SPEAKER_00: The question I want to answer tonight is one that maybe you have asked, maybe you haven't asked, but I have heard it asked a lot recently.
SPEAKER_00: And that question is why do we as a church practice church discipline at communion?
SPEAKER_00: Why don't we do it some other way, like in a members' meeting or in a uh a letter or something like that?
SPEAKER_00: But if you've been in Emmanuel for any number of years, I'm sure you've seen that when we have put somebody out of the congregation, we do that at a communion service.
SPEAKER_00: And people have asked why that is, and so I want to answer that tonight.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to start with what church discipline is, and that's Matthew 18.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be in probably four different passages tonight, but we're gonna begin in Matthew 18, verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus' first instruction on the church, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Chronologically, it's his first instruction on the church.
SPEAKER_00: He hasn't used the word church in his life until Matthew 16, where he declared that he would build his church and the gates of hell wouldn't overcome it.
SPEAKER_00: And then he finishes off Matthew 16, Matthew 17, Matthew 18, he begins to teach on the church.
SPEAKER_00: The church did not exist in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: There were believers, of course, in the Old Testament, but God was working through the nation Israel.
SPEAKER_00: The church does not exist when Jesus teaches this.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he said, I will build my church.
SPEAKER_00: It's a future event.
SPEAKER_00: He's looking forward to it.
SPEAKER_00: He builds his church by sending his Holy Spirit after his ascension, after his death and resurrection, he ascends first to the earth, where he teaches about the kingdom for 40 days, and then he ascends into heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And when he's at in heaven, he sends his Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The Father and the Son send the Spirit together.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit fills the disciples, seals their spirit, their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: They had been regenerate before, but now the Spirit seals them, gives them spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul describes in Ephesians 4, that the one who ascended on high sends his spirit giving gifts to men.
SPEAKER_00: And then Peter, filled with the Spirit, preaches the first sermon in church history.
SPEAKER_00: Thousands get saved, and the church is launched.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus here in Matthew 18 is giving instruction for the future church that will be realized in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: And his first instruction on the church is on the subject of church discipline.
SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 15, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
SPEAKER_00: If he listens to you, you've gained your brother.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first step.
SPEAKER_00: If he doesn't listen, take one or two others along with you, so that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: And I've taught in Matthew 18 many times, including last year, but you remember this isn't two witnesses to the sin, this is two witnesses to the confrontation.
SPEAKER_00: And so they can attest to how the confrontation went, and so their testimony about the confrontation would uh would bear truth.
SPEAKER_00: If he refuses to listen to that group, then tell it to the church.
SPEAKER_00: And if he refuses to listen to even the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
SPEAKER_00: And so the way we follow that at Emmanuel is you know, if somebody is living in open sin, in rebellion, they're confronted.
SPEAKER_00: If they refuse to repent, witnesses, usually two elders are involved, and if they refuse to repent, the full elder counsel is brought in, and if they refuse to repent, even when appealed to by the full group of elders, and their name is read at a communion service, and they are put out of the church.
SPEAKER_00: There it is, fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says it this way in verse 17 tell it to the church.
SPEAKER_00: If he refuses to listen to even the church, then let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
SPEAKER_00: That phrase, tell it to the church, as I mentioned, that's the second use of the word church in Jesus in the Bible, in Jesus' whole preaching.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in the context of church discipline to keep the church pure as best as you're able.
SPEAKER_00: And he gives more instruction about the nature of this.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven, wherever two or more of you are gathered, he's there.
SPEAKER_00: They're with us.
SPEAKER_00: This is all in the context of church discipline.
SPEAKER_00: He's telling the elders and the church that when you remove someone from your congregation on earth, you're reflecting your heavenly reality.
SPEAKER_00: You're not saying that this person is not saved for sure, but you're saying as best as we're able to determine, he's not.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're disfellowshipping him, we're excommunicating him, putting him out of the church.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the teaching.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why do we do that at communion?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is because there's so much to the answer, but I think the short and simplest way to address it is to think about what the church has at their disposal.
SPEAKER_00: What's happening at church?
SPEAKER_00: When we come together together, what's really going on?
SPEAKER_00: And it's the corporate expression of the body of Christ on earth.
SPEAKER_00: There's fellowship, there's the means of grace.
SPEAKER_00: The means of grace is a phrase that just covers things the church does corporately.
SPEAKER_00: That's how people grow spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: So the means of grace include fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: As Christians are talking in the hallway and talking before and after the service, there's fellowship, that's a means of grace.
SPEAKER_00: You grow spiritually by life-on-life conversations and interactions that provoke spiritual growth in your life.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not part of a church, you're not regularly fellowshipping with a church, you see yourself withering spiritually because you're absenting yourself from the means of grace.
SPEAKER_00: There's the preaching of the word.
SPEAKER_00: There's something that happens when you sit under the preaching of the word that's different than you know podcasting sermons.
SPEAKER_00: There's an authority to the Bible and the pulpit and the gathered congregation.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way the Lord designs the church.
SPEAKER_00: There's singing.
SPEAKER_00: You can rock out in your car to Caleb all you want.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not the same thing as what's happening at church when you gather and you sing the kind of songs that we just sang with other people, and you know, you sing better than you believe.
SPEAKER_00: You're singing truth that's deeper than you would say.
SPEAKER_00: But it's true.
SPEAKER_00: And so those words kind of pull you up, and singing them with a group of people pulls you up together.
SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a means of grace.
SPEAKER_00: There's a couple others.
SPEAKER_00: There's a baptism, as you watch a believer who's baptized and raised from the water in newness of life that encourages you, it reminds you of your salvation and of your conversion, and in that sense, it gives you grace.
SPEAKER_00: And there's the Lord's table where we all come together, we drink one cup, we eat one bread, and we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
SPEAKER_00: It reminds you of the real, tangible nature of what the Lord has done.
SPEAKER_00: When we church disciplines someone, what are we removing them from?
SPEAKER_00: What are we saying they're no longer welcome to participate in?
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make sense to withhold baptism from them, although that's what Jonathan Edwards ran into.
SPEAKER_00: If you're familiar with Jonathan Edwards' life, and last time I taught him Matthew 18, I talked about this in kind of the introduction of it.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember Jonathan Edwards, the uh American theologian and pastor, he church planted among the Indians, president of Princeton University, etc., etc.
SPEAKER_00: But most well known for his pastorship in Northampton, Massachusetts, where uh the Great Awakening took place under his ministry, yet he was fired from his church over this issue.
SPEAKER_00: He saw people who were unregenerate, who were giving no claim of profession and faith in Christ, and Edwards taught that you should withhold baptism from their children.
SPEAKER_00: He's working in an infant Baptist context where people baptize their children into the covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And so Edwards said, if you're not leading a saved life, if you're not even claiming the name of Christ, if you're not professing a conversion, then I won't baptize your children.
SPEAKER_00: Now, for the Baptists in here, which I would assume would be almost all of you, we kind of chuckle at that.
SPEAKER_00: But you understand the dynamic, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: In the infant Baptist world, that's what Edwards has at his disposal.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying you're not responding to confrontation in your sin.
SPEAKER_00: You're not professing a Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not going to baptize your children into a covenant that you by your life deny.
SPEAKER_00: And the church fired him.
SPEAKER_00: But what about for Baptists?
SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't say that we're going to withhold baptism from babies if their parents aren't regenerate because we just withhold baptism from babies, period.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where communion comes in.
SPEAKER_00: Communion is the public profession of the unity of the body that we are celebrating the reality of the death and resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We proclaim, as Paul says, the Lord's death until he comes.
SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting question that has marked a lot of church history that we take for granted, but who has the right to withhold the Lord's table from somebody?
SPEAKER_00: Even the word excommunicate, it literally means ex out of.
SPEAKER_00: Communicate is from the word for communion.
SPEAKER_00: What the word excommunicate means is to remove somebody from the presence of communion, from the Lord's table.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in the Catholic Church, this is what they did to maintain control of their population.
SPEAKER_00: The Catholic Church would withhold all of the sacraments, all seven sacraments from people that were in rebellion against the church.
SPEAKER_00: They would withhold baptism or the efficacy of baptism.
SPEAKER_00: They would say it doesn't do anything.
SPEAKER_00: They would withhold the ordination of priests in a certain parish or a certain geographical area if their king was in rebellion, so the priest couldn't even give the sacraments.
SPEAKER_00: They would uh nullify marriages, they would deny last rites, and the Catholic Church knows the seven sacraments, including communion.
SPEAKER_00: They certainly would remove communion.
SPEAKER_00: And it was not the local priests that did this, but it was the government that did it.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Protestant Reformation comes along and Luther renounces the authority of the Pope in different areas from Zurich, Switzerland under Zwingli to Geneva under Calvin, Scotland under John Knox, even London under the brief time of the little boy King Edward and the nine days of Lady Jane Grey and the ministry of Oliver Cromwell and others, they too wrestled through this issue.
SPEAKER_00: If you deny the Pope's authority, who then has the authority to remove somebody from the church?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer was not very clear-cut.
SPEAKER_00: This is what where the idea of separation of church and state came from.
SPEAKER_00: They would argue that the government had the authority to withhold the Lord's table from somebody.
SPEAKER_00: If you reject the Pope, then it's the government that can say this person can or cannot take communion.
SPEAKER_00: After all, it was the local governments that were saying we're no longer under the Holy Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: We reject the Pope.
SPEAKER_00: So the government gets to decide who can and cannot take communion.
SPEAKER_00: And then you had pastors that were pushing against that and saying, no, we reject King Charles's authority to say who can and cannot take communion, and the Puritans said, we are taking that for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll bore you a blow-by-blow analysis of how this played out in church history, but it's fascinating.
SPEAKER_00: And note that I could give it to you if I wanted to.
SPEAKER_00: But to skip to the ends, kind of the truce that they settled on was that the church had the authority to label who the heretics were.
SPEAKER_00: And the government had the authority to punish them.
SPEAKER_00: Heresy in many places was a capital offense.
SPEAKER_00: The first person that was executed under Calvin's Geneva, for example, was executed for leaving him death threats on his pulpit.
SPEAKER_00: And so the church turned that man over to the government, and the government executed him.
SPEAKER_00: Or in Europe, people were, or in England, people were executed for heresy.
SPEAKER_00: But John Owen, for example, rejected the idea that the king would get to decide who a heretic was.
SPEAKER_00: John Owen insisted that the church decided who the heretics were, but he was very clear the church doesn't get to kill them.
SPEAKER_00: So this is when the Puritans talked about separation of church and state, this is what they meant.
SPEAKER_00: The church says this person's the heretic, so government, we give them to you, you kill him.
SPEAKER_00: Or the government says, I don't know if this guy's a heretic, what do you say?
SPEAKER_00: And the church would say, yeah, heretic, and give him back to the government.
SPEAKER_00: That was, in their world, separation of church and state.
SPEAKER_00: Have that in your mind when you think of the Salem witch trials, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: You think, how could pastors be involved in executing so-called witches?
SPEAKER_00: Understand that this was their version of separation in church and state, where the legal system said, we're not going to wait into who does and who doesn't have a demon.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to let the pastors do that.
SPEAKER_00: And the pastors tell us that person has a demon and then we'll kill them.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, we have moved on from that form of separation in church and state.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: But what remains?
SPEAKER_00: What remains is this basic question who has authority over the Lord's table?
SPEAKER_00: Does it the government?
SPEAKER_00: Or do churches?
SPEAKER_00: The elders.
SPEAKER_00: So from Matthew 18, I want you to flip over to Mark chapter to 1 Corinthians chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians chapter 5 is where we pick up this theme here.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians chapter 5 is Paul's really his first teaching on communion in his epistles.
SPEAKER_00: He's writing the Corinthians, and the Corinthians are leading allegedly in chapter 5, verse 1, sexually immoral lives.
SPEAKER_00: Many of them are.
SPEAKER_00: Extreme sexual immorality in chapter 5, verse 1, the kind that's not even tolerated among pagans.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2, he says, the person who does this ought to be removed from you.
SPEAKER_00: And so you have to ask yourself, when Paul says the person leading an unrepentant and immoral life should be removed from you, what does he mean by that?
SPEAKER_00: Is he using a new phrase that he's just come up with right now?
SPEAKER_00: Is he saying that you know trespass him?
SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00: Much of what he describes in 1 Corinthians is drawn from Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in chapter 7 of 1 Corinthians, he says very expressly that some of this was told to him from the Lord's teaching, namely the Gospel of Matthew, is where he's quoting from in 1 Corinthians 7.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's likely here that he's borrowing language from Matthew's gospel when he says, remove this person from you, he's borrowing the concept, I would say, from Matthew 18.
SPEAKER_00: When he uses the language at the end of verse 2, remove this person from you, he's talking about church discipline.
SPEAKER_00: He even echoes Matthew 18 in verse 3, though I'm not there, I am there in my spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul's not omniscient.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying that when the church acts in this way, it's as if the whole body of Christ is acting, just like Jesus himself said, that I'm with you.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, I've already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, if the elders of the church look into this and remove the person, Paul says the judgment has been pronounced.
SPEAKER_00: It's very much an echo of Matthew 18.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4 When you're assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is there, with the power of our Lord Jesus, deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's Paul's teaching in church discipline.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Do it when you're gathered, when you're assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Well, my friends, that is the corporate gathering of the church he's talking about.
SPEAKER_00: When the church comes together, assembled with the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Lord Jesus, to proclaim the gospel, that is the Lord's Day gatherings he's talking about.
SPEAKER_00: He's not talking about some members' meeting, he's not talking about, you know, a mail-in letter here.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about physically gathering, the same gathering where you take communion, the same corporate gathering.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's addressing here.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to get very specific in a second.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6 a little leaven leavens the whole lump.
SPEAKER_00: That's an analogy out of nowhere, it seems.
SPEAKER_00: It's a food analogy.
SPEAKER_00: A little leaven leavens the whole lump?
SPEAKER_00: What is he talking about?
SPEAKER_00: It's an Old Testament image here of leaven going in, it works its way through the bread, it becomes an image of sin.
SPEAKER_00: If you allow sin in the camp, it defiles everybody.
SPEAKER_00: And so the instruction here is to remove sin from the camp.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is taking that Old Testament analogy, making it a New Testament reality here about church discipline.
SPEAKER_00: And he says in verse 7, Cleanse the old leaven that you might be a new lump, as you really are unleavened.
SPEAKER_00: For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's taking the leaven analogy and connecting it to Jesus, our Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Passover is the Old Testament annual celebration of how the Lord led the Israelites out of slavery with the blood on the doorpost.
SPEAKER_00: Passover is not celebrated in the church.
SPEAKER_00: What's celebrated in the church instead is communion.
SPEAKER_00: It's not annually, Paul's going to say later on in 1 Corinthians, but as often as you do it.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we celebrate that festival, he says in verse 8, not with the old leaven, malice and evil, but with sincerity and truth.
SPEAKER_00: Now, verse 9, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.
SPEAKER_00: Not at all, meaning the sexually immoral of this world.
SPEAKER_00: Because then you'd have to go out of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And what would you do?
SPEAKER_00: Where would you go work?
SPEAKER_00: Where would you live?
SPEAKER_00: What sports teams would your kids play on?
SPEAKER_00: What country would you go to?
SPEAKER_00: What state would you go to?
SPEAKER_00: Some of you all want to move to Florida.
SPEAKER_00: Let me let you know something.
SPEAKER_00: There's sexually immoral people in Florida too.
SPEAKER_00: If you can't remove yourself from that, you'd have to leave the world.
SPEAKER_00: What's he talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 11, I'm telling you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother, if he's guilty or of sexual immorality or greed or an idolater, reviler, drunker, or swindler, not to even eat with such a one.
SPEAKER_00: Now let me be clear.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of confusion on this verse.
SPEAKER_00: He is not talking about having lunch with somebody who's not a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: He is talking about celebrating the Lord's table, proclaiming the death and resurrection of Christ with the sexually immoral person.
SPEAKER_00: He says, you may not do that.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about Christians in the gathering of the church eating in a way that harkens back to the unleavened bread of the Old Testament and Christ our Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that pretty clearly is communion.
SPEAKER_00: And he's telling you, do not celebrate communion with those who are leading sexually immoral lives.
SPEAKER_00: Unless you say, well, it seems like he's elevating sexual immorality above other kinds of sins.
SPEAKER_00: He's not.
SPEAKER_00: He's dealing with it, because that's the sin presenting itself in Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: But notice what he says in verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: He's also talking about greed, idolatry, a reviler, a drunkard, a swindler, and sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: There's six sins for you right there.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about broad categories of sin.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he's saying if there's somebody who is claiming the name of Christ, but is leading an immoral life, do not take the Lord's table with such a person.
SPEAKER_00: Well, how would you apply that?
SPEAKER_00: How would you who maybe know the people in the row in front of you and behind you and to your left and your right?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe know the people over in that corner, and maybe know the people in that corner, but we don't know who's here.
SPEAKER_00: It falls then to the people who are receiving this to follow Matthew 18, which this is in the context of confronting people in their sin and bringing them to the elders, and the elders putting them outside of the church.
SPEAKER_00: Specifically for the purpose of withholding the Lord's table.
SPEAKER_00: He makes that clear in verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: What do I have to do with judging outsiders?
SPEAKER_00: It's those inside the church that we're talking about judging.
SPEAKER_00: God will take care of those outside the church.
SPEAKER_00: You, however, are to purge the evil person from among you.
SPEAKER_00: So again, how are you supposed to purge the evil person from among you?
SPEAKER_00: What tools has God given us to do that?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is pretty straightforward.
SPEAKER_00: It's Matthew 18, it's confronting somebody in their sin.
SPEAKER_00: Paul repeats this in Galatians 6.
SPEAKER_00: You who are spiritual, when someone's caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual, restore them with a spirit of gentleness and meekness.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the whole concept here.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 7, I confront you in your sin and I hope that you repent.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's driving home to them.
SPEAKER_00: He wants the church to put out from its congregation those who are leading immoral lives.
SPEAKER_00: It falls to the elders to do that.
SPEAKER_00: This goes back to Matthew 18, verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: If you refuse to listen to him, treat him like a Gentile and a tax collector, treat him like someone who's unclean.
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't eat with such a person.
SPEAKER_00: I remember being so confused about this when I was invited to somebody's house who was leading an immoral life, calling themselves a Christian, and they invited me to their house for a meal, and this passage was just like it was giving me problems.
SPEAKER_00: I was a seminary student, I knew enough to be dangerous, not enough to be helpful.
SPEAKER_00: And I was so vexed, like, should I eat at this person's house, or is that violating this passage?
SPEAKER_00: I eventually told him, listen, if you stop calling yourself a Christian, then I'll eat at your house.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have the MacArthur Study Bible to look up at the answer key at the bottom and know the right understanding of the passage.
SPEAKER_00: It's not talking about having a meal at somebody's house, it's talking about, in this sense, extending Christian fellowship to somebody, particularly in the context of the Lord's table.
SPEAKER_00: Treating somebody as if they're a believer when their life denies Christ in the context of taking the Lord's table with the gathered church.
SPEAKER_00: Paul has makes it very clear in chapter five.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about when you if you go back to chapter four, he's talking about when or to chapter five, verse four, he's talking about when the church is assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is corporate worship.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's what the word excommunicated means, is removed from communion.
SPEAKER_00: You can skip over to 1 Corinthians chapter 10 now.
SPEAKER_00: Skip right a few chapters.
SPEAKER_00: Paul has more to say about communion.
SPEAKER_00: First, he tells them in verse 14 to flee from idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, repent from your sin.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 16: the cup of blessing we bless is participation in the blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The bread we break is participation in the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I love the way he renders it here.
SPEAKER_00: The bread does not become the body of Christ, but you eating it participates in the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This denies the idea of transubstantiation, so often taught, especially in the Catholic Church, that the bread physically changes into the actual body of Christ, that of course would deny the real humanity of Christ, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the humanity of Christ means that he's localized in one place.
SPEAKER_00: The human nature of Christ is in one place at one time because it's a human nature.
SPEAKER_00: If the bread could be ubiquitous, if it could be everywhere all over the world at the same time, that denies the humanity of Christ, which is, of course, a heresy.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul doesn't say when you take the bread, you're taking the actual body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He says when you take the bread, you're participating with the body of Christ, meaning the church.
SPEAKER_00: The bread represents his body, the church taking it as a participatory act of the church.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what he's talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Because verse 17, there's one bread, we who are many are one body, even though we all partake of the one bread.
SPEAKER_00: He uses a reference in verse 18 to Israel and how they functioned, even in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 19, he makes fun of the uh the contrast between God and idols.
SPEAKER_00: Idols can't really corrupt food, of course.
SPEAKER_00: Idols have no actual power.
SPEAKER_00: But then he says in verse 20, this is the key part.
SPEAKER_00: Pagans sacrifice to demons and not to God.
SPEAKER_00: Don't participate with demons.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21, you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons.
SPEAKER_00: This is an ontological statement.
SPEAKER_00: You're either participating with the body of the Lord or you are celebrating the immorality of the world, a demonic activity.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot partake the table of the Lord and the table of demons.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot do both at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the gauntlet he's throwing down.
SPEAKER_00: When the church gathers together to celebrate communion, be clear about what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00: Is this a whoever wills, let him come?
SPEAKER_00: And Dider and I went and visited my brother, actually, uh in Albuquerque and his church.
SPEAKER_00: He's part of a church plant, and they were uh renting a building from an Anglican church in downtown Albuquerque, and that's where they met in the evening service for their evening worship in that Anglican massive cathedral.
SPEAKER_00: It was a beautiful beautiful building.
SPEAKER_00: Uh just an incredible experience.
SPEAKER_00: I think it was we were there for Christmas, they were singing Christmas songs, and it was really a wonderful, wonderful time.
SPEAKER_00: But then in the hallway afterwards, I saw flyers on the wall for the next communion service, not of my brother's church, but of the church that met there in the morning.
SPEAKER_00: And it was a bring your pets to communion service Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: And there were pictures on the flyer of the previous year's pets to communion service, and you got like people with chihuahuas and stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Lying in the aisle, I don't know the mechanism.
SPEAKER_00: Normally in Anglican, they use the shared cup.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if the dogs drink from the same cup, I don't know exactly.
SPEAKER_00: What if you had like a parakeet?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how it how it would work.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's asking a very basic question here.
SPEAKER_00: When you come together at the Lord's table, is it to celebrate the death and resurrection for those who have professed Christ and have the Spirit of Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Or is it an open invitation for the world?
SPEAKER_00: It can't be both.
SPEAKER_00: You know, churches, different churches have different approaches to communion.
SPEAKER_00: Some churches practice open communion, which is the and Emmanuel's probably pretty close to this.
SPEAKER_00: That's the declaration that any believer in Christ can participate in communion.
SPEAKER_00: Other churches practice what's called closed communion.
SPEAKER_00: This is most Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: If you go to Baptist, Baptist churches practice that form of communion where they say any baptized believer who's a member of a church can celebrate communion.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you have to be baptized, you have to be a member of a church, not necessarily our church, but any church, those can celebrate communion.
SPEAKER_00: And there's closed communion.
SPEAKER_00: Closed communion is where you say only members of our church or a church in our denomination can celebrate communion.
SPEAKER_00: A like-minded denomination.
SPEAKER_00: But notice that those are the three approaches to communion.
SPEAKER_00: All three of them have this idea that is for believers only.
SPEAKER_00: It's not whoever wants to, but whoever is saved, professing faith, whose life does not deny their testimony.
SPEAKER_00: And if they're not doing that, it falls to the church to remove them from the celebration of communion, or you're profaning the Lord's table.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot say that Christ is Lord except by the Spirit of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And if you deny Christ, you deny the presence of Christ in communion at the very least.
SPEAKER_00: Parents, and the parents say, Oh, we've never, what is that?
SPEAKER_00: What is that in your backyard?
SPEAKER_00: And you said it's a pool.
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, is that water?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, water.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we've never seen a pool before.
SPEAKER_00: Have you guys swam before?
SPEAKER_00: And they say, no, no, we've never swam before.
SPEAKER_00: What's swimming?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's where you go in the water and you close your eyes and hold your nose and kick, kick, kick.
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, wow.
SPEAKER_00: All right, we're gonna do it right now.
SPEAKER_00: What's the most loving thing you could do for that family?
SPEAKER_00: A little two-year-old, a little four-year-old, a little eight-year-old, parents.
SPEAKER_00: What's the most loving thing you could do for them right there?
SPEAKER_00: You'd say, No, you're not.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually electrified, and you'll zap yourself if you touch it.
SPEAKER_00: Stay away.
SPEAKER_00: You have a duty out of Christian love to warn them that if they go in the water, they might die.
SPEAKER_00: Now I know there's like the old adage of, you know, you can teach a two-year-old to swim by chucking them in the pool, but yeah, probably not your pool.
SPEAKER_00: You have a duty out of Christian love to warn such a person.
SPEAKER_00: It won't go well for you.
SPEAKER_00: That's where I want you to flip to 1 Corinthians chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: We'll jump in.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 17 forward is more instruction about communion.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is certainly talking about communion.
SPEAKER_00: If you look at the heading in the ESV in verse 17, he's talking about the Lord's Supper, he's talking about communion.
SPEAKER_00: When the church comes together for communion, you come together, verse 18, as a church, it's the gathering of the church.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not going to get bogged down the details of how the Corinthians celebrated communion, which is different than how we celebrate communion.
SPEAKER_00: Many other churches celebrate communion.
SPEAKER_00: It appears to be more like a, you know, an actual meal.
SPEAKER_00: Because Paul says in verse 22, hey, why don't you just eat at home rather than profaning the Lord's table?
SPEAKER_00: But then verse 23 is where I want to draw your attention to.
SPEAKER_00: This is where it gets significant.
SPEAKER_00: I received from the Lord that which I also pass on to you.
SPEAKER_00: He's again quoting from the book of Matthew here.
SPEAKER_00: When he gave thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way, after supper, he took the cup.
SPEAKER_00: This is the new covenant of my blood, do this often.
SPEAKER_00: As you drink it in remembrance of me, he's telling them, practice communion as the Lord instituted it that night.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way, he says.
SPEAKER_00: So what happened that night?
SPEAKER_00: Dog your mind back to that night.
SPEAKER_00: A lot went on.
SPEAKER_00: John 13 to 17, there's a lot going on in there.
SPEAKER_00: But one specific thing happened that night.
SPEAKER_00: Before the Lord instituted communion, he removed somebody from the presence.
SPEAKER_00: He removed somebody from fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: He told Judas, You gotta go, man.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta go.
SPEAKER_00: What you do, do quickly, took the bread, dipped it in the wine, handed it to him, and kicked him out.
SPEAKER_00: Judas went away to betray Christ, and then Jesus instituted communion.
SPEAKER_00: It's always struck me.
SPEAKER_00: I think Pastor Tom was the first person who pointed this out to me, that Judas was there for Jesus to wash the feet.
SPEAKER_00: But he was kicked out when it came time for communion.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus served him until the end.
SPEAKER_00: And then he went away with his heart hard.
SPEAKER_00: That becomes Paul's model in 1 Corinthians 11 to remove the impure person from among you.
SPEAKER_00: So he ties his teaching on communion back to that in verse 23.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the Lord did.
SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you're doing here.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever 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.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I like the swimming pool analogy I gave you earlier.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you keep guilt on yourself if you take communion in an unworthy manner.
SPEAKER_00: Let a person examine himself and then so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
SPEAKER_00: Forever eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
SPEAKER_00: This is why so many of you are weak and ill, and some have died, Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: So it is like the swimming pool.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there might be the one or two people that have been chucked in and learned to swim first try, but sometimes people die doing that.
SPEAKER_00: The same thing is true at communion.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, people can take communion in an unworthy way, and nothing bad happens sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes the Lord kills people also.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's part of loving leadership to fence the table, to put a fence around it.
SPEAKER_00: And say that this person who's leading an immoral life is removed, excommunicated, removed from communion for their own safety and for the health of the congregation.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 31 if we judged ourselves truly, we'd not be judged.
SPEAKER_00: This is plural.
SPEAKER_00: It's often used as an introspective verse, like before communion, you should judge yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And it means that, of course, before you take communion, you should confess your sins before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Make sure your account is clean.
SPEAKER_00: Not that you're sinless to take communion, of course not.
SPEAKER_00: If you said you were sinless so you can take communion, you're a liar, and that's a sin, and so you just ruined it.
SPEAKER_00: But you're saying, I've confessed my sin to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I know I'm a sinner, I've brought my sin before the Lord, I'm broken over my sin.
SPEAKER_00: I'm praying to him about it, I'm receiving the forgiveness that comes through Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And you're made clean.
SPEAKER_00: That's how you take communion.
SPEAKER_00: But somebody's leading in unrepentant sin.
SPEAKER_00: The elders have said this person is leading a life in unrepentant sin should be removed from it.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, if you judge yourselves corporately, in other words, Matthew 18 again, if the elders judged the congregation appropriately, God wouldn't have to kill people.
SPEAKER_00: If we judge ourselves rightly or truly, we wouldn't be judged.
SPEAKER_00: John Calvin, as I mentioned, went to Geneva at the height of this battle.
SPEAKER_00: 1536.
SPEAKER_00: He came to Geneva.
SPEAKER_00: 19, 20 odd years, after the 95 Theses, he comes to Geneva and he starts ministering there, and he was viewed really as a traitor.
SPEAKER_00: He was French, first of all.
SPEAKER_00: Geneva had a sizable French population, but the Swiss are proud, even then, they were proud.
SPEAKER_00: And they didn't like a French person exerting more and more influence.
SPEAKER_00: And remember, this is the height of the time where they're sorting out what is the separation responsibilities between the church and the government.
SPEAKER_00: There was a city council that ruled Geneva, yet Calvin was the pastor of the most significant church.
SPEAKER_00: And so Calvin told the city council that he wanted authority over who took communion.
SPEAKER_00: And the city council responded by firing him.
SPEAKER_00: Peace out, man.
SPEAKER_00: Go back to France.
SPEAKER_00: And so he did.
SPEAKER_00: Went back to France, got married, married a Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
SPEAKER_00: And came back to Geneva a few years later.
SPEAKER_00: Returned back to Geneva in 1541.
SPEAKER_00: And went right back into the fight.
SPEAKER_00: There was a fight against the city council, which wanted him in Geneva, of course.
SPEAKER_00: They liked his preaching.
SPEAKER_00: They liked the religious revival.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't want, there were Muslims in Geneva.
SPEAKER_00: There was an Islamic presence there.
SPEAKER_00: There were, of course, Catholics in Geneva.
SPEAKER_00: And the city council didn't want either of those, and they couldn't conceive of some kind of religious pluralism or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00: And so they really wanted Calvin and his preaching there.
SPEAKER_00: But they didn't want to cede authority to him.
SPEAKER_00: And this sparks a decade battle between Calvin and the city council.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes Calvin thought the city council was too harsh.
SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, when they executed the guy for leaving death threats to Calvin, Calvin didn't want the guy put to death.
SPEAKER_00: Calvin argued against it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they didn't care.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't his job.
SPEAKER_00: That was the world that he was in.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes arguing for mercy and grace, then confronted with heretics and saying, this guy's a heretic.
SPEAKER_00: We give him to you.
SPEAKER_00: I think he deserves mercy.
SPEAKER_00: That was the world they were living in.
SPEAKER_00: Michael Servetis, of course, you know him.
SPEAKER_00: He was the most famous person executed in Geneva during Calvin's ministry.
SPEAKER_00: But he's not the real battle.
SPEAKER_00: The real battle during Calvin's lifetime was with the Libertines.
SPEAKER_00: The Libertines did not claim regenerate life.
SPEAKER_00: They claimed the name of Christ, but they led an immoral life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what made their life immoral?
SPEAKER_00: Well, that really depends on who you ask.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, every book on this period of time has different answers for that.
SPEAKER_00: Some books say they were immoral because they made cards.
SPEAKER_00: The leader of the Libertine, the Libertines was, you know, had a company that made cards and sold playing cards and the city council banned playing cards on the Lord's Day and had the faces on them, and that's a Second Commandment violation.
SPEAKER_00: So there was that battle going on.
SPEAKER_00: Also, those guys were committing adultery and divorcing their wives, and so maybe it was that instead of the cards?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, all of that's going on.
SPEAKER_00: It's impossible to sort out from 500 years later.
SPEAKER_00: But that was going on.
SPEAKER_00: Michael Servetus was there, the head libertine, kind of the leader of the libertine sect, this immoral group, was Michael Cervidis' defense attorney.
SPEAKER_00: So all these roads come together.
SPEAKER_00: And he wanted to take communion.
SPEAKER_00: The city council had already excommunicated the guy.
SPEAKER_00: But he insisted on taking communion.
SPEAKER_00: He fought Calvin for years on this issue.
SPEAKER_00: Calvin's wife died during this time.
SPEAKER_00: And still he insisted on taking communion.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, Calvin told the city council, you've got to tell us what to do.
SPEAKER_00: I cannot keep this fight going on forever.
SPEAKER_00: And the city council said he can take communion.
SPEAKER_00: Serve him communion.
SPEAKER_00: Any church in Geneva, you tell the pastors, wherever he shows up, give him communion.
SPEAKER_00: And so he announced that he was going to roll in to Calvin's church on the next communion Sunday to celebrate communion.
SPEAKER_00: Beza, who was a contemporary of Calvin, Calvin's associate pastor, described what happened that day.
SPEAKER_00: The Libertines strolled in, flanked over a dozen of them, well-known men in the town.
SPEAKER_00: These were not, you know, these were not poor people, they were not immigrants like Servetus looking for refuge.
SPEAKER_00: These are people who grew up in Geneva, knew everybody, royal, influential, wealthy.
SPEAKER_00: They were armed.
SPEAKER_00: They walked into church, not with Bibles, but with their hands on their sword, Bezos says.
SPEAKER_00: And they lined the back of the church.
SPEAKER_00: The way he took communion then is the pastor would descend.
SPEAKER_00: Calvin would descend from his pulpit down to the table on the ground.
SPEAKER_00: It was a very big deal to Calvin that communion not be served up on the table, because that's where the Catholics did, up on the stage.
SPEAKER_00: That implied the priest could do something, you know, some magic to the bread and the wine.
SPEAKER_00: No, it had to be on the floor, even like we do it here.
SPEAKER_00: So Calvin would descend and go behind the table.
SPEAKER_00: And he would invite people forward to receive the Lord's table.
SPEAKER_00: It was fenced.
SPEAKER_00: You had to be a member of one of the churches in Geneva.
SPEAKER_00: You couldn't be under discipline.
SPEAKER_00: And you'd present yourself there.
SPEAKER_00: The libertines rose to come forward and receive communion.
SPEAKER_00: Beza said that Calvin quoted Chrysostom, who had a similar showdown in his ministry a thousand years earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Calvin stretched out his arms in front of the table and said, You can hack off these arms.
SPEAKER_00: And I would rather die than let unholy hands profane what the Lord declared to be holy.
SPEAKER_00: And Baza records that the Libertines then left the church, went away.
SPEAKER_00: And that was the end of the battle with the Libertines.
SPEAKER_00: The city council acted decisively after that.
SPEAKER_00: They recanted, gave the church the authority to fence the Lord's table rather than the government.
SPEAKER_00: And Calvin won the day.
SPEAKER_00: So when people talk about doing church discipline at communion, that's the background of it.
SPEAKER_00: The background of it is it's the means of grace that we have in church that the elders have oversight of and that exists to encourage you in your faith with Christ, to mark the holiness of the congregation.
SPEAKER_00: The holy lifestyle, not the sinless lifestyle, but the holy lifestyle.
SPEAKER_00: And if you police yourself, the Lord won't judge you.
SPEAKER_00: If the churches police those in immoral lifestyle and put them out of the church, then the Lord won't kill them.
SPEAKER_00: We are judged by the Lord, we're disciplined, Paul says, so we may not be condemned along with the world.
SPEAKER_00: This is the promise that the Lord has given us this table for us to celebrate.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: God, we're grateful.
SPEAKER_00: For this table, it is an ascent memorial.
SPEAKER_00: It points us backwards to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: His death, his broken body, his shed blood.
SPEAKER_00: A real body on a real tree.
SPEAKER_00: Real blood, a real sword piercing aside, heart with a burst, blood on the ground, shed in our place.
SPEAKER_00: We know communion is not just a memorial, though, it's also anticipatory.
SPEAKER_00: It points forward.
SPEAKER_00: As Paul said in the passage we read tonight, it proclaims the Lord's death until he returns.
SPEAKER_00: So we strain our eyes forward, looking to the horizon of time.
SPEAKER_00: We pray as John prayed, for you to come quickly, Lord, and get your people.
SPEAKER_00: But in the meantime, you have given us a church, brothers and sisters in Christ, fellowship, songs, sermons, the joy of giving financially, the joy of talking in the hallway and provoking one another to godliness and good deeds, assembling together as long as it is called the day.
SPEAKER_00: You've given us all of these things to produce grace in our life.
SPEAKER_00: As we take the Lord's Sable, it is a means of grace, not that it's a sacrament, it's not the bread and the wine that infuses some kind of grace in us, but it's the proclamation, the corporate proclamation, that we are a called apart people.
SPEAKER_00: We're sinners, of course.
SPEAKER_00: None of us are sinless.
SPEAKER_00: We are low.
SPEAKER_00: We've sinned today.
SPEAKER_00: We do confess our sin to you, knowing there's even sins that we've committed that we don't even know about.
SPEAKER_00: And so we just surrender our lives to you and receive the grace that you give us through Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This bread and this cup points us back to that.
SPEAKER_00: We give you thanks for that promise.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.