This is a covenant table. God has established Jesus Christ as the Lord of the covenant table, and one of the central features of covenant living is the feature of blessings and curses.
The sinful mind and the foolish heart war against this. But God is not mocked—men reap what they sow. Of course God teaches us not to view this woodenly or simplistically, as Job’s comforters tried to do, or the Lord’s disciples when they enquired into why a particular man was born blind. The pattern of cause and effect in covenant blessings and curses is not mechanical.
But they are still real and open and obvious. A man cannot plant barley and think to harvest potatoes. Still less can he plant morning glory and pray for a crop of wheat. So how can a husband diligently plant his marriage full of weeds and pray for anything other than marital disaster?
God writes His story so that evil men fall into the pit that they have dug for others. Hamaan is hanged on the gallows he prepared for Mordecai. Sodom and Gomorrah blow up at the end of the story to the satisfaction of all the godly. God’s villains are often right out of central casting. These things are written as examples for us, so that we might learn to think this way. But we have abandoned Bible stories, and are searching instead for stories with depth and ambiguity and complexity. This in itself is fine, so long as we do not lose the moral imagination, so long as we do not tumble down into moral confusion. We must remember that at the Day of Judgment there will be no ambiguity whatever. God will be terrifyingly simplistic there, with His talk of sheep and goats, and no other alternative categories.
We are a sinful people and subtleties are lost on us. We are not as intelligent as we think we are. We have not graduated as we think we have. Take and eat; it is Your salvation. Take and drink; it is Your redemption. Do this without evangelical faith, and it is nothing of the kind. So, come, in simple, child-like faith. Believe God. Love God, hate sin. God loves you, and He feeds you here.