July 12, 2026

"Delivered to Us" (I Cor 11:23-26)

Series: Heidelberg Catechism Scripture: 1 Corinthians 11:23–26

Hear now the word of the Lord from 1 Corinthians 11:23, 26. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated. And as you're taking your seats, please join your hearts together tonight with me in prayer. Gracious Father, as we come to your word, we confess our inability to grasp these mysteries. Father, we are dealing with a text and with a sacrament that has been notoriously debated and reconsidered and kicked around and argued over for a very long time in your church. And Father, we pray that as we study this passage tonight, that your Scriptures would lead us, that your Scriptures would guide us, that we would say as fully as we can, as much as your Scriptures say, and close our mouths where your Scriptures are silent.

And so we pray tonight that you would give us hearts to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear all that is contained in the good news of the Gospel of your son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.

You know, as we read this passage of the institution of the Lord's Supper, those words of institution sound so simple to read them. But then if you've ever been in a conversation with somebody from a different church about what those words actually mean, you realize that these words are very widely interpreted in different ways among different Christian traditions. And so as we study this kind of a passage, as we think about what we are doing when we receive the Lord's Study Supper, we have to ask, are we at one extreme where we're talking about a hyper literal chewing of Jesus skin and muscle? Or on the other hand, are we talking about a bare symbolic snack of bread and juice that has really no connection with Jesus at all? What are we doing when we come to the table of the Lord?

Now I think it's helpful to study this particular passage because as Paul talks about the delivery of this tradition of the Lord's Supper, the handing down of it, and he talks about what this symbolizes and holds forth and brings to us, there are some word PLAYS There are some things that get lost in translation that I think are very clarifying to what's happening here and how we are to understand this. And specifically, as we study this passage, my aim tonight is to clarify that when we receive this meal, we are gaining Christ himself. We're not just chewing on his physical body or drinking his literal blood. We're not just sort of thinking about him from a distance, but we truly gain Christ. We eat and we drink Christ spiritually by faith.

So our theme tonight is that Christ delivers himself to us in the Lord's Supper. And that wording, that language is intentional, that Christ delivers himself to us in the Lord's Supper. And so three aspects of delivering in our sermon tonight. First delivered to us. This deals with the tradition that was delivered to us.

That's the first section. The second section is delivered up for us. That's what the tradition is, that Christ was delivered up for us and then third, delivered through us. It's how that tradition is now passed on. It's delivered through us.

1. Delivered To Us (1 Corinthians 11:23a-23b)

So we first come to this idea of delivered to us. And I want to look again at verse 23, and I want to actually go fairly slow through this passage. What Paul says here is for I received. That word is important. I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

Now, this language of receiving and of delivering, this is a language of passing down a tradition. So what was received from the Lord, that same tradition has now been delivered onto others, particularly to the church at Corinth, in the letter that Paul wrote to Corinth to straighten out and to clarify some of their own communion practices. But by the Holy Scriptures, this tradition has been delivered now down to us. That same thing, that same tradition that Paul received that was received from the Lord, he is now delivered to us. And this language of delivering and receiving is actually fairly important.

If you want to just peek ahead a little bit in First Corinthians 15, I think sometimes when we hear of traditions, our minds worry, are we talking about man made things? I want the Bible. I don't want traditions, right? I want the Bible. I don't want my traditions to get in the way of the Bible.

But the way the Bible talks about good traditions is the Bible says that what the Bible passes on to us is a tradition. Look at First Corinthians 15, verse 1. Now, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received. There's that word for receiving of our tradition in which you stand and by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered. Same language. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received. That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12. So it's that gospel message that Paul says this is something he received that he passed down.

And this is the mission of the Church, to receive through the Scriptures the traditions that God wants us to then be passing down to those around us and to the next generation. And Paul says these traditions are no man made traditions. Again, going back to our passage in 1123, for I received from the Lord. Paul is an apostle of the Lord Jesus, and he received these traditions from the Lord. He wasn't there on the night when Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, but the Lord Jesus delivered the substance of what that meal was and what needs to be passed on throughout the successive generations of the Church.

There was a theologian named Yaroslav Pelikan, and he draws a distinction between traditions and traditionalism. It's a very famous statement. Tradition is the living faith faith of the dead, but traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And then he writes, and I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name. You see, the Scriptures tell us that tradition is not a bad thing so long as it is the right tradition.

And these traditions that we receive from the Scriptures, that's where we get our right traditions, that these form a real vibrant living faith that links us to the dead, that links us to those who have gone before us. But what we must beware, and especially this is true every time we receive the Lord's Supper, is we must beware of traditionalism, where we're simply going through the motions again without really laying hold of Christ by faith through those traditions that he has passed down to us. We need to recover the tradition while rejecting traditionalism. So what is the tradition itself? I want to break up one part of talking about that tradition into the next section.

But I do want to start in verse 23 where Paul continues. He says, for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was buried. I want to stop there. That's as far as I want to go in this section on the night when he was betrayed. This language for betrayed is the same word for the word that Paul just used for the word delivered.

You Might translate this. On the night that the Lord Jesus was delivered up, or the night that the Lord Jesus was handed over. It's the same Greek word, a slightly different form, form of it. But the idea is that Jesus, the tradition being handed down involves the way that Jesus was handed over to the religious authorities and then ultimately to the Romans to be crucified for us. Now, this word is often translated as betrayed through the New Testament.

And there's. That's a. That's a good translation. It's one aspect of it. So Judas is the one who handed over.

He was the traitor who handed over. By the way, Latin is a different language than Greek, but we call Judas the word traitor in a word that's very close to tradition in Latin and in Greek. The word for handing over is the same word in both of those languages. And our word traitor and tradition, both of those mean the same thing because they mean the idea of handing someone over. Judas was a traitor for handing over Jesus over.

Again, if you understand some of the nuances of this word, it helps to understand what we're doing in the Lord's Supper. But in Matthew 26, verse 21, we read that as they were eating, Jesus said, truly, I say to you, one of you will hand me over. Or literally, as it's translated in the esv, one of you will betray me. That's that same word here. However, the idea of a traitor, or the idea of betrayal, the idea of handing over in that sense is not the only use of this word.

It's one slice of it, one aspect of it. But this word is also used about God's handing over his Son for the salvation of his people. Richard Hayes makes this point in his commentary of God's giving over of Jesus to be crucified. In Romans 8:32, we read, he who did not spare his own son, but gave him up, delivered him up, handed him over for us all. That's what God did for us.

Also Acts 2:23, this Jesus, and this is a slightly different form, but he was delivered up. Or instead of given over or given away, it's given out is kind of the sense of that according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. So the idea is that Judas betrayed Jesus. He handed him over, but God the Father actually sent his Son into this world to die for sinners on the night when our Lord Jesus was delivered up, we might say, instead of just the smaller sense of betrayed. Now, one more aspect of this word, it's also a word used to describe Jesus own willing love and sacrificial giving over of himself.

In Galatians 2:20, Paul writes, In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself over for me. The Father hands over Jesus. Jesus hands himself over. It was a small thing, although profoundly wicked, for Judas to hand Jesus over, because this was entirely something in the control of our loving Lord. And what Judas meant for evil, God meant for good.

The Father in sending His Son into this world, and the Son in willingly going forth out of his love and mercy toward us. And this is the tradition that is handed down and received and then passed on generation to generation. Not that is man made. Not that is something that we have invented at some point in time, but that has been laid down for us in the Scriptures that we preach and teach week in and week out as we proclaim Christ from this pulpit. That's the tradition.

And we receive and we maintain this tradition in a variety of ways in our worship, but especially in the Lord's Supper. Okay, so this gets us to one aspect of the tradition that Christ himself is handed over. He hands himself over. He was handed over by His Father and to some degree by Judas. But the Lord's Supper not only delivers to us that Christ was delivered up and over, but that he was delivered up that he was delivered over for us.

2. Delivered Up for Us (1 Corinthians 11:23c-25)

It's not just a historical statement. It is something that connects history to our present day reality. And this is the second section, delivered up for us that when Christ died, He was delivered up for us. So let's go back to verse 23. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed or the night when he was handed over, what did he do?

Here's the tradition. He took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. We're going to stop there for just one moment. Here we have Jesus giving thanks to the Father for the Father's plan of redemption that he had sent the Son into the world to accomplish.

Now think about that for a moment. Jesus on the night that he would be given over to be crucified, is giving thanks to His Father for the soon to unfold plan. If our Lord Jesus could give thanks for the role that he was about to play in suffering and being tortured and beaten and nailed to a cross and bleeding out until he gave up his last breath, declaring it is finished, how much more grateful. How much more should we give thanks to the Father who loved us so much that he did not spare his own Son, but gave him over for us all, to the Son who willingly went enduring this work, and to the Spirit who sanctified and seals this work ongoingly to our lives. What gratitude we should have.

Well, as we look through this section of Paul's discussion of the substance of this meal, let's deal with a couple of details. For example, the bread. There's a common question. I just received it a few weeks ago from members of this church. Should the bread be leavened or unleavened?

Well, Jesus would have certainly used unleavened bread in the original Lord's Supper, since the original Lord's Supper took place during a Passover meal. And there is a word for unleavened bread in the Bible. Paul had used it earlier in 1 Corinthians, Corinthians 5, 8. But it's very important to see that Paul does not use that word here. He doesn't say that the Lord Jesus took the unleavened bread.

It's not like for us, it's two words. It's bread. And then we add the modifier unleavened. For them, it's just bread. And then there's another word that just means unleavened bread.

And so he could have just chosen that simple word for unleavened bread, but rather he uses the plain, ordinary, common word for bread. And in doing so, and again, I think we're seeing something of what Jesus wants to pass down of the substance of this tradition. Again, what he received from the Lord. Namely, that the ceremonial details of the bread that we use in the Lord's Supper is no longer something that is important. In the Old Covenant.

The ceremonial details were critical. They were giving precise, although veiled and shadowy pictures of who Jesus was, of different aspects of Jesus mission and ministry. And by those shadows of the ceremonial law, God built up the faith of his people in the coming promised Messiah. But in the New Testament, now that Jesus has come, there's no emphasis, there are no details. We wonder, where's the Christian version of Leviticus?

Where do we find the details and the rights and the procedures of what we are supposed to do and how we are supposed to do it and when we are supposed to do it. We're even just told to do it as often as you do this without any description of how often or frequently that is. That's just one more reason for Christians to divide and argue about perhaps but part of what that does in de emphasizing the ceremonial details. No recipe, no description of whether this is unleavened or leavened bread, whether this is gluten bread or gluten free bread, whether the recipe includes wheat or rye or millet or anything like that. There's no real description of what's in the cup.

We are told that it's the fruit of the vine, but we don't know whether this should be the fruit of the vine. Of red grapes, white grapes. Should this be alcoholic? Should this be sweet juice? Even in baptism we get very few details about how to administer baptism.

Should the water be poured or should it be sprinkled? Again, the emphasis of the New Testament sacraments, unlike the Old Testament, entirely plays down those ceremonial details because the substance has come. And the more we focus on ticky tack details of ceremonies and rites, the less we will focus on the substance, on the glory of Christ. Jesus doesn't care about the bread. Jesus wants us to care about him and on what he has done for us in giving his body to be broken and his blood to be shed and for the salvation of his people.

So the emphasis is not on the recipe, but on that breaking of bread that points us to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. And more than that, observe that this sacrifice is for you. Verse 24 this is my body, which is for you. He was delivered up. That's not just a historical statement, it's a history that is connected to your present reality.

It was delivered up in the past for you living today. Objective history. Christ died on the cross. Heidelberg Catechism 75 talks about this. First, as surely as I see with my eyes the bread of the Lord broken from me and the cup shared with me, so surely his body was offered and broken for me and his blood poured out for me on the cross.

That's history. But there's also a subjective not, not in the sense of what's true for me can be different for you, but in the sense of personal appropriation of that history that Christ was delivered up for me. Again, Heidelberg Catechism 75 second, as surely as I receive from the hand of him who serves and tastes with my mouth the bread and the cup of the Lord given me as sure signs of Christ's body and blood, so surely he nourishes and refreshes my soul for eternal life with his crucified body and poured out blood, the faith of Christianity is not a blind leap. Again, I had some evangelistic conversations with people this week where they they tried to minimize. Well, that's just your faith.

Your faith is just something you believe, Right? But the difference between beliefs that are just opinions and the faith of Christianity is that our faith is grounded in real human history. We don't just believe pie in the sky things. We believe in the God who sent forth his only Son, who entered human history as a human being like us in every respect, except for sin, who really breathed, who really bled, who really suffered, and who really died, and who really on the third day, rose again from the dead for our salvation. We've got to have that objective truth, and we must personally appropriate that objective truth.

Children, I'm going to talk to you in a moment again, but understand that being brought up in a Christian home and having heard these things is not enough. You are being brought into worship and brought under the preached word of Jesus Christ so that you can appropriate these gospel truths for yourself, to lay hold of Christ by faith for yourself. It is such a blessed thing to be a covenant child and to receive covenant baptism, for the promise is to be put on your body. But what all of that is pointing toward and moving you toward, we pray, is for you to lay hold of those things by faith and to make your own personal public confession of faith in Heidelberg Catechism 76. The catechism says that eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood therefore means to accept with a believing heart the entire suffering and death of Christ, and in this way, to receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

The next thing Paul says is, do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me at the end of verse 25. And when he talks about that remembrance of me, he's not just talking about call to mind these facts. Rehearse this. Review this as though you were going into some kind of test and you were trying to remember what you'd scribbled down in your notes over the course of the semester. Do this in remembrance of me is precisely this kind of personal faith.

It means to call to mind, to exercise wholehearted faith and trust that what Christ has done was for me. Now, when Paul then talks about the new covenant that is in Christ's blood, verse 25, in the same way also, he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Now, what Paul is doing here is a little bit different from what we find, for example, in the gospel of Matthew 26, verse 28, where Jesus says, this is my body, Paul writes, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. He is interpreting. And that's not to say that he is misquoting Jesus.

He's applying what Jesus said. Jesus says, this is my body. And. And Paul is saying, here's what it means. It's the new covenant in Christ's blood.

The point is that this is not literally and physically the blood of Jesus. Rather, this is the cup that shows forth, it exhibits, it confers to us the blessings of the new covenant which were acquired for us in Christ's blood. You know, earlier tonight, it struck me that in tissos sweet to trust in Jesus, we sang this phrase, oh, how sweet to trust in Jesus just to trust his cleansing blood just in simple faith to plunge me neath the healing cleansing flood. Now, what are we talking about there? Well, probably if you draw the symbolism, you're talking about the waters of baptism, or described as the waters of.

That wash us clean. That wash us clean. And we also read that we are cleansed by the blood of Jesus. And a couple of weeks ago, we heard a sermon that talked about the way in which baptism is connected sacramentally to the blood of Jesus. But no one says that the waters of baptism have been transubstantiated into the blood of Jesus.

Even though Roman Catholics would say that the cup, the wine, has been transubstantiated into the blood of Jesus. That though it looks like wine, it tastes like wine, it is nevertheless actually substantially the blood of Jesus. Well, we wouldn't say that. We would say that the same way we talk about being cleansed in the blood of Jesus and how that connects to the sacrament of our cleansing baptism. The same kind of idea is here in the Lord's Supper, that the cup is connected to the blood of Jesus.

It doesn't have to be magically transformed. It rather gives us what the blood of Jesus promises, that as we eat the bread and drink the cup, we lay hold of Christ and all the blessings of the new covenant. Now, it's also significant that Paul calls this the New Covenant. In Greek, there are two main words that mean new. One word would mean new in the sense that this did not previously exist.

There'd be no continuity with the Old Testament. Something brand new that Jesus brings in whole cloth. That's not the word that appears here. And in fact, from our officer reading Tonight, from Exodus 24, we see there are deep Old Testament roots that are very closely connected to the Lord's Supper. But the other word here means renewed.

New in the sense of renew. That it took something that had a very old history and heritage, and it renewed it in a sense that actually makes it new for us, the blood of animal sacrifices promised, the blood of Jesus provides what was held out in those burnt offerings that Moses made when he was actually taking blood and spattering on the people on that mountain and saying, this is the blood of the covenant. All of that was looking forward. It was promising. But the blood of Jesus, which cleanses us from all sin, now provides for his people.

So the Lord's Supper confirms and ratifies more than simply the truth that Christ was delivered up. The Lord's Supper confirms and ratifies the truth that Christ was delivered up for us. We have the message of this Gospel in the Word, and we have the bread and the cup, the seal and the confirmation and the authentication, the validation that Christ's body was broken and his bloodshed. For, for us, in the Lord's Supper, the precious promises of the Gospel are personally applied to us. An old reformed minister, Robert Bruce, who died in 1631, he wrote a famous treatise on the Lord's Supper.

And he said that in the Lord's Supper, we do not gain a better Christ, but we do gain the same Christ better. And we do because we're receiving the fullness of these covenant promises every time we eat and drink. Well, there's one last part in the third section, which will be brief. When we look at this final verse in our passage in verse 26, which talks about, okay, if the first section dealt with the tradition of Christ delivered to us, and now we have the tradition of Christ that Christ was delivered up for us, now we see our part in handing down that tradition to next generations. And third, that's delivered through us.

3. Delivered Through Us (1 Corinthians 11:26)

In verse 26, Paul writes, For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Now, in part, Paul means here that the minister proclaims the Lord's death every time we come to the Lord's table. First in the preaching of the Word, the Lord's Supper is something that never is done on its own, in isolation. I can't just go out on the street and for evangelism, just hand people bread and wine and in that way bring Christ to them. No, it's always connected to the preaching of the Gospel.

But second, when we come to the table, the presiding minister proclaims the words of institution, reminds us of just what we are reading here tonight. So partially, that's the way that that word is proclaimed. First in preaching, second in the words of institution, the Lord's Supper. But the third way that we proclaim the Lord's Death is not by something I say, it's what you all do functionally. Eating and drinking is a profession of your faith.

And this is why we confess together the Apostles Creed before we received the Lord's table. It's to connect the profession of our saints faith in the gospel of our Lord's death until he comes with the receiving of the Lord's Supper, which is to proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. And as inquirers come and see what we are doing and why we are doing it, they should never ever miss the fact that our eating bread and drinking the cup is for the purpose of proclaiming, partaking of and passing on the tradition received in the early church from Jesus Christ himself, laid down for us in the Scriptures and passed on through every subsequent generation all the way down to us surrounding the Gospel of Jesus Christ and children, this is where I want to come back to you. You have been baptized and brought into membership as covenant children this church. But you probably know you are not permitted at least right away to receive the Lord's Supper.

That's on purpose. We want you to ask your parents what does this mean? Why are we doing this? You know early on every child thinks why does everyone else get the snack that I am not getting? That's not what's going on.

We're not receiving a snack. Neck. This is about the promises that Jesus has made to us. Children, you were born and baptized in the church as non communing members. You were included in the covenant by God's own promises that he will be God to our children after you.

But at first when you don't understand what's happening at communion, you are not able to do what Paul requires in just a few verses. In the next section, in verses 28 and 29, you can't really examine your heart to know whether you're ready to come to the table. You can't discern the body of Christ in understanding what we are doing at the table. And you can't judge yourself to repent from any sins that are in your life. That's something that your parents are training you in and trying to teach you how to do.

And because of that there is a warning you should not you are not ready to receive the Lord's Supper. But that doesn't mean the Lord's Supper has no benefit for you. Children, you should watch every communion Sunday what everyone around you, not everyone, what all the people who are communing are doing around you. You should recognize that while you are members of your church by birth and baptism. There is still more for you to gain in Christ's kingdom.

Ask your questions. Give your parents an opportunity to talk to you about what Jesus Christ has done for you. And by this, as God strengthens and deepens and confirms your faith, the goal is that you too would come to a point where you can give credible profession of your personal faith in Christ. You have to come before the elders. They're very kind men, I promise you.

And they want to hear about your faith because they want you. They want to admit you to the table to receive the Lord's Supper with all of us. And what a joy that is. It's what we are praying for from before the day that you were born. Because, children, you have a job to do.

You will likely, although no one's guaranteed how long any of us will live, but you will likely outlive us when we are dead and gone. You will be the ones to deliver on the tradition, to hand on that tradition, to proclaim Jesus Christ in him crucified after we are gone. This tradition has been delivered to us, this tradition about Christ who is delivered up for us. And this tradition will be passed on until the day that Jesus comes again. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the meal that you have given us. We pray that as we prepare our hearts, perhaps you would make us hungry and thirsty. Not for bread or not for the cup, but for Jesus Christ. Not to physically eat his body or literally drink his blood, but to feed and drink on Jesus Christ and him crucified as the Savior of sinners. Father, I pray for our children that they would come to embrace Christ by faith.

We pray that every child, every covenant child baptized in this church would make a personal profession of faith. And we pray for those who are far off, who may not know Jesus tonight, that as we meditate on what your son Jesus willingly handed himself over to do, because you had handed him over for that purpose, we pray that the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ would become real to anyone who does not yet know him. Lead sinners to salvation through Jesus by faith. Tonight we pray and we lift up all these things in Christ's name. Amen.

other sermons in this series

Aug 9

2026

"Walking in the Spirit"

Preacher: Luis Muñoz Scripture: Galatians 5:16–26 Series: Heidelberg Catechism

Aug 2

2026

"Keys of the Kingdom" (Matt. 16:13-20; 18:15-20)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: Matthew 16:13–20, Matthew 18:15–20 Series: Heidelberg Catechism

Jul 26

2026

"Lord's Supper: The Tests"

Preacher: Wybren Oord Scripture: Hebrews 9:24–28 Series: Heidelberg Catechism