We're going to be back this morning in 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians, we're back in chapter 11. We're going to reread a little bit of 1 Corinthians this morning, just a tiny bit, just three verses that we covered last week. And we're going to finish up our study on the Lord's table this morning. Last week we read the beginning portion of this passage, which is really likely the very first time that the Lord's Supper is taught. And it's taught in this letter to the Corinthian church. And we started in verse 17 and we read all the way through verse 26. And the way Paul structured this letter is he gave some strong rebuke at the start of the portion. And then he gave the story of Jesus' actions on the night of Passover, the night that he was betrayed, and he put that in the middle, and then he continued on with some more instruction. And so if you read from 17 to 34, right in the middle is the actual story of the establishment of the Lord's Supper. And so we ended there last week, and we're going to start there this week. If you recall last week, we looked at what we called the principle of the Lord's Supper. Why was it established? What was its purpose? And we looked at Paul's response to how the Corinthian church was carrying it out and his, I would call it his righteous indignation at the way the Corinthian church was acting in what they were considering the Lord's Supper, and what he rebuked him and said, that is absolutely not the Lord's Supper the way you're doing it. And he called out their divisiveness, he called out their self-centeredness, and he called out their indulgence. And he said, you can't be divisive, self-centered, and indulgent and call it the Lord's Supper. So today we're gonna move from the principle into the practice. So last week was the overall idea and the centrality of the Lord's Supper in the Christian church. And now we're gonna talk about the practice and it's gonna be the practice meaning how do I as an individual partake in the Lord's Supper and then how do we as the body of Christ, how do we collectively partake in the Lord's Supper? So let's jump back in by starting by rereading at verse 23, and we'll read through the end of chapter 11 here. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was 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 also took the cup after supper, saying, this is the cup pardon me, 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 this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may 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 when you come together, it will not be for judgment. about the other things I will give direction when I come. Join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come together again and we open your word and we look for the truth of your scripture. We look for it to instruct us, that it would teach us the right ways that you have laid out for us to walk with you as our Lord. Let our minds be open to your instruction, Lord. Let our hearts be open to your rebuke, your teaching, even your discipline, Lord. We pray that we make you and your teaching and your word the center of everything here this morning. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. So the practice of the Lord's Supper Pastor Benner called out that tomorrow is indeed Memorial Day here in the United States. And Memorial Day is not a holiday that you celebrate. If you think of holidays, most holidays you celebrate. You have a party, you have some ceremonial or some traditional practices, and it's a joyous time. But Memorial Day is established to remember people who have served in the military and have died in the military. Not like Veterans Day where we honor their service simply for serving, we are honoring their death in their service. And if you talk to men and women who have served along others and they've had people that they've served with pass away, they may have been present when they died in combat, it is not something that you go and you celebrate in terms of, I'm so happy to think that they died in combat. That is not what Memorial Day is. But last week we talked about the idea of the Lord's Supper. And the Lord's Supper is a Christian memorial day. It was established as a memorial. Similar to what we call Memorial Day of Remembering Those Who Passed Away, it was established by Jesus himself saying, tomorrow I'm gonna die. Actually it was night, so today I'm gonna die. And Jesus established this knowing that his death is imminent. And he's establishing a memorial so that when he's gone, and he says this, right, do this in remembrance of me. When I die, when I'm gone, remember what I've done here. But the difference in this memorial than I think all other memorials is this is genuinely a memorial that you should celebrate. The Lord's Supper is not supposed to be a solemn occasion. It is a reverent occasion. We give it reverence. We don't treat it flippantly. But it's not a solemn occasion because yes, Jesus died and remember his work on the cross. But then you also remember that he rose again. And just as we celebrate Easter and Resurrection Sunday, the Lord's Supper is remembering that his death was a conquering death. He didn't die in battle and was a victim Of this eternal battle that that satan has tried to wage against heaven No, he was the victor in death. We celebrate his death as a victory And so although it's a reverent occasion, it should be a happy occasion. I ask you to keep that in mind because the apostle paul Is going to talk a lot about judgment and he's going to talk about punishment and discipline and he's doing so because They haven't given it its reverence, not because they were being too happy at the Lord's Supper, they just weren't being reverent at the Lord's Supper. So I don't want you to walk away today as we go through this and think, wow, man, the Lord's Supper is a downer. You should be dressed in black and just keep your head down and don't smile during the Lord's Supper. No, that is not what we as Christians know to be true. Christ is risen, Christ is conquered, Christ is king, and we can celebrate that when we remember the Lord's Supper. So keep it in mind as we dig in today. Let's start by looking at verse 27. Verse 27 says, Now I'm not going to rehash all of last week, but last week was talking about all the ways that they got it wrong. All the things they were doing wrong that Paul said it would be better if you just didn't meet at all. Like just quit doing church if this is how you're going to do it. It was that bad. And he says, if you don't listen to these things, based on what the Lord's Supper is supposed to be, based on the reverence it's supposed to have, and you eat the bread or drink the cup in an unworthy manner, you will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. That is a very weighty statement for Paul to make. And you have to ask yourself two questions. One, what does it mean to be guilty of the body and the blood of Jesus. What does it mean that I'm guilty of the body and the blood of Jesus if I do this thing unworthily? And the second thing you're gonna have to ask yourself is, then how can I do it in a worthy manner? If it is so grave that I'm guilty of the blood of Jesus himself, well then how do I make sure I am worthy when I do such a thing? And we're gonna look at both of those here with verse 27. First, the idea of what does it mean to be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord? Well, you have to consider how did the breaking of Christ's body and the spilling of his blood come about? Who was guilty in the acts of that day, of the actions that took place? And you remember that the story of Jesus going to the cross, Jesus had been pursued for the last three years, for better or for worse, for the most part throughout his three year ministry, he was pursued in terms of he would go somewhere and he would upset people, usually the Jewish leaders. And he would upset them because he would teach things that they didn't want him teaching. And so there was different times where they had set out to entrap him, to trick him with their rhetoric. There's other times where they actually sent people after him, and they're like, he's over there, go, send these people over there. And sometimes we had them, you know, Jesus snuck away or Jesus evaded them. but they were constantly trying to get after him. And Jesus' story of his journey to the cross is not one where eventually the Pharisees just got him. They finally trapped him, or they finally, that's not what happens. It's also not a story of where the Romans finally just decided, oh, we're done with this guy, and they just came and arrested him. No, the story of Jesus and how did his body come to be broken and his blood shed is a story of one of his own betraying him. that Jesus was betrayed by someone that pretended to be his friend. Someone that walked with him, somebody that ate with him, somebody that slept in the same room, same locations, on the same hillsides. Somebody that was there, scripture tells us, from the very beginning of his ministry, followed along with Jesus and pretended to be his friend. And so he is betrayed. And so when Paul says, if you do this, you're guilty of the body and the blood of Jesus, what he's painting is a picture here of this. If you come to the Lord's table and you pretend to eat with the Lord as if you are worthy of being there, but you are not truly there as a friend of the Lord, you are like Judas on the night he was betrayed. Remember the scene from the garden, you have Jesus, he's in the garden and he's praying, and the 11 are with him, and then comes the mob, and on the other side of the garden, the mob comes, and Judas stands with the mob. And Jesus is here and Judas is there, and Judas stands opposed, pretending to be a friend of Jesus. He comes to him and he kisses him on the cheek, right? He gives him a greeting on the cheek, pretending until the very last moment to still be his friend. And Paul says, if you come to the Lord's table falsely, you are like Judas, who was with the Lord falsely, guilty of his body, guilty of his blood. You might as well be putting him on the cross yourself. That is the magnitude of the accusation of Paul. Now, when he says this, to be very clear, what Paul is not saying is that if you do this, you must not be saved. No, his rebuke is because he knows there are genuine believers who aren't acting like genuine believers. There are people that genuinely call Jesus Lord, and they genuinely believe that Jesus is God, and that He died, and that He rose, and that they want to follow Him, but they're not acting like it. And he says if you're not acting as a friend of Jesus, you're acting like one who betrayed Jesus. He's also not saying, by the way, that you lose your salvation somehow. by taking the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner. We've said it before, quoting another popular preacher, if you could lose your salvation, you would. If I could lose my salvation, I would. You cannot lose your salvation, you can't attain your own salvation, only the work of Jesus Christ can impart salvation to you. So no, taking the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner doesn't mean you aren't saved. It doesn't mean that you could lose your salvation, but it does mean you are acting as Judas act the night he betrayed Christ, that you are feigning participation with Christ, but you are not truly participating with Christ. That's a big accusation. That is a big deal. That is something we should take to heart If you want to understand the magnitude of the Lord's Supper, understand the magnitude of what Paul says it is like when you do it poorly. This is actually not the first time, by the way, that Paul has brought up this concept. We think this is the first time that anyone has written and taught of the Lord's Supper. We said maybe the Gospel of Mark has been written by this time. But it only told the story, it didn't teach. the Lord's Supper, but actually for Paul, he actually has brought this up very subtly, very quickly in what we would consider chapter 10, but if you're a Corinthian reading this, it's just, you know, slightly up the page. In chapter 10, he said this, chapter 10, verse 16, he says, the cup of blessing that we bless, that is the cup of the Lord's Supper now, is not it a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? That is to say, that when you take part in the Lord's Supper, you make yourself a party to the Lord's work. You say, I am one with Christ. I am willing to walk with Christ. As Christ said, I am willing to take up my cross daily. I am partaking in his body and his blood. We either participate with Christ in his selfless giving or participate as one who stands opposed. There's no two ways about it. We're either guilty with Christ, or we're guilty of betraying his work. So that's what it means to be guilty of the body and the blood. Well, the second question we said is, how do we make sure we're worthy? How do we make sure we're worthy? Well, there's two components if you want to make sure you're worthy. First thing you have to do is you have to make sure that you are worthy personally. We said that communion is both a personal act and it is a corporate, it is a communal act. The body of Christ proper, that is his church. And so the first piece, the individual act, how do you personally know that when you come to the Lord's table, you do so in a worthy manner? Well, it's a pretty simple question you have to start with. And the question you have to start with is, am I holy? Am I holy? Because only if you're holy can you commune with God. God is perfectly holy. God cannot dwell, God cannot remain with that which is unholy. So if you want to sit with the Lord at the Lord's table, it is possessive, it's the Lord's table, if you want to sit with the Lord at the Lord's table, you yourself must be holy. We've talked before that holy is the same word that's used for sanctified or for saint, that the scripture actually makes no distinction of some other, you know, super Christian that we might call a saint. Some Christians believe in there's a super Christian and this, you know, John was a saint because he did miracles. John had the same Holy Spirit I have. John believed in the same Jesus I had. Right? John and me, in that way, are no different. Now, have I done miracles? No. But if God wants to give me the ability to do miracles, God will give me that ability. It wasn't John that did the miracles. It was God that did the miracles through John. I don't give credit to John. I give credit to God. And you know what John wrote? John wrote, don't give credit to John, give credit to God. And yet, we have somehow thought that these are super-Christians. They're not super-Christians. Look at their lives. When they stopped listening to the Holy Spirit, they failed. And when they listened to the Holy Spirit, they succeeded. And each and every single one of them said the same thing, please do not praise me, because they knew their own failure. Paul said it again and again and again, please don't praise me. Praise only Christ through me. If you would have come up with this idea of sainthood and talked to the Apostle Paul about it, or John about it, or Peter about it, they would have thought you're nuts. Because they knew how bad they were when they didn't listen to the Holy Spirit. So when we say, are you holy? Yeah, you can say, am I a saint? Am I literally a saint? That is the Greek word. That is the word that, by the way, is taught in the New Testament, that you should call yourselves saints. So if I'm holy, well, how do I know if I'm holy? Because I tell you the truth, I definitely never feel holy. I don't think if I looked at myself or read any journal entries from any point in my life, I would say, yep, I'm definitely holy now. I don't feel holy. I'm definitely not someone that should be called a saint. But the Bible teaches that nobody is holy. Jesus himself said nobody is good, but God. Well, if nobody's holy and nobody's good but God, how do we become holy? We'll become holy by recognizing that Jesus himself was holy. Surrendering what we would have hold onto ourselves, surrendering our actions, surrendering our efforts, surrendering our heart and our mind, and saying, Jesus, only you are holy. Make me holy like you. Because the first thing you have to realize, if you want to be worthy of the Lord's Supper, you have to realize you can personally never become worthy of the Lord's Supper. Only Jesus can make you worthy. There's nothing you can ever do to make yourself worthy of supping with the Lord, of communing with God. Only the blood of Christ can impart His holiness to you. We're not worthy. we're not worthy. John 1 12 says to those that have received him, he grants himself, he gives the right to be called children of God. How do you become holy? You receive Christ and then he gives you the righteousness of himself. He grants it to you. You didn't do it yourself, you simply accepted him and then he makes you holy. So you can say this, Anyone who has not accepted Christ's work on the cross and proclaimed that Christ is Lord of their life is worthy of communion. You bring a friend to church and they're saying, I'm just here to check it out, you know, I've never done this church thing or I went to church as a kid, but you know, I don't know about it. And there's communion, there's a Lord's table. The right thing to do, the most loving thing to do is to let them know like, hey, when the plate comes or when community comes, it's not a big deal. Just let it go. Just let it pass. Let them know. that they are not worthy of sitting at the Lord's table. Because what did Paul say in verse 26? When you eat this meal, you proclaim the gospel of Christ. Don't lie to your unsaved friends and let them think, well, it's fine, I can take communion. I'm just like you. No, you're not. You're not holy. Jesus' entire message was to let people know they weren't holy. And only once they realize they're not holy can they ask Jesus to save them. You've got to know you're dying before you know you need a Savior. If you take communion, do the loving thing. Do the kind thing. Let them know, pass the plate. Don't take this. This is not for you. And then you can tell them how it can be for them. Because no, we're not better than them. We're no better than them. We've just come to realize we're not better than them. And we've asked Jesus to impart His holiness to us. That's the first piece. You've got to ask if you're holy. You have to take the actions to know how to be holy. And that is accepting the saving work of Jesus Christ in your life. Second thing you have to do is you have to ask, am I repentant and am I submitting? Or in other words, am I walking with Jesus daily? If you're a believer, if Jesus is your Lord, are you walking according to his teaching? Now, this doesn't mean perfect. None of us are ever gonna be perfect. No matter how long I live and how hard I try and how much I read the word and pray to the Lord, I'm never gonna be perfect. But I can always be submitting to God. I can always be accepting of his teaching. I can always be responsive to his discipline and say, yes, Lord, please make me more like you. But if you come to the Lord's table and you think, well, I'm a Christian, and I do call Jesus Lord, and therefore I am worthy, not necessarily. Think back to the gentleman in chapter 5. Gentlemen, in chapter 5, he's a Christian. Paul calls him a Christian. He's in church, and he's having an affair with his mother-in-law. And the church knows about it. And Paul says, he's not worthy of the Lord's Supper. Paul actually says, not only is he not supposed to be coming on Sundays, don't eat with him at all. Don't even have lunch any time with him. You need to put him out from you entirely. He's not worthy of being in and with the body of Christ while he walks in this manner. When he decides to repent and follow Christ's teaching, then welcome him back. As a believer, if you want to sit at the Lord's table, you have to ask yourself, not only am I holy, have I accepted the work of Christ, but am I following and walking in the teachings of Christ? Am I worthy today to be at his table, because the Lord's Supper is a continual reminder. Remember, it says, Jesus says, as often, as often as you do this, remember my work. But then he doesn't say how often to do it. He just says, whenever you do, remember my work. In the early church, it was likely that they were meeting, when it first started in Jerusalem, that they were taking the Lord's Supper every single day. They got together every day and they took the Lord's Supper every day. By this time, it's clear that in Corinth, they were doing it, it appears to be, every single week. In the evening, on Sunday evenings, they were taking the Lord's Supper. And Jesus says, as often as you do it, remember my word, the Lord's Supper is that perpetual reminder to be walking how Christ has instructed us to walk. It's a perpetual reminder. It's gonna happen again next week or the week after. It's, in the immediate future, always a Lord's Supper. And so we're asked, to check ourselves. Are we walking how we should be walking? So that's the personal aspect, finding out, am I holy and am I repentant? But then there's this communal aspect. There's this communal aspect. And verse 29 says, for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. Anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. Now there's two interpretations of this verse. Discerning this verse, there's two primary interpretations. Here's the first one. The first interpretation is that to discern the body means to understand the nature of the bread you are eating. that Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, said, this is my body broken for you. And to discern the body means that you come to an understanding of what is the bread. Some Christian denominations will say the bread is the literal body of Christ, meaning it literally turns into his flesh. You can't taste it. You can't see it. If you put it under a microscope, it won't look like it, but it is actually his flesh. That is the teaching of some major Christian faiths around the world. Others say it's not literally his flesh, but it's a literal manifestation of his presence, that Jesus himself comes into the bread and you kind of spiritually swallow him within your physical body. That is a very simple way of teaching what Martin Luther himself taught. John Calvin taught that it was a presence of Jesus, but not physically in the bread, but physically in the people around them. And then you can go to later Reformers and later Reformers. Some have taught that it is not anything in the bread. The bread is still the bread. But the idea of discerning the body is the central idea. And so each of these faiths has tried to do this. And they've tried to say, well, how do we discern the body? What is the body? And they're obsessed with this idea of the bread. Here's the second interpretation of this verse. The second interpretation is when Paul says discern the body, he isn't talking about the bread at all. Because what else does Paul refer to as the body? All of us. Paul says again and again, what is the body of Christ? The body of Christ is the church gathered together. That's what Paul refers to as the body of Christ. The body of Christ isn't the bread, the body of Christ is the people that are gathered together. You make up the body. By the way, the next chapters are gonna be all about this idea of what does it mean to be one body? What is Paul's primary condemnation? in this passage. What do they start with? He says, I don't praise you, it's better if you don't meet, because you are being divisive in the body. He's condemning them because they're not treating each other as equals. They are dividing and they're keeping poor people outside. And they're not giving them food. When Paul is condemning the body of Christ because they're not acting like the body of Christ, when he says, discern the body, he's not talking about the bread anymore. He's talking about you gathered together and that you haven't considered all of your members. That is his entire condemnation in the entire passage, that you aren't treating each other well. And as we keep going in the further verses, you're going to see it's all about the idea that you have not thought of who else is here. So when he says, discern the body, It has nothing to do with the bread. It has to do with the people of Christ. Jesus didn't die and said, please take care of the wheat and the water that you turn into bread. He says, feed my people. Take care of my people. Jesus wasn't concerned about bread. He was concerned about people. And Paul's not condemning them for how they've eaten the bread. He's condemning them for how they've treated people. Discern the body means understand that at the Lord's table, you are supposed to care for his people as Christ cared for us. It has nothing to do with the piece of bread in your hands. It has to do with the people sitting next to you. He says if you don't do this, if you don't consider those around, if you aren't having the Lord's table united and others focused and unindulgent and Christ-centered, you drink judgment on yourself. Interesting, by the way, if it was about the bread and not concerning the, why would he not say the same about the blood? He doesn't mention like, well, if you don't discern the blood, he only says if you don't discern the body. And then if you don't discern the body, you drink judgment. You see how the metaphor breaks down if you try to make this about the bread? It's not. You drink judgment on yourself because you haven't considered those who you are supposed to be drinking alongside. There's another place we can look. If you go again, I said in chapter 10, he's already brought this up. Chapter 10, verse 17 says this. If you want to understand how Paul has helped them make this connection that the body is the body of Christ, not the bread, he says this in verse 10. The first time he brings up the bread, he says, because there is one bread, we who are many are one body. For we all partake of one bread." What does he refer to? He says there's bread and there's a body. But the body is not the bread. The body is us. He's already explained this in his letter. You really have to want the bread that he's passing here, and this word body to be the same thing, to read it that way. Because he's already explained it in chapter 10. If you're a Corinthian and you're reading this, you read this all at once. You're reading it and he's like, oh, there's one bread, and that one bread makes us the body of Christ. Then you get down to the next couple lines and you go, and if I don't discern the body, what's the body he just defined? Us. Because we eat bread, we are the body. Discerning the body is the people of Christ, meaning you cannot take communion if you're only doing that individual piece. You cannot take communion if the only thing you do is come in and say, I love Jesus, he's my Lord, I'm following him, I'm individually worthy. If you stop there, then you really aren't worthy. If you stop there, you really aren't worthy because you're still just focused on yourself. And the whole point is to be focused on others. Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, was not worried about his own well-being. He was willing to be betrayed to save others. If you come to the Lord's table, you can't be only thinking about yourself and your own worthiness. You have to be thinking about everybody else who's there with you. That has to be your mindset, or you're not worthy. You gotta be personally saved. but we can't just be consumed with our own holiness. Verse 30, he continues. He says, this is what happens when you do so unworthily. He says, that is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died. But if we would have judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. Paul makes it abundantly clear. If you do this wrong, yes, God is judging you. What will that judgment look like in terms of the discipline he doles out? That's between God and you. I don't get to decide that. I don't even have to care about that because I'm not God and I definitely don't want to try and be God. I want to let God be God, and if somebody takes communion in an unworthy manner, the most that I'm going to do is if I'm aware of it, I'm going to point it out to them as an elder, if I'm an elder at their body. If they're a member here at Oasis, I might call it out and say, hey, you've got this sin issue and we're aware of it. You shouldn't be taking communion. It's not my job to dole out punishment. It's not my job to say, you've got to go do these actions, and that's the only way to get back with God. No, I can show them their sin. I can show them from Scripture what God says they should be doing. Now, if they continue to be unrepentant, we move beyond the Lord's table. And Paul's already outlined how you should treat someone who is not willing to listen to the teachings of Christ. But the judgment that's doled out, does it mean that you will get sick? Does it mean that you will die? Probably not. The Corinthians were doing a really bad job here of doing church, and God's not just smiting them all. It does say some of them did. We do have some pronounced examples beyond this one of people, as we said, feigning the Christian walk, pretending to walk the Christian walk. Here in Corinth, some are pretending to take the Lord's table when really they're just getting drunk themselves. Earlier in the Christian Church, one of the earliest examples we have is Ananias and Sapphira. Ananias and Sapphira are two believers. They've followed Christ. This is very soon after Christ has died. We're talking months, not years here. Christ has recently died, and there are members of the church in Jerusalem. And they sell land. It's their own land. They don't have to sell it. They own it. They can do what they want with it. But they decide to sell this land. And they pretend to give all the money to the church. They lied to the church. And the husband comes in and the apostles say, why, it says the Holy Spirit has told him, why did you lie to the Holy Spirit? Why did you pretend to sell the land? And they say, the land was yours. You didn't have to sell it. But once you decided to give it to God, why did you not give it all to God and then lie to us? And he drops dead right there. And it says he dropped dead in front of them and they picked him up and they carried him out and they buried him. And then his wife comes in And they asked the wife directly, you can go read this in Acts, they said, is this the exact amount you sold the land for? And she says, yes, it's that amount. And he says, these men just carried your husband's body out, now they'll carry yours. And she drops dead right in front of him. Scripture is clear, Old Testament and new. God will not be mocked. You want to pretend to genuinely follow Christ among his believers, and you want to lie to the Holy Spirit? God can choose how he wants to discipline you. He will not be mocked. Now, here's the thing. If it's that bad for a believer, what happens if an unbeliever takes communion? It looks amazing. Probably nothing. Probably nothing. You know why? Because they have no relationship with God. God isn't their father. Christ isn't their brother. They are not children of God. They are not co-heirs with Christ. If an unbeliever takes communion, guess what their judgment is? It's eternal. Their judgment is eternal. You don't need to worry about an unbeliever taking communion. You need about an unbeliever learning who Jesus is and accepting Christ's work on the cross. Taking communion falsely is the least of their concerns. They're already going to hell. For an unbeliever, the judgment is eternal. For a believer, the judgment is paternal. Christ is our Father. He disciplines his children. I will tell you, even if Christ, if I did something unworthy and Christ decided to kill me, I'll take paternal discipline over eternal judgment any day. Still praise God that he is a just God, because what I deserve is eternal judgment. I'll take that paternal discipline all day. Paul concludes with this as he's talking about this idea and he's brought the weight to bear. He says, then what? If this is how important it is and how reverent you should be, what then should you do? And he says, so then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so when you come together, it will not be for judgment. Now, he's not telling you to stay away from the Lord's table. What he's saying is, look, take care of what you need to take care of. and then come to the Lord's table. If you're too consumed with your own hunger or your own thirst, then stay home. But what you really should be doing is saying, how do I take care of what I eat so I can go and participate in Christ's communion? And that word, wait on one another, it means this. It doesn't just mean wait. It's not just the idea of time. Give them every moment of time. That's not what it means. It means receive everyone. You could say in the modern sense it means wait on everyone. Like at a restaurant, a waiter doesn't physically wait on me by time, a waiter receives me and figures out what I need and meets my needs. So when it says wait on everyone, what it's saying is quit putting the poor outside where the rich are dining inside. Quit bringing only your own food and eating it all by yourself and the poor who have no food have nothing to eat. Receive everybody at the table. Make sure everybody is fed. Then you won't drink judgment on yourself. Wait. You can say it does mean don't be in a rush. We often do the Lord's Supper at the end. There might be times you're like, I got a tea time. I'm going to the game. Or maybe I'm just hungry for lunch. Can we hurry this Lord's Supper thing up? Don't be in a rush. Serve others. Receive all. Don't organize by status. There's no head of the table at the Lord's Supper. There's no one more important than the others. Receive all. Remember where you are and what you're doing. Be sure you've discerned the body, understood who's present and their needs. That this is Christ's church, that we're walking with Christ, that we're caring for each other. And then we can eat at the Lord's table. Join me in prayer.