This meal is one of God’s appointed means of grace. We come to Him wanting that grace to be multiplied to us. But as it is multiplied, one of the things we must remember is that what is multiplied must come in a certain order. As a multiplication problem, if we just throw things down …
Always Put Yourself First
We are all coming to this Table for grace. We come together, but we also come individually. The meaning of communing together is seen when all of us do something individually. We give you bread, and you eat it. We give you a cup and you drink it. At the same time, all over the …
The Exit May Be Behind You
The Puritan William Bridge once said that whenever Satan builds a temptation, God is sure to build a door in the side of it. This is a great and wonderful truth, but we must not be simplistic in our attempts to grasp it. As the flight attendants always remind us, in case of an emergency …
You Are Free to Go
In the older covenant, when a man had the misfortune of killing another man by accident, the law made a provision for him to help him evade the avenger of blood. He could flee to one of the designated cities of refuge. In order to remain safe, he had to remain in that city until …
The Table of No Comparisons
This is a gospel Table, a good news Table. This is a Table that presents the broken body and shed blood. This means it cannot contain a hard message for anyone who partakes of it in living evangelical faith. This makes it the Table of no condemnation. Because God is here, with no condemnation, this …
Because He Bled
We are gathered at this Table in a world that has been fundamentally transformed by the resurrection of Jesus. The world can never be the same as it was before because this is a world in which a man has come back from the dead. And so we believe in the resurrection, we declare and …
Taking Heart at the Table
One of the things that God wants to do for you here at this Table is encourage you. This is a Table of thanksgiving, which you cannot properly offer when you are discouraged. When we are discouraged, it is often because of affliction around us, or sin within us. Affliction is God’s crucible, it is …
Hypocrites Don’t Care . . .
The Lord Jesus warned us about the sin against the Holy Spirit, a sin that could not be forgiven (Matt. 12:31). We are approaching a Table laden with forgiveness, and some tender believers worry about whether they have a right to come, whether they have a right to be here. Before considering what that sin …
How the Sin Argument Can’t Work
This meal is a meal of all grace. When we shrink back from it, we do so (most often) because of our sins. But because it is a meal of grace, all the arguments we might construct out of our sins do not and cannot work. This is because grace is there because of our …
Those Darts Are Doubts
This meal is offered to you as a means of grace. It is one of God’s great instruments for building your faith, for encouraging you in your walk, for establishing your assurance. Ah, there’s the problem, some of you might be saying . . . assurance. If only I had it. You think you need …