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The Lord's Supper, Part One: The Worse Way

A Sermon Delivered by Jim Scott Orrick

January 7, 2001

Acts 2:42 leading to 1 Corinthians 11:17-22

According to our text in Acts, the first church in Jerusalem continued steadfastly in four practices: the apostles’ doctrine, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. In this small series of messages I am preaching on each of these four practices and insisting all are necessary for a group of Christians to be a church.

In previous sermons, we have already thought about the first two of these essential ingredients. First, we examined what the essentials of the apostles' doctrine are from the preceding context here in Acts, chapter 2. Secondly, we saw that fellowship is an essential ingredient of a New Testament church. I emphasized that church discipline is an essential part of church fellowship. Fellowship is not merely a flabby feel-good kind of fellowship, but it is a fellowship that has backbone to it. We are able to have good fellowship with one another, according to the Bible, because we share some essentials in common, and we insist that we share these essentials in common if we are going to be a church. And then Don Whitney preached a more full-bodied sermon on fellowship that talked about its various other aspects. I concentrated primarily on church discipline; he gave a more well-rounded view of what church fellowship is. Today we come to the third essential ingredient of what makes a church.

Do you remember the illustration I gave you about four essential ingredients? I think I told you that if you're going to make good gravy, you've got to have four things. You've got to have grease. You've got to have flour. You've got to have some kind of liquid (I use milk), and then salt. Well, I suppose you could have gravy without salt, but it doesn't taste very good. If you want to doctor up your gravy, you might add other things. You might add pepper or some other kind of flavoring, but you really don't need those other things. They are just for extra flavoring. Well, with the church there are four essential ingredients. There may be other things that are present. There are, I promise you, activities of this church that would be foreign to the church in Uganda or in China. There are things going on in the church in China today that would be different than those in the church here. Even within our own town, there may be things going on at the Korean Baptist Church this morning or at the African Baptist Church this morning that are different than ours. But we do share these four basic ingredients with the Lord's churches all over the world: we all, down through history and all over the world today, continue steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and public worship.

It's the third one that we're to concentrate on today. Here in Acts 2:42, the breaking of bread is mentioned. This is one of the two ordinances that the Lord has given to His church. The other ordinance is mentioned in verse 41: baptism. Lord willing, in a succeeding sermon, I will talk about baptism. This morning I want us to begin to think about the Lord's Supper, because that is what is meant by the breaking of bread. It is true that along with the breaking of bread, many of the first century churches had a meal, and of course, when the Lord's Supper was instituted, it was after a meal. It was after the Passover Supper that Jesus gave special significance to the fruit of the vine and to the unleavened bread. He told them that the fruit of the vine represented His blood and that the bread represented His body that was going to be broken. That leads me to make an observation regarding both of the ordinances, both the Lord's Supper and baptism. Both of them preach the Lord's death. They are pictorial settings forth of the Lord's death. That is an essential criterion for a ritual to be considered an ordinance. An ordinance is something that has been ordered, or it's a command by the Lord. It will help you to remember that an ordinance is something that has been ordered. Jesus gave two ordinances, or two orders, to His church that would set forth His death. Jesus gave more than two commands. He gave more than two orders to His church, but there are only two pictorial representations of the Lord's death that we are to observe: baptism and the Lord's Supper.

When someone is baptized, they are plunged beneath water, and then they are brought out of water. That pictures what Jesus did for sinners. He died, He was plunged beneath the ground in a tomb, continued under the power of death for a season, and then He came up again. When someone is baptized, they are saying, “I trust in what Jesus has done for my salvation. I trust in Jesus, and I want to live like Jesus now. I want the entire world to see that I am dying to the old person that I used to be, a person who loved sin and didn't love God. I have died to that person, and that person is going to be buried, and now when I come up out of the water, I want everyone to know that I'm going to try to live a new life. I fully intend to pursue obedience after my Lord from now on.” That is what baptism is saying. It pictures the death of Jesus, and a believer saying, “I'm trusting in the death of Jesus, and I'm going to try to live like Christ. I want to live the resurrection life now, a life that is no longer under the control of sin.”

Well, when we take the Lord's Supper, we are also showing forth the Lord's death. The fruit of the vine, whether it is grape juice or whether it is wine, represents the blood that Jesus shed when He was crucified. The bread represents His body that was broken. When Jesus was crucified, none of His bones were broken, but He was hit with the soldiers' fists, and you can be sure that when someone gets hit in the face with a bare fist by a grown man, the face is going to be cut. Jesus body was broken when He was cut on the back with a whip. His living body was pierced with nails. His dead body was pierced with a spear. Jesus' body was broken, and when the bread of the Lord’s Supper is broken, and when we crush it in our teeth, we remember the body of the Lord Jesus Christ that was broken and crushed for sinners. It is a very powerful telling of the Lord's death.

I once was associated with a church that had the practice of whisking the children away out of the auditorium when the Lord's Supper was served so that there would be no interruptions, no crying children, no hustling and bustling and moving about. I do not approve of that practice. I want the children to see the church observing the ordinances. I want the children to see baptism administered. I want the children to see the Lord's Supper administered because it is a powerful preaching of the Word of God. The Lord has given us these pictures to help little children and to help us who are little children to understand His death, burial, and resurrection.

Since the Lord has given us only two ordinances, then we should be sure that we don't try to invest other ceremonies with religious significance. For example, I'm uncomfortable with the whole ritualistic lighting of candles. There's nothing wrong with candlelight. If we want to have a candlelight service sometime, there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you don't say that this candle represents something else, and this candle is actually picturing Jesus, the Light of the World and so on. That would be investing religious significance in a ceremony that the Lord Jesus has not commanded. Someone might say, “Well, you know, that's a very small thing, the lighting of an advent candle or the hanging of the green and saying that this candle represents that and that candle represents something else. I mean we all remain true worshipers of God after all of that, don't we?" Well, some churches do, but if you look at the vast majority of the world that calls itself Christian, you will see that they practice many rituals that they invest with religious significance, and sometimes these rituals become the main part of their worship. The Roman Catholic Church has identified no less than seven rituals that they call sacraments. I use the word sacrament. Should we call the ordinances sacraments? I don't have any problem with it as long as you know what you're saying. A sacrament is something that is sacred or something that has been set apart to sacred use so that when we observe the Lord's Supper in a few minutes, we are not merely drinking grape juice and eating bread. It has religious significance. It has been set apart as a sacred act. So there is nothing wrong with calling it a sacrament if that is what you mean. But, if by sacrament, you mean that it's going to save you from your sin, then you shouldn't call it a sacrament, and that's what some people use the word sacrament to mean. They will say the sacraments actually save you from your sin, and in that case, you shouldn't use the word sacrament to refer to the ordinances.

Well, we can't get very much information about the breaking of bread or the Lord's Supper from Acts 2:42. We're going to need to turn to another more detailed explanation of what the Lord's Supper is, and for that I want you to turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians, chapter 11. Lord willing, there will be at least two parts to this message on the Lord's Supper. The first part will occupy all of the sermon today, and then a later sermon, the second part. The first part is The Worse Way to Observe the Lord's Supper. The second part will be The Better Way to Observe the Lord's Supper. .

“Now in giving these instructions I do not praise you, since you come together not for the better but for the worse. For first of all, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. For there must also be factions among you, that those who are approved may be recognized among you. Therefore when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper. For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others; and one is hungry and another is drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? 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 do not praise you.” I like the King James Version that says, “I praise you not.”

You see that I got the title for this first sermon on the Lord's Supper from verse 17. "You come together not for the better, but for the worse." Children, when you're going to someone's house, on the way, do your parents ever say to you, “Now when we get here, you must not do this. You must not do that. The last time we were here you did this; don't do it again.” And your mother or your father will go over these instructions about ways that you should not behave. That is what the Apostle Paul does here. We're getting ready to talk about a wonderful feast, the Lord's Supper. Think about it. Supper with the Lord! Before we go to the Lord's Supper, the Apostle Paul, like a loving parent, puts his arm around us and he says, “Now this is the wrong way to do it. Here are four ways to ruin the Lord's Supper.”

First of all, verse 18, “When you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it.” The first way to ruin the Lord's Supper: let there be divisions and factions in the body. Verse 19: “For there must also be factions among you, that those who are approved may be recognized among you.” What's the difference between a division and a faction? A faction is just a little bit worse than a division. If you have a King James Version of the Bible, then you see that instead of the word faction, you have the word heresy. But the word heresy in this place does not mean a doctrinal falsehood, but rather a practical separating. That is why a heretic is called a heretic. He is separate from the orthodox teaching of the church. So a heretic in this case is someone who separates himself from the rest of the church by just having his little group of friends.

With each of these four wrong ways to observe the Lord's Supper, I want to see what was going on at Corinth and then look at dangers that we have to be on guard against today. So what were the divisions and factions at Corinth? What are some divisions and factions that we need to beware of today that can be ruinous in our attempts to worship the Lord through observing the Lord's Supper?

We see that some of the people at Corinth had divided into groups according to personalities. By personalities I mean that there were certain preachers who ministered among them. Some of the members really liked Paul. So they said, “We are the students of Paul.” Others of them really liked Cephas or Peter, so they said, “We get our teachings from Peter. All of you people who like Peter as a preacher, come over here. We're just going to have our own little meal together.” And then others said, “Paul is not for me. Cephas is not for me. I love Apollos. Oh, he speaks so eloquently. He is such a better speaker than either Cephas or Paul. And so all of you people who like Apollos, let's eat the Lord's Supper together.” Paul rebukes them. He says, “I and Cephas and Apollos are all servants.” Now it may be that you enjoy the preaching of one more than the preaching of another even in this church. There are three elders. All three of us preach. You may prefer the preaching of Jim Elliff above the other two. You may prefer the preaching of Don Whitney above the other two. That doesn't offend any of us if you like the preaching of the others more than our own. The danger is when factions begin to develop and someone says, “Well, you know I'm really on the inside circle with Jim Orrick, and Jim Orrick says this,” and you start pitting Jim Orrick against the other two elders. Or someone else says, “You know, Don Whitney really ministers to me. I really love Don Whitney, and Don Whitney does this,” and you start pitting Don against the other two elders.

Let me add a personal note here that it is such a delight to work with my brothers Jim Elliff and Don Whitney. For one reason, neither one of them gets his feelings hurt easily. Sometimes one of us will present an idea, and the other two will roundly put it down and say, “I don't like that idea at all.” I have never known either one of them to get his feelings hurt, and say, “Well, if you don't like MY idea, then I'm not going to approve of YOUR idea.” There is none of that that goes on. There ought not to be any of that in the body of elders, and there ought not to be any of that in the body of Christ, in the church.

Not only were the Corinthians dividing according to their preferences among leadership, but they were also dividing along socio-economic lines. I mean that some of the Jews were saying, “All right, we're going to have a little Jewish party. You Gentiles can't come.” Or the Gentiles were saying, “We Gentiles are going to have a real fun party. None of you Jews can come.” Social lines. Or they were dividing along economic lines. "We rich people are going to have some good food, and since you poor people never bring any good food, you can't come." Well, they probably wouldn't be that forthright with it. They would just send out invitations to their rich friends, and their rich friends would come. We will see that this was actually happening at the Lord's Supper! Obviously, the rich people could afford a higher quality of food, and they were jealous about eating it themselves. I can imagine the rich people glaring at the poor people who were simply helping themselves to the food that had been brought. They were unhappy about the situation, so the rich people got together and said, “What are we going to do? Next time let's come half an hour early, and that way we will be able to enjoy all the filet mignon ourselves, and then when the poor people come with their soup beans and cornbread, they can eat that.” They were actually doing that at the church. They were dividing along socio-economic lines.

Well, of course both of these divisions are a danger for any church today. There's a danger, as I've already pointed out, of our choosing favorite personalities, favorite leaders, favorite teachers. There's also a danger that people who are well off would only stick together or that people who are not so well off would stick together and hold a grudge against people who are well off. There's a danger that people who choose to homeschool their children would say that home schooling is the only way and anyone who chooses a different educational option is unspiritual. Or a really big divider in churches today is over the issue of style of worship. Are we going to have contemporary worship? Are we going to have traditional worship? Some churches are split apart over those divisions. There's the possibility of churches dividing over lesser issues. So we also need to be on our guard against divisions and against factions and getting little cliques together.

Let me give you some practical advice, some practical instruction that I believe we can draw from the Word of God right here. When we have our fellowship meal, do you always eat with the same people? Do you, after you have gotten your food, look out over the people who are already seated and ask, “Who would I really enjoy talking to today?” Or do you say, “Who is lonely? Who do I think really needs ministering to today? Who is someone new? Who is someone that I've never sat with before, that I'm actually in the same church with and whose name I don't even know?” What should you do? Well, if you don't even know their name, you should sit with them and say, “You know, I'm sorry. Could you tell me your name? You've told me before, but I have forgotten.” And this would be a good day for that. This is the day to just get all things right and say, “I can't remember your name. Will you please tell me your name or help me to remember the names of your children?” I forget the names of my OWN children, and sometimes I just have to point to one and say, “What is your name?” And so don't be embarrassed if you have to ask the names of my children repeatedly, and please don't be offended if I have to ask the name of your children more than once or more than five times.

So, in our own church we have a danger of splitting up into factions. Be on guard. It will ruin the Lord's Supper. While the comments that Paul makes are specifically directed towards the Lord's Supper, you see that they are applicable to worship in general. So the first way to ruin the Lord's Supper or to ruin a worshiping church, is to allow factions and divisions to exist unchallenged. Before I leave that point, let's all be frank. In a group of people, there are going to be some persons with whom you have more in common and that you enjoy more than others. Is that wrong? It is not wrong. And if you want to get together with someone outside the church and do the things that you enjoy or talk about old times or enjoy an activity together that only you share in common, there's nothing wrong with your doing that. The wrongness comes in when it's brought into the church, and you cannot break that faction when you're in church.

Before we move on, look at verse 19, and I see something else that I meant to mention. Verse 19: “For there must also be factions among you that those who are approved may be recognized among you.” I tried hard to make that mean that Paul was saying in an ironic or even in a sarcastic way, “Of course you have got to have these little groups so that those of you who want to achieve eminence can do so in these little groups. You may not be able to achieve recognition in the entire assembly, but in this little group you can do it, so of course, you've got to have them for that reason.” I say I tried to make it mean that, but after studying it further, I believe that verse 19 means this: In a church full of sinners, it is inevitable that there will be some factions. It's a sad thing, but it's true. God allows them to exist so that those who are really approved may become manifest. And you know church troubles will manifest those who are approved by God. You know what you're full of? Whatever spills out when you're shaken. And church troubles will shake you up. There are some foods that emit a particularly foul odor when they begin to spoil. When a carrot begins to go bad, you don't know that it's getting dried up. But if a potato begins to go bad, you smell it when you walk in the door. Some foods stink worse than others, and there are some troubles that stink worse than others. I'll tell you church troubles stink. Church troubles are really bad. I was talking once with a godly widow whose church was experiencing some troubles, and this widow said to me, “These troubles cause me more grief and anguish than I experienced when my dearly loved husband died.” That is how bad church troubles can be. They can ruin even a very beautiful ordinance. One skunk can stink up a very beautiful countryside. And church troubles can stink up and ruin a very beautiful ordinance.

All right, let's move on to the second thing now. Verse 20: “Therefore when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper.” The second thing that can ruin the Lord's Supper is vain worship. Vain means empty or meaningless, and when the church of Corinth was coming together, they were going through the motions of observing the Lord's Supper. They had bread. They had wine. But even though they may have gone through the ritual, they were not really observing the Lord's Supper. They were having a Corinthian supper. It wasn't the Lord's; it was the Corinthians' supper. That was the problem at Corinth, and of course the same problem is a danger for us today. We can come together and have singing and have praying and Scripture reading and preaching, but if your mind is somewhere else, if my mind is somewhere else, it's not the Lord's worship that we are engaged in. We may have come for some other reason—to be seen by people, or we may have come actually with the intention of worshiping the Lord, but when we get here, we're distracted with something else. While we're singing “Oh How I Love Jesus,” we're really thinking, “Oh how I love football.” That is not worship. It is vain. It's meaningless. Jesus says, “These people draw near to Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” And Jesus knows that. Now how would you husbands like it if, when you were kissing your wife and she was drawing near to you with her lips, you could see into her mind and you could see that she was actually thinking about an old boyfriend or thinking about some movie star. You wouldn't like that, would you? Thank the Lord we can't read our spouses' minds all the time! But Jesus can, and He says, “When you draw near to Me with your lips, make sure that your heart is there too. Otherwise it doesn't mean anything.” When we observe the Lord's Supper in a few minutes, and you drink that cup, think about the blood of the Lord. When you eat that bread, think about the body of the Lord. Otherwise, while you may be eating bread and drinking the fruit of the vine, it will not be the Lord's Supper that you're participating in. So the second way to ruin the Lord's Supper is through vain or meaningless worship.

Now look at verse 21 for the third. “For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others; and one is hungry and another is drunk.” The third way to ruin the Lord's Supper or to ruin any worship in the church is through inconsideration and rudeness. Of course rudeness IS inconsideration. I've already explained to you the way that they were doing it at Corinth. The rich people were coming ahead of time and eating all the good food before the poor people got there. The poor people would be ashamed. "Oh, we're supposed to be coming to a church fellowship meal, and here I am, and all I have is just this little bit of food, and now no one is here. The rich people, look at them. They're drunk over there. They're making fun of us because all we've got is just a little bit of food."

I know a woman who feels great grief when she thinks about one aspect of her early childhood education. She attended a one-room schoolhouse, and she said at that one-room schoolhouse there was one family in the community that was very poor. All the children brought their lunch to school in a bucket, and these children would only bring fried potatoes, day after day, month after month, nothing but fried potatoes. And this woman will almost weep as she says, “We made fun of those little children for bringing fried potatoes.” That does seem awfully heartless and insensitive, doesn't it? That is what the Corinthians were doing. They were shaming the poor people because they were poor.

Is there any way that we do this? Oh, perhaps not that blatantly. We have more refined manners than that, I hope. But how much consideration do you give to others when you come to church? Do you go away pouting that no one ministered to you? Have you tried to minister to anyone? Have you taken the time to ask at least one person how they were doing and really meant it? Have you offered to help a mother who has a baby in one arm and a satchel in the other? Even you children can do this, and I notice that there are some children who are always helping. Some children hold the door open for others. Some children will say, “May I help you with that?” We've got some fine young people, but I've noticed that there are some others of you who never do diddly. You're always just thinking about getting away to play with your friends, and some of you adults are no better, you know. You're always thinking about what you've got to do this afternoon. "Oh, I've got to hurry up and get home and get my nap in. I've got to hurry up and get home and watch the football game. I've missed the first half, but I can catch second half." That's a way to ruin church for you, if not for everybody else. Your being rude and inconsiderate will ruin church for you. It works that way. You'll go away pouting and thinking that no one has helped you when it all would have been made better if you would have just taken the time to be considerate and polite and helpful and caring about someone else. So the third way to ruin the Lord's Supper is by being inconsiderate and rude.

The fourth and final way to ruin the Lord's Supper and, indeed, to ruin church as a whole is in verse 22. That is to treat the church like a social club. “What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? 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 do not praise you.” Now there's nothing wrong with eating and drinking, nothing wrong with eating and drinking at church. We have a fellowship meal. The first century church had the love feast, the agape feast. After that they would share the Lord's Supper. I would like for us to do that here sometime, to have the Lord's Supper after we have our fellowship meal together, to take some time with it. I know that sometimes when we observe the Lord's Supper, like we will in just a few minutes, you have already been sitting for a long time. You've heard a sermon. Maybe you're hungry, and you're thinking about the bagels and the donuts, and you just can't help it. It's hard for you to think about the Lord's Supper. At least sometime I would like for us in an unhurried way to observe the Lord's Supper after we have had our love feast, after we have had our fellowship meal, which is what our fellowship meal really should be. The main purpose of our fellowship meal is not socialization. Socialization will go on, and we're not opposed to socialization anymore than Paul was opposed to eating and drinking. But the main purpose of the church is not to provide a venue for your socialization and my socialization. The main purpose of the church is not to provide a venue for eating and drinking. When we treat the church that way, we treat the church as though it were only a social club, and a social club is something far less than the church of Jesus Christ. When we treat the church that way, we are despising the church. That's the word that Paul uses here in verse 22. Do you despise the church of God? When you treat the church just like a social club, you do two things. You despise the church of God, and number two, you make people feel ashamed who are not on the in crowd. When the church is treated like a social club, there are always going to be some people who are not on the in crowd. You despise the church of God, and you shame those who have nothing. Well, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is something that is far better than a social club. My best friends are here. I enjoy socializing with you. Every conversation that I have today will not be about the Bible or about church or about some spiritually related subject. It's all right for you to talk about the weather. It's all right for you to talk about something else that you may share in common with someone and enjoy their company. But all the while, let that be a far second to true fellowship. That is, that the majority of your conversation and your desire will always be that you can talk about the most important reality that you share in common with these brothers and sisters. This may be the only place that you assemble all week long where you have a group of people who believe the same way you do about Jesus Christ. Let's take advantage of it. Because a sure way to ruin the Lord's Supper and to ruin the Lord's church is to treat the Lord's church as though it were just a social club.

Yesterday one of my daughters asked me, “Daddy, is it o.k. to go hunting on Sunday?” My response to her was, “Sweetie, there are much better things to do on Sunday.” I enjoy hunting. But Sunday is the Lord's Day. On Sunday I don't have to be distracted with thinking about hunting. I've already made up my mind, no hunting on Sunday. Is it o.k. to watch football on Sunday? Well, who would want to waste Sunday by doing such a thing as that? There's something much better to do on the Lord's Day. We can enjoy the Lord on the Lord's Day. We don't have to be distracted. We can make up our minds ahead of time, "I'm not going to do any schoolwork on Sunday. With the Lord helping me, I'm not going to do any extra housework on Sunday. I'm not going to do the yard work on Sunday." If your ox falls into the ditch, get the ox out of the ditch, but I've observed that with a little bit of planning, you can usually keep the ox away from the ditch. That way you're free. You don't have to worry about your ox on Sunday. You're able to devote your time to something that is far better.

Well, that same principle applies to assembling with the Lord's people. There's nothing wrong with socialization. I expect some of it to go on, and it's o.k. You shouldn't feel guilty about it. You shouldn't feel guilty about socializing here or getting together with your church friends outside of church for the express purpose of socialization. There's nothing wrong with that. But when we assemble together on the Lord's Day, there's something much better that we can enjoy, and we are much the losers if we don't focus on fellowship, worshiping the Lord and encouraging one another.

So the Apostle Paul, on the way to the Lord's Supper, puts his arm around us and he says, “Now children, when you observe the Lord's Supper, firstly, make sure that there aren't factions and divisions. Secondly, make sure that you don't observe the Lord's Supper in a meaningless or a vain way. Thirdly, be considerate; be polite. Fourthly, don't treat the Lord's church like a social club. All of these will ruin the Lord's Supper. That's the worse way to observe the Lord's Supper.”

Other uses require written permission. Contact jimorrick@hotmail.com

Scripture from The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by
Thomas Nelson, Inc.