First Corinthians chapter 11, we'll look at just a little bit of this text beginning at verse 20. Verse 20 tells us about the impropriety of following a ceremony without bringing your heart along with it, and especially the ceremony of the Lord's Supper, or the Lord's Table. He says here, let me read these few verses here, 1 Corinthians 11, 20 through 22. Therefore, when you meet together in the same place, it's not to eat the Lord's Supper. For in your eating, each one takes his own supper first, and one is hungry, and another is drunk. For do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this I will not praise you. Paul is addressing an issue that is going on in that church in Corinth that is horrific because it so much undercuts the reality of the gospel, the reality of what the Lord's Supper or the Lord's Table or communion or the Eucharist, various words, we'll consider those in a moment, what that means and how Contradictory are the actions or the attitudes in which the people come to share in that meal versus what the meal represents. It's Christ laying down his life for his church and here these people come in and they're all full of themselves, they're all full of their entitlement, they're all full of their status, their prestige, their distinction between this group and that group. And the haves versus the have-nots. So much is going on in this text. And Paul says, I'm not going to praise you in this. What do you expect me to say to this congregation that is so full of themselves? When you do meet together, which they ought to, this meeting together is the mind, without which not, the sine qua non of an assembly, of a church. We are supposed to assemble together, and assembly assembles, and so we do meet together regularly. And how regularly? It seems like the pattern has come to us to meet on the Lord's Day, which is a Sunday, the first day of the week, the day of his resurrection. And so when they meet together in the same place, or in the same time, or in the same mind, even this word, this phrase, in the same situation is appropriate, but what you're doing with it, it's not. You've come with the purported plan to celebrate the Lord's Supper. And that brings into question, by the way, how often did the early church remember the Lord's Supper? Was it a weekly occurrence? Was it every time they got together? Maybe they got together multiple times a week. When did they meet? Did they meet on a Sunday evening, or a Sunday day, or a Saturday evening, depending on where they were doesn't matter, I don't suppose, but in terms of the time of meeting, but the regularity of sharing the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Table, as it was mentioned back in chapter 10, is something that was part of their their regular practice, we see it's referred to in different ways. Here we have the Lord's Supper. It's mentioned in, as early as Acts, the end of the chapter of Acts 2, when God is building the church, 3,000 souls come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ in that day, and it says that they were all together, the Lord was adding to the number, and that they, in part of what their practice was, to break bread together. could be just a meal, but also could be very specifically the Lord's table, the bread and the cup that are shared in honor of what Christ has done. But here he says, yeah, you come together, you're going to get the Lord's Supper, but how can you do that? How can you in good conscience take the Lord's Supper when there's so much going on? As Dan read earlier in this text, there's so much in this text, divisions and factions among them, schisms that are going on, and that's not how you ought to be coming together to serve the Lord. You're not coming to eat the Lord's Supper. As I mentioned, that this is the Lord's Supper. This is not their own. He makes a very strong contrast here in the next verse about their own meal. But this is the Lord's Supper. It's in honor of Him. Even in this text, it says that we remember Him in the taking of the bread and the sharing of the cup. And it belongs to him. It pertains to him. It should reflect everything about what Christ has done in and for us. And so the way that they're observing or celebrating that feast is so wrong. He said it earlier in chapter 5. of 1 Corinthians, giving the distinction or giving the example, I suppose, of casting out the old leaven there in verse 7. He says, we ought to keep the feast, and he's speaking specifically of the Passover feast, the celebration of the exodus and God's great deliverance of his people out of Egypt from slavery. But he says, let us keep the feast not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with an unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Even at that point, he's kind of anticipating implication of the Passover meal is to not it's not about ourselves it's not about our goodness or our rightness or it's what it's about what Christ has done he is the one verse 7 says Christ our Passover lamb also was sacrificed and you come into this this congregation you think it's all about you and and people ought to be thankful that you're here We're thankful that Christ is here. We want to honor Him, and we want to recognize ourselves underneath Christ and His righteousness, His patience toward us, and His sanctifying of us. It is the Lord's. When we come up to the Lord's table, we do it in honor of Him. This adjective, the Lord's, is only used one at a time, and it's used in Revelation chapter 1 to talk about the Lord's day. John speaks about that, and on the Lord's day, He was in the Spirit and so forth, and so He seems to indicate the first day of the week, which we can look back at the Gospels and say the first day of the week when Jesus was raised, that early Sunday morning, and we recognize it's a day to celebrate what Christ has done, to reflect upon his sacrifice. It is here described as a supper, And that word is used again in verse 21, that word supper. It's used to describe not just a meal, but kind of the chief meal, the premier meal. Usually in the evening, but different cultures celebrate at different times. Even us, when we have a Thanksgiving meal or supper, it could be, I don't know, what time you have your supper, two o'clock, four o'clock, six o'clock, eight o'clock. I don't know what time you do it, but it is that chief meal. It is the reason you get together for that fellowship. And here, yeah, you can take the meal, but you are totally trampling upon the whole meaning of it by the attitudes and actions that you come to eat it. So yeah, you're coming to eat it, but you're not coming to eat it. You're not coming to fellowship and really honor the Lord in this. Why? Because in verse 21, he says, in your eating, as you have this meal in front of you, each one takes his own supper first, and one is hungry and another is drunk. So as they're eating, as they're sharing this meal, and there's some, I don't know, it's a debate or a question, but there's a suggestion, I suppose, that there was a meal, more of a meat and potatoes kind of meal, if you don't mind, a substantial stuff, and then there was what we refer to as the sharing of the bread and the cup. And so there was, as Jude describes it, Jude, I don't know, in the teens, verses, he says, referring to the love feast, the agape feast. And so it could be that they were having a meal together, and then sharing the Lord's Supper as part of that process. But in taking their own supper first is this idea. In your eating, celebrating the Lord in this time, you're so selfish and so motivated about what you can get first. And so this idea of taking first, I should have italicized it here, but I think it's italicized in the text here. No, it's not. So it's good. It's not italicized. First is the idea. Because this word, take, can have a temporal aspect, which is to say beforehand. Mark chapter 14, when the lady had done what she could, Jesus says, she anointed my body beforehand for the burial. The anointing of with oil and wiping the oil with her hair. She did it beforehand, before his burial, so a time aspect. But there's another aspect that this word is used. It's only used three times in the New Testament. The first here is in Mark chapter 14. The third time is in Galatians chapter 6 verse 1, which you might know pretty regularly. Brothers, even if anyone is caught, any transgression, and it goes on and talks about how to help that person, not to beat him when he's down, but to help him, right, get him back up on his feet. If anyone is caught, there's our word, taken, as it's described here in verse 21 of 1 Corinthians 11, they're caught, which has the idea of taken by surprise, maybe, or maybe overtaken, overwhelmed, just can't, I don't know how to do this, I can't get out of it myself, I need help. It's that kind of idea. And so, okay, either a temporal aspect or an intensification aspect. What's the big deal? Do these people take their meal before everybody else? And they want to get, you know, they have the best seats in the house, they're the ones who get served first, and therefore they eat all the food before other people can get there. Maybe some of the lesser people, the have-nots, as it says here in verse 22, the have-nots, maybe they come in late, maybe they've been working all day, and by the time they get there the food's all gone, I mean the meal, right, the supper, it's all gone, and some people are drunk or sated, right, just excess to the excess, and other people have nothing. How can that, that's not a church, that's not kindness, that's not showing Christ love and the change that he brings in our lives. In your eating, idea here could be you take your own supper first and you just you're all selfish and you get what you can before other people do or it could have that intent and or it could have the other sense of consuming or devouring their food. I mean, they're just getting into it, and they're getting whatever they can get for themselves. And either aspect, whether it's before everybody else or more than everybody else, it's wrong. In your eating, you're all about yourself. And the implication is, or the result is, that one is hungry, and another is just filled to excess and beyond. And you think, well, they shouldn't be drunk at all. He's condemned that, right, back in chapter 6? Yes, to be sure. The idea here is that they are filled with just more than they need, and it's to the detriment or to the neglect of those who didn't have anything. And part of the implication of this separation between those who, in some respects, it's the haves versus the have-nots. In the next verse, it talks about the have-nots, or those who have nothing. It could be a social distinction, which is to say the wealthy landowners, household owners, well, the church is meeting in their homes, larger homes, and so they were already there and the food, they They just got the first dibs on the food, or they, you know, they were there the longest, so they got the fullest or whatever. So there's a social distinction, there's a wealth distinction, there's the wealthy looking down on the poor, and even the slaves. Which is why if you were to come back and read through, particularly these last, you know, from chapter 8 forward, and recognize how many times Paul even going back to chapter one, but how many times he undercuts this idea of wisdom and status and privilege and the class conflict, you know, conflict between the classes has no place in the church. There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free man. male and female, he says in Galatians 3, he said, we're all one in Christ. So act like it. Don't keep those worldly, secular distinctions between different classes and bring that into the church. That has no place in the church. And so there's a social distinction. There's also just a very practical architectural distinction. In these first century homes in Corinth and other places, we didn't have, like our structure has a nice, clear span. We have a nice, open, big room. We can get hundreds of people gathered together. Not so much in this first century time period, it would be another...the first church building was a house. It was discovered some years ago in southeastern Syria. I think it is Dura Europa, Europos it's called. It's her house that had been converted into a church building. It had some other features that would be described or identified as a church building. But typically these churches met in the assemblies, the congregations met in homes, and so you're limited by the architecture, the style, the design of the home. In a wealthy home you'd have various rooms, you'd have the entry area, you'd have this garden space that's open to the sky and a fountain water retention facility, you'd have a kitchen area, but then you'd have the place where the meal is served, the dining room, called the triclinium, which is shaped like a big U, you see it over in the in the far lower right corner there, where people would be reclining and taking their meals. And there's not much room, especially when you're splayed out like that guy, you know, just taking up three or four spaces. But nine to twelve people maybe could be reclining in there. Not a lot of people when you get the church together. And so some people would take their meal out in the atrium, maybe in the garden space. Well, they don't get served like the food was taken into the triclinium. That's for the wealthy people. And so you see, both socially and just the practicality of what they're used to as a Corinthian society, the separation, the distinction, discrimination even, has no place in the church. And so he says, you make sure that you come and don't be so concerned about getting what you can before anybody else gets there, or getting as much as you can before anybody else, because you're leaving people hungry. It's not that they didn't have much at all to eat. They didn't have anything to eat. They were empty, whereas you guys are just full. And not just full of yourself, but you're full with food and drink and wine and so forth. And he says, that's not appropriate. And he says, look, don't you have houses in which to eat and drink? And the way he structures this question here in verse 22 is assuming, yeah, of course we have homes in which you can eat and drink. And he doesn't fault the people for that. If you wanna have a feast, if you wanna have a meal, have in your own home, but don't think that that is appropriate for you to be, and it's selfish to some degree, but it'd be selfish if you were to invite everybody else and they can see kind of the food that you're eating, but they don't get any of it. That's selfish. If you want to have a feast and a meal with your own family or whatever, you do it and enjoy the fellowship. Go back to Ecclesiastes and read the joys that God provides those who fear him. Food and drink and just the blessings of life. Enjoy it. But when you come into the assembly, share. Share. empty of yourself and share what you have with other people." This emphasizes even going back to the Acts 2 passage, many would say, claim rather, that the church, the early church was held, was based on communism, that everything, nobody had private property anymore. Well, it's not, okay, If you just looked at Acts 2, everybody had everything in common. Nobody had any needs because they shared with... Well, yes. But if you were to look at, for example, the end of Acts 4, and you realize, hey, this guy Joseph Barnabas of Cyprus, he came and had land, and he sold it and brought the proceeds to the apostles and laid it at their feet. But wait a minute. How can he have land if it's communistic society, right? The land on private property is abandoned, right, because everything is self-incumbent. No, he had that property, and he sold it and brought the proceeds to the apostles. Fast forward to chapter 5, you see Ananias and Sapphira, they sold a piece of property, they kept back some of it for themselves, but they presented the gift as if it was their entire amount. And Peter makes that point, you know, when the land was Before the land was sold, wasn't it yours? After it was sold, wasn't it yours? Yes, emphasizing private property, but also saying the issue is not that they didn't give everything to the apostles. It's that they claimed they did give everything. They lied. to the apostles and to the Holy Spirit, Peter says. And both of them died, and they received inheritance in the Lord, as it were. I don't know what we'll know about them in the future, but the idea is you can have private property, you can enjoy what you do in your own home, but when you come together as a church, It is for the church. It's for the Lord's sake. And you eat and drink, celebrate everything. Remember back in chapter 10 verse 31, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. So many times in Scripture, especially in 1 Corinthians 11, we see this combination of eating and drinking and how that's just enjoying food, enjoying the benefits that God has provided. When you do that, do it for the benefit of God, do it for the benefit of the Church of God, and not to shame those who have nothing. He asks a second question. Do you despise the Church of God and shame those who have nothing? So there's an action or a direction of their action that is toward God, because it's His church. And so many times in Scripture we see this phrase, the church of God, or the churches of God. Very infrequently, I should say, we see the phrase, a church of Christ, or Christ's church. We see His body described as His body, which is the church, or churches of Judea, for example, which are in Christ, Galatians 1.22. But typically we see this phrase, the church of God. It belongs to Him. He's the Redeemer. He is the one who manages it and directs it. And so whenever we come into this assembly, it's not just your average social club. It's not just a human institution. You're not walking into a classroom. You're not walking into any kind of community group. You're walking into the church of God and not the building. Forget the building. It's the people you're gathering with and the purpose for which we gather. It is God's church. It is his assembly. He has called us out, brought us close to him. And so despising his church, Well, I'm not despising. Well, yeah, you are because you are you are acting in such a way that you are bringing shame and disgrace upon him, reflecting on the pompous pride and arrogance that these people would have, you are looking down, you are even looking at the other people that come in, this ragtag bunch of people that have knots, and say, oh, dear, we'll have to fumigate after our meeting today, or, you know, scrub the pantry, or just, We need to look for another church because these people, they don't, and this kind of despising going on in that first century church, and it's just not appropriate because people in the first century are similar to people in the 21st century, that we look at each other and we kind of size each other up and we are prejudiced. We have prejudged people based on any number of factors that we consider. It's not how it should be in the church. Accepting, loving one another, helping one another, serving one another is how we ought to be doing do what you want in your own homes. When the church gathers, you bring honor to the Lord. Do not despise, do not think lightly of them or just dismiss them. Oh, well, that's just the help or that's just those people from across the, well, they didn't have railroads, but across the aqueduct or whatever, people on their side of the city. Well, yeah, we put up with them, but we don't certainly fraternize with those kinds of people. You're despising the church of God when you do that, when you act in such a selfish, self-centered way. And it says you shame those who have nothing. scorn and disgrace, you humiliate them, and you're not even ashamed about it yourself. You embarrass them in front of it because they have nothing. They didn't have anything to bring to the meal, and you don't want to share anything. Out of your excess, you've already eaten it, and you're sated and bloated and drunk. And just that is shameful activity toward the folks who have nothing. It could describe those who are permanently poor, they have nothing at all. Or maybe on that particular meal, they couldn't go back home to get their stuff, and so they came to the meal, the regular meeting of the church, and they didn't have anything to contribute to the meal. Or it could be those who are vulnerable, kind of unstable in their situation, and just are not able to contribute out of great extreme need. How do we act? We do not shame them. We welcome them. We share with one another. I should say, in verse 33, it says here, kind of the implication of this whole text, so that my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. Kind of underlines that idea of eating before, going in and starting the meal before everybody's gathered, and by the time other people gather, it's all gone. So it could have that idea of waiting in time for one another. Some other people would like to say that, and I'm not convinced about that, we'll revisit it when we get to verse 33, It's a kind of an intensive of receive one another, make sure that you share or welcome everybody in, show hospitality, and make sure there's enough for everybody to go around. So share, don't be so selfish. Christ came and he gave his body, verse 24, gave his blood even for his church, and you're taking all the food for yourselves? That does not, that's not consistent with what Christ is doing in this Lord's Supper. And so he says in verse 22, what shall I say? Do you think I'm going to praise you about this? You think, oh, you're doing such a good, you're not, this is not praiseworthy. This is not encouraging. This is a wrong action, wrong activity. You have come to share the Lord's table. As I mentioned back, this is the fellowship meal with Him. It's also the fellowship meal with each other, communion. that we share, it is the Eucharist so described, which comes, there's a first century, second century writing called the Didache, which is an instruction manual for the church, how they ought to meet, and that talks about in your, in that thanksgiving, because that's what Eucharist means, a thanksgiving, giving thanks to God, that this is how you should do it, and they describe in how to do it. But that's where the phrase Eucharist comes from, it's giving thanks, because it says here, verse 20, for when he'd given thanks. So it's that idea of giving thanks, Eucharist. Communion is the other word that's used often to describe what we're doing, but it's the Lord's, it's for the Lord. It's to share our fellowship with him, with each other, and make sure you do it in a praiseworthy way, not selfish, not self-fulfilled, for your own glory. It's for the glory of Christ that we do these things. Do you remember how James chapter two says, my brothers, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. And who's the favoritist person that we have? Well, it's myself. And the second favorite, well, those who are close, don't show that personal favoritism in the sense of how you care for and how you serve one another in love and graciousness. And he goes on in chapter two, James, about the contrast between the wealthy and the poor and how that discrimination is shown. Don't do that. Don't do it. show kindness, wait for another, receive one another, show kindness to another, show that same example, what Christ has done for us. We want to show this holy and beautiful and even the profound sacrifice in that Lord's Supper, not taking it for ourselves, serving our own interests. That's contrary, exactly contrary to what Christ has done in offering himself for our sins. Our Father in heaven, we're so grateful for the truth of your word and how you have taught us how to love one another, and not just taught and commanded, which is quite appropriate, you are the Lord, but shown us through your love. You sent your Son to die in our place, and He gave up Himself willingly, offered Himself as a sacrifice to cover our sins, to take away our sins, the guilt of sin, even the presence of sin, in that future day when there will be a resurrection unto life. I pray that that day would be soon. Please help us to live each day to love you and to love other people. Please help us to be less full of ourselves, even not full of ourselves, but follow the Holy Spirit and therefore able to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit, one of which is love, the love aspect. Please help us to show kindness one to another, to receive one another, to celebrate what Christ is and is doing in our lives, to give glory to you. Thank you. We pray in Christ's name.