think rightly about the Lord and about others. We think about the Lord, His unselfish giving of His life for our salvation. And then we think about others, these brothers and sisters who sit to our right, to our left, before and behind us. We think rightly about them, considering them better than ourselves.
30 For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep.
Again we read in this letter of the Lord’s discipline. We have read it once before back in chapter 5 and some of you were shocked to read about it there. You’ll remember chapter 5 was where Paul tells the church to excommunicate the man who was having sexual relations with his stepmother. He told the church they should remove him from the membership, cast him out, 1 Corinthians 5:5, “deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
So Paul says here in verse 30 that the “reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep” is because the Lord is disciplining His church. Rather than the congregation taking part in the discipline, however, it is the Lord Himself doing the disciplining. This is especially clear in verse 32 where Paul refers specifically to their being “chastened by the Lord.”
Failure on the part of the Corinthian church members “to examine themselves” rightly, eating and drinking “in an unworthy manner,” failing to “discern the Lord’s body” led to three negative consequences spelled-out in verse 30: “many are weak and sick…and many sleep.” The word “sleep” here is a common euphemism for death.
So get this now: the failure of God’s people to worship rightly and reverently led to their becoming sick, becoming weak, and becoming dead! Just let that sink in a bit.
31 For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged.
Of course Paul is writing specifically to the Corinthians first and then, by way of extension, to us. The principle is the same, “if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged.” In other words, “If we’ll confront our sins and repent and get right with God and others, we have no reason to fear the judgment of God.” The problem with the Corinthians, of course, was that a great number of them had not done that. They were gathering together in very selfish and unthinking, and uncaring ways. The behavior of some in particular had become so immoral and so disrespectful that God had actually taken their lives from them. You might say God “called them home early.”
Craig Blomberg puts our questions about this in perspective:
The question most believers of most eras tend to ask is “Why does God treat his people this harshly, even if only rarely?” Verse 32, of course, provides Paul’s answer in this context: they are being disciplined. But the question itself is misguided. All human beings deserve discipline for all of their sins. What Christians ought instead to ask is “Why aren’t we punished more directly more often?” In so doing, God’s grace—his undeserved favor lavished on his people—becomes greatly magnified.
It’s not as though we are to tremble when taking the Lord’s Supper, shaking in fear that God may strike us dead at any moment. The problem with the Corinthians is that they weren’t thinking of God, at all (1 Corinthians 11:20). They were not worshiping, but rather partying.
At the same time, however, a healthy fear of God is always helpful. We must remember when we gather together to worship that we are, in fact, gathering in the very presence of our Creator, of the One who holds our very hearts in His hand.
Again, I am reminded of our wonderful Wednesday study from last week. Matt was teaching on the 3rd Commandment, taking the Lord’s name in vain. He mentioned we may not realize the disrespect we show to God by referring to Him flippantly, the way we may refer to a friend, using phrases such as “Jesus is my homeboy,” or what have you. To refer to God in loose terms is to fail to appreciate the awesome nature of His power and majesty. It’s not as though we’re to be afraid of Him, the way we might be afraid of a fallen creature, as much as it is that we are always to be in awe of Him, struck by Him, forever bowing before Him in our spirit if not bowing on our knees.
32 But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.
God is always ready to receive our repentance. He chastens us that we might repent and turn back to Him, that we might turn from the world and turn to the Lord. That’s the idea here.
It’s like Manasseh in the Old Testament. Manasseh was a bad king, an evil king. He caused the Israelites to commit the sin of idolatry, worshiping false gods.
2 Chronicles 33:11-13:
11 Therefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the army of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh with hooks, bound him with bronze fetters, and carried him off to Babylon.
12 Now when he was in affliction, he implored the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers,
13 and prayed to Him; and [God] received his entreaty, heard his supplication, and brought him back to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.
That’s verse 32 here in 1 Corinthians 11: “But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.”
See sometimes God allows some bad stuff to happen to you because of your sin. Careful here! Not always. Sometimes bad things happen to us and we don’t know why. Job is the classic example. God knows, He is sovereign, He always does what is right.
But there are other times, when you and I know full well why some particular thing has happened to us. God is getting our attention.
I remember once in my teens riding in the car with my friend. He was later my best friend at our wedding. And he was driving the car and I was riding along with him and we had just picked up a couple of young ladies and man, we thought we were hip and cool. We didn’t know what we were all going to do together but we didn’t tell our parents where we were or what we were doing and here we had just picked up these young ladies—free as birds you know—and my buddy turned around to talk to those girls in the back seat and when he turned around, he turned the steering wheel around with him and that car immediately struck the curb, blew out two tires and bent both rims. We were obviously shaken, but we were all okay. The girls got a ride home from someone else and there was Chris and I looking at one another. He said something like, “Man, I can’t believe that happened,” and I remember saying something in response like, “I know why it happened. God was in this.” And he said, “Yeah, I think you’re probably right.”
And sometimes things happen to you and me as a means of God’s getting our attention. It is a judgment of some kind. The Bible teaches that God loves His children enough to discipline them. And when He disciplines, I just believe that you and I know when it’s happening and why it’s happening. Again, be careful here. I’m not saying that every single time something bad happens that it’s because of our sin. If that were true we would all be dead because we’re all sinners. This is the whole point of the Gospel. Jesus paid it all! But as God’s children, as followers of Christ, when we sin and we know better—we can expect the discipling Hand of God.
What is required of Christians participating in the Supper: thoughtful commemoration, joyful proclamation, prayerful examination, and lastly:
IV. Respectful Consideration (33-34)
The last two verses are clear, Paul is calling us to be considerate, reminding us that the Supper is not merely a call to look back, but to look around, to be considerate of one another, verse 33:
33 Therefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.
Be considerate. Be Christlike.
34 But if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, lest you come together for judgment…
There again, the warning that attaches to those who are selfish and inconsiderate: “lest you come together for judgment.”
And I like the way Paul concludes this section of material, last few words of verse 34:
…And the rest I will set in order when I come.
It’s like he’s saying, “I’ve got more to say on this, but this is enough for now.”
And I understand that. I’ve got more to say, too, but this is enough for now.
•Stand for prayer.
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