When we come to the Lord’s Table week after week it is with the expectation that God will feed us. We come here expectantly, and we are right to do so. We bring our children with us to this meal, and they are right to be expectant also. Food and wine were promised, and food and wine are always provided.
You have been urged before not to take this for granted, and that exhortation is right and good to remember. But there is another sense in which we ought to take God’s goodness for granted. What do I mean?
We resist the temptation to take it for granted wrongly when we remember that except for the grace of God, we would not be here at all. We are not here by any autonomous right, resident within ourselves. This is all gift, it is all of grace.
But once the gift is given, once the forgiveness is pronounced, it is not humility to hang back, but rather unbelief. Once the gift is given, we ought not to show up at church thinking that in order to keep from taking this for granted we have to believe that God may or may not bless us here. No. That is not cultivating a good remembrance; that is cultivating a craven spirit. You and your children are children here at the Table. Your place was purchased for you, not by you, but it was in fact purchased, and is now yours. You and your children are here at the Table, and are not dogs under the Table, collecting the scraps.
So come, and welcome, to the Table of Jesus Christ.