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As you prepare to come to the Lord’s Table next week, think on this: we are given a literal taste of the meal that was extended to Adam at the very beginning and the meal that we will one day have with Jesus at the very end.

Let your contentment come from “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). Imagine how lifeless Paul’s command to give from the heart would be if Christ were not in our hearts by His Spirit. But since Christ fills us, cheerful giving must flow out.

We are at all times, for the good of our neighbor, to say with Paul, “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls” (2 Corinthians 12:15).

God gives to us so that we would give back to Him, by His grace, an abundance of what we first received. We do this by investing our gifts into people, places, and things that will yield an increase for Christ’s kingdom on earth. This cannot happen by carelessly tossing a few dollars into the offering plate every so often. The use of God’s resources requires more diligence than that.

Our giving reflects our understanding of the gospel. Knowing how generously God has given to us in the gospel will loosen our hold on our finances and let them flow freely into things that are of lasting value.

To lean on something is to receive support from its steadiness when we are weak and wobbly. This is an external picture of what it means to trust inwardly with our hearts. When we trust in God, we lean our failing and faint hearts up against His and therefore are established.

We give thanks, first of all, that God would allow us filthy sinners to feast with him. But beyond that, we give thanks knowing that when God feeds us we will never hunger again!

So ask yourself today: is there something I am trying to hide myself in that is not Jesus? Where do I run when I run from God?

Brothers and sisters, if you want to know what love is look to the cross. See your Savior graciously giving his life for you. See him dying a death that should have been yours to die. See him bearing a punishment that should have been yours to bear. That is what John would have us do – look to Jesus: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us.”

The Supper, like the rest of worship, is an ascent. Worship does not take place down here in the realm of sin, but above in the realm of saints and angels.

But every time God answers “no,” we learn a little more about how to pray. We can say that, even though God did not answer this specific request, He did so to teach me patience, or trust, or humility, and maybe that’s what I should have been praying for all along! So whatever God’s response may be to our petitions, we are still better off for praying!

The Law kills (2 Cor 3:6). But Christ is not only the Law incarnate, but also the Gospel incarnate. And the Gospel brings to life.

O, pity for evermore that there should be such a one as Christ Jesus, so boundless, so bottomless, and so incomparable in infinite excellency, and sweetness, and so few to take Him! O, ye poor dry dead souls, why will ye not come hither with your vessels and your empty souls to this huge, and fair, and deep, and sweet well of life, and fill all your vessels?

The abundant life is a life lived with one foot on earth and yet the other in heaven.

Feast or funeral? That’s a major question as we approach the Lord’s Table. What are we here to do? Are we rejoicing, or are we mourning? Is this a festive banquet we have come to, or a funeral service?

While our life this side of heaven is one of faith, and not sight, yet God gives us a glimpse—literally—of the vista of heaven in the Supper. Praise God for His visible word!

For though we are a bruised reed, Jesus will not break us. He is gentle. How does He show this gentleness to us? By being broken for us. We are so delicate that we could never hope to take the harsh blow that God’s justice requires, so Jesus took it for us.

God’s glory is the splendid, majestic, and marvelous manifestation of any and all of His attributes. God’s glory is everything that makes Him God. And can you imagine claiming that as our own for even one second?

Inasmuch as it is the rule of all truth, containing all that is necessary for the service of God and for our salvation, it is not lawful for me, nor even for angels, to add to it, to take away from it, or to change it.