I Corinthians 11: 25
The New Covenant and Communion

I. NOW, FIRST I WANT TO TALK VERY BRIEFLY ABOUT THE BAD EXAMPLEOF THE CORINTHIANS IN THEIR COMMUNION PRACTICE. 

1. When I was the Dean of Carver Bible College I had a student who was the pastor of one of the numerous Corinth Baptist churches in the Atlanta area.  I often wondered what kind of a church it was and why they took the name of Corinth. I found out later that it was not uncommon in the South.  There is one here in Clarke County.  The original was certainly no model!  It had more screwy ideas, bizarre practices and weird customs than any church we know about. (with the possible exception of the Galatian churches which had a good bit of heresy.  Our first paragraph comments on their -- to say the least -- unfriendly and even divisive practice of the communion. 

As you know, the Lord's day began on Saturday evening at sunset -- the beginning of the day in the ancient cultures.  The day always began at sunset and not at dawn as ours does.  The early Christians appeared to worship always in the evening because in a pagan culture that would be the only time that many of them could meet.  They didn't take Sunday off to watch TV or stroll around the mall. It was a work day.  Almost certainly in most of these churches of the New Testament they met in a house.  The only exceptions would have been when a whole synagogue in a Jewish area turned to the Lord and became a church. 

In houses they didn't need folding chairs but they sat all over the place.  The music would probably have been lined out. Instrumentation would have differed from church to church.  And music would have differed in quality and character from church to church in different areas.  In Jewish areas of the world they would have borrowed from Jewish Psalmody and music styles.  The rest of the churches used more secular styles.  They seemed to have composed hymns from the very start. There are a half dozen or more early hymns quoted in the New Testament.  And they give us an idea about their music's literary content, even if not about what the music sounded like.  Many hours would have ultimately been consumed with reading the Bible text. 

2. But their bizarre practice that Paul condemns was seemingly to bring a "sack lunch" --in some cases a sack dinner with lots of wine and too much food -- and for each person to eat his own dinner with no thought of sharing and drink to excess and just mix that with what they thought was the communion.  They would just break out a chunk of bread and a large vessel of wine and pass it around.  It had all the grace of a bunch of half inebriated people watching a big-screen football in the Tate Center.  Paul was horrified and said that the practice and the mentality canceled out the idea of communion.  In v.20 he said: "what you do is not the Lord's supper" (The name for the communion they favored because it was observed at night.  And, by the way, the Corinthians observed this desecrated sacrament every Lord's Day.) 

3. Now listen as I read "I Corinthians 11: 17-22" which is the apostolic commentary on their practice.  There is an application to this.  You can so bring your secular culture into the church service as to cancel out its Christian effect.  These Christians who had so recently been raw pagans were turning the sacred communion into a Bacchanalian orgy even as they were bringing pagan ideas into their worship that approached the orgy worship of their former associations (but probably nearly as excessive). 

Watch out for this.  The Medieval people did it.  They brought their pagan views, organization and ceremony into Christianity and imported their pagan idea of "mini-gods" that they turned into worship of the saints and they brought all the superstitious magic ceremonies of the pagans into Christianity.  All the present day people who dress up in quaint garments and act-out in ceremonies borrowed from the middle ages or, now, in post-modern times those mod people who are bringing the mentality of a downtown club or even of a therapy group into the assembly of the Lord are doing a similar thing. 

How common it is for churches nowadays to be structured like late-night T.V. programs -- entertainment for people who are surfeited on T.V.  I want us to be thinking of why we do everything that we do and have a good reason for doing it.  It is the responsibility of the elders of this church to supervise our worship.  And you ought to be involved by thinking about why we do what we do and advise them.  This is very important if we are to remain a kind of New Testament church, yet one that is fully relevant to our time in history. 

1. It is explained and regulated here in "vv23-32."  At the very end of the chapter he tells them stop eating at the church service.  This is not a condemnation of Christians eating together but a condemnation of eating together as a part of the service.  I would think in our world it would at least condemn communion breakfasts and handing out cookies during church. That will probably be the next fad in seeker sensitive church services.  But it is fair to say that it probably condemns making the communion look like a real meal where people eat the elements for the satisfaction of eating.  Notice "v.33-34a" 

2. Now the corrective is that the communion was a symbol and a renewal of the New Covenant.  It is mentioned in v.25 "This cup is the New Covenant in my blood.  Do this as often as you do it in remembrance of ME."  The word for covenant diatheke is a solemn agreement, a contract.  And it is the Bible way of describing our relationship to God.  Romans 5 describes us as once having been in the Adamic Covenant and as now being in the New Covenant.  (Though it does not there use the word, clearly this is the concept.) Read the last half of this chapter this afternoon and see if it isn't the sense of the passage. 

3. The basis of this covenant is the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.  The cup of the communion is a sign, a "remembrance" of his blood -- his atonement bearing our sins before the holy Father in Heaven so that, if we are in this Covenant, God the Father sees our sin as having been charged to Christ and when we day-by-day confess our sin we confess it not to a Judge but to a dear Heavenly Father.  The bread of the communion -- which for us is ordinary household bread (just as the ancients used their ordinary bread) is said to be the symbol of the body of the Lord eaten in remembrance of that fact.  This idea of the body of the Lord is a symbolism representing his humanity as the God-man.  For it was in that body that the incarnate, Second Person of the Trinity lived a life of perfect righteousness and of infinite worth; and that perfect righteousness was added to his bearing of our sins so that we would not only be forgiven of sins in the sight of God the Father, but positively righteous, since it is his infinite, perfect righteousness that has been imputed to our account.  As Count Nicholas Von Zinzendorf put it in the hymn translated by Wesley: Jesus thy blood and righteousness/ My beauty are, my spotless dress; In flaming worlds with these arrayed/ With joy shall I lift up my head Bold shall I stand in thy great day/ For who aught to my charge shall lay? Fully absolved through these I am/ From sin and fear, from guilt and shame. 

4. We come into that Covenant symbolically in baptism but, in truth, at the moment of faith in this Savior who is our substitute, our redeemer, our sin-bearer, our perfect righteousness before God the Judge.  And we remember the fact of his atonement for sin and his imputed righteousness, confess it as our own, give thanks to the Triune God, rejoice "with joy unspeakable and full of glory" at the wonder and the grace of it all as we celebrate the renewal of the New Covenant every time we celebrate the communion -- or the "Lord's Supper" as the Corinthians called it.  A part of that covenanting is, too, the continuing intention to obey him and follow him and to confess our own sinfulness 

5. Here is an application of great weight and moment for you: Do not miss this in your Christian life!  Take advantage of it fully.  We do not put on a show at the celebration of the communion -- no golden vessels; no magic words or gestures; no hocus pocus.  We try to use good taste and elements that do not call attention to themselves so that you will not be distracted by the external elements or their surroundings: sometimes in the celebration of the communion an emotional fever is created; how sad and inappropriate!  It is not a time for emotions but a time for covenanting!  It is not a time for ceremony and marching around like they do at a wedding, a funeral, or at an inauguration of officers at a ladies' garden club.  We do not need to make anything up!  This is the renewal of the New Covenant!  And, if you are a true Christian it is a true link between the physical and the spiritual where physical symbols are used to transport you into a covenantal relationship with God.