'Communion' Tagged Posts

The Feast of Unleavened Bread

1 Corinthians 5:6-8
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

According to the law given by God to Moses, during the feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread, which followed and was closely connected to the Passover, the saints of old were to remember God’s gracious deliverance of His people out of the bonds of slavery in Egypt. They were to eat it in haste, “with a belt around the waist, sandals upon the feet, and a staff in the hand”.

Traitor!

Psalm 41:9
Even my close friend in whom I trusted,
who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.

Traitor!” they cried, “Traitor!” With that word a man’s life is marked forever; it’s a label that never loses its stickiness. Recorded in the annals of history are the names of those whose entire life is summed up with such words, regardless of what other good or evil they may have done. It is not surprising that Shakespeare put into the mouth of Julius Caesar those now infamous words that have become synonymous with betrayal: “Et tu, Brute?”

Christ Came Into the World!

Hebrews 10:5-7 (ESV)

5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;
6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”

In many ways, the book of Hebrews is the owner’s manual for the Old Testament sacrificial system. What are all those passages about and how do we properly understand them? For the writer of that important letter, the ultimate answer was that everything found their meaning in the Person and work of Jesus—a better servant, a better prophet, a better priest.

Behold the Lamb of God!

It must have been an incredible moment, especially for those who had ears to hear and hearts prepared by God to understand the fullness of the Baptizer’s confession. John had known from the beginning that he was called to be the forerunner of the Messiah. He knew that he was not the Light come into the world, but the one ordained by Almighty God to bear witness of the Light, that all through Him might believe (John 1:6-9).

Waiting for His Appearing, with Faith

Hebrews 9:26-28
26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

It has been some 2000 years since our Lord ascended into heaven to take His rightful place at the right hand of God the Father. The wait has certainly been long, has it not?

Hannah: Her Song and Yours

1 Samuel 2:1

Then Hannah prayed and said:

My heart rejoices in the Lord;
in the Lord my horn is lifted high.
My mouth boasts over my enemies,
for I delight in your deliverance.

Hannah was childless in a culture where having children is what defined you as a successful woman and wife.

A Day of Shame for Christ

Isaiah 53:3-4

He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.

Imagine, if you will, your most embarrassing moment. I am not talking about some small thing like your cell phone going off in church and everyone hearing the embarrassing song that is your ring tone (by the way, you know who you are). No, I am asking you to think about a moment of deep embarrassment.

Freedom for a Christian

When he first said it, it was not what I expected. After all, he had been behind bars for the last six years and he was now a free man on the outside with so many choices and options. As many of you at Village know, I have been visiting with “Kevin” [name has been changed] since 2009 when his sister and brother-in-law called me one afternoon in the early spring of that year. Through three trials and many visits, we spoke of what it means to be a Christian on the inside of prison and what it means to be one on the outside—no difference at all, really, except for location.