If you have your Bibles, let me invite you to turn to our text this morning for the reading and the preaching of God's word. We are in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, and verses 17 to 34. Let us hear the word of the Lord. The Apostle Paul says, "But in giving this instruction, I do not praise you, for 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 divisions exist among you. And I believe it in part, for there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you. Therefore, when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's supper. For in eating, each one takes his own supper first. And one is hungry, and another is drunk. Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this I will not praise you." For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was being betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, he took the cup also after the 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 death of the Lord until he comes. Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must test himself, and in doing so, he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason, many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will 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 you will not come together for judgment. The remaining matters I will direct when I come. May God bless his word. Please be seated. Sometimes God gives us examples to follow in life, such as Daniel or Paul himself, and other times he gives us examples of what not to follow. It is helpful for us to see the right direction to go in our Christian lives and also to see what the wrong direction looks like and how easy it can be for us to go in the wrong direction. The church in Corinth is God's example to his church in every age of what to do or, really, what not to do as a church. A church can be outwardly successful in many ways but inwardly going sideways from the will of God, as it seems in Corinth. Corinth had stumbled and failed at so many levels that it must have been absolutely, think about it, just exhausting for Paul to write this letter to them. Divisions had existed among them around personalities. They had a love for the world's wisdom when it came to worship and the proclamation of the gospel. They had become ashamed of the gospel and so they even sought to improve on it with their own methods and their messages. They had begun to think themselves superior even to the apostles. They had approved of sexual sin in a way that the world would have said, "What?" They were taking each other to court. They had begun to tolerate other sexual sins in the body. They were abusing their liberties in Christ and harming their weaker brothers. They had begun to turn on Paul himself, Paul who had personally labored among them for a year and a half. He did not even take pay from them but labored with his own hands to support himself while he taught and instructed the church. They were full of grumbling. They had even begun to dip their toes into pagan worship. They had begun to confuse the roles of men and women in the church. And now we find that they were using the Lord's Supper for a time to abuse the poor and for some of them to just fill their bellies with bread and wine to the point where they were getting drunk at the Lord's table. It is an amazing list, and we will see there is even more to come as we get into the book. We find here many, many examples that God has given us of what not to do as a church. But we should also see that in this, as bad as this church was, Jesus comes to this church to correct them and to restore them. Even when the list of errors and sins is as long as the one in Corinth. You know one thing that is interesting to note is that the church in Corinth receives the most attention, you could say, the most words from Jesus of all the New Testament churches. Only the church in Thessalonica receives two letters, as the church in Corinth did. But those letters contain about 2,800 words to the church in Thessalonica. To Corinth, there are about 15,600 words. Even when comparing that to the great letter to the church at Rome, which contains only 9,500 words. So Jesus has a lot to say to this erring church. He cares for it. And He cares for it enough to have the Apostle Paul come back to it again and labor over it and seek to restore it. But we should also know that the warnings of Christ are not without limit. As we read about the seven churches in Revelation, we find that it is made plain there that Jesus will warn His church. But His warnings are not infinite; that is, they have an end. Jesus tells His church there, "If you do not repent, I will come to you and I will remove your lampstand." That is, "I will take the very presence of the Holy Spirit from you, and you will cease to be a true church." And so we need to know that the words of the Bible are dead serious, beloved. They are more true than the sun rising in the east or water running downhill. The Word of God is never to be ignored or trifled with by us. To ignore the warnings of Scripture is really to be like a man who is running on ice with his hands in his pockets. When he falls, it is going to be spectacular and tragic, and everybody is going to see his folly. He will be like the man who built his house on the sand. So Jesus comes now and brings the needed correction to the church here in this text this morning in chapter 11 regarding its abuse of the Lord's table. The church had become like ancient Israel. It had begun to worship in ways that had truly become a stench in the nostrils of God. They had taken the Lord's table and corrupted it. The Lord had come to ancient Israel and called them out, saying to them, "Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah. What are your multiplied sacrifices to me?" says the Lord. "I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and of fat fed cattle, and I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls and goats and lambs. When you come before me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts? Bring your worthless offerings no longer. Your incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure the iniquity and the solemn assembly. I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you. Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered in blood." The Lord wrote this through the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 1. He also wrote through Amos, "I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer up to me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them. And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. Take away from me the noise of your songs. I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." The church at Corinth had found itself following in the footsteps of ancient Israel. Although back in chapter 10 Paul had warned them not to be like Israel, Israel had turned the worship and the sacrifices into a mockery of God with their gross idolatry. They had reveled in their sin while they offered sacrifices. So too in Corinth, they had taken the most serious and joyful moment of our worship, the Lord's Supper, and made it a time of abusing the poor and for their wanton pleasure rather than a time for the entire body to come together around the cross of Christ. And so Paul rebukes them in a way that reveals that they were thinking that they were actually pleasing God with their worship. They thought they were good with God as they came together to celebrate the Lord's table. Paul speaks to them in verse 17 by saying, "I do not praise you for you come together not for the better but for the worse." He goes on and repeats this rebuke in verse 22. He is telling them in verse 17 that their worship is actually worse than not coming together. Just like Israel's sacrifices were worse than not bringing them. And so one of the abominations that they were coming to the Lord's table with is that they were coming divided. The chief focus, beloved, of our gathering around the Lord's table is to be united in Christ. This is the great display of the table. We take it together to declare that we are his together. Not simply that I am his but we are his. This is why you do not take the supper at home in your bedroom by yourself. It is a family meal. It is not meant to be a TV dinner. So the church was divided, and Paul rebukes them for that in verse 18. Now what is interesting is that Paul goes on to say that there must be divisions so that those who are approved—that is, those who are in the right—may be evident. So the solution to divisions, where there are truth issues involved, is not simply to say, “Well, it doesn't really matter; what matters is that we get along.” No, that is true for some issues. But the kind of issues that were dividing the church in Corinth were not the kind that you could simply say, “Well, let's just not mention those things, pretend, and just get along.” Now there are issues that sadly divide the church unnecessarily. But there are also, at times, issues that necessarily must divide the church in order to show who is right. And that is what Paul is speaking of here. It may be sexual issues, the issues of men's and women's roles, or other crucial doctrinal issues of the gospel, the atonement, the Trinity—issues that cannot simply be overlooked or merely issues of preference. So when there are crucial issues of doctrine or practice, Paul says that there must be division so that those who are correct will become evident. So in a fallen world, there will be times—certainly sad times, but necessary times—when divisions must be present so that the truth of the gospel and the word of God might be proclaimed and believed. This is the situation in Corinth. So Corinth had begun to abuse the Lord's table. They were neglecting the poor. They were even getting drunk, as we said, on the wine used in the supper. It is hard to imagine, isn't it, such behavior in the church. But then if you have really been around the church long enough and seen it in enough places, you will see at times behavior in professing believers that is just like the world or even, at times, worse than the world. This was the case in Corinth. This is the case at times even in our day. And so the solution to it is to call out the heirs, whether in doctrine or practice, and to call the church back to faithfulness. It is also to warn the church of the real dangers of living in doctrinal error or practicing sin. We will be looking more in the weeks ahead at the meaning Paul gives here to the table. But we should note well the warnings that come through Christ to the church. As we read in verses 27 to 31, the abuse of the table had brought both real sickness and death to some in the church of Corinth. Jesus, beloved, takes his supper seriously, deadly serious. This is the only time we find this kind of discipline being brought upon the visible church. Many times in Scripture, the church is warned, but it is when the table of the Lord is being despised that actual sickness and death as a judgment of discipline comes on the church. Oh, what a reminder, what a reminder that Jesus is serious about the seriousness of together remembering and rejoicing in the cross. He holds his table to be holy for his people. It is, by the way, one of two things in the New Testament that Jesus specifically designates as belonging to him. That is the Lord's Supper, as we read in verse 20. We also will read of the Lord's Day in Revelation 1:10. So Jesus has uniquely designated both the supper and the day, resurrection day, to be his. One marks his death, the other marks his resurrection. And so it is a weighty thing to come to the table of the Lord and to remember his finished work. It is one that we dare not trifle with or come to lightly. These are the two most weighty truths in our world: the cross and the resurrection, the justice of God that is declared at the cross, and the forgiveness of our sins, and the power of God on display, and the conquering of death for us, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ has removed, beloved, your sin from you, and he has given you new life, new life in Christ, a life that is eternal, one that cannot be ever stopped by death. Sin is gone. Life is yours. The Lord's table is for us the time when Jesus comes and gathers his people again to celebrate his victory over sin and death for us. He comes to find us united in him. He comes looking for us to rest again in what he has done to save us. It is a time for your soul to rest again in God alone and to do that with everyone who belongs to Jesus. Let us close with prayer. Father, we pray that you would help us now to see what you have written to the church at Corinth and take heed. We pray you would guard us, Lord, from the errors that we find there. Keep us far from them. And Lord, teach us to treasure the body here, the unity of the body of Christ, and to treasure it as we treasure Christ together around the table. So we pray that our coming together, Lord, would be pleasing in your sight as we come truly united in Jesus, loving one another, and finding together our full and certain hope that our sins have been forgiven in the death of Jesus Christ in his broken body and in his shed blood at Calvary. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.