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Glad to Forgive and Fellowship
In the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), the younger son despised his father by asking for his inheritance early, then he dishonored his father by squandering the family money and the family name. After the cash ran out and he was eating the pig slop, Jesus said “he came to himself” (verse 17), headed home, and hoped that he could work for his dad as a hired servant.
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In a Dining Hall
The Trinity intends to share their life with men. Eternal life is knowing God (John 17:3), it is sharing loving fellowship with the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. At the center of this life-giving work is the cross. The one sacrifice of Christ satisfies the death penalty our sin deserved, His sacrifice purifies us, and it enables us to share a meal with God. His offering brings peace.
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We Call It Choice
Every culture can be identified by its worship and all worship can be identified by its sacrifices. Some of the most grotesque, almost unimaginable sacrifices were offered by Israel’s pagan neighbors in the Old Testament. In order to please Molech, the Ammonites slaughtered their own children. We are horrified that any society could condone this sort of religion. What kind of god accepts child sacrifices as worship?
Our society doesn’t call it religion or worship, we call it choice.
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More Like a Segregation
In his first letter to them, Paul admonished the Corinthian church about their failure to commune at communion. They were eating and drinking, they were in the same place as one another, but they were still disconnected from each other.
When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk.
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No Matter What They Were
Every once in a while someone at our church throws around the word liturgy. Because most of us don’t come from traditions that talked about liturgy at all or we’re from backgrounds that badmouthed it if they did, it’s easy to misunderstand.
Liturgy refers to a predetermined or prescribed set of practices in corporate worship. Every church, every one, has liturgy, whether or not they talk about it or whether it is obvious.
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The Meat of the Meal
When you sit down to dinner, when does the nutrition start to work? When do you feel most connected to those around the table? When is the best part of the meal; what part do you enjoy the most?
Some of the benefits come after the meal. The body digests the food, turning it into energy and (depending on what you’ve eaten) muscle. We look back and remember the conversation and the laughs shared.
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All the Way Down the Line
Looking at our corporate service from an unbeliever’s point of view, how ridiculous must it seem for us to confess our sins as part of our worship? What idiots would assemble in order to acknowledge their failures? From an outsider’s perspective, why would anyone go to get worked over like this? If you were an unbeliever, and if you were forced to acknowledge that God exists, you wouldn’t want Him to be authoritative.
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Calvinism as Guaranteed Fellowship
On Calvinism as a life-system, or worldview, that explains how men relate to God’s eternal purpose:
Calvinism takes its stand with a fundamental thought which is equally profound. It does not seek God in the creature, as Paganism; it does not isolate God from the creature, as Islamism; it posits no mediate communion between God and the creature, as does Romanism; but proclaims the exalted thought that, although standing in high majesty above the creature, God enters into immediate fellowship with the creature, as God the Holy Spirit.
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Too Much Life
For 51 weeks our church has communed together at the Lord’s table. We’ve taken a distinct approach, or at least one that is different than most of us are used to, by practicing communion as a time for joy, not misery. Excessive, let alone morbid, introspection misses the point of the table. None of us are worthy for communion, not even the most mournful among us. The table reminds us that Jesus is worthy and that He invites sinners who believe in Him to share His life.
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Corporate Confession
We take time in our service every week to confess sin before the Lord. Each of us could all do it at home, before the service, all by ourselves and that would be good. It’s good to confess individual sins individually to the Lord whenever we sin.
What if each of us actually did that? What if we all showed up all confessed up? What if this exhortation was blue on black, if it dug up no fresh dirt, if it suggested nothing new for any of us to confess?