Eat and Be Satisfied

The Word of God promises that the suffering Servant will come to see of the travail of His soul, and He will be satisfied.

We too often draw the wrong conclusions from the doctrines of depravity, or from our distress over the current conditions of the Church. We are fallen, and the Church is in a dreadful way. We have sin to confess, and we have confessed it.

But we miss the whole point of Scripture if we do not see the promises. One of the promises is that after the passion of the Lord Jesus, and after His resurrection, He will look at the fruit of His cross, and He will be satisfied.

He is not ashamed to sit down at table with us. He is not ashamed to call us brothers. He is not ashamed of our table manners.

As we learn this — as we grasp what free grace really means — this sets us free to learn our table manners.

This table, this communion, is not a reward that we get for being worthy. It is a means of grace, it is one of the means God has ordained to make us worthy. We eat and are nourished. We are not to strive to grow healthy and strong, and then seek food as a reward. We are weak, trembling, and in need of what He gives.

But please know that He is not ashamed to give it. He is satisfied with the table He has set, and, because He is satisfied, it is possible for us to eat and be satisfied.

Note: I have been delivering these short homilies in our celebration of the Supper for over a decade now, and so we have quite a collection of them. In fact, in a week or so, Canon Press is going to be releasing So Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, a daily devotional with morning and evening readings made up of these meditations. For various reasons, rather than continuing to compose new ones, in 2017 I am going to be pulling them from the archives — but I will continue to post them here. If you want to get them all in one place, that will be possible shortly.