Reclaimed - Part 3, by Pastor Rob Ketterling
Well, we are continuing the series Reclaimed, and we are reclaiming the table, and I'm really enjoying this. And I hope you are participating all the way with this and you're doing all the things we asked you to do. Remember, we asked you to use the hashtag with social media, #Reclaimthetable. And any time you use that hashtag on any form of social media you're entered into a drawing to win one of those custom-made tables. And staff is not eligible, but everyone else is. And I love seeing this. I love just going on to Instagram or Twitter and seeing #Reclaimthetable and seeing how it's just going viral. And, as a matter
of fact, churches around the nation are saying, "Hey, we want in on this and we want to do the series, too." It's just been fun to see it go around. So we are using the hashtag.
Remember, we are praying over every meal; breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Doesn't matter if we're in the marketplace, the school. Doesn't matter where you are. We are praying over every meal. It doesn't have to be a vocal, out loud prayer, but if God tells you to do it, just be obedient, and say, "Hey, can I lead us in prayer?" But it can be a silent prayer, but it is never an ashamed prayer. It is never something that we are ashamed of. We are going to pray over all the meals.
If you are doing that, here and at all of our campuses, if you're praying, and I know sometimes you might forget, but if every time you remember and at every meal possible you are trying to pray over the meals, would you go ahead and raise your hand? You're going to be a part of this. Go ahead and raise your hand. Excellent, excellent. And if you're not doing it, it is not too late to start. Let's jump in on this. Go for it. If you miss a meal, "Oh, now I'm out." You know, don't do that. You're still in it.
So we're using the hashtag, we're praying over every meal, and we are going to try to have three family meals together, three family dinners per week together. And I
know that's a challenge. I know that it's hard. A lot of you are busy. You're going here, there and everywhere, but we're going to do this. Because the importance of this is so strong, so strong we have the family meal together.
And I'm enjoying this series, because as I do this, how many know, when you do a series like this everything you start to see looks like the series. It's like that food, that scripture and everything. I was reading -- this is funny -- I was reading 2 Kings 4 about Elisha, and the oil keeps flowing, right? And so the oil keeps flowing to all the vessels that this lady has, and I'm sitting there, and as I'm reading that I'm like, "That's like unlimited refills. Reclaim the table." You know, it's just the way my mind goes.
And then, of course, Slate magazine recently had an article by Amanda Marcotte, and she talks about the tyranny of the home-cooked family dinner. And she said it's really a tyranny. It's like it's too much stress. And she said the stress of the family meal outweighs the benefit. Now I have to say this as I saw this article, I was like, "No, you couldn't be any further from the truth. You couldn't be any further."
The value of the family dinner, of eating at least three meals together, remember we talked about the studies have shown three meals together lowers the rate of drug abuse amongst your children. It lowers the teen pregnancy rate. It lowers depression. They get better grades, have higher self-esteem. They have a better vocabulary than if you read to them at night. It says that the stories that you tell give them a resilience. It helps them to understand, the stories around the table, that God is in control, they are going to make it. Sometime it looks bad, but they are going to make it through life. All these things are so good. I say we need to reclaim the table. I don't know care what Slate magazine has to say. We are going to reclaim the table. This is an important thing. God gave us the
table, and he gives us the ability. We are going to use it for discipleship. We are using it for outreach.
And today we are going to use the table to help us to remember. We are going to use the table to help us remember. And if we can, we are going to let the food preach to us. The food will preach to us today. The food will be the message, and it's going to speak to us just by the things God uses in the Bible when he talks about certain foods we should use in holidays and special days.
Now, I want you to know that food can help you remember things. How many know that? Like, for instance, this weekend my family and I, we are going to eat stuffed cabbage, okay? Now, I want to tell you, it is going to smell up the whole place where we cook it, and my mom lives in like a retirement apartment complex, and so everyone there is going to smell it. That stuffed cabbage is going to fill -- I mean, you're going to walk in the main door and it's going to smell, and as you get close to her place it is going to smell up the whole place.
But here's the thing stuffed cabbage does for me. It brings me back to the story that my mom and dad told us. First of all, it tastes amazing. Second of all, it brings me back to the story that my mom and dad were introduced to each other because of my mom's recipe for stuffed cabbage. A friend of hers said, "You make the most amazing stuffed cabbage. I don't know where you are going in this world. I want you to marry one of my friends so I will always know where you are." So he's looking around, like, who can marry Isabel, and found my dad. He said, "Have I got the girl for you." True story. They went on a date. Two months later they were engaged. Two months later they were married. Stuffed cabbage forever, and Pastor Rob came along in the deal. So it kind of worked that way. All right.
So whenever I eat stuffed cabbage, I think about mom and dad meeting each other. I think about the fact that I am here with stuffed cabbage. And when we eat that this weekend, I'm going to think about my dad. I miss him like crazy. He has been gone for a
long time after a heroic battle with cancer. But it will be a time to remember. That food is just going to bring us back.
So it's so important. It does it for you, too, though. Think about this. If I mention the food, you'll immediately jump to the holiday. Turkey, stuffing, cranberries; Thanksgiving. You just went there. You're like, "Oh, yeah, that's coming up. Whose house is it at?" You know, you're thinking about it. All right? If I say ham dinner, you're thinking Christmas. If I say lutefisk and meatballs, you're saying, "Norwegian. I don't know what meal, but don't invite me." That's what you're thinking, you know. If I say barbecue and corn on the cob; 4th of July, 4th of July. You're there.
I mean, so there are things, and it's interesting that we've attached certain foods to certain holiday traditions. And it's no different in the Bible. God attached food to certain celebrations and certain holidays and certain things that they would remember, and the food would actually help preach to them. The food, whether it was sweet or bitter, whether it was in abundance or not, so it would actually preach to them. So I want you to open up your heart to receive this today that the food is going to preach to you.
And I want to be very clear. We are not required to celebrate these festivals.
These festivals are in the Bible, but we are not required to celebrate them. But after studying them, I'm kind of excited about them, and I think I'm going to, you know, want to be a part of maybe a Lifegroup that will do these festivals. I think there is a lot here. To be honest with you, I think there might be some sermon series coming out of this because I'm learning more about God as I look at these festivals and I look at the food we are eating and what's going on. And so I think there is more coming. But we are not required to do that.
But it is interesting, we are required to do one thing as followers of Jesus Christ that has to do with food. We are supposed to take communion. We are supposed to do the Lord's Supper. We are supposed to do that in remembrance of what Jesus Christ
did. And the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, he says, For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
And it's interesting. I mean, we celebrate communion. We have this as part of our church and we celebrate communion. We'll take the bread and we'll take the cup, and the food preaches to us. When you hold the bread there you are reminded that Jesus Christ came in a bodily form, that he lived on this earth, and that his body was hung on the cross. You remember that. The food actually preaches to you, if you will.
When you drink the cup -- and, incidentally, we use grape juice at our church because we know that some people struggle with alcohol. We run a Celebrate Recovery ministry. There is no alcohol in our church. So you wouldn't see that. And so we just do that out of respect, out of saying we are going to do this. We also know that minors are served communion. Some churches do that. We are not judging them. This is just our stance on this.
But when you drink that cup and you drink that, you're reminded that the blood of Jesus Christ covered your sins, and Jesus Christ said do that, "Remember my body, remember my blood." And he tied it to food, and the food actually preaches to us. That's the only thing we are required to continue to do. At River Valley Church we do it about once a month. Enough to stay regular with it, but not every Sunday where people are like check, check, it's check. But we do it enough to make it in remembrance of the price that Jesus paid for us.
I will say this, and I know that we're culturally conditioned this way, but I'm starting to wonder if we are actually celebrating communion wrong in our church. Here's what I mean. When we do communion, we always are like somber and quiet. It is always like the slowest song and also like, "Let's take the elements." And, you know, pastors go for their deep voice, "On the night that Jesus was betrayed..." You know what I mean. They try to go there, you know, and act really somber. And then we get done, like, okay, put the elements down. All right.
And I'm wondering. Here's the deal. Christ won. He won the victory over death, hell and the grave. He took your sins, my sins, everyone's sins, and it was nailed to the cross on him, and all that call upon the name of the Lord are saved, and we are doing this in remembrance of the price that he paid, and we won.
I mean, could you imagine going to a celebration and they are like, "We are going to celebrate that our team won the Super Bowl." That would be in a state not Minnesota. "We are celebrating that our team won the Super Bowl, and sh-sh-sh, a lot of guys got hurt in that game." You know, right? You would be like, "We won! We won! We won!"
And so I wondered. Again, I don't want us running around going crazy. But I'm just saying maybe during a fast song sometime, we could change it up. Again, some of you are culturally conditioned. I can just see some of our campuses; "Not happening here." I can just see that. I know that. I know that. But think about it. Think about it. Maybe we could change it up, break out of the routine, and celebrate how good it is.
As a matter of fact, I'm getting an idea. What if we went around on one communion day and we just told people the day we got saved, the day we got saved. We went around and you said, "I'm doing this today to remember that on this day, or this year, or about that time, I give my life to Jesus Christ," and you celebrated. And the other person
told you and you told them, and you celebrated the goodness of God. I'm just saying the elements, the food preaches to us, and we ought to celebrate and realize the food is preaching to us.
Now, when we look at these festivals, I want to let you know they point to Jesus. When we look at the food, it points to our relationship with Jesus Christ. It's going to tell us about God, it's going to tell us about our relationship with him. And all of the festivals from the Jewish perspective are looking towards the Messiah, the Promised One. And so here's how I want you to understand this. Jewish people look at the festivals with one eye.
They are looking forward. They are trying to say, "Where is this Promised One coming? Where is it?" So they are looking at these festivals pointing to the One that's coming.
Christians look at it with saying, "It's about Jesus, it's about Jesus," and we look at the now. And when we look back in history and we look at these festivals and we take in both perspectives, we are using both eyes. And we're like, "Oh, now we understand what God was saying from that direction. Now we understand what he's saying from that direction.
Wow, God, you're amazing. We understand you more. We understand about Jesus. And we get this."
For instance, this is not a festival, but let me illustrate this. In Exodus 25, God is saying in the tabernacle, "When you worship me, in this place where you worship me I want there to be a table, and on this table I want there to be the bread of Presence. In Exodus 25:30, he says, Put the bread of the Presence on this table to be before me at all times. Why did he have them put bread there? The bread was pointing to the Messiah, the one that would save them. That the bread was there, and some day the bread of life would come and save them. So when Jesus says in John 6:35, it says, "Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty," he's saying, "Guys, the bread, the bread that was pointing here,
the bread is here. The bread is here. Let the bread preach to you. The bread is here."
So this is what's going to happen in this sermon today. The food is going to preach to you. And I want you to understand in the book there is seven festivals of the Messiah. Edward Chumney says this; he says four things about these festivals. All the festivals are historic and prophetic. All the festivals teach us about Jesus. All the festivals are agricultural in context. And all the festivals teach about your relationship with God.
Now, I want to let you know as we look in these festivals, I will not be able to unpack all of it. Honestly, I'm not even expert in this area. I'm not going to be able to unpack all of it. And we are going to mostly look at the food that's used in these festivals. Okay? The food is going to preach to you, but I won't be able to cover it all.
There are seven festivals in the Bible for Jewish people to celebrate. There are three fall festivals. They all have Hebrew names. I'll just use the more common names that we would call them, okay? So there is the Festival of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, the Feast of the Tabernacles. In the spring there are four festivals; Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, and the Feast of Wheats, which is called Pentecost. Okay?
So I want to look at the fall festivals. And I want to say that I have a huge debt to pay to Derrick Skoglund. He lives in Israel. We actually support him as a minister to live there. And he gave me a ton of help on this, and so I'm indebted to him.
But the fall festivals, the first one is the Feast of Trumpets, okay, and found in Leviticus 23, the Feast of Trumpets. And there is a lot there that symbolizes the return of Jesus, okay? And I don't have time to go into all that. Again, that could be a whole other sermon series. But it's the start of the Jewish New Year, start of the Jewish New Year. And here's the food that they would use. They would use apples and they would use honey.
And so, of course, I have all my stuff here. I think of all the other campuses.
Go ahead, you can see this on a shot. So I have all my stuff. I feel like I'm running a
cooking show, you know. Like, I've got it all right here.
So they would take apples and they would take honey, and as they would eat them during the Ten Days of Awe, they would realize that they offended people. That they might have been a little short with somebody. They might have lost their temper, a little short with somebody. Maybe God was convicting them of somebody they offended, and that's what the apple would remind them; the tart. And they would take the apple and dip it in the honey because that would be sweet. And as God would convict them of somebody that they offended, they would go to them and they would say, "It hurts to bring up the tart. It hurts to bring up the bad, but I know that I offended you, and I want to get to the sweet reconciliation with you. I want to get to the sweetness of it." Think about that. I'm going to start the new year out by going to the people I offended, going to the people that I have issue with. Not backbiting, not talking about them, but going right to them and saying, "I want to get rid of the tart. I want to go to the sweet. I want to be right with you, and I don't want to go into the new year having issues between you and I." I mean, the food is actually preaching to them.
Think about this. In the fall, when you go to the place and you get an apple, I mean think about it, instead of just chewing apples in the apple orchard with your family, what if you talked about that, and you talked about forgiveness and who do we need to say is a little tart and we need to ask for their forgiveness, and God convicting us of this. And so they do this every year. And also with the honey, the honey would be the sweet things. And Psalm 19, starting with verse 9 and going into 10, it says, The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. 10 They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.
And as they would be eating the honey, you know what they'd say? "I'm recommitted to reading God's Word this year. I'm recommitted to reading God's Word."
This year, what if every New Year you said, once again with honey, "I'm committed to doing our SOAP reading. I'm going to be committed to this and dedicated to this." You took even a little bit of honey on New Year's Eve and said, "I'm going to get the sweetness of God's Word." That's what they would do.
In addition to this, in this festival they would use a pomegranate. And it's not very common for us, but it was very common for them. The pomegranate was sweet and bitter. And they would say to God, "God, we know that we sinned. We know we did some things right toward you, and that was sweet. But we know we did some things bad toward you, and that's bitter. God, we desire to be sweet in your eyes and not bitter. Help us to be more obedient to your Word and not less obedient. We desire to be the sweetness of God. We desire to be blessed and not cursed."
You've got to understand, when the Bible talked about Old Testament times of curse, it doesn't mean curse the same way we mean it. They meant it like this: If you are living toward God, you're blessed and you're becoming sweet. If you're being disobedient, you are like bitter and you're becoming less and less like God wants you to be. And he's saying, "I don't want you to be cursed, I don't want you to be less, I don't want you to be bitter. I want you to be sweet and obedient and more and more and more like me." So this is going on. The food is preaching to us. The food preached to them, and it will preach to us over and over and over again.
On the Day of Atonement, on that festival they ate nothing. Twenty-four hours no food, no eating. In that moment they were saying, "God, we are totally dependent upon you. We've sinned. We've done wrong. We don't even want to eat. There is no good in us. It is all in you." They would dress in white and they would say, "We rely on your mercy and your goodness." So the lack of food showed them that they were nothing. He was everything. And even in not eating food, the food is preaching to them. Just amazing.
In that Day of Atonement there was also the scapegoat, and I don't have time to go into it. But they wouldn't eat it. If you want to hear more about that, I preached a sermon in November 2011, and I preached about the scapegoat.
There was a Feast of Tabernacles in Leviticus 23. After they gathered in the harvest they would remember they wandered around in the wilderness for forty years, and they would make a three-sided tent with no roof, and they would remember that God took care of them. And they actually used four plants to celebrate this feast in this time, the Feast of Tabernacles. Now, not all the plants have fruit, but stick with me on this.
The first plant that they would use was the willow. And they would say the willow, when they are teaching their children, they'd say, "The willow in this festival, the willow symbolizes something that produces no fragrance and no fruit. It has no goodness before God. It doesn't know God and it doesn't do good works. Don't be like a willow, kids. Don't be like a willow. God doesn't want you to not be in love with him and not doing good work."
Then they'd take the myrtle. And they'd take this plant and they'd say, "This myrtle gives off a sweet aroma, but there is no fruit." And they'd say, "Kids, that is like someone that studies the Word of God and prays even, is good to God, but there's no fruit for the world to benefit from their goodness with God." God doesn't want you like that. God does not want you like the myrtle. God doesn't want you just praying and just reading. He wants you to do that so you can go out and do something good. Don't be like the myrtle.
Then they would grab the date palm or something that gave off fruit or vegetable, you know. And they said in modern days they sometimes use the cornstalk, so I have one of these. And they'd say this gives off something that people can eat, but there is no smell to this. There is no smell. And they said, "Kids, you know what this is like? This is like doing good works, but not doing it for God." There is a lot of people in this world that
will do good works. They are going to be doing good everywhere, but it is not connected to God, and God wants it to be connected. And so don't just do your good works and not connect it to God. There is supposed to be something to this.
And then they would go to the last thing, and they would grab the last plant, and it was like a lemon plant. It was a citrus plant. And they would say, "This plant we have gives off an amazing aroma and it gives off a fruit for people to enjoy. Kids, that's how God wants your life to be." And as they are celebrating this festival, they are saying that's what he wants. He wants you to be in prayer and read his Word and being in love with him, and that's a beautiful smell. And he wants you doing good works so the world is fed and nourished. In our day he wants you to go to church, he wants you to sing the songs. That's a beautiful fragrance. But when you leave church, he's like, "Go do something good. Go do something good that your life would shine before men, that they would see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."
Wow, the food would preach. This food is preaching. These are the things that God would use in these object lessons. And I think somewhere there is a kindergarten teacher that's like, "I love God right now. He is speaking my language!"
In the four spring festivals, we focus on just this one. I don't have time to go into all of them. Remember, this is just an overview. They would do a meal, the Seder meal. And I want to let you know if you are ever invited to do one of these, book some time, okay? The meal itself takes about four hours for the whole meal to take place. But I'm going to give it to you in about five minutes, all right? So I'm going to give you some of the highlights of it. But I want to let you know the Passover meal was remembering when God, the death angel, passed over the homes where the blood of the lamb was applied. We will get to that lamb in just a minute. But the lamb is going to preach to us. Because each household had to have a lamb, and they would apply the blood to the doorpost. That's
really pointing toward Jesus, the lamb, the blood that was applied to cover our sins. Okay, but in this Passover festival they would have wine. They would have four glasses of wine. And they would have this and they would pour it out and the family would drink it together, and the first one would symbolize something, the second one would symbolize something. As a matter of fact, the second one that they would celebrate would symbolize God's wrath and the plagues of Egypt, and they'd pour it on the table. They wouldn't even drink it. And then they would say, "We are bad back on mission." And they'd say, "We are going to drink with God some day in heaven and celebrate the goodness of God." So they had these four cups. It was just an amazing thing.
As a matter of fact, a friend of mine, Chris Hodges, wrote a book called Four Cups. And he talks about this because this is their strategy for their church. They said the first cup represents God getting them out of Egypt, and it represents God getting you out of sin, that he saved you, and he said, "Our church is all about saving people."
He said the second cup represents God getting Egypt out of them, because there was a lot of Egypt, bad habit, and God had to get it out of them. And he said, "If you're going to be part of our church, we want you to drink the second cup and find out how God can make you whole and get rid of the bad in your life."
The third cup is that they were back on mission. God never wanted them to be slaves. And he said, "God wants to put you on mission, so we want you to find your spot in this church and find your place to work." Some of you are wondering why we are asking you to get a job. It's the third cup. You're wondering why your walk isn't going further?
You're not going to the next step. It's part of the way you are created.
And then the fourth one is to celebrate the goodness of God. And let me tell you something, when you're saved, when you're getting the yuck and garbage out of your life, when you've found what you're created for, it's a joy to serve him. It's a joy to be in
church. There is life. And some of you are wondering where the life is. The life is moving from cup to cup.
And some of you just said, "Well, I drank the first cup. I got saved." Well, get the garbage out of you. Let someone speak into your life. Get the next cup. Find out where you're supposed to go, and then celebrate the goodness of God with the family of God.
Another thing they would do in the celebration of the Passover meal, they would take salt water and they would take parsley, and they would take this and they would dip it in the water twice, in the salt water. And it reminded them, they'd say this, sometimes in Jewish celebrations they'd say, "We are born again." Interesting isn't it? "We are born again. God brought us through the sea and drowned Pharaoh's men, and God brought us across the Jordan into the Promised Land." And they'd do that. And the reason that it's salty, they remembered the tears that they shed while they were in slavery and it was salty, because they shed tears for the men that died as they chased them. Because they said, "Those Egyptians, they lost their husbands and their fathers, and it is sad, and we remember that." This is all going on in the celebration. You can imagine, the food is preaching to them.
But it goes on from there. They would take the matzah bread. And they would take the bread, three pieces of it, and they would take it, and they would take the three pieces, and they would take the middle piece and they would break it in half. Listen to this. Three pieces. They would take the middle piece, break it in half, and then they would wrap it up in cloth, a white cloth, and then they would go and hide it. And then somewhere in the meal the father would say, "Go find the hidden piece." The children go and find the hidden piece. And then when they find it, they are given a great reward because they found what is valuable. Think about this. Three pieces of bread; Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Middle
one, the son, broken in half, broken for you, wrapped up in a linen, hidden, found by the family, the pearl of great price, great celebration that you found what's valuable. I think the food is preaching to us. This is amazing stuff that God put in there!
Now you can imagine, as a parent you're charged to teach your kids this, and they are grabbing the story. They are grabbing it. They are realizing there is something going on here. And I'm learning this, you're using object lessons to preach to your kids.
They would also take horseradish, and not in the same way we do. I have had people say, like, "I love horseradish." Nasty, terribly, horribly bad-tasting horseradish concoction, and they would say to their kids, "Put that in your mouth," And enough that it would make their eyes water, so the kids wouldn't like it. And they'd say, "That's what it was like being in bondage in Egypt. That's what it was like. That's what sin is like. It's horrible.
It may look good, but it's horrible when it gets you. And it burns and it doesn't bring joy." But then they'd take like an applesauce type concoction, and they'd say, "Taste this." And the kids would taste it and it would be good. And they'd say, "That's the grace of God.
That's how good God is. That's how God is to you. It may not look that good from the eye, but I'm telling you what, it tastes good and it's sweet, and it's joyful to do the things of God."
The food was preaching. The food was preaching. And I think, parents, you can preach with the food. I think you can get more creative ideas. Who knows what you can do with different foods that you eat? Maybe you could get food and import it from another country and pray for missionaries from there. Think about that. Maybe you could eat from a different region. You're saying, "We're having Thai food. We support these missionaries." Maybe you could have a bitter thing and a sweet thing and talk to them about the bitterness of sin and use object lessons. If that's how God did it with his people, why can't we do that now with our children and impress it upon them?
I'll give you something else that we could do. It has nothing to do with food,
but it's at our table. If we're reclaiming the table, let your kids grab any object in the home and bring it to the table and ask you, "Why is this in our home? What's the story behind this?" Think about this. They'd say, "Why is that old frame in our home?"
And then it's, "Oh, that was from grandma, and let me tell you about grandma.
Grandma prayed for all of us to find faith in Jesus. That's why that frame is here." Next meal they go and get something else. "Why is that here?"
"Oh, that was from our honeymoon. You know, we got married 37 years ago, and we've been madly in love." And I just thought if you're 37 years married, you've got older kids. So anyway, but you get the point, you get the point.
Here's the thing. Like, if you were in my office it is filled with stuff like this. "Why is that flag there?"
"That was on my dad's casket." "What are those stones from?"
"Those stones are from the Valley of Elah where David killed Goliath. I picked them up myself."
And you should see, the little kids in the office are like, "Ohhhh! You know, "Why is that sword over there?
"Well, on my first missions trip when I was fifteen years old I bought a machete, and ever since then every country I visit I buy a sword, dagger, spear or something. I bring it back to remind me of the country that I went to on a missions trip and what God did. It tells the story."
So let the kids bring stuff to the table. And if it doesn't tell a story, evaluate whether you should keep it or not. How many know we have enough stuff in our life? And maybe say, "Do we keep or sell," and look at it that way. But just use the table. Let the food preach. Let the objects tell a story. God's all about that. Let the objects tell the story.
Last thing, the lamb. The lamb at the Passover meal was to be eaten by the family, and the lamb was pointing to the lamb which is Jesus. And I want to point this out, this is an amazing progression. In Exodus Chapter 12 it says this: Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. 4 If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat.
I want to point this out. When it started, it was one lamb per household. But then John tells us in John 11 that Caiaphas, the high priest, prophesied this about Jesus: It was no longer a lamb for a household; it was a lamb for a nation. It says, 50 You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” A nation. The Bible tells us, 51. He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation...
But it doesn't end there. The progression continues. In John 1:29, he tells us, 29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
A lamb at a table for a family. A lamb for a nation. A lamb for the world; me, you, everyone. I think we need to let the food preach. I think we need to let it preach. And there is a lot there, and I think we need to be better at letting the food preach.
So, God, I pray right now that you would help us to do that. Let the food preach. As we read your Word, may it just grab us that we want the sweet and not the bitter. We want the good and not the bad. We want to say thank you for setting us free from sin. We want to celebrate the joy of communion that your body, your blood was shed for us so we have forgiveness. We let the food preach. We thank you, God, that a lamb for
a household, a lamb for a nation, and a lamb for the world. You're the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. We celebrate that, and we let the food preach to us.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen, amen.
