Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri
### 1 Corinthians 11:17-34

1 Corinthians 11 beginning at verse 17. 1 Corinthians 11:17 through the end of the chapter. Now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you not that you come together not for the better, but for the worse. For first of all, when you come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you. And I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.

When you come together therefore to one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s supper. For in eating, everyone taketh before other his own supper. And one is hungry, another is drunken. What have you not houses to eat and to drink in? Or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not. What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. For I have received of the Lord, that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread.

But when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “Take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me.” After the same manner also, he took the cup. When he had supped, saying, “This cup is the new testament in my blood. This do ye as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord’s death till he come.

Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.

For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. Wherefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, tarry one for another, and if any man hunger, let him eat at home, that you come not together unto condemnation, and the rest will I set in order when I come.

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Last week, we began a series of talks on communion going through our order of worship, the Reformation Covenant Church. As you’ll notice in your outlines, this is part 16 of this series. And we’ll have several more talks on communion and then go to the other subjects that we’ve indicated. We deal with the raising of hands in worship, alms as a separate matter, which really fits in quite well with communion. And we’re also going to hopefully in the context of all this talk about the ascension to heaven that is indicated in some texts of the scriptures relative to holy worship this morning.

So we continue with communion. We started last week by talking about the relationship of communion to community. And we talked about how there’s a real scarcity of texts in the scriptures about a very important thing that we do, which is take holy communion. It’s an important part of worship that’s clear in the scriptures, but there’s not really a great deal of instruction on it. And so we’re stuck with some texts here in 1 Corinthians that are not really written primarily to give a set of instructions for taking communion, but that are corrective.

I shouldn’t say stuck with. That’s God’s providence. This is his holy word that he’s given to us, and all we need is here. So we have the institution of the supper in the three synoptic gospels. We have Christ’s discourse after the supper in the book of John. And then we have these passages in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 that relate to communion. There’s not a lot else. John 6 perhaps we’ll mention that briefly later on.

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We started last week with community because we were all—many of us I should say—were at church camp and the community was gathered there in a sense for most of the week in a strong sense and important. That’s one reason why I chose that subject, but we also chose the subject as a corrective. We talked from 1 Corinthians 10 about the partaking of the Lord’s body in communion and how that verse in 1 Corinthians 10 talks about that in relationship to the church.

Now, I didn’t mean to say last week, and I hope you didn’t pick this up, that there is no presence of Christ in the elements. There is, and you simply cannot get around the plain statements. We wouldn’t want to get around the plain statements that in this sense, the scriptures tell us that when we take communion, we eat Christ and there is the presence of his body and blood in some sense in the meal.

But what I tried to say last week was the primary teaching of that text has to do with community and the violations of the Corinthians against community. It is a corrective text aimed at that. And what I mentioned last week was it’s a very sad commentary that the thing that was to unite the church in community, the partaking of the one cup and the one bread was instead the church at Corinth turned into a matter of division and so people were divisive and had schisms and one would eat before another etc.

And I mentioned also that historically it’s a sad thing that the reformers, many of them while agreed on some very basic doctrines of the Reformation, the thing that divided them and caused a great deal of schism and breakup was the doctrine of communion and specifically the real presence. What does that mean? Transubstantiation, consubstantiation, spiritual presence, whatever it is. The point is it divided them.

The very thing it was supposed to teach them—at least in the teaching from 1 Corinthians 10—the essentials of Christian community. And so it was a real perversion as it were to take what was true in a sense and yet try to fine-tune that definition of real presence and as a result divide the body that Christ had brought together through his death, reconciling us to himself, to God the Father, and also to one another.

We talked last week then about 1 Corinthians 10 and about how there’s a warning in 1 Corinthians 10, the very first few verses, against an undue reliance upon external signs and this again is so important. The real presence people who took 1 Corinthians 10:11 to indicate that was the essential teaching of what’s going on there and therefore if we eat Christ we really have grace, we really grow and all this sort of stuff—which is true to a certain extent—Paul gives us a real strong warning against idolatry and against an undue reliance upon external signs in 1 Corinthians 10, the first few verses. We’ll return to that in a couple of minutes in discussion of our subject this morning on discerning the body, communion and children.

There was a warning against undue reliance on external signs and seals. There was a warning against idolatry. And it’s a warning that we should take to account. We think we have strength in certain areas. And yet God says careful, careful. These things can produce idolatry in people. They can produce sin and your liberty can be turned into license. And you must take those warnings to heart. They’re there for a reason because we easily fall into sin in some of those areas.

Very important. And then we said that community is an essential aspect of communion. Communion, as I said in verses 16 and 17, communion is with the body of Christ. And although that has some reference to the sacramental body of Christ, the primary reference, I believe, from that text is with the covenant of the corporate body of Christ, the political body of the church as it were. And so, it’s very important to realize that and that Paul went on to talk about how his communion is defined by the partakers and that communion is also defined by our actions toward other partakers.

And since they had divisions in the passage from 1 Corinthians 11 we just read, he said this is not the Lord’s supper and he talked about the judgment they were falling into akin to the judgment in the first five verses of 1 Corinthians 10 where in the wilderness people were baptized into Christ, they ate Christ—baptized into Moses as a type of Christ—and they ate Christ he said by and drank from Christ the spiritual rock, the spiritual food, and yet they also suffered judgment. He says you’re getting together for communion but because of your failure to apprehend the teaching of community in communion you have reaped judgment to yourself and the passages you just read are part of that judgment.

I quoted from Reverend Rushdoony last week. I’ll quote this again and this is really the essence of what I was trying to say last week. Rushdoony said that thus where the church fails to be a community and where any member thereof is negligent of his family responsibilities to other Christians—and I would say in the first reference to the local body there—the body of Christ is not discerned and communion is taken into damnation and judgment.

He said that’s also made clear by Christ in Matthew 26 where he says, “Unless you do it to the least of these, you haven’t done it to me.” If you fail to treat the other brothers and sisters in the church with the needs that they have, required of the responsibilities you have toward them in Christian community, what does Christ tell us in Matthew 26? He says, “If you don’t do those things, you’re cast into outer darkness, not outer darkness—the fires of hell.” He says, “Eternal punishment, condemnation, and judgment.” Christian community is an essential aspect of communion.

So, important to realize that and to realize the implications that we have then in our responsibilities one toward another.

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Okay. So we talked about that last week and that leads up to a discussion of 1 Corinthians 11. And here we are going to be talking about the correct way to understand again the discernment of the body required during this passage of scripture. The failure to discern the body, Paul tells us, resulted in the Corinthian church having people among them weak, sick, and some sleep. Death is probably indicated there.

Now, I think this has relevance to the Christian church today. Have Christians today been judged? Are they divided? Have they lost covenant children from their from the churches that are raised supposed to be raised in the faith and yet then apostatized in great numbers? Certainly, this is the case. Are we not the tail of this country and not the head? Are we not in a position of God’s curse and judgment upon the church corporately in America. If communion is what we believe it to be, a meal of covenant renewal and expressive of the basic concepts necessary for covenant obedience, certainly the recovery of biblical communion and the avoidance of the errors and sins cited in biblically corrected materials such as 1 Corinthians 11—these things—should be a very high priority for us with the current reformation underway in this country around the globe. If we suffer judgment and our judgment is akin to the judgment talked about here, then we should recognize that this biblically corrected material is quite important for the church today. And so let’s turn to the text now and look at discerning the body in 1 Corinthians 11.

That was the central sin that they failed in and that they received judgment for. Paul cites a tremendous problem in 1 Corinthians 11. As we said last week, this problem is seen in some degree as parallel with his definition in 1 Corinthians 10:1-5. He warned there that while all of the covenant community partook of Christ and the Old Testament ordinances of the Red Sea crossing and of the heavenly bread and drank manna and then the water that came out of the rock, nonetheless, because they sinned, they were laid low. He says that thousands of them fell in a day. He says that some of them were destroyed by serpents and others were destroyed by the destroyer for their sins. And he’s drawing a correlary to church at Corinth.

Here in the chapter we just read, we are told that those who partook of the Lord’s supper, as they thought was the Lord’s table, that they were also judged. In verse 30 says that for this cause many are weak, sickly among you and many sleep. In addition to making the serious nature of the problem crystal clear then through this parallel and through these strong language from Paul, Paul also makes clear to us what the problem is.

But unfortunately far too many Christians today and churches have abstracted Paul’s comments on in 1 Corinthians 11 out of their God-given context in the epistle and so missed much of what is hereby taught. The passage we read, the center of that passage is one that’s commonly read at communion. We recite part of it during our communion liturgy as well. It’s a good thing. The problem is when we abstract things out like that we end up losing the context and much of the meaning of the text.

Remember I said last week that some of us have read these examples to us, and he cites Exodus where they sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. And many people think that means we sit down to eat and drink. We ought to be careful how we rise up not to play. But that’s not what that passage from Exodus is all about. What Paul’s telling them about was they sat down with an idolatrous communion. They made the golden calf when Moses went up on the mountain. They stood up to play and rejoice before the God they just had dinner with, as it were, the golden calf. So see, when we abstract these verses out and put them into a liturgy, frequently we end up with wrong interpretations of them and that’s what’s happened to this text I believe.

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Now the key to understanding the problem lies in verses 27 to 30. Here Paul cites at the end the resultant judgment from God for their sin. Again he says many are weak, sickly and sleep. The cause for this damnation—to use the word Paul uses in verse 29—damnation is a failure to discern the body. They don’t discern the body. The result of that is judgment. So we have the cause and we have consequence or the curse of that: the failure to discern the body has resulted in unworthy participation in the supper and hence judgment. The corrective is also spelled out by Paul: that corrective is self-examination. So we have here then the curse—judgment; the cause of the judgment—unworthy participation by way of not discerning the body correctly; and the corrective to that—which is self-examination.

The root problem, the cause to be corrected then was a failure to discern the Lord’s body. But what does that mean?

Many have posited some sort of failure on the part of the Corinthians to understand the real presence, the sacramental body of Christ in this phrase. And as I said before, there is some—there’s obviously a reference to the sacramental body, but it is not primary. Now, what they do is they take verses 23-26 where Paul reminds the Corinthians of what he has already instructed them in—that the Lord’s supper is partaking of the Lord’s body and the Lord’s blood. But—and they say that’s kind of the center of the passage, but it isn’t.

The center of the passage is the corrected material that he is reminding them of their failure to obey by bringing up these points of verses 23-26 where he recites the institution of the Lord’s supper. Now, that passage where he recites the institution of the supper, he says, “I already gave this to you. Your problem is not intellectual. Your problem is not that you don’t understand these things well enough. I’ve told you what you need to know. Your problem is obedience. It’s an ethical problem, not an intellectual problem.” And that would be a big clue to many people who misinterpret this passage to see that the problem is ethical and not intellectual.

People keep trying to get a better intellectual understanding of the real body, the real presence rather. And so they misinterpret this whole thing. Paul says, “I’ve already given this to you.” And the point of verses 23-26 is to increase their sense of judgment because he says, “Not only are you partaking unworthily of this communion meal with the rest of the believers, this is actually a violation of the body and blood of our savior. This is what he died to effect release from.”

Okay. All right.

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The answer to the Corinthians’ problems, if this is—if you think that what he is saying in terms of discerning the body is the meditation of the real presence—the answer to that problem would be some sort of meditative analysis on the sacramental or physical body of our savior or on a very deep introspective self-examination. Now Paul does instruct the Corinthian church to examine themselves prior to participation in the Eucharist. But I believe there’s a radical wrenching of the text out of its context here to suggest analysis that leads us to the corrective action of deep self-introspection and a meditation upon the sacramental body of Christ.

Paul tells us in this very section more of the nature of the problem. In verse 18 of what we just read, he says there were divisions. In verse 21, he says there was self-interest yielding resulting in drunkenness and some say gluttony. In verse 22, he says the church of God is despised because the poor brother doesn’t have enough to eat and the rich people eat more. In a word, it is a failure of community that Paul is quite clearly addressing in this epistle.

If we’re going to understand the phrase, that’s the context. The answer that Paul sketches out for them indicates this as well. He gives this section. He says, “You got problems. I’m going to talk to you about the problems.” And then he gives them the solution in verse 33. And what is that solution? How does he define the self-examination required? He says in verse 33 that as a result of all this, the corrective action is wherefore, tarry one for another. Don’t do this stuff in relationship to the community. Don’t sin against the covenant community. Carry one for another. Restore biblical communion and biblical community to your love feast and to your Eucharist. And then you’ll be blessed and not cursed.

The self-examination called for is an examination of our actions relative to the covenanted community. It is a looking about and evaluating our actions as those that are actions to those we see as we look about at church. It’s not some sort of deep personal introspection that’s indicated here. In fact, the term used for examine yourself here could and frequently is translated in the New Testament as proved. So the text could be read let a man prove himself—that is demonstrate through his actions in community his worthiness to participate in communion.

Paul told them that the Lord’s supper is a demonstration, a proclamation, a showing of the Lord’s death. That is what that death accomplished: reconciliation man to God and reconciliation man to his fellow man of the church as well. Their actions belied this at least on the horizontal plane, believer to believer. And so judgment followed.

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Now, this fits nicely with the whole context of the rest of the epistle as well. We said last week that we spoke of the link between community and uncommonityin last week in 1 Corinthians 10. The very epistle itself starts in the very first few verses of the discussion of division, schism, sins against community and continues in that vein throughout the epistle. As we said last week, chapter 10 instructs the Corinthians in quite clear terms that the partaking of the bread of communion was to teach them their horizontal obligations one to another in Christian community.

And here in 1 Corinthians 11 in the text we read, the same is repeated. Now it says to discern the Lord’s body. Many manuscripts actually omit the term Lord from the phrase discerning the Lord’s body. And if we accept those manuscripts as many people do, the matter is really very clear. The term the body used there and in most the occurrences in the New Testament refers to the body of believers, the church.

But even if we learn to leave the term Lord in, so the phrase is the Lord’s body, the meaning still seems quite clear as we said last week. The great preponderance of the use of such terms, the body of the Lord or the body of Christ refers to the church, not the sacramental body of the Lord. I won’t take time to look at those verses. I cited them last week and I think they’re in the outline. I’m not sure.

Both the preponderant use of the phrase and the possibility of a better manuscript along with the clear contextual evidence and the corrective being cited as action toward members of the corporate body of the Lord—all this and much more speaks to the body to be discerned being the covenanted community of Jesus Christ, the church, the corporate body.

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Now, by this time, you may be wondering if the outline is an error. After all, the topic was supposed to be paedobaptism, child communion, household communion, whatever label you want to put on it. What does that have to do with 1 Corinthians 11? My main point this morning is that I believe that much of the church in America, 1984, have also failed to discern correctly the Lord’s body in that members of the covenant community below the age of 12 are regularly excluded from communion in 99% of all Bible believing churches in America.

I believe this represents a radical violation of the text of scripture and a radical misreading of the covenantal body of Jesus Christ. It’s my belief that this radical failure in terms of discerning the body of the church has led to the weak, sickly death-like sleep of the contemporary church that we see in America today. Does 1 Corinthians 11 itself help us or does the epistle of 1 Corinthians help us itself in terms of this particular sin—in terms of discerning the community and the particular sin of discerning the community that I’ve just mentioned, the exclusion of children from community—does it help us with that specific problem?

It’s not written to a church that was excluding children from communion but I think by way of application—so it’s on its primary reference way of application. Several things taught in these passages of scripture do point us toward this sin. in We’ll go back for a couple of minutes to 1 Corinthians 10:1-5. And you remember in 1 Corinthians 10:1-5 Paul describes the covenant community, the historic Old Testament analog to the Corinthian church.

His purpose is to warn them that they like the old covenant church had been baptized and had taken communion, but they’ll suffer judgment for their sins. And we pointed that out a couple of times already this morning. To make this point quite clear, Paul says five times in those first few verses of 1 Corinthians 10, he uses the term all. We mentioned this last week: all were under the cloud. All passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses. All ate spiritual food and all ate spiritual drink.

The relevance of these verses to our discussion is quite clear: who passed through the sea and who ate the manna? Answer: that we properly discern the extent in terms of membership of the covenant community that is the Lord’s body and that is what Paul is citing here is being analogous to the Corinthian church quite obviously and quite obviously all here means quite clearly children as well as adults.

The children came out of bondage they went through the Red Sea and the children have nothing else to eat or drink in the wilderness but the manna and the water that came out of the rock which was Christ. Now here Paul gives us in my opinion an ironclad portion of scripture teaching infant baptism and infant communion at least in the old covenant and by way of analogy to the situation he’s addressing in 1 Corinthians to them as well.

Kids in the old testament were baptized and kids took the Lord’s supper. That’s what he’s saying there by way of implication. They fed on Christ in the manna and this is also spoken of in John 6 that we mentioned earlier.

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Now, we really could stop right there. Paul has told us in 1 Corinthians 10:1-5, the extent of the covenant community, it includes children. They were baptized. They had communion. By way of analogy, the Corinthian church should do that same thing today. We could stop right there, but I won’t stop there. One, you might feel cheated only getting about 20 minutes this morning. We won’t take a vote on that. Plus, and it is quite important we spend some time on this because the church today does not witness to this truth.

The extended church across America and across the world doesn’t believe in this. I told my wife this morning on the way in, our kids were running around—why we’re smaller than some other big evangelical churches in the area. And I said, “Well, my wife is putting out they they teach a pretty broad—they make their doctrine so watered down that a lot of people can come in and hear it and like it.” Well, what I’m saying this morning would drive 99% of the people out of the pews in most churches the following Sunday. And that’s something for us to think about. I mean the fact is that church doesn’t witness to it so we should spend some time reconsidering this and thinking it through to make sure we’ve got it right and of course the historic reformed confessions also don’t witness to this and in fact we taken just the reverse. So it’s quite important we think about this a little bit more than what we’ve just done.

Now remember last week we said that Paul here gives in summary fashion in 1 Corinthians 10:1-5 two sets of Old Testament covenant events. Turn to Hebrews 9:10. And this is really a parallel passage. We didn’t bother to look it up, I don’t think, last Sunday, but we should at least look at it here in Hebrews 9:10. And remember, book of Hebrews is comparing old covenant to new covenant, saying how we have a better covenant today than the old covenant. And he does that by way of explaining the old covenant. You can’t understand the new covenant, he says, unless you understand the old covenant.

In that context, he says in verse 10—well, let’s start in verse 9, which was a figure for the time then present in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices that could not make him that did the service perfect as pertaining to the conscience. And what he gives in chapter in verse 10 here is a summation of those Old Testament priestly ordinances. And he says which stood only in meats and drinks and diverse washings, carnal ordinances imposed on them until the time of reformation.

So he says that there were the old covenant carnal ordinances and he gives us two sets of those carnal ordinances. Ordinances for the body is what one way you can translate that. We won’t get into a discussion of that last half of the verse. That’d be very interesting to spend an hour on itself. But in any event, there were two sets of these ordinances. There were cleansing ordinances and there were nourishment ordinances, washings, food, and drink.

And those are the same two categories that Paul lists in the first five verses of 1 Corinthians 10. He says they were all baptized. And then he says they all ate and drank spiritual food and drink. And so the Westminster Confession and other documents have seen that in the Old Testament we had many sacraments, many ordinances picturing union with Christ and the results of that. In the New Covenant, those are dwindled down, distilled down to two: baptism and communion, washing and nourishment.

Very important to recognize that they go together. And there’s a direct correlary to those Old Testament ordinances. These two signs and seals of the covenant in the New Testament indicate initiation and continuance as did the washings and the nourishment meals of the old covenant. Now, we’re not doing an apologetic for baptism this morning. There are other tapes available from our church along that line. But just notice here that the two do go together. You’re cleansed. You’re initiated into the body of Christ definitively and then you’re nourished and in a perpetual way throughout that. And that’s the relationship between them. And if you are cleansed, then you have right to partake of those meals.

And next week we’ll spend more time looking at those meals and we’ll look at some of those things and how they work themselves out. But the important point is to remember here is that cleansing prepares you for having dinner. Like washing your hands before supper except that we have our hands washed once for all in baptism in a sense. We’re engrafted into the body of Christ and then we are nourished in that body.

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Now the primary exemplar cleansing ordinance of the old covenant sacrament the circumcision—that is, circumcision is a cleansing ordinance. I can’t go into here now but there are definite verses if you’re concerned about that I’ll show you later—verses that correlate that a study clearly shows in the old covenant uncircumcised, uncircumcised people are regarded and identified as unclean before God. There’s a relationship between circumcision and cleansing that is therein said and the unclean and the uncircumcised are lumped together in the book of Isaiah as well.

So circumcision was the exemplar cleansing ordinance. Many others were also given. And by the way, just briefly here, this is why some people get a little concerned about baptism and circumcision. Circumcision was males only. Baptism is males and females. Why is that? And you can have the proof text about we’re all one in Christ. But that doesn’t really answer it. I think what if you see all those Old Testament cleansing ordinances, some of them were applied to particular people, some were applied to in a more general sense, and all of them lead up through the application, the expansion of the cleansing ordinance given to all members male and female in the new covenant.

In other words, circumcision women didn’t receive, but women did receive, for instance, the sprinkling, the cleansing of the blood of the covenant in the book of Deuteronomy. When Moses takes the blood and applies the blood and sprinkles it to the people, women, children, all receive that washing. And so there are washings in the old covenant that women did receive. And so the new covenant washing, which is the distillation of all these washings, is applied across the board.

Okay? Now, the exemplar nourishment ordinance, which is our concern this morning—food and drink sacrament—was Passover. And it’s important to remember that it isn’t a one for one correlation. There were other food and drink ordinances as well. We’re going to talk about those in a couple of minutes. All those come down to communion in the new covenant. Now, the body that received these sacraments consisted of covenanted families, including the children.

Paul instructs us in 1 Corinthians then that to discern the Lord’s body correctly, we should consider are all members. All members, including children. Now, that’s not the central point of the text, the inclusion of children, but it is certainly deducible from it. And this is consistent with the Old Testament ideas of the covenant community.

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In Deuteronomy 29, God gathers all of Israel together, the congregation together. And he tells us specifically who that consisted of. He says in verse 10, “Your chiefs, your tribes, your elders, your officers, even all the men of Israel, your little ones, and your wives.” Tells us definitively the congregation of Israel, the old covenant consisted of children and women as well as men.

Joel 2:16, God again gathers the congregation. And what does he say? He says, “Gather the people, the congregation.” And what’s the definition of the congregation? Sanctify the congregation, assemble ye elders, gather the children, and nursing infants. So children are definitively included in the covenant community of the Old Testament. And by the way, we’ll talk a little bit later at communion today about the letters, the epistles to the covenant community—churches—and they include instructions for kids.

Okay, this is also consistent with another portion of 1 Corinthians 7:14 and that Paul answers a question regarding the status of covenant children when there’s only one believer who is converted to the faith. Are the children still covenantally holy before God? And Paul says indeed they are. You see, you have to understand that by seeing this covenantal significance. Israel was a holy nation. Why? Because God brought them into covenant with himself and the children of one believing parent and the other unbelieving, Paul says they’re holy. They’re set apart to God. Why? Because they’re in covenant with God. And so the idea of the covenant community, including children, is clearly spelled out from the example of the Old Testament that Paul uses analogously to the first Corinthian church.

It’s pointed out from the definition of the congregation of the Old Covenant. It’s pointed out in the epistle instructions to children in the New Covenant. And it’s pointed out in 1 Corinthians 7 where he says, “Definitively, children are holy. They’re in covenant with God.”

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Okay. Now before we go on, we need to address very quickly some specific objections raised to infant communion from this text specifically. And notably, people center upon the examination clause: let a man examine himself. There are four particular words that are used that people have used to object to the inclusion of infants. The first is whoever in verse 27.

1 Corinthians 11:27 not verse 17—verse 27 sorry about that: whoever shall eat this bread drink this cup of the Lord unworthily. The point is it said that people say well whoever there refers to men it can’t refer to kids. Well in 1 Corinthians 11:27 we do see that but in other portions of the book we read. The other portions of the epistles, we read the phrase that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

To restrict whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved away from children since they can’t call on the Lord would mean the logical explanation of that would be that no infants who die in infancy are elect or saved or go to heaven. You see, if you want to use the term whoever in 27 to exclude children, you got to use it to exclude children because it calls in other portions of the scripture says only those who call the name of the Lord shall be saved. So it excludes children from salvation. And I don’t think people would want to go into that because John the Baptist clearly was regenerate in his mother’s womb. He leaped in the womb at the at the realization of the Savior’s presence. And so it’s a logical inconsistency.

Additionally, the infant partaking of communion is not unworthy in the sense that Paul uses the term in verse 27. Paul discusses unworthy being harming to the body. And the infant has not violated covenant community by hurting other members of the body. So, he’s not unworthy.

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Verse 28, it says, “Let a man examine himself.” In Romans 3:28, the same term a man is is used. The same term is used in the context of this verse. It says that a man is justified by faith apart from works. And again, if we want to exclude children from the first use of that amen phrase in verse 28, we’d have to exclude them from Romans 3:28 because the children cannot exercise faith as an infant. There’s no intellectual knowledge, there’s no faith. Does that mean they’re not saved? I don’t think so. I don’t think most people who hold that distinction would say that. John the Baptist was saved in the mother’s womb. He was regenerated by God. This isn’t by man’s choice. It’s by God’s election.

Additionally, examination here in the context of verse 28 has the idea of proving or demonstrating covenant continuity with the community of Jesus Christ. As we said earlier, in the case of the infant, the demonstration, the proof as it were is his demonstration that he is a member of that community is his baptism which he has not yet denied and we would say that a person has to be baptized for they can take communion but if the infant has been baptized that’s his demonstration of continuity of the covenant household. Okay he hasn’t denied that baptism he hasn’t hurt the body.

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Same thing is true of the term he who in verse 29. We won’t go into all of that but the point is that these terms if we stretch them to the to the limit to exclude children, we end up with lots of problems with the rest of scripture where the exact same phrases are used. Now, additionally, of course, the exam—the call for people to exercise self-discernment, self-examination, to discern the covenant community of Jesus Christ, that’s given to a particular people who can perform that duty.

In we read, for instance, in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, if anyone will not work, neither let him eat. Addressed to the whole church. But we certainly don’t mandate that our children work before they eat. If you did that, the baby would die at infancy. No, it’s given to a particular people, those implications of the command are those who are able to fulfill the command, adults who are capable of working. And so the command to exercise self-examination etc. also is given to a particular people, those that can exercise it. And so that doesn’t exclude children by way of that at all.

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Okay. So we talked about the discerning the body from the book of 1 Corinthians. Now, we’re going to talk about discerning the body in the Old Testament. And in Isaiah 1, I want to deal with this just real briefly here. And I’ll tell you why we need to deal with Isaiah 1 for a minute here. There are some people that say, “Okay, if you can prove to me that kids partook of communion in the Old Testament, Passover, and the other sacrificial feasts, I don’t care.” Because in the old covenant, that was a matter of being born into external relationship with God and the new covenant is internal relationship with God—faith inside, not just external genes related to Abraham. So they draw up a Old Testament, New Testament distinction. The Old Testament isn’t pertinent to the discussion they say because that’s all external motivated.

Well, if you read Isaiah 1, you’ll see that Isaiah 1 has some very analogous language in it to 1 Corinthians 11. In Isaiah 1, God tells the people in verse 14, he says, “I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts.” Now, Passover was an appointed feast and the Lord’s supper is an appointed feast for the new covenant church. And God here in Isaiah chapter 1 says, “I hate your Passovers and your other appointed feasts.” And he goes on to tell them why he hates them.

He says, “Your hands are full of mischief.” In verse 15, in verse 16, he calls them to wash themselves, to make themselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from my sight. Cease to do evil, learn to do good. May not be a big deal to you, but what he is calling on them here in Isaiah to do, he’s calling on them to self-examination, isn’t he? He’s calling on them to come to repentance for their sins. And he’s calling on them to exercise faith in his word and the sacrifices offered. And then he goes on to call upon them to exercise that not just vertically to him, but horizontally to their body.

Because he goes on in verse 17, he says, “Seek justice, reprove the ruthless, the ruthless defend the orphan plead for the widow.” They weren’t doing these things. And so in Isaiah 1, he cites them for violation of Passover and other appointed feasts for the exact same reasons that Paul cites the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 11. Failure to self-examine, failure of repentance, failure of faith, failure to treat other members of the community the way the feast would have us treat them.

Now, that’s important because Isaiah 1 means that if we do find that children partook of those appointed feasts in the Old Testament, then we can’t make this external internal distinction. It means it will have application to the new covenant church as well. There is continuity there and that’s exactly what we find.

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It’s also interesting by the way that in verses 19 and 20 of Isaiah 1, he goes on to say, “If you consent and obey, you’ll eat the best of the lamb, but if you refuse and rebel, you’ll be devoured by the sword.” Same way that Paul ended his exhortation to the first Corinthians. You don’t do this, you’re going to weak, sickly, and die.

Okay. So, we have in the Old Testament a yielded community exercising faith, repentance, and self-examination that includes, as we read the definition of congregational and community from Deuteronomy 29 and other passages from Joel, includes infants. And now we’re going to look at an infant incorporating body at Passover, specifically Passover.

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Exodus 12. Turn there. Exodus 12, we read in verse 4 who the Passover was supposed to be partaken of by. Says, “And if the house will be too little for the lamb, they’re instructed to take the Passover lamb. If the house will be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls.”

So he says, first of all, the Passover lamb is determined by the number of souls. He doesn’t use a term here to refer to adult consenting males. He uses the term soul. It means every living being in your households. That’s very important for us today, of course, because it has application to the abortion question. People are living souls. Okay? They’re not just little kids that aren’t important. And here Moses says specifically, when you get that Passover lamb, it’s according to the number of souls, living beings in the household.

He goes on to say, if that isn’t clear enough, he goes on to say every man according to the eating shall make your account for the lamb. So he gives a second definition of who partakes of the lamb and who decides the size of the lamb and which households have to come together. The number of souls which includes children and according to the mouth of your eating the number of mouths in your family who are going to eat this thing that is also determines the count.

Now that term the mouth of the eating is only used in one other portion of scripture and that is in Exodus 16 where it’s used three times to refer to who eats manna and they gathered the manna according to the mouth of their eating. Now we know the children ate the manna. They would have starved otherwise. And so the mouth of eating in a in the same book used by the same writer refers specifically to a group of people that included kids when it related to manna. And we’ve got to take that clear indication of what it means then back to this text and say the mouth of eating here includes the mouth of those little ones, the little mouths as well.

So there’s a second line of evidence that children were included in the Passover. A third, a third line of reasoning is that all the congregation was to do this thing. It speaks says in verse three, speak unto all the congregation. We looked at the definitions of congregation from Joel and Deuteronomy earlier, it includes little ones. So here in the Passover, we have three specific reasons to believe that children were included. One, all the congregation, which by definition according to scripture includes kids. Two, the number of souls—children are souls. Three, according to the mouth of your eating defined explicitly in Exodus 16 as including children.

So it’s quite important to realize that children were certainly involved. Additionally, in verse 24, Moses says, “This will be an ordinance for you and your sons forever.” And the word son there is ben which means in Leviticus 12:6, any child 8 days old or more. So ben is an inclusive term, not age related, and can include little tiny children. So we’ve got lots of evidence from the text itself that the Old Testament covenant community that ate Passover included children.

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Now, why do I go to all this trouble? Seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t obvious. And it is this specific problem that has plagued some of the reformed scholars for years. Murray, I believe, takes the position that Passover was not eaten by children and that’s why we don’t give him communion today. There’s a new book out. I listed on your outline several references that I used in preparing for this and one of a new little booklet out by Bacon published by Kevin Reed. Presbyterian Heritage Publications called What Mean Ye Me by This Service? And he says the kids didn’t eat Passover and we’re going to deal with some of his objections.

But that’s why you need to know those textual evidence that the kids did eat Passover. And Isaiah 1 says those appointed feasts including Passover eaten were meals that were internal oriented also and yet kids ate them. And so God says in the new covenant also the kids should eat communion.

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Okay. Why does Bacon believe that kids don’t eat Passover here? in this passage of scripture. And why does many other reformed scholars say the same thing? Well, they base it upon later in the text it says when your kids ask you later, “What mean ye me by this service?” And you tell them then this is about God’s deliverance. They take that simple question to be a series of catechetical questions and answers related to the event.

Well, now even if you took that to be the case, the kid doesn’t have to answer the question. He just has to ask it. I mean, a three year old could ask that question, right? So to say that means they have to memorize a whole catechetical set of questions and answers is really forcing the text. But it’s even worse than that. There was a rock memorial in the book of Joshua and when you walk by it, the children are supposed to say, “What does this mean, Dad?” You’re supposed to tell them.” The idea is you’re doing what Deuteronomy 6 tells you to do. You instruct your kid. They’re rising up, sitting down, on the way, whatever you do. You instruct him in these things. And sure, he was to ask the question, but that doesn’t mean he was restricted from eating it before he asked the question. It’s not in the text of that way at all.

Additionally, there’s even more damning evidence for this position. In Deuteronomy 6, God says, “Instruct your children in the statutes and judgments from the day to the little.” We do that this church, big unfamily devotions. Many of us catechize our kids a set right. Well, I bring that up because later in the text in Deuteronomy 6, later in that chapter, God says to Moses, God says to the people then, just like he says now, he says later when your children ask you what mean these sacraments or these testimonies rather in judgments and statutes which the Lord commanded you. What do these things mean?

Now see Bacon says the kids didn’t say what do we mean by the service. The kid says what do ye mean by this service? So they weren’t part of it. Well apply that same logic here. The kids say what do these statutes and judgments mean which God commanded you doesn’t command me that. You see the inconsistency terrible. So that objection by Bacon on the basis of that question is just in my mind it’s it’s hard to understand how a man can make that objection. On Deuteronomy 6, there specifically rebutts it.