In the message today, we have considered the importance of eating. Food is not a consequence of the Fall, and the nourishment of creatures was no afterthought on the part of God.
God created us as eating creatures. As we eat, and grow, and mature, and multiply, we find that God is in the process of turning inorganic matter into personal beings who love, and sing, and pray, and read, and hear, and obey.
After the Fall, God determined to restore the creation, and to bring us back from the death we had chosen through our father Adam. And again, eating is an important aspect of this. This is one of His instruments for renewing the creation.
Now of course, if we approach the Table here in unbelief, with an absence of evangelical faith in Jesus Christ who bled and died for us, then we are again approaching the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in disobedience. God’s way of renewing the creation through eating is not a way of eating in disobedience. So let all superstitious tomfoolery and rationalistic minimalism be put away. We cannot please God by putting our faith in created things like bread and wine. But neither can we please God, and protect the importance of faith, by refusing to believe what He has told us.
We partake of Jesus Christ here, spiritually and covenantally, by faith. Just as the material elements are presented to your senses, so the mystical body of Christ is presented to your soul. And as you partake of the one, in genuine faith, God knits you together with His Son, bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh, enabling you to partake of Him in a glorious and merciful way.
This is the greatest of blessings, and you are charged not to corrupt it, whether with superstition or rationalism. Take, and eat. Take, and drink.